The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1874-05-21
An English View Of the Plight Of Plundered
South Carolina.

Since the election of Gen. Grant to the Pres
idency of the United States his opponents
have been constantly complaining that he was
setting up system of personal government,
and the reception accorded by him to the dep
utation of taxpayers from South Carolina, as
related by our New York correspondent in the
letter we published yesterday morning, will
not tend to lessen the point of such accusations.
South Carolina, we need hardly remind the
reader, is one of the original thirteen States
that won the independence of the Union, and
before the civil war it was among the greatest,
proudest and most influential members of the
Federation. There "the peculiar institution"
of the South attained its greatest development,
and there, consequently, the white man was
seen in his haughtest and most high-spirited
mood. The exhaustion of the Confederate ar
mics, and eventual surrender of Lee and john
ston. placed the State at the mercy Of the
North, and Congress proceeded to restore what
it was pleased to call Republican form of
government by virtually excluding from all
Share in the administration Of the Common
wealth the whites-that is to say, the whole
population that had any experience OF public
affairs, or, indeed, which was able to conceive
what politics meant-and handing over all
power to the former slaves. The consequence
may easily be imagined. Even in the oldest
parts of the Union, where the people are of
pure European descent, and have been trained,
generation after generation, in the transaction
of public business, corruption, as all the world
knows, is scandalously and unblushingly pre-
vaent; but New York itself has been decent
ly and honestly governed in comparison with
South Carolina and Louisiana. In South Car
olina, for example, the Executive Government
and the Legislature alike are in the hands of
persons who own no property in the State-the
owners of property are practically disfran-
chised. AS consequence, since the civil war
the State taxation has been multiplied five
times, and the State debt has been trebled.
The State bench and the State law offices are
managed by the "Ring," so that justice is
bought and sold, or dispensed only to the
friends of the existing regime. And the pres
sure of taxation has become SO heavy that land
pressure of the public burdens, it is stated that
one acre out of every forty was sold in a sin
gle year by persons who gave up the struggle
and moved out of the State.
How bad matters had at length become may
be Judged from the action adopted by the
whites. You will recollect that the South Car
olina whites were the fercest, the most stub
born, most uncompromisng advocates o. the
doctrine of States Rights-the doctrine which
maintained that the States were sovereign, AMI
that Congress was only their agent and minis
ter in their collective capacity. In defence of
this doctrine they were the first that rushed
into secession and we all remember how, on a
hundred battle fields during the long agony of
the civil war, they proved the genuineness and
lasting strength of their conviction. Yet so
intolerable had "carpet-bag" misgovernment
become that these ultra professors of States
Rights sent deputation to Washington to lay
before Congress and President the tale of their
grievance and invoke Intervention. The depu-
tation sought an interview with the President,
and on the day appointed its members proceed
ed to read a respectful document, in which the
condition of their native State was depicted in
studiously moderate language. They were
7aarq,le used to admonish presumtuOus Parfe-
ments of their duty. 1t seems that in the con-
vention at which this taxpayers deputation
was appointed one member had made speech,
in which he censurcd the Presidents conduct
in violent and even scurrilous terms. The rest
of the members saw at once to what use such
speech might be turned by their enemies, and
after a time they succeeded in extinguishing
the blatant orator. But the mischief was done.
A copy of the speech was laid before the Pres
dent few minutes previous to the entry of
the deputation, and it threw him into parox-
ysm of rage. With difficulty he listened to the
reading of their petition, and when it was
finished, he told the members, in a few curt,
brusque sentences that the State of South Car
olina is sovereign Commonwealth, competent
to regulate her own internal affairs, and that
the Federal Government has no right to inter-
fere with the manner in which her people
choose, through their elected representatives,
to manage their domestic concerns. With this
part of the answer his auditors would, doubt
les, cordially concur, if only it were seriously
to be acted on. But with the reconstruction
laws vigorously enforced it must have sounded
as a bitter mockery in the ears of the South
Carolina gentlemen. However, this was the
least part of the humiliation to which they had
to submit Suddenly turning from the great
political question before him to his own petty,
personal grievance, the President proceeded to
tell the deputation that his sympathy for the
suferings of those they represented had been
materially lessened by remarks hostile to him
self enunciated at the Columbia Convention.
The members of the deputation attempted to
explain that these remarks were made only by
q single speaker, and that he had been prompt
" nut down. The President paid no heed to
the explanation, but repeated with increasing
acrimony and rising voice what he had said
before. And thus the deputation was dismissed,
having been imprcsslvely taught how essential
it is in the model Republic, whose institutions,
according to President Grant, all Europe is
desirous Of copying. that criticism of so august
parsonage as a President should be uttered
with batcd breath and in drawingroom Ian
guage-London STANDARD, april l7M.
DoN'T NEGLECT THE CoEN.-Whilew we hear
very doeful tdings Of the cotton crop, conse-
quent upon the horrible weather of the past
few weeks, good report of the growing corn
crop is almost universal. 1t is admitted that
the only thing now needed to make the corn
crop still more fourishing is little cultivation