The Camden journal. [volume] (Camden, S.C.) 1866-1891, 1871-08-24
How the State Can be Saved.

give but little opportunity to the truth to
struggle to the light. If an honest ne
gro, impelled by conviction, votes with
the Conservatives, he is at once branded
as traitor to his race, and untold per-
sccutions pursue him in all the relations
of life. Opprobium and social proscrip-
ton drive his family from church and
his children from school, and his best
friends only hold a cold and distant in
tercourse with him. Yet, the same pco-
pie who thus rigidly insist upon fidelity
to race, are loud in their clamours for
total obIteration of all recognition of
questions of color, race or condition, So
ciably or civilly. This palpable incon-
sistency, of itself, is sufficient to demon
strate that they are in error, transfxed
either upon one horn of the dilemma Or
the other. The claim of the Radicals to.
the support of the colored people is based
npon their alleged services to them as
people. The first lessons they taught
these trusting people were that they were
freed by the Republican party at the ex-
pense of million of lives, and billions of
their beloved dollars, and consequently
were bound to serve the party, right or
wrong, until the very crack Of doom.
They rung the changes on the outrages
inflicted upon them by the Shareholder
while they were in bondage, and excited
their hate towards the "rebels," as they
termed us, by every conceivable exagger-
alton that an inventive and malignant
imagination could conceive. No wonder
that, under these circumstances, we find
all political questions merged into that
of race. The result has been as these
false teachers foresaw-the undue, almost
unlimited elevation of themselves, greedy
and needy adventurers and their baser
associates in social and political crime,
at the expense Of the poverty, humilia-
ton and degradation of all who do not
share with them in the public plunder.
Having in this manner embittered the
colored people against the whites, and
sown the seeds of, perhaps, eternal and
irreconcilable enmity between the races
at the South, they secure the continuance
of their ',ascendancy, so basely and vici-
aously attained, by claiming the merit Of
. having deserted their own race from dis
interested love of the negro, and demand
ing their favors as a compensation for
the well-deserved social prescription Of
their own class. Hence it became q mo-
raj impossibility for decent white man
at the South to become Republican,
and most difficult for colored man to
become Democrat Or anything conserv-
ative.
IF there is to be any restoration OF
good government in this State, under the
existing organization of political forces,
it must be by teaching the better class
Of negroes higher and truer ideas of their
privileges and duties as free citizens of a
Republic, and procuring their co-opera-
ton. The barriers of prejudice against
any afiliation between the classes in any
political movement, are so formidable,
!, that few of the colored people can be
brought to brave them by individual ef-
fort, however clearly they may perceive
thenecessity and the duty Of such pol
icy. There must be strength created by
combinations sufficiently powerful to en-
ancipate them from the thraldom ofpar-
ty dictation, and to protect them socially
and personally, from party prescription
and persecution. Let all the conserva-
tive elements of our colored population
combine and organize as colored con-
servative party, not allied to the Radicals
or the Democrats, but banded together
as good citizens, determined to overcome
prejudice and hate and seek the advance
ment of their race and the security of
their rights and interests, by supporting
good laws and good men for office. If
they begin now, by this time next year
they will be in a condition to secure any
reasonable demands peculiar to them as
a class, BY union with that party which
will aid them in procuring a good gov
ernment, just and favorable to all. If
the white people of this State are not
prepared to meet them upon such princi-
pies, then there can be no good govern
ment, no peace, and no prosperity to