Nashville union and dispatch. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1866-1868, 1868-04-03
THE FREEDMEN,s BUREAU

The National Intelligeneer says; "What-
| ever action may ultimately be had in Con-
gress to contiue a system which has place,
speculation, and spoliation as its leading
design, the people at large have so much de-
clared against the crying iniquity, that great
party risk will be incurred by longer tolerat-
ing the damaging nuisance. Even such ex-
IRENE Radical organs as the st. Louis
Democrat and the Philadelphia North Amer
lean are strongly on the record against this
grand government machine of imposture
and tyranny at the South, by which whites
are defrauded of their rights of all descrip-
ton, including, especially, the vital ones
of suffrage and the right to hold office,
while the carpet-bag adventures of day
are exalted to positions through which they
manage, by fraud or force, to despoil the
people of their property or earnings"
The st. Louis Democrat, one of the
staunchest and most Radical of the West
ern organs of the Republican party, says:
eve find it very difficult to understand
| the reasons of Congress for voting to con-
tinue the Freedmen's Bureau another year.
| 1t is true, strong representations urging its
continuance have been made by many loyal
people at the South, but the opinion of
General Howard, unless it has been changed
| by these manifestations, would go far to
| outweigh them. The Bureau can hardly
fail to do more harm than good after the
| completion of reconstruction and the adj
mission of newly-organized States, and the
action of Congress therefore looks much
like an admission that its plan of recon
structon is not likely to succeed. There
may, perhaps, be stronger reasons for this
action than we have yet seen--reasons
which fully justify it-but the abstract of
debates does not supply them"
The Philadelphia North american thus
descants on this sore subject:
1--WE could add many more opinions
equally emphatic, and from journals just
as radical as the Democrat, TO show that the
views we have expressed on this subject
are very widely and generally entertained
by Republicans. Our belief is that the
right of suffrage, guaranteed TO the freed.
men by the reconstruction laws, is worth
more than a thousand such institutions as
the Bureau. By means of these votes the
freedmen can now most efiectualy protect
their own rights and interests, and they
seem TO be by no means slow in under
standing how to do 80. We observe that
quite a number of officers of the Bureau
are candidates for high office in the South,
and, perhaps, this will in some degree ac-
count for the anxiety TO continue the
Bureau. We must candidly say that we
have no respect for the Republicanism of
this sort of carpet-bag candidates, and that
we have no wish TO see them in Congress.
The South has interests of its own to look
after at Washington, which these men do
not understand or appreciate, and we sus-
pect that if they should succeed, through
the agency of the Bureau, in getting them
selves elected TO Congress, they would, for
the most part, be mere representatives Of
New York or New England interests.
In support of the positions of the North
american, we have TO refer to the follow
ing from the Richmond (Va) correspond
ence Of the Hartford Conn., Times, as fol-
lows:
'To those Of the North who are inter-
ested in paying tie fiddler by way of
taxation, for these negro political jolliGca-
tons here in the South, | will give the
amount Of negroes rations from that
charitable negro magazine, the Freedmen's
Bureau, and you can Judge whether or not
Sambo is not good at the draw game viz:
Thirty pounds of corn meal, thirty pounds
of -four, fifteen pounds of pork, fifteen
pounds Of fresh beef, fifteen pounds of fish,
with wood, etc, etc. One corn mill alone
furnished at the Bureau, last week, the
enormous amount of eighteen hundred and
lightweight tlSss) bushels, equal to
ninety -four thousand pounds of corn meal