The weekly clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1863-1882, 1874-07-02

with all its incidents and afinities is dead
/ extinguished, sunk into a sea that give
not up its dead They cherish no as
! pirations or schemes for its resusclta
/ ton With their opinions on the right
fulness of slavery unchanged by the evenu
of the war, vet as an enlightened people
+ accepting what is inevitable, they woulC
not if they could again identify theil
destiny as people with an institution
/ that stand antagonized so utterly by al
the sentiments and living forces of mod
ern civilization. In a word they regarc
/ the new amendments to the Constitution
which secure to the black race freedom
citizenship, and suffrage to be not les
sacred and inviolable than the Original
charter as il came from the hands of the
/ fathers They owe allegiance to the lat
ter; they have pledged their parole of hon
or TO keep the former, and it is the parole
Of honor of a soldier race.
| | repeat, your policy of securing the
results of the war has reached its consum
nation.
There is no class of people in this
country who have more liberty and who
are more secure from the assaults of enc
mics than the colored people of the South
Every man, woman, and child of them
can do precisely as they like without the
slightest restraints from the whites
Every black man Of twenty-one years
possesses a vote and exercises the same
right and the same individual freedom as
the weaithiest and proudest white man in
America. There Is not a trace Of priUl-
lege throughout the land Morally, men
tally, politically, negro liberty is univer-
sal, thorough, and complete, and their
equality before the law is without an ex-
ception. To 90 further is to make it a
privileged race Would it not be wise
and statesman-like to pause before you
push your policy to further extremes,
and see the results of it as time will dis
close them?
But, sir, is it true that in the estab
Iishment OF the Union and the enfran--
chisement of the black men American
craftsmanship has exhausted its resources
and absolved itself from all obligations
growing out Of the tremendous conflicts
through which the country has passed
Is no regard to be had for the white pop
ulation in these Southern States, to the
seven million men in whose veins run the
blood Of the races that uphold the Chris
tianity and civilization of the world; a
population III which resides the intellectu-
al culture, the moral strength, the mate
rial interests, the skilled labor, the use
full capital of that entire section, rs well
as its political experience a population
which, whatever heated partisans may
say Of it, has in every period Of your
Il 4
portion of Presidents for your Federal
Republic, ministers in your cabinets,
Judges upon your bench, statesmen in
your national Legislatures, generals in
your armies, and troops Of unsurpassed
bravery upon your battle-fields popu-
lation whose leaders guideI your country
for sixty out OF seventy years Of her eX-
istence, and only fifteen Years ago surren-
dered her to your control, to use the Ian
guage Of one of them upon that occasion,
without a stain upon her honor, match
less in her glory, incalculable in her
strength, the pride and admir- alton of the
world.
But III a speech to which | believe by
the rules of this House | am not allowed
to refer more particularly, it is said, states
men as they were, ''they were engaged
in wicked rebellion to overturn the
Government which was entrusted TO their
hands; - and Though they have surren-
east in the mold OF rebellion and cannot
bend. you can no more conciliate
them by giving them back their privileges
than you can conciIiate the rattlesnake
by restoring to it its fangs." Another,
to which | am precluded from alluding,
says that things are in a bad way down
in the South, but it is the legitimate fruit
Of their own misconduct. They have
sown the wind and they must reap the
whirlwind" 1T is said that the black
people have governed badly, and are of
a lower order of intelligence; but give to
me the lower order of Intelligence that is
loyal, rather than the higher order Of IN
telligence that has derived its culture from
the blood of the Republic
Sir, the inevitable effect, if not the di-
rect object Of such views, will be to fix
upon the Government policy that works
the degradation, humiliation, wretched-
ness, aud torture, for its own sake, of the
Southern people. But l believe, sir,
that this spirit is passing away, even from
the minds Of my friends on the other side.
Ii Is condemned by the spirit Of age.
\ on can find no sanction for it in the
ethics Of Christian or American states
manship And the authors of the SEN
timents might have learned even nobler
lesson from the allegories of heather
mythology. " hen Prometheus was bound
to the rock, it was not an eagle, the
pround bird of ,Jove, but vulture that
buried its beak in his writhing frame.
This is not the spirit that animated your
northern people to war upon the South,
nor was it the spirit that fired your brave
men to follow Mcclellan and Grant and
Sherman.
Sir, the issues of the war are we'll de-
fined The people ofthe South believed
that if the States of this Union, whose
institutions we're so discordant that they
could not live together under a common
government, part slave and part free, !"
could divide into two great American re-
publics, each pursuing its own destiny,
the freedom, the progress and greatness
of Its own people, without interfering
with the other, it would furnish the
grandest example and the grandest ar
gument in fAyor of free institutions that
the world had ever seen. The North be-
lieved that'such separation was death to
the Americanism Of government; that it
was dissolution to the whole system, and
it proclaimed and waged war to give effect
to the principle that the people of each
State and every section must pursue their
freedom and their greatness and theirglory
only in the freedom and greatness and
glory of the American Republic, which
would make them freer and greater and
more glorious than they would become in
two separate confederacies. And the
whole theory upon which your war was