Wyoming democrat. [volume] (Tunkhannock, Wyoming Co., Pa.) 1867-1940, 1869-03-10
EARLY YABoLuTIoNISTS-- THEN AND
NOW.

| Tom Hood somewhere describes the
frantic zeal with which certain old danes
of England once endeavored to scour to
whiteness some Africans among them
They were determined to make the negro
white man, by scrubbing off the black,
and so gathered together all the soap and
scrubbing brushes of theneighborhood and
went to work with persistent and unfag-
ging industry They stripped Sambo and
lathered, andrubbcd, and foamedand scrub
bed him till the skin fairly peeled off -
Then they hung him out to dry, but he
was still negro, and did not even pale in
to dark mulatto under the process. They
laid him out over night on the grass. that
the night air and morning dew might
whiten him with their alkalic properties,
but all in vain ; the African was still black,
and from being polished, was all the black
er
The Rump Congress and the Republican
party at this time, it.is palpable, are but
re-attempting what their simple English
mothers undertook. 1t is plain case of
the same philanthropy which exercised the
early Abohtionists, for while they have
gathered together the material wealth OF the
people, to be used up in lathering and
scrubbing the negro into white man,
thoy leave themselves unclean, and the ne
gro is as thoroughly savage, black and
forbidding, as when they commenced their
labors upon him. In fact, he is all the
blacker, that they have attempted to scrub
him white.
And in this insane attempt, millions Of
the peoples money-hundreds Of millions
have been Gathered" away upon the
African as well might they attempt 10
change the spots upon the leopard, as to fit
Sambo to live under, and become amen
able to. laws and civilization beyond his
powers of comprehension much less can
they legislate him into a legislator. He
belongs to the jungles and ''deyil bushes
of Africa. They are his by nature and he
theirs and he returns to condition suit
ing them to him, and he to them, the mo-
meut the strong grip of the white man
loosens its hold upon him.
The effort to make the negro freeman
to give him the rights of citizenship and
equality of person, only exhibit the falsity
of that sentiment, the success of which has
done the African-American so great a wrong
Wherein he is freeman? The boon has
been extended to him, and he takes it and |
wanders away from civilization, as if seek
ing to find his native and natural plane
a Jungle into which he can creep from the |
white mans eye, therein to. practice his |
mysterious Obi incantations and supersti- |
tious.
Scrub him, lather him, soap him, rub |
him, as We will, he comes from the bath |
still nigger-hideous to the eye-offen-
sive to the senses And so it will continue |
through all time. He cannot be made the |
equal of the white man ; he cannot be rails |
ed to that plane and if equality be resolv-
ed upon, those who stand upon the plane
above the trembling, jibbering imam and
brother" must come down to him, and wal
low with him on his plane
This is the penalty of equality. We can
not Anglo-Saxonize the negro, but the ne
gro may Africanize the white man. 1t is
easier to descend than to ascend. The one
cannot ascend-hence the other must de-
scend.-Bellefonte Wmtcbman.