Port Tobacco times, and Charles County advertiser. (Port Tobacco, Md.) 1845-1898, 1873-08-22
@One of our contemporaries, speak
ing of ssPolitics in MarYland.n saws:

AhE5 va LII ObJ6.
cit is a matter of record that Maryland has
been the victim CT Encouragement in the past,
SO far as the interests of the Republican party
are concerned. The State has been the object
of great solicitude on the part of many of the
prominent leaders of the party, who remember
her proud record in the past, and who believe
that she should long ago have taken rank in the
solid column of modern progress. The blacks
did not vote within her borders until after the
fifteenth amendment went into full effect, and
never have voted as they should vote since then.
She was the last State wherein slavery had any
material hold in which the blacks were given
the full recognition of citizenship. In many of
the lower counties, and within short distances
from Washington and Baltimore, they do not
even yet understand and exercise these privi-
leges, because there has been no competent ex-
ecutive head to organize them or instruct them
in the drill of party discipline"
This betrays, on the part of it's author,
a lamentable ignorance of the facts which
he undertakes to discuss. The solicitude
which the Republican press and leaders
naturally feel for the success of their par
ty undertakings unreasonably stimulates
their desire to furnish excuses that are, at
least apparently, plausible when defeat is
the only reward they meet. To say that
the former slaves, who now constitute the
Republican voters in the Southern coun,
ties of Maryland, do not yet understand
their franchise privileges, in degree quail
flying them for its intelligent and patriotic
exercise, is to charge them with want O.
capacity and intelligence which we could
not truthfully undertake to controvert.-
To imply, however, that these people dc
not exercise" these privileges, according
to accepted Republican theories of free
voting, is charge as unwarranted in its
assertion as it is unreal in the fact it al
leges. That they do not exercise these
''privileges" as free voters, according to
the true acceptation of the term, we can
not otherwise than readily admit; but that
they s'exercise" them uninfuenced by pre-
JUDGE and unwhipped by the Republican
Lash, is proposition which deserves and
receives our prompt denial While we
speak with special reference to our own
section, we believe our remarks will apply
with equal force to the whole State when
we say, that a more compact, thoroughly
organized and instructed band of voters
than the late slaves, can no where and un-
dos NO circumstances be found. Every
election bears the mosU uaainestinned- tes=
timony of the fact, and testifes also to the
astonishing energy and tact of those who
as leaders, are hereabouts entrusted with
the management of Republican party tao
tics. In this county no labor has been too
great, no undertaking too serious, and NO
obstacle too formidable for those who have
brought about this perfect unity Of action
and year after year voted long columns Of
ignorant negroes agreeably to their own
views and strictly after the Republican
fashion of free voting. To charge then
that the blacks in the lower counties Of
Maryland "do not even yet understand and
exercise these privileges" according to the
Republican code, is a perversion of facts
which ignorance will hardly excuse, and
reflection on the Republican leaders in
Maryland which decent regard for JUS
tice will not tolerate.