New national era. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1870-1874, 1871-05-04
THURSDAY, NAY 4, 1871.
SantO DOmtngO-NO. >.

Opposition to the annexation of Santo Do
mingo to the United States founded in sen
sitive regard to the just rights, interests, and
feelings Of the people of Hayt (her nearest
neighbor,) is certainly worthy of respectful and
candid consideration. Every man, friendly to
human progress. Of whatever country, and
especially every American in anywise identified
with the fortunes of the African race who has
read or otherwise learned the history of that
people, must feel anxious TO avert any calamity
which may threa ten them. During seventy
years they have been trying the experiment OF
freedom and independence under i'm me asurable
hardships and difficulties. They have blum
dered, staggered, fallen in the race, 20 be sure,
but they have ever kept in view the sacred
cause Of liberty and independence. Fierce,
terrible, and bloody in their domestic quarrels
and their ambitious and revolutionary riyalries,
but they have never allowed hostile foreign
foot to rest in peace upon their soil and. 10
day, though disturbed, and no man knows what
new trials may be at hand, brave Haytians.
with NIssAGE SAGET for their President. are as
sternly bent upon their own freedom and in
dependence as when they hurled from their
borders the armies Of two OF the mightiest ma
tions OF modern times-when their generals
and statesmen successfully put their arms and
minds against the ablest generals and statesmen
that ever plotted the extinction of human
liberty.
Faults, palpsble and grievous faults, has
Hsyti. lie is not her true friend who would
gloss them over or unfairly excuse them. She
has failed 10 keep pace with the civilization of
the age. Education has languished within her
borders. Her republican institutions have but
another name for military rule. Liberty of
speech and of the press have no existence
there. Public political meetings are not al.
lowed. Neither stranger nor citizen may
travel from one town TO another without pass
from the Government. Everybody seems sus-
pected. The mulattoes suspect the blacks, the
blacks suspect the mulattoes, and the whites
suspect both, and are suspected by both in
turn. Ignorance and superstition, those an
eient foes of progress, have handed her fertile
villages aud mountains over TO the chains and
letters Of mental and moral darkness. and to
slavery Of the soul more difficult to abolish
than the powers of mere physical bondage.
Catholicism and Voodoism and Fetichism -four
ish within her borders. Fanaticism, in the
Interest OF their fancied divinities, has often
gone the length of Offering human sacrifices.
Since ABRAHAM, religion has taken this wild
form All such worshippers hope to obtain
special grace at the hands Of their dvinities.
In business they are 10 be made successful
In war they are 10 escape bullets in trouble
they are to he delivered in sickness thew are
to escape death and no weapon formed against
them, if they are faithful. is to prosper Thus
faith becomes everything and the great fact
that the world is governed by fixed, eternal,
unaltsrable, and uneradcsbls laws, is lost sight
Of. The people live in a fog OF ianaticism,