Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1868-05-14
Abandonment of the Gulf States by the
Whites.


Whites.
From the New Orleans Crescent
Some of the newspapers of Virginia
appear to anticipate considerable addi-
tion to the white population of that State
by migration from Southern sources.
They refer especially to tendency in
this direction on the part of South Caro-
linians, who are anxious to put them
selves beyond the sweep of the dark, por-
tentous shadow of impending negro
supremacy. Under this impulse num-
ber of new settlers, it is said, have
already arrived from South Carolina,
and great many more would come, were
it not SO difficult to sell the lands which
they abandon in the one State and to
buy lands on which TO make their homes
in the other. In order to abate the last
of these difficulties, it is proposed that
landed proprietors in Virginia unite in
the offer of liberal and inducing terms to
this class of immigrants.
This migratory movement is as ahpor
NAL as it is melancholy and, though it
may portend still deeper disaster for
South Carolina, it is not surprising. Let
us hope, however, that it will prove to be
only temporary, and that this defect and
unhappy State is destined yet to ex-
perience a situation which will invite
immigration, instead of repsling its own
population. Meanwhile few salient
facts, political and statistical, afford
ready explanation of the movement.
There is no other Southern State except
South Carolina, unless Florida be one,
in which the numerical predominance of
the negroes is great and decided. There
are four hundred thousand of this popu-
lation in South Carolina against three
hundred thousand whites. Politically,
this disproportion is made much greater
by disfranchisemen under the recon
struction law, and by the frauds of Radi-
cal registration the registered white
voters of the State being only about forty
thousand, whereas its registered negro
voters are upwards of eighty thousand.
Those whites who are prone to emigra-
tion by reason of these facts, are doubt
full of the success of struggle against
such numerical odds. 1t is not the mere
game for political ascendancy which they
are prepared to throw up in despair.
The carpet bag Radicals have no impre-
scriptible charter to colored voters in
South Carolina any more than in Vir-
ginia or Louisiana. The political status
of the negro once out of the question, it
is by no means improbable that the policy
of Wade Hampton, and other South
Carolina Conservatives, based on the re-
cognition of identity Of interests, will at
length prevail, and that the majority of
the colored voters and majority of the
white voters will work harmoniously to-
gether, and form the preponderant po-
liticsl power in the State. But all this
is involved in problem of the future.
In the interval, negro supremacy, organ
lied by carpet-bag Radicalism, looms up
as baleful certainty, disturbing society,
paralyzing industry, depreciating prop
erty, closing every avenue and suppress
ing every element of hopeful and pros
porous activity. Hence this impulse of
emigration. 1t is significant that the
emigrants in this case do not seek homes
in foreign countries, in the West, or in
the far North but that they turn toward
Virginia, in a somewhat higher latitude,
indeed, but where they may find a sym.
pathetic public opinion, climate and a
soil not much different from their own,
and social elements, including a consid-
erable colored ingredient, such as they
leave behind them. They are not re-
PEELED by the negro population of Vlr-
ginia, because they have no fear OF its
predominance there, numerical, social,
aud otherwise. This is a very suggest
i've fact