Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1868-01-07
The Plantations Abandoned
and the Country Swarm-
ing with Idle, Vicious
BlacBam0Ors.
Murder, Robbery and Pilfer-
ing by WhOIesale-Thou-
sands Starving 10
Death.
The Feast of Death 10 Which
Radical Politicians have
Brought their Black
Dupes.

We once saw a caricature representing
Lincoln on one and Davis on the other
end of plank placed midway on negro
on all fours the whole illustrating the
exercise familiar to country schooboys
as teeter." Beneath the picture was
the explanation mo matter whose on
top, the niger bears the burden Z" The
truth of this has been exemplified in a
thousand ways during the past few years,
but never so thoroughly as now. AT
last the holiday has passed away; at
last the tinsel and gewgaws have faded,
fand the visions of easy Incidence are
vanished. At last the poor blacks, whom
cunning politicians have vagabondized,
realize the hollowness of their new
friends pretenses, and are beginning to
feel their own wretchedness and degre-
dation. At last, despite the machinery
of Loyal Leagues, and the hurrahing of
politicians seeking votes, the negroes
begin to realize that, with few excep-
tons, they are homeless, friendless
paupers, OF the verge of starvation and
death, with no one to stretch them q
helping hand. To. day they are the
veriest, poorest, most God-forsaken
lazzaroni the world ever shuddered to
contemplate yet their degradation has
only begun.
The fruits of the past two years mis-
conduct they are reaping in desolation
and woe. Throup bout the length and
brcdth of this war-stricken country they
are starving by hundreds of thousands,
with scarcely rags to hide their naked
ness. Idleness has begotten want; want
crime +; aud both both death Here in Nam
phis the number who obtain livelihoods
by honest toll can be enumerated In
hundreds. The masses, male and female,
live by the charity of others or the wages
of crime. The young women throng the
streets and alleys, prostituting them
selves for food and clothing and plunging
headlong into theft. The men shrink
into ut-of-the~way places during the day
and at night come forth to rob and muir
der Daily numbers Of both sexes are
dragged to the jails, and daily poor
creatures are found in outhouGes, hollows,
the bayous and the rivers, dead from
starvation and neglect. The city is a
vast lazar of woe, degradation, crime
and death. The alleys and by-ways-the
low auarters-reek with this human offal,
whose ghastly presence causes one to
shrink and shudder with horror. Many
thousab DIS who must live; who would net
work when needed and begged to do so;
whom idleness and dissipation, encour-
aged by bad white men seeking them as
tools, have rendered unfit for work; to-
day infest Memphis as deadly plague.
Those who taught them idleness, drunk
enness and bestiality; who turned them
against their former masters; have moth
ing to give, and would give nothing if
they had to spare. Their purposes are
served without the sacrifice, and the silly
dupes are left to beg, steal or starve.
Matters are even worse in the country
There, fewer intelligent blacks can be
found, and the passions are more easily
worked upon Here are at least fair
proportion who regard the interests OF
politicians secondary to their own, and
cannot be seduced from good homes and
employment. They have learned some
thing from bitter experience. But, with
few exceptions, the country negroes
seem crazed about politics and politi-
clans The season has passed for en-
gazing laborers for the coming crop
yet the plantations are deserted. The
elections and Loyal Leagues last year
drew the negroes from the fields when
labor was most needed.
The crops languished from inattention;
and when settlement day came, employ
ers could not pay because the fields were
bare. The blacks did not pause to con-
slider that their own conduct greatly
contributed TO the disastrous result.
White Radicals we're found to fill their
ears with charges against the planters Of
making unfair returns, and entice them
of to Leagues, where they were further
inhamed against their employers. Thou
sands of others believing that the plan
tations would soon be divided for their
benefit and the whites driven from them,
declined to engage for the next crop,
and went away in gangs, to await events.
A ride through North Mississippi and
many portions Of West Tennessee reveals
the practical results. Plantations are
deserted, and the country swarms with
gangs of nog.oes, partly armed, who
rove from point to point, killing or driv-
ing away cattle, stealing horses and
mules. and depredating generally on
their late employers. They sleep in out
houses, hollows-wherever night over
takes them-and with return Of day re-
new their nomadic life. An army oil
lOcusts could not prove more injurious
to vegetation than are these idle, worth
less, thieving vagabonds to the planters,
whose ruin, almost procured by the war,