New national era. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1870-1874, 1872-08-01
s'Cracking the Lasl.o

The onslaught of the Democracy upon the
blacks because they will persist in voting as
they fought and prayed and labored, upon
the Union side, is meant to be terrific, but
threatens to be ridiculous. Threats are now
used without stint. They are warned of the
consequences Of their perversity, if Massa
Greeley, at the head of the rebel sympathiz-
ers, should happen to be elected. Well, per-
haps the blacks, with that sublime faith with
which they watched and waited for the day
Of their deliverance from the house of bond
age, realize that their abandonment by the
loyal North and patriotic, liberty-loving men
of the South, in an event too improbable to
justify concern on their part. Is there not
something wickedly absurd in this arraign-
ment and denunciation of the blacks because
they cannot be swerved from their allegiance
to the great captain who led the Union
through the bloody ordeal of the rebellion ?
Why shouldn't the colored man stand by his
cOlOrs? Are we not told by the New York
Tribune itself that the whites of the South
are almost unit against the Administration
and the Republican party? We believe the
statement false, because it presupposes that
the loyal element among the whites is ex-
tinct in that section. We believe it false,
because it would argue an utter absence of
all sense of justice and right in the minds of
stored to all the rights of citizenship by a
general amnesty, and who have seen their
States restored to the fraternal embrace of
the Union without the imposition of condi-
ton to remind them that they had committed
the greatest crime known to national law.
We know it is false, because we are daily
advised that there are many high-minded
Southern men who feel that they can more
safely rely upon the magnanimous chieftain
who leads the Republicans than the motley
company who follow the camp of Horace
Greeley. But why do not these assailants
of the blacks understand that the union of
the whites, of which they boast, is just as
unpatriotic and unreasonable as they repre-
sent the union of the blacks to be? Nay,
much more so, for it is the union of those who
those whom they proclaim weak and ignor-
ant. The blacks may be ignorant, but there
is no discounting their love of liberty, their
patriotism. They seek only their own rights
and self-protection, not to destroy the rights
of others. They seek not the humiliation,
the Acknowledgement of the whites, but merely
to exercise their own franchises. They are
not an ungrateful race. The least exhibition
of kindly feeling and sympathy on the part
of the former dominant race is hailed by
them with delight. Let these denuncators
of the blacks remember then that the day for
the lash has passed by; that the right of one
class to dictate to another, either in the South
or the North, is no longer recognized. This
may be "white mans Government" in
the sense that whites have the preponder-
ance but it is Government that recog-
nizes human rights as based upon a better
foundation than caste or color. He that
would have friends among the blacks must
prove himself friendly in deeds as well as
words. He must be willing to fill up the
"chasm" between the races and the two Sec
tons, not stop with shaking hands over it.
Washington Daily Chronicle.