New national era. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1870-1874, 1872-05-16
Letter OF Peter III. Clark.
We take the following from the Cincinn;
Commercial

we take the following from the Cincinnati
Commercial:
10 the Editor Of the Commercial:
If the Greeley party are building any hopes
on the oft-repeated assertion that the coloreG
people Of the South will vote for their candi.
date they are surely doomed to disappoint.
ment. That some colored men will be found
on their side is, perhaps, true. Some colored
men have been found to vote the straight
Democratic ticket, but the number is small
and not likely to increase.
The fact that the Republican party is the
instrument which has freed and enfranchised
him, which guards him in the exercise of his
rights as freeman, which promises him great
future good, is known and well known, to the
dullest black man in the South, and if he can
get the chance to approach the ballot-box
unintimidated, he will vote for the candidate
of that party.
1t is possible that, at first, many of the
colored voters were disposed to take liberal
view OF politics, and to go with their neigh
bors and former masters against the carpet
baggers; but the uniformity of the results
when so-called Conservatism has triumphed,
has pretty effectually cured them of that ten
dency. The treatment of the colored people
OF Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and North
Carolina by the Conservatives is enough.
They will avoid all such parties, however
favorably they may be labeled or headed.
The Republican party is their ark Of safety,
and to it they will cling until they deem ali
danger past. They know nothing about
tariffs and questions of civil service reform,
and if they did they would regard them as
subtle devices of the enemy to divide the
Republican party.
With the complaint made about centraliza.
ton and the interference of the Washington
Government with State affairs, they do not
sympathize. They make, in fact, just the
opposite complaint. The Government does
not interfere enough to suit them. They
find, in too many localities, the police force
utterly demoralized by the fact that it de-
ponds upon the lawless elements of society
for its official life, and that the property and
Life OF all who are opposed to the clement is
never safe, and if life or property be taken,
there is no redress. A distinguished State
official in Mississippi said to me few DAYS
ago: II am sure there have been more than
i've hundred murders perpetrated in this
State, within two years, by men actuated by
the Ku-Klux spirit, which murders have not
only not been punished, but they have not
been reported by the press of the State"
Here" said the gentleman 1--WE are safe,
but" pointing to Pearl river, 1--WE dare not
go across there to discuss our principles I'M
less we go by day and in large armed par
ties" To men who sleep quietly in their
beds only because the arm of the Federal
Government is interposed between them and
slaughter, the talk about interfering with
State rights will have but little influence.
In this state of affairs the colored voter
only seeks to know which is the candidate of
the Republican party, and to vote for him if
he can.
In a tour leading through the States of
Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana | sought
in many conversations to find the attitude of
the colored people relating to Mr.. Sumner
in the then possible contingency of his being
the candidate of the Cincinnati Convention.
The response was unanimous If he goes
into that movement we are sorry for him !;
but he has left us, and we will not follow
him." Hon. Jere HARRISON, a man emanci-
pated by the proclamation, living in daily
contact with his people, and admirably fitted
to speak for them, said: "If Mr.. Sumner
.,oes into this movement he will be another
proof that man may live too long for the
good of his reputation. and for one am not
going to follow him anywhere"
If Mr.. Greeley is presented to the colored
voters Of the South as a candidate for the
Presidency it must be either as the leader of
a party formed for the special purpose of
breaking up the organization which they re-
gard as their greatest benefactor and only
friend. or as the leader of the Democratic
party, whose whole policy is inimical to their
rights.
The white Republicans Of the South are, as
a rule, in close sympathy with their colored
allies. They are by far more radical than
the masses Of the party in the North. If they
are "scalawags," they have been hunted
from their homes by the friends of slavery
and Of the Confederacy; they have returned
from months of hiding in swamps to find
their homes pillaged and in ashes. They
have had their sons torn from them by con-
scripting officers to fight in a cause their souls
abhorred; they refuse to be comforted for the
loss of those sons lying in dishonored graves.
They have stood upon the scaffold, with ropes
around their necks, and were only saved from
the death which their fellow Unionists met
by the chance freaks of the mob. Such men
will have but one vote to give, and that will
be for the regular nominee of the Republican
party. Ii they are carpet-baggers, they are
either office-holders, and as such anxious to
whom they depend for office; or they are of
that noble class of men who went South to
aid honestly in the work of reconstruction.
They have risked life; they have endured So
cial prescription; they endure what is harder,
the aspersi0ns of those who, at q safe dis
lance from the scene of conflict, criticise and
abuse men whose work in saving the Union
is only second to those who fought for it on
the field of battle. They have organized and
taught the colored people they have inspired
them with hope and self-respect; under their
guidance and protection schools are opened,
churches organized, justice administered, and
Union is kept alive in the land where slavery
and disunion reigned.
Talk to those men about corruption in Off.
cial places, and they will tell you it is an evil
which they cannot assist in remedying until
they are assured that the principles fought
for in the war are no longer in danger from
the reactionary tendencies of the Democracy.
Said the same distinguished gentleman whom
have quoted before: we have the wolf by
the ears and dare not let CO." They dread
the success of any candidate ether than the
one to be selected at Philadelphia, however
pronounced he may be in his Republicanism,
since the Democracy would regard it as a
symptom of backing down from the high pO-
sition heretofore held by the party.
As for Conservative Republicans, they are
q myth. Democrats sometimes masquerade
in the garb which they call Conservative Re-
publicanisin, but the disguise is too thin to
deceive the most unwary.
To the Republicans of the South, every
man who is not In their camp will be regarded
as an enemy. They will seek to maintain
fho >orkr s.,k n