Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1874-08-11
UNCIVILIZED CIVILIZATION.

Some fifteen or twenty years ago the
Hampers, after achieving great success
with their monthly, started, in addition,
a weekly paper which they called the
Journal Of Civilization. From the be-
ginning it has been intensely sectional
in tone and power in the Republican
party. 1t not only supports the Civil
Rights abomination, but has done more
probably than any other five papers in
the North to develop that error inpublic
sentiment which led the Senate to pass
the bill by SO large a majority. The
Harper Brothers are typical If a pretty
large class of publishers of age and ex-
perienee, who have educated the North
ern mind to believe in all the political
and so-called civilizing dogmas which
they teach. This sectional civilization
enquiries how far it is expedient to de-
press the white race in the South inor-
der that the blacks may stand
firm and securely on top of
them. There can be bit one purpose
in this kind of legislation; the princi-
pie involved is too plain to be conceal
ed, or misunderstood. But the COM
mon sense of the South sees what the
Journal of Civilization and the Sena-
tors who voted for mixing white and
black children in the same schools, fail
to see-that to crush one race does not
elevate another race.
The Southern negro can rise only as
the Southern white man rises; and the
relations between the two must be set
tied, not by fanatics IN distant States
who are profoundly ignorant of the
facts, but by those Immediately inter
ested in the matter TO be decide d.
Foreign intermeddling, under the pre-
tense of a purer and better morality Of
the Beecher type, can do nothing but
harm in the sunny South.
The experience of unnumbered gen.
erations has established the inestima-
bic value of local selfgoyernment. On
this sound principle can anything be
more absurd, not to say mischievous,
than for Senators from Oregon and
Maine to attempt to regulate the CON-
mon schools, hotels, churches and rail
roads in Davidson county, Tenn? We
insist on the point that this Congress
sional invasion of inahenable rights is
not civilization, but a long stride to-
ward despotism and barbarism.
Either the Civil Rights bill is as un-
constitutional as any law can be, OF
the people of the several States have
no reserved rights, and now live by
sufferance, at the pleasure Of central
despotism. There will soon bea national
fight through the ballot-box on this
question of federalism, with Beecher and
the Harper Civilization on the one side,
and Jeffersonian States Rights Democ-
racy on the other. The antagonism is
as old as the general government, and
encroachment after encroachment on
the rights of the citizen have been
made till he has become the helpless
victim of niserably inefficient laws and
the slave of tax collectors. 1t will be
no easy matter to remedy these evils,
for some of them seem to be constitu'
tional and hereditary. The fanatics
have done their work as thoroughly
and enduringly as they knew how, and
placed both whites and blacks in a
false position. The true interests OF
these are not antagonistic, but in har-
mony, if rightly understood. Provi.
dence does not make the good of one
class or race depend on the injury Of
another. The political theory which
bears rotten fruit in South Carolina is
anti American and false 1t cannot
stand long"