Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1870-08-31
THE WANE OF CARPET-BAG
RULE.

The New York Journal of Commerce
| Justly characteristics the carpet dagger
when it says: she took nothing there
but his carpst-bag. He had no interest
in Southern industry or Southern devel-
| opment. He was messenger of war
and not of peace; for it was out of the
disturbances which he spared no effort to
foment, and for which he always had at
hand the remedy of powder and cold
steel, that he expected to profit. 1t is
the carpet Dagger, operating with his
allies in Congress, who has so long kept
the Southern States from representation
at Washington. He was ready to aid in
their readmission only when he was
elected Senator or Representative. At the
| Capitol he is the same evil genius that he
is among the people whom he misrepre-
sents. His vote at the last session was
generally to be found on the bad side of
| all political and financial questions. For
Jobs he has the fondness of mouse for
cheese, and was usually detected burrOw-
ing away in the center of every
rich contract or franchise. Such is the
species of carpet-bagger-the worst of all
the genus politician. We congratulate
the South and the country that the fiat of
plundered and indignant people is about
to stamp the political life out of the whole
odious race" When it was decided by
Radical Congress to destroy the State
governments organized for the Southern
States by President Johnson, and to place
those States in the hands of few scala
wags and white stragglers from the North
and the negroes, the reign of the carpet
baggers began. A lot of worthless adj
venturers soon rose into importance, and
were made Governors, State officers, Rep
resentatives in Congress and United States
Senators. 1t is unnecessary to repeat |
here how these parasites have impover-
ished and run in debt the State govern
ments of the South. This chapter in our |
history is familiar to all. 1t is one of the |
encouraging signs of the times that the
carpet-bag governments of the Southern
States are breaking up. They have re-
ceived a terrible blow in the over
throw of the Holden faction in |
North Carolina. Holden is not q |
carpet-bagger, but had he been one he
could not have played into the hands of
that political class more faithfully. With
the fall of the carpet-bag and scalawag
governments in the Southern States,
Grants administration goes to the wall |
This fact is recognized by even Radicals.
The New York Sun, edited by Charles A. |
Dana, Assistant Secretary of War under |
Stanton, and paper that bitterly hates
the Democratic party, makes the follow
ing admissions
sThe Overwhelming defeat of Gen.
Grants administration in North Carolina, |
foreshadOws its downfall in all the former |
slaveholding States. The fruits |
of the carpet-bag reign of theE last five |
years are what might have been expected. /
The world may be searched in vain for
governments so immoral, so shamelessly |
corrupt, so hopelessly rotten, as those
now prevailing in the South. Politically |
they may be changed; but this cannot
cure one of the sorest of the evils already |
inflicted. These scamps have run the
States they rule ruinously into debt.
All the issues which made their advent
even possibility have been settled. Let
the better class of old citizens accept the
situation in good faith, and assure the ne
groes that there is no disposition to de-
prive them of their newborn privileges,
and there will be an uprising of the peo-
pie that will drive out these ravenous vii
lains, and restore to the States what they
have not had since they plunged into re-
bellion nine years ago, stable, thrifty, re-
spectacle governments. These corrupt
carpet-bag usurpations are the outlying
supports of Gen. Grants administrati IN.
They sustain him by their votes, and he
maintains them by his bGyOnets. "
No one can for moment doubt the re-
suit here stated. 1t was the certainty
that these carpet-bag governments would
vote for Grant that secured his election to
the Presidency. With their loss he must
90 down, and with him will fall to pieces
the party that has done so much to bring
disaster and disgrace upon the country.