The daily phoenix. [volume] (Columbia, S.C.) 1865-1878, 1872-09-18
COLUMBIA. S. G.
Wednesday Morning, Sept. 18, 1872.
For President of the United iStotes.
For Vice President
b. GRATZ BROWN, Of MISSOURI.
Tho Colored Vote In tho Preside ntiaI
Contest.

COntoBG.
It is noteworthy fact in the present
Presidential canvass that the oolored
voters are almost entirely massed in sup.
port of President Grant. They have
deliberately turned their backs upon
their lifelong friends, Greeley and Sum-
ner. They coolly rejeot the counsel Of
the latter and, with rare exceptions, are
found ready, upon all occauions, to
asperse the motives aud ridicule the
claims OF the former. Frederick Doug
lass, who may be regarded as their repre-
sentative man and mouth-piec and who
has met with as much contempt from
Grant as he has kindness and conside-
ration from Mr.. Greeley, has issued q
pamphlet in the interests of Grant, and
in every number OF the National Era. of
which he is the editor, exhibits towards
Mr, Greeley the foulest and most malig-
nant black k-guardism. The New York
Tribune considers these attacks, as they
are, too vulgar and too 'Aimsy to answer.
But it adds: s'No friend OF the negro
race can read them without pity for
those inherent vices OF nature for which
slavery is alone responsible" We think
there is some contradiction here. If
she vices are ''inherent," if they are
"vices OF NATURE" the old bugbear Of
Southern slavery should not be freshly
evoked to account for them. It is
dead, md, as the last link in the chain of
sarpitude in the States of the American
Union, calmly and confidently awaits the
comparative judgment of time and his
sory. Do not continue the injustice
which was shown to it while living, by
saddling it, now that it is gone. with
aims for which it is not responsible. Let
it rest. It went out here as the result of
war. amid the flames and roar of cannon.
It died on honorable death, and neither
hypocrisy nor profit attended or resulted
from its demise. It had o somewhat diff
ferent termination in the New England
and Northern States. When no longer
7emunerative as form of labor, it came
~ al Cdut Ny tAO LI0Ao1SkS ALA III AaCOAs
siderable numbers, of the slaves to
Southern purchasers. Thus the money"
which. in Scripture language. they were,
and the tender consciences of their own
ers, were both saved by this prudent and
business.like arrangement, and the ven
ture in 1916 of 50 ship of one Thomas
Keyser and one James Smith, the latter
member of the church of Boston, in
first bringing upon the colonies" as We
racIous chronicles and histories relate,
'the guilt of participating in the traffic
in African slaves" was both piously and
peouniarily justified, and the end COR
responded to the beginning.
The "brutish ingratitude" with which
the colored people are charged toward
Mr.. Greeley, is thing about which they
do not much concern themselves. They
live mostly in the present, and the pow
ers which they respect and which are
paramount in their influence above all
others upon them, are interest, force and
humbug. They are not 80 much un-
grateful for favors as, from their peculiar
constitution, insensible of the obliga-
sions which they impose. AS Lord Ba-
con advises the student, with every
acquisition, to kick down the ladder by
which LIE mounts to successive heights of
knowledge, SO the colored man is prone
to forget and disregard the kind Offices
by which he has been enabled to rise.
1t is hard to make them see their interest
in the overthrow of Grants dynasty.
The evils which it has brought upon the
country are beyond their appreciation.
Time, just argument and skillful hand
hing may eventually make some differ
ence in their opinions. The humbug by
which they are hoodwinked, and the
1orcs to which their convictions and in
stincts have sucoumbed, may, and ulti-
mately will, we hope, weaken their hold
upon them. We should not be wholly
discouraged in endeavoring to make them
see things in their true light. Constant
dropping wears away stones.