The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1872-12-19
A Certain Cure for the South.

1t is a little discouraging to hear SO much
about conflicts of authority, double legisa-
lures, spare governors, the marching of troops
and even ''the surrender of troops" in the
Southern States. If it were not for the
efforts of the general government to preserve
the peace it seems quite certain that some OF
these hot-blooded people would presently
fall to cutting each others Threats. just
now it happens to be Louisiana and Alabama
that are troubled in this way. But to-mor-
row it will be Georgia or Virginia. The
machinery of government is hardly in work.
ing order in any of the reconstructed States.
We notice that two electoral colleges met
and voted for President in Arkansas on the
first Wednesday in December. The hon.
est citizen who means to respect the laws and
obey the constituted authorities must often
find himself in state of exasperating moral
perplexity.
All this is what might be expected. How
could we look for wisdom and self-eontrol in
people who in the days of their former
Fictitious prosperity allowed themselves to
remain poorly instructed, and who have re-
Gently received as a Reinforcement to their
body polite hundreds of thousands of wholly
ignorant freedmen and large number of
unprincipled Adventures? The typical car
pet-bagger is undeniably bad fellow, with
hankering for Office and greed for gold,
however worthy individuals of the race,
many of whom we all know, may be. An
ignorant constituency led by selfish and dis
honest men is likely to have an infinity of
trouble. The voters are easily made the prey
of the restless politicians, native and i'm
ported, and when the knaves are once in
Office, they begin to imperil the public peace
by their reckless quarrels with each other.
Thus the Bullocks, Warmouths, Bradleys,
and Kelloggs make the experiment of self
government in the South temporary and
partial failure.
There are many specifics offered for the
cure of these evils. Universal amnesty is one
of them. But of what avail would it be to
make eligible to Office one or two hundred
old gentlemen, who, in the vigor of their
manhood and the maturity of their powers,
upheld that system of slavery conjoined with
the repression of general education to which
is to be attributed the present unhappy st tie
of affairs? The expulsion Of the carpet-bag-
gers is another. But with the obnoxious
politicians who are so classed would 60 the
Yankee school-ma' ans and school-masters,-
with them would 60 that little leaven of Yam
kee ingenuity and enterprise without which
the South can never get out of its slough. If
the people of the North are to be outlawed in
the South, as before the war, secession has
virtually triumphed. Nor is the plan of dis
franchising the freedmen better one. I'm
til the blacks are fully and permanently in
corporated into the body polite they will al
ways be source of trouble and danger. To
disfranchse them would be to postpone genu-
inc reconstruction half century.
The only sure cure is education, There
are perhaps fewer real specifics in the moral
than in the physical world. We doubt if
there is more than one of the latter, and that
is the one we have named. For the South it
would be sovereign remedy. A body of en-
lightened voters would never be led captive
by such knaves and fools as just now have
the upper hand in several of the Southern
States. Educated voters would soon secure
the public peace and provide for public Sc
curity, prosperity and happiness as fully as
the people of New England do. The North
can afford to be generous in this matter.
We are in the same boat with the South. No
matter if the bill now pending in Congress
does give the South the lions share of the
raised from the proceeds of the public lands.
Let it go with hearty blessing! A million
year with the interest of another million, dis
trbuted SIN proportion to population and
iliteracy'' among the States, will be worth
more to the country than fifty millions ex-
nepded m anv othar vvav