The Louisiana Democrat. [volume] (Alexandria, La.) 1845-1918, 1874-12-02
The South.
IMPRESSIONS ABROAD OF TUE TINES COR
RESPONDENCE.

1t is very difficult to realize the state
of things in the Southern States of North
America. We read of conflicts in New
Orleans and Of troubles in Arkansas,
and SEINE are tempted to think that the
whole country south of Mason and Dix
on's line is on the verge of civil war,
and that life must be nearly insupport-
able to those honest folks who simply
desire to gather the crops the bounty of
Nature yields them and live peaccably
with their neighbors. How can order
be preserved when men are disputing
i'll arms as to who shall have the power
and authority to preserve order? These
reflections are natural, but in yielding
to them we fall into the same error that
besets us in thinking of Spain. The
Southern States differ from one another
like the provinces Of the Peninsula, and
the contrast between town and country
life i'll the South is something far ex-
ceeding anything that can be traced oil
the other side of the Pyrences. The po-
litical organization OF Spain is weak;
that of the Gulf States is so feeble that
we should not go far from wrong in say
ing that it has no existence. The re-
stricted aristocracy Of large slave-hold-
ers which once represented them has
been broken up, and the States are now
geographical! areas where human beings
eongregate together, and no more
The condition of political life in such
communities is thus analogous to that
of the lower forms of animal existence.
There are creatures so loosely put to-
u, I,,t
makes no difference to the remainder
that is left, and even when they are BIZ
sected the halves live healthily and
happily apart, as if nothing had been
done. This is the image we must bear
in mind if we would understand the
South. Each State is independent gifts
neighbor, and within each State each
county has its own semi-animate organ-
izalion, and is not troubled though the
next is on fire. The wave of distur-
bance is rarely intense enough to over
flow the borders OF the district in which
it originates, and the traveller can pass
in few miles from burning excite
ment to an apathy which appears inca
pable of being moved to passion. We
print in another part Of our impression
of to-day, letter which must bring
home to the reader the low political Or
ganization Of the South upon which we
have insisted, and in conjunction with
this, the contrast between city an d
country life in the Gulf States. 1t is
probable that there is not to be found
upon the face of the globe white conmu-
mites less deserving of respect than
those which inhabit the towns of the
former slave States. The man of French
descent in Louisiana seems somehow to
keep himself from DECORATION, but the
| Anglo-SaxOn and the Irishman run to
seed in frightful fashion. A popula.
! ton compounded of "mean Whites -
"carpet-baggers," and of a,iventurers-
| all "rowdies," and all resolved to live
! without restraint upon their desires,
and without working to satisfy them
affords the materials of perpetual polit-
cal riots, for such men see in the enjoy
meHt of the spoils of Office the ready
means of realizing their own Ideals
| Unless some radical change is accom-
| plished in the sytem of government in
the South, we must expect periodical
recurrence of tumultuOus attempts to
got tie upper hand. Electoral frauds
will be corrected by violence. and fights
will be suspended only to be renewed.
But this is the city life of the South
The lett which we publish is that of 4
correspondent of the New York Times
who left New Orleans few weeks since
to see something Of the country life in
Louisiana, and no one who reads the
record Of his experience could suspect
! ~ 81 20. I'm
open war in the city he had Quilted
lie went up the Mississippi to the mouth
of the Red River, andthen struck across
Oh horseback in westerly and north
westerly direction to Alexandria, on his
road to Shreveport, in the northwest
cOrder of Louisiana. a town which has
also been of late sufficiently notorious
The distance he proposes to travel is no,
great; the distance which he had rid
den at the time he wrote his letter was
barely fifty miles, but he had got well
into Il land where political struggles
whether orderly or disorderly, went fol
nothing. The country through which
he passed had its troubles, but they
were ia no case political. They were
due to two causes-iirst, to the fact thai
the inhabitants were trying to get a liv-
ing out of land so situated that they
were liable every year to see their hopes
destroyed by the ,overtlowing of the
Mississippi; and secondly, that the ne.
groes were as yet so unaccustomed tC
the novel ideas of having anything Of
their own, and Of providing for them.
selves, that they ale most slow to aocll.
mulate in good times any store for the
future. Not that they have had any
superabundance Of good times over
which to rejoice. The district traverseC
by the New York correspondent has its
advantages, if well treated, but it has
not been fairly cultivated since the war
Lying to the south of the Red River
and to the west of the Mississippi ant
| the Atchafalaya, it is so intersected 10y
streams which break out of these big
rivers only to fell into them at lower
points in their course, that the whole
land is, in fact, made up of a multitude
of islands. 1t is obvious that in thi;
amphibious country of bayous tn,
means of irrigation exist in abundance
but also the means of mundatiou. Al
early care of the French settlers who
first peopled Louisiana was to apply tht
lessons they had learned on the bank:
of the Rhonc and Loire, and construc
levees along the banks of the rivers o
the South to save their lands from being
annually flooded. In the military ope
rations of the war these levees were Gu
and broken down, and little or no effor
has since been made to reconstruc
them. 1t is, III fact, awork WHICH mus
be accomplished on large scale' to bt
effeetual, since it is useless to embanl
the Mississippi for few miles, leaving
it free to overflow the country further
up, and the organization of the State il
too feeble to undertake such an enter
prise, while the traditions OF the Unior
make it difficult for the Federal Govern
ment to deal with it. With levees un