The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-02-22

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1t is plain that, to be consistent as well
as to be safe, the radicals must undertake
| the reconstruction Of number of Northern
States. Connections is one of these Con-
necticut has repeatedly voted down the propo-
sition for negro suffrage. The people of this
State manifest an irrepressible repugnance
TO social fusion and miscegenation with
blacks The telegraph has just related not
able cropping out of this feeling in the town
Of Meriden; the proprietor of the principal
hotel in which place not only expelled Fred
Douglass from the public table, but whipped
the radical editor of the Meriden Recorder for
denouncing the expulsion. According 10
radical logic, this proceeding. taken in connec-
ton with the antecedents of the State with
regard to the negro question, is nothing less
than an eruption Of the rankest disloyalty and
treason. There can be no doubt that Steven
Ives acted as he did in the character OF typi-
cal Connecticutian.. There can be no doubt
that he conceived himself to be an active en-
bodiment of the sentiments of his public
when removing from the public table that
foremost representative of Northern free ne
groism, Fred Douglass. There can be no
doubt that his conduct signifies the existence,
in the State at large, of state of feeling
which. is utterly inimical to the assumption
by the negro of the position which radicalism
insists that he must have, as an indispensable
condition of republican government and as
the only sufficient guarantee against the re-
yiyal and final triumph of rebellion. The
occurrence would otherwise be inexplicable
Now, when it is remembered that, if affairs
remain as they are in the North, it's extremely
questionable whether the electoral votes of
the ten negro governments which Congress is
now creating in the South can secure the sue
cess of the radical ticket for the presidency,
it becomes evident that the radicals have
urgent occasion for the summary reconstruc-
ton ofevery Northern State which is likely to
cast an anti-radical vote in the presidential
election. They must, that is to say, recon-
struct such States so as to make radical voters
of all the negroes which these States contain,
and so as to make up for any deficiency still
remaining by DISTINGUISHING political oppo-
nents. Under the radical theory, there is
plain and conclusive argument for such dis
reimbursement. All the Democratic leaders
in the North, radical congressman and
journalists assert, gave aid and comfort
In the late war to the Douthern rebels.
Indeed, according to radical testimony, those
Northern Democratic leaders constituted, in
moral fact, q branch of the Southern rebel
lion. If so, they are quite as amenable to
the penalty of Acknowledgement as the lead
ing Southern rebels who are prescribed by
the reconstruction acts and the carpet-bag
constitutions. 1t is only, then, question of
expediency whether Congress shall take mea-
sures to disfranchise them /; and, from the
present aspect of the political situation, ex-
pediency certainly points in this direction.
1t seems plain, in short from the
radical standpoint, that the "truly loyal" if
they are resolved at all hazards to insure the
triumph of their definition of loyalty, must
at once proceed to the practical consideration
of Northern cases for reconstruction such as
we have indicated. If they do not, the presi-
dental election may go in favor of the North
ern Democratic leaders and that would be,
according to radical logic, equivalent to the
surrender of the country to disloyalty, trea-
son and rebellion, even though reconstruction
in the South should have caused all the
Southern rebels to be political ciphers with
to the election.