The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-11-25
SPIRIT OF THu PRNss.
nditOrIal Opinions Of tho Leading Journals
Upon Current TOpIcs-Compilcd HverV
Day for the Evening Telegraph.
FREEDMEN VS.. PILLsBJRY

good, sound, dismal instrument, not only in
unison with his own sad thoughts, but cal
culated to awaken fellow-feeling in the
bosoms Of his neighbors.' What the flute
was TO Dick the English language is to Mr..
Parker Pisbury. IL is probably many years
since he has been in the company of a hum
dred people of whom he did not honestly be-
lieve and think it his duty to mention that
they were stepped in corruption, immersed
in iniquity, and likely in few days to wade
knee-deep in human gore For a good,
steady-going Jeremiah in daily life, COM
mend us to him; or if it was Hezekiah;- =
whose days ran backward, then Hezekiah let it
be- With him each day is more gloomy and
ominous than the day before. Like the devout
captain in the First South Carolina with his
Rebel prisoner, he promises us nothing but
the day of judgment and periods of damna-
ton. This illimitable tragic powe; made
him effective, though depressing, as an abo-
litionist 1t seems little unfortunate that
now, when slavery is abolished he should
turn his lurid artillery upon the freedmen.
After devoting half his life to setting them at
liberty he seems ready to devote the rest of
il to proving their unworthiness of freedom;
thus treating the negroes as Mr.. Squeers did
his schoolboys, when he set them on their
seats by boxing one ear, and knocked them
off by boxing the other.
There was nothing very new in these
charges against the freedmen. They were
Just what the Democratic press had been
steadily asserting and the freedmen steadily
disproving from the outset Of the war. To
them liberty means license Mr.. Pillsbury
thinks; they have q weak partiality for
whisky and for gingerbread, and are imper-
fectly supplied with elevated patriotism and
with small-tooth combs. Nothing can be
more obvious, he thinks, than that they are
unfit for the ballot But how the State of
South Carolina is to be governed-inasmuch
rs he does not seem to think even the white
population very far advanced in soap and
sanctity-doth not appear. We should say
that as the Ecclesiastical Council in Connec-
ticut reinstated the backsliding deacon on
the ground that if the Lord wanted a church
in West Littleton, he must take such mate
rails as West Littleton had to Offer So even
Mr.. Pillsbury would be compelled, by his
own showing, if set to reconstruct South
Carolina, to do it, in some degree, with the
ballots Of the unwashed.
However, these views attracted small atten-
ton at the North, from their want of novelty:
and SO long as they were confined to the
Democratic press, as the IPOrl0 and the RecO-
INti0H, they attracted little at the South. But
when they were announced largely in the In
dependent, in the vast hospitality given by
that Goods acre Of a sheet-on that first
page where the CHEEKY editor leaves each con-
tributor to fight for his own hand, like Harry
Wynd, having no connection with over the
way-then they gained wide attention at the
South, and met with joyful response from
every one who had an atom of negrophobia
left in his bosom. To declare that nearly
every free black man in South Carolina was a
drunkard and vagabond-what more had
Nasty himself to offer?
We notice therefore IN the Southern Re-
publican press, and especially in that very
all e1o flA Vly.J
constant protests from black and white
against these sweeping attacks. To assert,
after a brief stay in South Carolina, that the
freedmen are ''most emphatically lost, that
marriage is rare, that ''infanticide is COM
mon," and "on the plantations very few
children are born"-these statements are pro-
nounced to be wantonly false. These contra
dictions were confirmed to us but few days
since by Captain N c. Parker, State Trea-
surer of South Carolina, a man of HIGH
character, who served successively in the lst
Massachusetts Cavalry and the 33d United
States Colored Troops, and has had
abundant opportunity for observing the South
Carolina freedmen for eight years. He SAYS
that these charges are ''cruelly unjust, and
have already done great deal of injury to the
position of the colored people of the South
The same opinion is expressed to US by Ser
geant Prince Rivers, well known as one of
the ablest colored men Of the State, native
born South Carolinian, and the very first man
In the United States to open his house as
recruiting Office for colored soldiers, in May
1862 He was member of the State Con
stitutional Convention, and is now member
of the Legislature, and, being also a magis-
trate, has abundant opportunity of knowing
the condition of freedmen. He Indignantly
denies these assertions of general drunken
ness and licentiousness, while admitting,
of course, that the colored people are still
poor and ignorant. Again, we have a let
ter before us from Sergeant Langley, a
colored man of Vermont birth and of good
common school education, well-known to us,
who went South in the 9th Massachusetts,
was transferred to the SD U. S. c. r., and
has resided there since the war, being now
School Commissioner of Beaufort county.
s. c., and Assistant Assessor. He SAYS of his
former fellow-soldiers $50 far as industry
is concerned, they have certainly made q
good record. ''Official duties in the cana.
city of Assessor have called me among them
quite frequently during The last two wears
Thus, have had the opportunity of seeing
the fruits of their industry and frugality NJ
their own homes Some OF these men hav,
done more than simply surround their homes
with the bare necessities of life, while man,
of them have money deposited in the banks
They are to be found employed as artisan
in every trade, and are generally doing we'll
Such deliberate opinions from those VIII,
habitually see the freedmen of South Oarolin
in their homes are worth more than any frs
impressions of n hasty traveller.
We should not have paid so much attention
to these charges, but for the apparent desir
of our Southern exchanges that the Northern
press should take some notice of them.
the freedmen could be sent back into slayer