The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1874-08-01
THE SUFFERING SOUTH.

Whether it will be successful or not,
there is no longer any doubt that an at
tempt will be made to make "justice to
the South " a leading, if not the leading
issue in the next Presidential canvass.
The politicians of that section are restless
under restraint, and eager for return to
power. "Justice " they interpret as the
handing over into their hands of the gov
ernments of the lately insurrectionary
States, and their restoration to their former
influence in the national councils. The
tactics they are employing prove that they
have lost none of their cunning during their
compulsory retirement, and if they are
defeated in their object, it will only be
because of an excess of that quality which
sometimes cheats itself.
For several years past the South has
been quietly but busily at work manufac-
turing causes to excite Northern sympathy
for its condition. The state of affairs in
Louisiana and South Carolina, for instance,
where number of INSCRIPTIONS politi-
clans have saddled debts of millions of dol
lars upon the States, has been exagger-
ated threefold, and represented as general,
whereas it is but local. Accepting the
stale Democratic charge that the kukluX
outrage were mental creations of desperate
carpet-baggers to fire the "loyal heart"
of the nation, and not even these fellows,
with all their cleverness, have shown half
as much ingenuity as the Southern states
men of the Toombs and Stephens stripe.
=" l tell you,'' said Ben Hill, of Georgia, to
newspaper correspondent the other day,
"the Northern people don't know how
much we have suffered down here" The
exact amount of misery Mr.. Hill and his
fellow Georgians have suffered, he did not
tell the enterprising news gatherer, but it
is probably less than that which the ALI
ance of Continental vultures imposed upon
Poland. Mr.. Hendricks proudly pointed
in his Indianapolis speech to that Demo-
cratic Commonwealth as one of the few
GASES in the desert-wasted South; and in
the last number of Scribner, Mr.. Edward
King, who is an impartial observer, with
an inclination, if any, to espouse the cause
of the down trodden Southern white, wrote,
Certainly, reconstruction is hull and void
in Georgia. Out of 1000 colored voters
in the State, scarcely 10000 voted to day;
free schools are almost unknown outside
of cities and towns, and there has not been
Republican inspector of elections since
the Democrats assumed power. To judge
from the testimony of native Georgians
and who have never been suspected of dis
honesty or untruth, the negroes are very
grossly intimidated. The Kuklux faction
still exist as a kind of invisible empire"
Still, according to Mr.. Hill, the cup Of
Southern, and particularly of Georgian,
misery is full; only one additional calam-
ity is reserved in the store house of Con-
gressional legislation, and that is the civil
rights bill.
We do not refer to these things in any
partisan SPIRIT but simply as signs of the
time. Mr.. Hill aud his confreres, like the
mendicants in great cities who MAIN them
selves or who bandage their eyes to hide
vision which would have delighted the
soul of poor Milton-all for the purpose of
better serving their obiects-have made
out a plausible. case. They are suffering
terribly, and they must be saved. Their
disease is desperate, and any remedy, even
the black draught of Republicansm pre-
scented by the hand that smites them, will
be welcomed. In vague and general
way they talk of sacrificing all the tradi-
tions of the Republic, the example of
Washington and the usages of our poll
tics, in preference to longer bearing their
burdens. The ills they know not of are
vastly preferable to those they know
Hence those political combinations of
which we hear whsperings from the South
and such utterances as this, quoting again
from Mr.. Ben Hill: "Come monarchy or
come what will, we in the South will GER
tainly be the gamers, for any sort of
change will be for the better for u.s." This
talk may delude few people, but the num-
Der will not be large enough to be danger
Gus. 1t is the threat of the spoiled child
to kill itself if its wishes are not gratified,
or like the suicidal mutterings of the NOR
bid-minded victim of alcohol after his peri
odical debauch. We only wish we could
believe these people mean what they say.
We should then have higher opinion of
their sincerity and courage.
The truth of the matter is that the con-
dition of the South, regarded from the
Southern standpoint, ought to be better
now than at any time since the close of the
war. A dozen crops have been raised and
there has been ample time for material
rehabilitation, while on the other hand, the
government of every seeding State save
three-Louisana, Mississippi, and South
Cardinals now in the hands of the native
and Democratic whites. In only one of
the States still held by the Republicans
South Cardinals there widespread politi-
cal and social Generalization for which the
whites are not responsible. South Caro-
lima, it is true, is impoverished and bank
rupt, and her lands by thousands of acres
are being sold under the auctioneer's ham
mer Tor reverting to the Commonwealth,
since the purchasers are mostly negroes
and they are the people in that State), to
secure the taxes which their owners are
unable to pay. But even this is only one
of the retributions of history; an informal
edict of confiscation like that revolutionary
act which divided the estates of the grand
seigneurs in '92, destroying the old noblesse
and making the monarchy impossible in
France. If Mr.. Hill had a realizing sense
of how much the South Carolinians have
sinned, he would probably modify his opin-
ion of the degree of their sufferings.
Philadelphia Press.