The Bedford gazette. [volume] (Bedford, Pa.) 1805-current, 1869-12-03


to the south, now drink the horrible
beverages here concocted, habitually,
and many of them to fearful excess.
And, worse still, will provide them for
the poor besotted colored people when
ever votes, better bargains, or better
work or more of it can be had there
by.
Private virtue among public men is
net looked for, nor expected, not even
desired And this is as true, here in
Washington as farther south or farther
north. | have seen aldermen when
sitting at the city council board so
drunk as that they had to be removed
by the police before business could pro-
ceed. have seen aldermen and coun-
eiImen who could notonly neither write
nor read but who exhibited little capaci-
ty for public business, even when sober.
And only yesterday / read in news
paper an account, by an eye witness,
of Judge in Abbeville, down in South
Carolina, on the bench SO drunk as that
he had to be taken home by his friends
and the court adjourned. The clerk,
it was added, was about as drunk as
the Judge. Whoever travels through
the south with eyes and ears open will
have no difficulty in believing all this
and more, were it needful TO be told.
And it is absolutely needful that it
should be told and published through
the country, if we would save our ma
ton from the doom of Sodom and Co
morrah.
A majority of the legislature of
South Carolina are colored men, and
many of them can neither write nor
read. But several of their very best
friends assured me, they should never
support such again for the sake of the
oolored race itseIf-not even to save
the state from the democratic party.
Such burlesque on the very name of
government, they declared, was never
before seen. [ have witnessed enough
myself to easily understand that it
must be so. AT the opening of the
session, colored votes were easily
bought at five dollars, though later
they rose on their price. One shrewd
Yankee from Massachusetts, not
member, but who had some schemes
to lobby through the legislature, car
r;ed to the capital some cases of new
hats; and with them as a legal tender
drove quite a spirited and successful
business. Sad examples for white
northern republicans to set before
people just emerging from the darkest
degradations and cruelest, bloodiest
bondage and oppression that ever
scoHrged the human race! With all
the frightful realities of their past his
tory still crushing them down, with
the whitening prejudice against their
color still raging around them on every
hand and with such examples contin-
uaIly set before them by those whom
they not only regard as the superior
race, but have been told thousand
times are their best and only friends
what wonder that they are not to-day
many of them one degree higher in
the scale of mortal being than when
their freedom was first proclaimed
To me 1t seems absolutely compliment
ary to human nature that they have
done no worse.
1t is often said at the north, and in the
south as we'll, that what is most need
ell here is capital. This is not true.
What the south needs most is men and
UonaeR. Not adventures, mere plum
derers, as so many are who have gone
there since the war, seeking whom and
what they may devour--ravenou
beasts, who only go forth to seek
their prey, intending to go back to
their native northern dens TO ri
OF on and enjoy it afterwards. The
south needs intelligent men and wo'
men, of industrious, virtuous and
THRIVING habits, who will go there and
identify themselves with the south, to
share her fortunes for better, for worse
men who shall regard the colored
man for more than his vote, and the
colored woman for more than her viz
tue, and both as important to them
only as they can in some way subserve
their own interest, convenience and
pleasure, with no thought whatever as
to what should be the fate of their vic
Tins. Formerly at the south few la
bored except slaves and free colored
people. That the native southerner
should hold to his own idea and habit
of idleness is not strange. But almost
every northern man who comes at once
contracts the same. Very few white
men intend to work here, any more
than did the shareholders fifty years
ago. Labor is about as disreputable
as ever, And northern men are to-day
all through the southern Atlantic
states deluding or driving the colored
people into working for them at prices
or conditions that would be deemed
downright insult If pFoffer9d to any
| good working man in New England.
The old shareholders have dreams
and schemes in plenty OF Coolies, Chi
nlmen, Japanese, and even Germans,
who are TO do their dirty drudgery
| and all their manual labor, as "house
servants'' and "feld hands" terms
still extant here), at prices which must
border on actual and perpetual starva-
| ton.
Almost the whole solicitude and
talk among the idle classes is of cheap
labor. cheap labor as if the curse of