The daily phoenix. [volume] (Columbia, S.C.) 1865-1878, 1870-03-08
s. C.
Tuesday Morning, March 8, 1870.
stand by the State.

OF recent date, that party of young
men of that city had gone to seek their
fortunes in one OF the South American
States. We regret to read of an Incl
dent like this. We appreciate fully how
disadvantageous nre many of the circum-
stances surrounding us in South Caro-
lima. We feel as deeply as any one the
burdens of the situation. which are tho
more grievous because they affect at
once our tastes. our sentiments and our
interests. That proud and prosperous
community should have been made to
pass under q moro CALLING yoke than
Rome, even in her imperial pride, ever
supposed upon conquered provinccs-this
is hard fate. In it, we see the exqui-
site mental and moral torture devised by
Butler. Stevens and Sumner. 1t is
the act OF one who basely strikes brave
though fallen foe. It is the Puritan
wreakipg his vengeance upon the cAva-
ier. All this is hard to bear, and like
the French officer who, after Waterloo,
broke his sword and turned away from
the lost field, many high-strung son of
South Carolina, filled with loathirg and
disgust, and wounded in his State pride, is
disposed to give up the cause and indig-
nantly break the chain of devotion that
binds him to his native State. This
feeling is natural. But we submit that
it is neither wise nor patriotic. The
sentiment we may excuse, but when this
sentiment is followed by the net of expa-
triation, we cannot approve it.
Hence, the point we desire to make is
this-that it is our duty to stand by
South Carolina. We must not give up
the State. It is the State of our birth,
and it contains the graves of our dead.
It is filled with the monuments which
LOVE and HONOR have raised to those
who have paid, in quiet way, ths debt
of nature, or have died in the civil scr
vice, or have fallen upon the field of
battle. Furthermore. there are many
men and women. widows and orphans,
young and old, poor and rich, high and
low, who cannot so hence, if they would.
And shall the young and vigorous shall
the young men of the State-leave them
to struggle, without their aid. for the
political showing and influence now with
held by wrongful legislation? They can
not do it. AS general thing, we feel
that they ,oiH not do it.
But it is not duty alone that demands
of our people that they should not aban-
don Carolina. We are sure that the self
exiled man may easily go farther and
fare worse. What has been the expert
euce of those who have tried Mexico and
Brazil2 Bitter. They have returned
home better and wiser citizens. 1t is true
that in these Southern States, where the
inexperience and prejudice of the negro,
for the present, control our politics to
large extent, the prospect is not inviting
and the situation is far from suiting the
tastes of q white man. But we have rare
material advantages in South Carolina.
We have genial climate, and teeming
soil. We have admirable water-po
We have the means and the materials for
many forms Of manufactures. We have
railroads, and sea.ports and an easy ac-
cess to the markets of the country. We
have the great staples, cotton and rice.
We can raise wheat, oats, rye, corn and
other cereals. We have gold mines. iron
mines and phosphate deposits. We have
brave, spirited, virtuous and persever-
ing people withstand n body of CO.
lored people, who, if left to themselves
and to honest influences, would be dis
posed to go to work and harmonize with
the whites upon the basis of civil and
political equality before the laws--now
denied to them by none in South Caro-
lima.
These are great advantages. if God
in his providence has permitted our
conquerors TO infct much of loss and
indignity upon us, he has left to us many
elements for the building up OF re-
newed power. We repeat it, then-and