Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1874-05-07
COUNTING THE COST.

COUNTING THE COST.
1t is aptly suggested by the Neto
York World that Summers civil rights
bill, as reconstructed by the Committee
on Judiciary and reported to the Sen
ate by Mr.. Frelinghuysen should be en-
titled, "a bill to deprive the States of
the Union of all power to protect their
citizens in their civil rights, and to
furnish the means for the humiliation
of the States" According to its
provisions "all persons within thejuris-
diction of the United States shall be
entitled to the full and equal enjoy
ment of the accommodations, advan-
tages, facilities, and privileges of inns,
public conveyances on land or water,
theatres and other places of public
amusement, and also of common schools
and public institutions of learning or
benevolence supported in whole or in
part by general taxation; and of GENE
teries so supported" and it also pro-
vides for certain penalties of fine and
imprisonment to be imposed for viola
lions of the act by "the territorial or
District Courts of the United States
wherever the defendant may be found"
and exclusively of the courts
of the several States. Here the
purpose is evidently two-fold
to drag the white man of the South,
down to the level of his former slaves and
to destroy the Southern State govern.
ments. The leaders engaged in this
conspiracy can hope to succeed in do
ing the former only by accomplishing
the latter. So long as the whites re-
tain control of the Legislatures and
the courts they can protect themselves.
In the contest which thepassage of Mr..
Frelinghuysen's bill would inaugurate,
the negro must unquestionably be the
loser, Notwithstanding the fact that it
would entail great hardships upon the
white people. 1t would undoubtedly
result in the repeal Of all laws estab-
fishing and maintaining free schools in
those States where the Legislatures are
not under the control of the negro ele-
ment. As a consequence, negro chill
dren would be cut off from free educa-
tional facilities in all but three or four
of the Southern States, and those are
so impoverished under carpet-bag rule
that they cannot sustain public schools
to any extent Throughout the South,
the negro children, although taught
separately, receive equal benefits
with the white children from
the funds set apart for the common
schools, and will continue to do so, if
this miscbievous civil rights bill should
not be passed. But let it become a
law, and the imam and brother" viii
have to educate his own children or
they must grow up in Ignorance. The
whites who can afford to do so Will fall
back upon private schools, while pro-
vision will be made for those of the
poorer classes by voluntary contribu-
tons or in some other way that will not
be repugnant to the civil rights law.
Those who profess to be the friends
of the negro in this matter of civil
rights, so-called, have hardly counted
what it will cost. Nor have the ne
groes, as a race, any intelligent idea
whatever as to how fatally it would affect
their most vital interests. While ex-
Guiding them from the schools, itwould
not even throw open hotels and theatres
and other places of amusement to them
upon a perfect equality with the white
race. The thing has already been at
tempted in some of the Southern States,
notably in Mississippi, and has failed
there. If in that State, with all the ma
chin.ry, Legislative and Judicial, of
Radical administration, such step in
the direction of social equality cannot
be forced upon an unwilling people,
could the Federal Government be more
successful? A centralized power may
destroy the States, or render them
practically imperative, as seems to be
the purpose of Mr.. Frelinghuysen's bill,
but it cannot foster upon them mixed
schools, mixed hotels and mixed places
of amusements.
We depredate this mischievOus inter-
ference on the part of COngressin amat-
ter which should be left to adjust it.
self according to laws which that body