The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1872-12-14
Poor South Carolina.

| saws contemporary. III We had u contract
to recruit thousand scoundrels, we would
undertake to fill 1t IN week by opening an
Office in New Orleans" In like case zee
would undertake to beat our contemporary BY
half the time by opening an office in South
Carolina. We doubt whether all history can
| furnish an instance where scoundrelism and
misrulc have in the same short space of time
caused such blight and havoc as they have in
South Carolina. Imagine the once proud
palmetto State"-the home of the Calhouns,
Haynes and Pinkneys-shorn of all its glory
and strength, emasculated of its intelligence,
enterprise and wealth, wholly given up to the
government OF a british, ignorant negro mob,
who plumber its treasury with the same reck-
less freedom and impunity with which few
years ago they robbed Niger hcnroost. The
condition Of the state was bad enough under
the dcmisavage, semi-military rule Of Gov
Scott, but The last election has driven it
hundred fathoms deeper into financial ruin
and political degradation. Every representa-
tive in congress negro but one, (Wallace,)
and he more besotted and degraded than some
of the negroes; the Governor covered from
head to heel with fraud and corruption and
q legislature Of negroes of whom not one in
ten can write his own name, led by few
white scoundres who are fortunate to have
escaped incarceration in a northern peniten-
tiary, and who when an occasional demo
cratic member from back county talks of
honesty so overwhclm him with derision and
contempt that, feeling himself cat in a
strange garnet, he leaves in few days in
disgust.
Says correspondent writing from Colum.
bia, ''there is really no law here but the will
and pleasure of a small ring of radical scoun-
drels. .1uries are made mp of negroes, who
obey the behests of this ring and give YER
diets ridicu!ously at variance with the law and
the facts. Negroes commit all the crimes in
the calendar and are acquitted or turned loose
on straw bail, while the whites, on the slight
est preiext, are arrested and punished with the
utmost rigor. In this way they are time and
again tortured by the lowest scoundrels. Even
refined and sensitive women are frequently
subjected to this species Of annoyance, and
however Ill treated have no redress. The
taxes amount to confiscatlon, and to make the
slightest improvement only increases them
tenfold, so that torpor and u general dead
lock prevail everywhere, and the white people
in large numbers are leaving the state, the
most ct them making their way to Texas, al
though many of them have gone or are going
to other distant localities, This is by no
means heg,ra Of choice, for never did Scot
or Pole or child of Erin turn the exiles last
look upon his country with more sadness in
the eye or a deeper sorrow in the heart Dali
ly they go, they go; and those who have yet
to remain are made still more dcsolate, Cor
they know they come back 10 more Fdcile
doscensus-here we have it to the fu,l--down
grade, brakes gone and under full Roadway
the descent is being made"
When the history of radical rule in this
country is written up century hence, what
q picture will the desolation OF South Carroll
IA afford for the historian to dwell upon