Litchfield enquirer., 1868-01-02

o& trial have been all that could bedexpected. The moment of the right of the ballot was conferred, and even before it was exercised the South was at peace. The Freedmen's Bureau, backed by the national bayenets was far less adequate protection to the negro than the simple promise of the bal lot. In the Gulf States the whites have held aloof from the registration of the polls knowing that the blacks would out-vots them and hoping against hope that the re construction policy of Congress would il some way, by Democratic victories in the North, be reversed. The effect of this conservative policy would be to throw the Government of those States almost wholly into the hands of the black and white Re. publicans This would fulfill the predic ton of De Tocqueville, made thirty years ago, that the Cotton States would one day form State Governments administered mainly by the black race. In Virginia the whites voted and were beaten by a small majority. As the whites vote for the dis franchisement of the blacks, of course the latter have no choice but to vote in solid phalanx for the continuation of their right of suffrage. No violence has characterized these elections, butisuch result on future occasions is not improbable. As ques- ton of statesmanship, however, the prob. lem of reconstruction is solved. What re- mains is mere detail When the ballot was given to the negro, the races were assured the same harmony which exists between them in Brazil and Mexico, where whatev- or causes of dissension may exist, the races have ever remained at peace with each oth- or. They were saved from the wretched social struggles, between whites and blacks which have impoverished several of the West India Islands. The majorities of the Republican party in the Northern States have been shaken slightly by the suffrage questi on, but to nothing like the extent suffered immediately after emancipation. The votes against granting suffrage to col ored men in Northern States indicate no dissatisfaction with the Congressional pol icy, because none claim that any great end of political statesmanship could be sub- served by the extension of the ballot to a few scattering negroes at the North:s It will eventually be done, not from necessity but for consistency.
 The Republican party which has thus overthrown slavery, and in whose hands is the restoration of the Union, is in the as- cendant in every Northern State, notwith- publican party in the recent elections an apathy which will vanish under the visibly safe and beneficial workings of universal suffrage at the South, and will be electrified into enthusiasm long before their reinforc- ed majorities will be required by the next Presidential campaign. By the reconstrue- tion of the ten Southern States, on the ba- sis of the equality of all loyal men, most of those States will speedily range them selves under its banners. Under these cir cumstancss, the Republican party, which is now emphaticslly the Democratic party of the country, not only in its principles, but in prestige and power, is liable to the dangers which always attend power, viz: corruption and venality. But under what influences it may hereafter rise or fall, its future destinies cannot erase from the page of history it's brilliant achievements Tor human freedom. Nothing but its own recreancy, in the future, to the prin- ciples which have inspired it in the past, can forfeit its strong hold upon the grati- tude of the oppressed, and the admiration of fall, in the present aud future genera tions, who believe in democracy or love liberty.
 Not less important than the sweeping revolution in the governing ideas Of the has been the consolidation of the members of feebly bound league or confederacy into great and powerful nationality, which with larger freedom to the individual, combines an immeasurably greater power in the state. Congress is no longer de- batting society. It may not produce as gosd debaters as when Webster, Clay and Calhoun poured out their resonant and re- verberating war of words-words- words; and when eloquence was deemed the one quality of statesman. But more. impor- tant legislation has been moulded by a silent sheer from Thaddeus Stevens, than Webster's most brilliant orations ever dis cussed. The statesmanship of the past four years has been that of action-constant overwhelming action-beside which words became paltry. Something of the prefer ence of achievement over oratory, which marks military men, has marked the civil ians of our military period. So far from wanting in great statesmen the statesman ship of the past six years has been that to which the spirits of the first Revolution would bow in revernce, land to which our statesmen, for the coming century, will poins as their model for imitation, and and their authority for all controversy, Lincoln, Stanton, Chase. Fessenden. uSewss ard, Trumbull, Colfax. Wade, Grant, lSher- man, Sheridan, Thomas, and the like, are < -s->~.~S s.S SASsS0AS AA4 11oeV1y do Sudbuda, Burke. Fox, Pitt, Canning, Marlborough, Wellington, Napoleon. Murat, Ney. They are the founders of that period in our his: tory when the United States developed in- toa nation capable of maintaining every right, of not merely its present forty, but of its future hundred millions of people, no longer scattered over thirty seven states, but crowded into seventy. Ten years ago we knew not whether or not our national ity was stronger than South. Carolina Our so-called statesman feared to test the ques- tion. Webster weakly declared he "dared not penetrate the veil" Jackson made much empty fame by swearing he would test it, and then, waiving the real point at irsue by recommending repeal of the du- ties Could so weak a bond suffice for our future republic? The longer the question was postponed the more blood it would cost to solve it.
 As it is the solution has cost much; but it is worth far more. Those who feli in the struggle have not lost in exchang- ing fseting life for glorious immortal