The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-09-10
Black and White in the "Tribuue."

From the ". Y. World.
There must still, we suppose, be some
honest people left who really believe that
BLACK is black and white white. II any such
do exist and if it ever occurs. to any of them
through accident or design to pick up a cur
rent number of the New York Tribune, its
articles on the Southern aspect of the passing
political crisis, must affect them very much as
De Morgan would be affected by a series of
papers written to prove that two and two in
exceptional cases make five, or Darwin, by an
attempt to demonstrate the direct descent of
the Massachusetts sea-serpent from the union
of Spanish Jack with Florida alligator.
General Forrest, in a long and frank con-
versation with Northern correspondent, de-
olares his belief that nothing could possibly
make the Southern white people punish the
negroes for that tyranny over their late mas
ters of which Brownlow and his cut-throats
have made them the tools. The Tribune
forthwith represents General Forrest (not, of
course on the same day on which it published
the report of his conversation aforesaid) as
having declared that the Southern whites
were arming to repeat on great scale the
abominable massacre of 'Fort Pillow" and
as bent on exterminating the Southern blacks.
General Lee declares that the opposition of
the Southern whites to seeing the political
power of the country in the hands of the negro
race proceeds from no feeling of enmity but
the negroes have neither the intelligence nor
other qualifications which are necessary to
make them safe repositories of political
power"
Upon this the Tribune, which knows that
this feeling is shared by the people and em-
bodied in the Constitutions of New York, Ohio,
Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Michigan,
Minnesota, Nebraska, California, in short of
every Northern and Western State in which
tba I1aorOps fOuOd in ohara ri IN
make it at all worth while to consider them as
a political element, deliberately accuses Gene
raj Lee, and through him the Southern people,
OF being hostile ''to regarding and treating the
negroes as human beings, with the rights per
tanning to humanity"
Does the Tribune suppose that the use of a
capital letter II in spelling humanity" invests
such wretched cant as this with an air of phi
loCophical candor2 The Declaration of Inde-
pendence was put forth to the world by the
representatives of thirteen American Common
wealths, in which political power" was with
held, not only from negroes in and out Of
slavery, but from thousands of white laboring
men, from white women, from white children.
Were the American electors of l776 hostile to
regarding and treating" all the non-voting
population of this country "as human beings
with rights pertaining to humanity ?"
Mississippi, North Carolina and other South
ern States, passed in 1866, the Tribune
solemnly informs mankind, a series of acts
making provision for the suppression and pun
ishment of vagrancy among the vast horde of
negroes set free by an act Of sudden and forci-
bic emancipation.
Upon this the Tribune declares that Sac
quiescence in such criminal legislation by the
Northern people whom those blacks had so
greatly aided to put down the Southern Re-
bellion would be criminal perfdy." Is this
sort OF stuff written to be read by men or by
moon calves? Not to speak of the monstrous
perversion of historical truth involved in the
| assertion that the "Northern people were
| aided to put down the Southern Rebellion" by
| the millions of blacks who remained quietly at
their homes, working for their owners and
| feeding the South while the war was wagng,
how atrocious is the absurdity of branding as
criminal" legislation intended to arrest one
of the greatest evils against which society has
had in every country of the world to struggle,
from the downfall of feudalism to the present
hour Were the vagrant laws of Queen
| Elizabeth oriminali Are the vagrant laws of
England and the Northern States at this day
criminaY Or are we to understand that the
| thing which in the white man is a social
scandal and wrong, inviting stern justice aud
an austere hand of control, becomes in the
! black man large AID noble social fact, de-