Spirit of Jefferson. [volume] (Charles Town, Va. [W. Va.]) 1844-1948, 1869-04-20
GRANT AND THE NEGRO.

The new President is the friend of the
negro, and recognizes his claims. More than
dozen have received appointments at his
hands, since his advent to the Presidency,
and how many more to be rewarded time
alone can tell. Commenting upon this pro-
pensity to elevate the negro, the Aictr0p0lttaa
Record says when the present Executive
was converting Sambo into food for powder,
that oleaginous persons most vivid dream
could scarcely have raised him to that dizzy
height to which he has been elevated by
Ulysses. Now and then he may have had
vision of voting booths and ballots, and pos
sibly of forty fertile acres and mule; but
certainly his minds eye could not have roam
ed among Post-ofices at SO, 200 year, or
feasted upon Assessorships measured in value
by the proficiency of the holder in the art of
stealing. He may have. wandered fancy free
in Paradise of idleness among the orange
and yam, but it could hardly have occurred
to him that in five short years the President
of the United States would be appointing
him to Office and that grave and venerable
Senators would be celebrating on his nomi-
nation. Possibly vague notion that Massa
Greeley of whom his Imagination drew per-
picking pictures would one day give him
money to buy his master, wandered through
his woolly head, but he could not have revel-
led in anticpations of big salaries for distrib
uting the letters and assessing the income of
his white employer"
"But Mr. Grant was then a subordinate
officer, exercising his modicum Of brains with
the problem how he should make seven we'll
fed men'whip one hungry one, and the genius
Of progress had not yet revealed to the drowsy
eyes of the American people the manifold
merits of the man:and brother. Mr. Grant
is now President of the United States, and
the African is his idol. He places him upon
the pedestal of power and puts into his mouth
the pap of patronage. He makes him Post
master in South Carolina, an Assessor and
Register Of Land Office in New Orleans, and
Judge or something equally inappropriate
in Washington. Truly "dc year OBJ jublo"
is come. The superiority of Sambo is at
last established. Who will dare declare him
an inferior being when he makes out the
approximation on letter in Columbia, and
levies tax of two dollars on dat gold watch"
10 New Orleans? Grant has made him a
Federal office holder, and from the towering
emnenoe of that distinction he can look
down in scorn on the shoal of "mean white
behring's" who have heretofore held him lower
than themselves"
"Why has Grant done this? Does he de-
sire the country to understand that he is re-
lated to the African? Is Sambo his cousin
or his brother>in>law? If not, how does it
come that he gives him an Office? We have
not heard that he ever ate dinner at the
expense Of the African, or receiving horse,
or house, or a box OF Havanas, from the
children of the plantation. Why then, does
he give them Offices. if they are not his own
or his wiCe's relations ? Surely the great
American Nepotist has placed himself in an
embarrf ssing position. All the world under
stands that he remembers only those who
give him presents and those who are related
to him by blood or marriage. The negroes
have not done the former are they 4he latter?
If not, why not and how do they come to
get Offices? Who can answer this momcn-
tous question 2"