The daily phoenix. [volume] (Columbia, S.C.) 1865-1878, 1872-05-28
s. G..
Tuesday Morning. May %. 1872.
Tho Republican Party In South Caro-
lima.

We publish elsewhere an article from
the Republican paper, published at
Beaufort, remarkable alike for its can
did acknowledgment of party error and
corruption. and it's sound and healthful
advice. It is q review of the record of
the Republican party in South Carolina.
from its origin in 1868 to the present
day. The glorious promises it made,
the bright prospects it held forth OF
equal rights, justice to all, economy in
government, dissemination of knowledge
among the ignorant masses, etc., are
faithfully repeated, and the utter failure
to realize them, or any part Of them, as
honestly recorded. The writer's criti-
oism of his own party is perfectly just
and correct; but when he comes to speak
OF those whom he terms the ''enemies
of the negro race" he makes a great
mistake. though there is, too, no little
Of truth in what he says. The negro
race has no enemies in South Carolina,
unless they be those who have misled,
and are still striving to mislesd them, to
their manifest harm. The white people
in this State who opposed negro suffrage
did it from no spirit of animosity to the
newly eniranchised race. If they had
been of Saxon blood, with skin as fair
and hair as fine as any Of that proud
altered. The blacks had been but day,
as it were, freed from bondage; they
were ignorant, inexperienced, crednlous,
and, in short, wholly unified to exercise,
with safety to themselves and benefit to
the State, the higher duties of citizen
ship. They were liable to be made the
tools of wiley demsgogues and dishon est
adventurers, and, being in the majority.
the State must suffer from it. So the
white people thought. and 30 every sensi-
BILE man must have thought. If the
events OF the last four years, in which
the commonwealth has been robbed of
untold millions, and corruption and
venality pervaded every department of
the public service, prove anything, they
prove that the apprehensions of the
whites we're well grounded. To say that
they were the enemies OF the colored
race, because they opposed universal
suffrage, is unjustiaable and untrue.
As soon might you call that parent the
enemy of his child. who refuses to allow
him dangerous indulgencies. What good
has oil the extravaganza, corruption and
incompetency, which has characterized
our State Government, done the masses
Of the freedmen? In point of material
wealth, they are to-day, after four years
of hard labor. as badly off as they were
when suffrage was thurst upon them,
and their future prospects are far gloomier
than they were then. The evil moral
effects which fnithlessness and actual
thefts in high places may have had upon
them, we will leave for profounder minds
than ours to measure.
-Four years ago, the whites were will
ing to conoede qualified suffrage. and
there is not an honest and intelligent
man to-day who will say that restrio-
tion put upon blacks and whites alike
in the exercise OF the elective franchise
would not be wise and beneficial to the
entire community. The ente-tainment
OF such an opinion as this was certainly
no evidence Of animosity to the black
people; and yet it is on this account
solely that the blacks are taught to con-
slider them their foes. The writer is in
correct in stating that "they (the oppo-
nents of negro suffrage) have watched
with intensest glee the fulfillment Of
their predictions Of the bad results to
spring from negro suffrage" We do
indeed know that If such ruinous and
shameful condition of affairs continues in
South Carolina, that relief will be given
us from outside, in some shape or form.
We know, too. that the more desperate
the situation becomes, the more rotten
our sham government shows itself to be,
the sooner will be the day Of redemption.
If there is not to be change for the
better. We Would be clad to have tl,o