The weekly clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1863-1882, 1873-10-23
lie. .. Nos he Delsaed.

We would not mar the pleasure which
naturally springs in the heart of the
sincere advocate of Reform in the man.
agementof the government. from even
the remotest prospect of such consum-
nation, but we would warn the opposers
of carpet-bag domination in the States
having colored majorities like ours, not
to look for relief from outside sources.
What we most need is reform in our
home government. This end is not to
be effected by Republican victory in
Pennsylvania nor Democratic victory
in Ohio; nor Peoples Party triumph
in California. If our State is ever to be
rescued from the hands of the adven-
turers who have come to rule and rob
her people, it must be done by their own
wisdom and activity. There is no esti-
mating the injury which the over-conf-
dence of the South upon outside aid has
brought upon her. Before the war, it
was a common remark of Northern Dem
Gratis that the Northern armies would
have to march over their dead bodies on
their march to the South. The memoir
able speech of d. S. Dickinson in the
e. S. Senate to that purport found many
an echo in the Northern press; and yet
it has come to pass that that Conven-
ton of the National Democracy has i'm
posed upon their Southern brethren the
humiliation of a resolution as test of
their party faith applauding the maraud-
ers who marched with Sherman to the
sea, burning houses and insulting women
and children who, by the rules of civil
lied warfare, were entitled to exemption
from the sword and torch of the Invader.
In the Charleston Convention, Beast But
Ter voted for Jefferson Davis for Presi-
tial nominee fifty times in token of his
sympathy with the cause Mr.. Davis
represented; and yet, of all the Vandals
in the war, Butler was the meanest; of
all the hounds that have logged her
since the war, he is the most cowardly
and cruel.
The hardest blow which the whites of
the South have struck themselves under
insane leadership, was their attempt in
1867 to defeat the Reconstruction laws
of Congress. 1t is as true as Holy Writ
that they were betrayed into this folly by
misplaced confidence in the ability of the
Northern Democrats to repeal those mea-
sures We well remember that the peo-
pie of this State had made up their minds
to reconstruct their State government in
accordance with the terms they en-
bodied; to accept negro suffrage and not
to repel the friendship of that class by
opposition to the political privileges pro-
posed to be conferred. But unexpectedly
a little squirt of Democratic victory in
Connecticut, and another in Ohio, or
somewhere else, changed the whole cur
rent of their thoughts; revolutionized
their feelings; arrayed them against the
policy of the government; encouraged
them to hope that Reconstruction would
be defeated by Northern Democrats and
that thus they would be spared the bitter
cup. Relying on outside aid, the people
stayed away from the polls, or voted
against reconstruction. The State was
abandoned to the rule OF corruption and
ignorance; and then followed the ava
lanche of curses that have been poured
down on the heads of the people who had
rejected the dictates of their own iudg-
ment to follow theignis fatuus of Northern
Democratic promises. Let US profit by
the example. Nothing is useful in mis-
fortune except the lesson it teaches.
Fools and knaves are not all dead yet
and you will find them pointing to what
has been done in Ohio, Virginia and
elsewhere as an example of what might
have been done in Mississippi, not re-
that Ohio is made up of
almost exclusively a white population
that Virginia has white voting majority
of 40, 900, and that common sense re-
quires that the people of each State
should act according to the circumstances
that surround their own case.