The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-03-13
DOESTHE DEMO OCRATIC PARTY ACCEPT
THE CONSTITUTION AS 1T IS?

From the NJ Y. Tribune.
Another Presidential election is in sight
1t rests with the party now in opposition to
determine the issues to be therein decided.
If that party shall see fit to say, ''We accept
and will obey and enforce the Federal Con-
stitution as modified by the thirteenth,
fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments" the
country may safely regard the issues raised
by secession and the consequent civil war as
closed, and proceed thereupon to the para
mount consideration of economic and finan-
cial questions. This is the shape which 1--WE
judge) most intelligent and patriotic citizens
prefer that the next canvass should take. We
have been mainly quarrelling about slavery
and negroes for the last twenty years. If
only for varietys sake, it is high time for
change of topic. Slavery was a weighty
theme in its day, but slavery is dead, and its
death involves logically the clearing away of
all the wreck and debris of the late arduous
struggle. The negro is no longer a slave;
what can he be henceforth but man? And,
if a man, why should he not be accorded the
rights, privileges, franchises, responsibilities,
and obligations of manhood-no less, no
more? The Kilkenny cats having demolished
and devoured each other, is it necessary that
their tails should keep up the scratching, spit
ing, and caterwauling2
AS Republican, we have no right and no
wish to direct the future course of the party
to which we shall at any rate stand opposed.
If that party shall see fit to challenge us to
fight over again the battle of 1868, we shall
of course take up the gage with great and
wellgrounded confidence of success, We
have ne fear that the American people will
reverse in '72 the verdict they recorded in
the election of Grant and Colfax. In purely
partisan aspect, we should consider this our
''best hold"
But there are other considerations of grave
moment by which that of party advantage is
counteracted and overborne. 1t seems at least
probable that, whenever the late Rebels shall
have been thoroughly convinced that the
negroes are to be henceforth their fellow
citizens, sharing fully and equally every fran
chise and immunity of citizenship, they will
stop killing them. 1t is the hope of paralyzing
with terror large portions of the Republi-
cans, white and black, of the South, as those
of Georgia and Louisiana were paralyzed in
1868, that inspires the Ku-klux atrocities now
rife in several Southern States. These can
not be melted by any rational expectation
that the Republicans will be exterminated;
the calculation evidently is that killing some
will awe the rest into a surrender of their
rights as essential to the saving of their lives.
In short the present Ku-klux demonstra-
hons at the South are simply more cowardly
phase of the Rebellion. They are q fulfil
ment OF the Rebel menace that the civil war
could and should be prosecuted for twenty
years after the overthrow and dispersion of
the Rebel armies. Its object is to LET the
nlgger know his place"-which, now as ever
in the Rebel conception, is under the heel of
the white man.
Until this skulkinR warfare, with masks in
stead of banners and torches in place of gre
nades, shall have been somehow terminated,
the Republican party cannot change its atti-