Knoxville daily chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1882, 1872-11-24
WEST TENNESSEE NOTES.
A Defeated Relic of By.Gone Days.
Special CORES pondenca of the Chrnn;clal =

special Correspondence of the Chroncle]
HUMBOLDT, Nov. q, 1872.
1t is difficult to get West Tennesseean
just now to talk about anything else than
cotton. The ordinary salutation when you
meet one of them is, shows cotton ?"
This is natural, for to the cotton crop they
look for money to buy clothing, hardware,
groceries, and most of their bread and
meat. The crop is fair one. Thousands
of acres stand unpicked, looking like vast
fields of snow in the distance, and yet every
depot has its cotton bales, amounting in
some places to hundreds Cotton COM
mands a fair price and is going into market
with reasonable activity.
Two days Of the present week [ spent in
the Bluff City, noted now as being the
home of the worst beaten man in the
United States, not even excepting the dis.
gusted sage of Chappaqua-I mean, of
course, Landon G. Haynes, the great
Spread-Eagle orator of the Volunteer State
the man who Barbour Lewis says spent
his boyish days in fishing for minnows in
the beautiful Wataugan and fancied he
was catching whales. In the late campaign
in the Memphis district he evidently went
feeling for Tartar" for he caught one
when he walked up Barbour LIE wis. Ordi-
narily, men can become reconciled to de-
feat and learn to accept the situation, but
Haynes case is without q parallel. There
is something whitening and crushing in it.
Caldwell, Key, GoIliday and others of the
much defeated, are only common men,
but Landon c., he is the greatest orator, in
his own estimation that ever smiled upon
an audience, and the idea of having been
1oL - kl,oo ~ Il,
Lewis, Northern mana New England
carpet bagger at that, is enough to break
the great mans heart. Groans and oaths
by night and drinks by day may ease him
in the course Of time, but for the present,
he squirms amazingly. The idea of being
beaten never entered his mind as even a
remote possibility, and the fact that he
was beaten three thousand votes, makes
him look with disdain upon his species.
The next thing you hear of him, he will
be emigrating to one of the straight dis
tricts in Kentucky. The Confederate
Cross Roads, perhaps. Just the morning
of the election, he was boastful of what he
was going to do. Walking into the bar
room where he is accustomed to taking
his morning drink, he said
To-day shall beat Barbour Lewis three
thousand votes.n
Next morning the election returns made
him want another drink, and he said,
Barbour Lewis is elected by the solid Ri0-
ger cote" When he took the drink on
Tuesday morning he smiled. On Wednes-
day morning he didn't. The poor fellow,
beaten to humiliation by a man vastly his
superior in point of ability, but whom he
regarded as his inferior in every respect,
be now returns from the political arena
with no one to weep over his fate. He has
gone to his political grave, "unwept un-
Ored and unsung." His folly is his mon
ument, and this he has erected himself.
AS in other portions of the State, [ find
that the people of West Tennessee expect
much of the next Legislature. They seem
| to feel that we are getting out of the old
ruts in which we have moved so long, and
that hencefOrward our pathway will be
smoother, and that the commonwealth
will make more rapid progress in the right
| direction. Never since the war, have the
people of the whole State been actuated
by so lofty a spirit, or so ca
gerly, pressed forward with q steady
purpose to achieve something. Andy
johnson claims that lie broke the crust of
prejudice, and l think the sequel will
show that the people have had their eyes
| fully opened. Fossilized politicians will
wake up to the fact that they are behind
the age. They have proven a weight to
| the prosperity of Tennessee, that is to be
no longer tolerated. A puffed up, ignor-
ant intOlerant, stand still would-be aris-
tocracy, the relic of slavery, they have
been blight to our progress in the past,
but henceforth progressive ideas will win,
and progressive men will rule. So mote it
be. w. r.