Litchfield enquirer., 1873-01-09
The Repubiican Party and the a 7i H-r - South.

00uCns
 . We rec eive with pleasure long-prom- ised article in opposition to our views re- garding the duties and responsibilities Of the National Republican party in relation to Southern misgovernment. We defer reply for two reasons: first, in order to- give our friends article the consideration t deserves. second, because we consid- CT it scarcely fair for an editor to insist on sending out his 'slast word" in the same paper with his opponents article, unless the matter involved Is of small i,n- ., ,artouao f,- ~s-tss'u attentiofI s7. i's-rso GOSHEN, Jan. 4th, 1873.
 MR. EDIToa: In two late late editorial articles you assume that the Republican party is responsible for mal-administra- tion in the Southern states. The civil disorders which have afflicted some of those states. according to your theory. are attributed to the extension of the right of suffrage so as to include large masses of ignorant colored population. h +.l,.>..r
 Let us look ata few other consideration than those which you have adduced which have direct and contrary bearing on the
 subject. --.f...-. s-g l,,,tt.
 In April, 1860, the National Democratic Convention met in the city of Charleston to nominate President and vice President. The controlling wing of that party sought and found . pretext withdrawing from that Convention and did withdraw to the number of fourteen states. For what purpose? To secure by a split in the Democratic party the election of the Re- publican nominees for President and vice President and thereby furnish themselves an occasion for breaking up the old order of things and plunging the country into war. Now, one of the legitimate, and we might almost say, necessary, fruits of that great scheme of treason and rebel ion is the civil disorder that has prevailed in some of the southern states during the period of reconstruction. Here we have, illustrated, the responsibility of the Dens-
 ocratic party for the troubles that affiict the South. ''t'- .....'-.',. =. s..-,,.
 Again, in 1865, Congress imposed it's
 plan of reconstruction on the South in place of the one-sided and unjust one of Andrew Johnson. Then, in that incipient and forming stage of reconstruction. when If ever intelligence and civic experience were necessary in the voting population, very large proportion of the ex-rebles, Democrats every man of them, and very many of them men of intelligence and ex- perience, stood aloof, in high dudgeon, from political action and civil organiza- tion because they were not consulted and their views not adopted by Congress. Is sRspublicanism responsible for that2 ! 'i 4 !. Again, it seems to me. to be a partial and one-sided view which makes no ac- count of the frightful ignorance which prevails among large proportion of the schite people of She South and who were voters not by Republican reconstruction but by good Democratic state laws. Moreover. southern ignorance, black or white, has had very little to do with the matter any way. Some of the remote but fruitful causes of disorder and of damage to state credit have bean specified; but the proximats cause is to be found in the dishonest and unprincipaled men who have obtained place and power and whose political anteeedents and affiliations were, Democratic in four cases out of six. V That intelligence is no security against mal-administration and public plundering appears from the history of New York city for the past four or five years, whers take the whole city, the average iptelligehce:is high sasz q bs9F s.aoe feas . 5faH the people of the South for the past four or five years have had the same freedom to change rulers and measures that theIpeople of any Norshern statehays enjoyed, and, ,hsving that freedom, if their state governments have been dishonest CT feeble. arg themselyessresponsible and not the Republican party Of this country.. Nor can 1t bs trnly claimed that there has been any intsE3ence oofsths general gov- lsrnmsut with ststs Sf natsnici,u,a, |, sisisssiirs s11 .szscEzc q ss1c sal s1sv Tea- s"1 s3z-