The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-04-04
/ srAnp BY YouR COUNTRY.


Despair has not yet approached the Southern
mind in any form SO ominous as that which
suggests the general abandonment of the
South by its present white population. We
regret that some of our Louisiana papers
have permitted this idea to find entrance into
their columns. Let them reflect moment
upon its pernicious tendency. Let them con-
slider that such an anticipation, if generally
INDUCED, must prove as DISASTROUS as it is
gloomy. Once diffused among our people, it
win work like an insidious narcotic, carrying
torpor to brain and nerve, paralyzing heart
hope, courage and energy. May heaven
avert this terrible infectionl
One of our contemporaries inconsiderately
predicts that the adoption of Constitutions
framed by radical conventions in this and
other Southern States, will cause the stream
of migration from these States, which
is now inconsiderable, to swell into a
mighty torrent, which will speedily drain
off nearly all their white inhabitants whom
poverty and wretchedness do not chain to
their present homes. The enforcement of
those nefarious contrivances of radicalism
for the oppression and humiliation Of our
people under negro supremacy, would, in
deed, be calamity of which the horrors
could not easily be exaggerated. Bnt. grant
ing, for argument, their nominal adoption, is
it possible for them to prevail as the embodi-
ment of the principle of negro supremacy?
We do not hesitate to answer that the thing
is moral impossibility. Think of eight mil
lions Of civilized, intelligent white people
succumbing under the rule of three millions
of blacks, for the most part reared in slavery,
ignorant and stolid, and universally unac-
quainted with the arts either of the politician
or the legislator The idea is preposterous.
Marius, it is true, with his legions of slaves
and aliens, was able, by dint of superior
force and remorseless prescription, to hold
mastery for brief season over the citizen
ship of Rome, until Sylla, like an avenging
fate, came upon the scene, and washed out
the Marian despotism in blood. But history
records no such instance of doulocracy as the
South would present quietly PROSTATE
constituting little more than one
third of its population. Nevertheless,
the enforcement, in theory at least, of the
set of constitutional denominations referred
to, is one of those possible contingencies of
the future which it would be weak and foolish
obtain for these instruments the forms of =
nominal adoption, may obtain for the minor
ity of blacks in the South the forms of nom-
inal supremacy. But what would be, in
reality, the resulting political domination
Analyze it. and at the bottom will not be
found the negro. but the same combination
of white conspirators, usurpers and revolu-
tionists which is now subjecting the South to
military despotism. The enforcement of the
radical Constitutions against the wishes of
the white majority, will be, in effect. the mere
continuance with certain notifications of
this despotism; for if the military arm is
necessary to establish those Constitutions,
it will be necessary to maintain them The
nominal supremacy of the negro, therefore,
will be the real supremacy OF the sword rep
resenting the white power in the North which
chooses to impose the law of the conqueror
upon the South. The predominant elements
of the situation remaining the same, there Is
no reason why the policy and tendency of our
people should undergo a complete revolu-
ton. And that policy and that tendency have
been to stick to their country, to cling to their
homes, and, come what may, to look with
brave faces to the future with indomitable
faith in the coming dawn of better day.
There are two other possibilities in which
few alarmists are disposed to find arguments
for anticipating general exodus of Southern
whites. 1t is argued that the South will be
the scene of war of races, and that it will
be cursed for an indefinite period with revolu-
tionary agitation and tumult. Mr.. Stephens,
of Georgia, is represented as saying that, in
case of such war, which he deems certain
to come, the white people of the South must
do one of two things-"quit the country, or
remain and fall" We fail to see the
necessity of either alternative If the whites
remain-and the bulk of them must remain,
for there never was such thing as the mi
grafton of whole people-they will not, they
cannot, eventually fall. 1t is an arithmetical
as well as moral impossibility for eight MIL
lions of people to go down in conflict with
three millions to whom they are superior in
all aptitudes for either war or peace. But
there is to be no war of races of the kind
that is apprehended. Remove the military
arm Of the federal government, and the
Southern freedmen would not dream of
making an onslaught upon the white popula-
ton surrounding them. The only war to be
anticipated is that whose bitter edge our peo-
pie have already felt and which is now pin
ming them with bayonets to the policy OF
sectional and tyrannical party.
AS for revolutionary agitation and tumult,
where within the limits of the United States,
or upon the American continent, or in the
compass of civilization, can immunity from
evils of that nature be found The age is
revolutionary. The spirit IS abroad and at
work in every part of the civilized world.