The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1871-01-28
Opening of the Radical Campaign of 1872.

i SfSes>eeo ~ SAAO SNo0ASoA SoA0fS@0 - " oOs -
The adoption of the resolution of Mr.. Nor
ton, in the U. S. Senate on Friday of last week,
for the appointment of committee Of five to
investigate the affairs of the Southern States,
may be regarded as the opening ofthe radical
presidential campaign for 1872. The whole
project is SO transparent that it can deceive
none but fool. This committee of five is to
60 down south after the adjournment of con-
gress and hunt up, or manufacture 'outrages"
enough to justify the next conrgess in remand
ing back Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia,
Tennessee. Alabama, and all other southern
states that threaten to vote the democratic
ticket, to military rule, aud thus deprive them
OF their voice in the next presidential election.
As the case now stands, New York, Pennsyl.
vania, Connecticut, Indiana, California and
Oregon are certain to cast their vote for the
democratic candidate for President in 1879.
These, with the southern states, will be more
than enough to elect him. There is no hope
or Grants reelection, then. but to exclude
the southern states from the electoral college.
And this the adoption of Morton's resolution
shows the radical congress fully purposed to
do. The President and his friends have
thrown off the mask, and display the real
spirit and purpose which have actuated them
from the beginning. We hear no more about
'let US have peace restored Union, univer-
sal amnesty, or any of that soft nonsense
which these gentlemen distributed so lavishly
a short time since. There is to be no peace.
no Union, no amnesty, no justice, honor or
honesty in our dealings with the SOUTH until
the people of the country rise in their might
and strangle party which has been nothing
but an unmi.lgated curse from the beginning
of its existence.
The intelligent Washington correspondent
of the Chicago Tribune (ultra radicaD gives
the true animus of this Morton proceeding, in
language as truthful and pointed as it is sur
prising, coming from such a source. He says:
1t is more than probable that this resolution
was meant to provide ddtI for the future policy
of the administration. San Domingo has been q
dead failure as new party plank, and there
seems to be no other suggestible line of policy
than reopsning the wounds of the war and re-.
hearsng again the catalogue of brute outrages
in the CaroliHas and Gulf States We passed
through that futile examination during John.
sons administration. 1t would have been strange
if tens of thousands of men, who but lately sur.
feited in the promiScuous indulgence of arms
and bloodshed, should have suddenly come to 80
anomalous . period of peace, without citizen
ship, and committed no atrocities. The sivllizs.
ton of the South was never very we'll pro.
nounced; the contact of 4 large negro popula.
tion, the want of schools, the universal habit of
carrying concealed arlns, the contempt of courts
of law in private arbitratons, and the Incidence
of the young men-these mark all society in that
region aud a committee of five might have
been appointed at any time within the past fifty
years which would have uuesrthed sufficient Vi
olence in tho South to fill the sailing canvass of
any Northern party. Our Western Territories
and our Pacific States shsw in q less degree how
aphysical life, wild associations, peril and self.
reliance, make a society at variance with our
theories of good citizenship. But the carpet.
baggng system in the South has been an abso-
Lutte failure; it has, to = certain degree, made
resistance heroic. Can we have peace with every
black man enfranchised, thousands of white
men ostracized, and the local government of
those States worked cs engines of corruption, BY
class of strangers, whose avarice is nearly az
horrible AZ the violence of the native heather
If we work the South, a. we appear to be bent
upon doing, merely as a perpetual ad iunct of
the Republican party, and yusge its loyalty by
its vote, when will the South become Labitable