New-York tribune., 1874-09-11
A RITTER LESSON.

When we warned the Southern COnserva-
tives q month or two ago that in the Organi-
zation of their White Mans Party they had
chosen the surest means to perpetuate the
Carpet-bag and BayOnet Repubicanism to
which they traced the worst of their misfor-
tunes, we little imagined how quickly the
verification of our words would come. Hardly
is the ink dry upon the resolutions which
call upon the white men of the South to unite
for the purpose of thrusting the negro out of
politics and resuming possession of their birth
right, than the cry goes up all through the
North that the wards of the nation are again
in danger, the Ku-Klux are reviving, there
must be fresh measures of reconstruction and
new enforcement laws, and the President
must interfere once more to "crush the re-
"belion.' Sensible men may comprehend
the cause of this sudden outcry, but it is
beyond question that it has produced great
effect. The negro, timid and excitable enough
before, sees a masked murderer in every bush.
and stands ready, with rifle cooked, to shoot
the first wayfarer he meets by night upon the
highway. Ridiculous personal quarres are
magnified by his fears until they not only
assume to his disordered vision the bgness of
civil war, but end in bloody riots which draw
into their inflamed circumference all the evil
humors and private hatreds of the neighbor-
hood. - Nor of course is the colored man the
only disturber of the peace. The South is
full of turbulent and lawless whites, and has
been full of them any time within the men,
ory of man. Belted swash-bucklers and swag-
gering regulators, full of strange oaths and
Colts revolvers, will not draw the line very
distinctly between the legitimate political OPP
position which the White Leaguers recon-
mend in public and the summary and severe
measures they are charged with practicing in
secret. To many of them lynching a nigger
or running off a Radical holder is merely
an exercise of the Southern white genteman's
erogative-sightly irregular perhaps, but on
the whole rather good thing for the COM
munity.
1t needed no great shrewdness to foresee
how the two dangerous classes of the South
would be affected by the stern division of
races which the White Mans Party proclaimed,
and how quickly the first symptom of dssen-
sion would be seized upon at the North, not
merely by political schemers but by honest
philanthropists as an argument for prolonging
the rule of the carpet-bag governments, which,
though they have plunged the South in misery
and bankruptcy, have at least protected the
colored men from wholesale persecution. Thou
sands of wavering voters, disgusted with the
corruptions of the Republican party have re-
newed their allegiance to it since the outbreak
of these disorders, and the Administration,
half minded to turn cold shoulder hereafter
to the adventurers of the Moses stamp who
have so long plundered under its protection
is almost compelled to continue its support
and yield to their demand for more troops"
In every respect the White Mans Party thus
far has been disastrous experiment; and
unless its leaders adopt at once a very differ
ent policy still graver misfortunes are proba-
bly, yet to come. The regeneration of the
South is Impossible by any process of indis-
criminate ostracism. The negroes are part
of the body polite, and q strong part. 1t is
too late to attempt their exclusion from pub
Lie affairs, and there is no hope Of q general