New national era. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1870-1874, 1874-07-09

A Mr.. Northrop writes long, dull, stale,
fiat and Improbable communication to the
Christian Union, Henry Ward Beecher's paper
against mixed schools. We confess to some
surprise to find such letter in such paper.
The printing and publishing of such an arti-
Gle as this might have been looked for in the
Baptist Waterman, an organ of the United
Baptist Societies, whose officers, at their
late meeting in Washington went out of their
way to attack and denounce mixed schools
or, such an article might as well have APP
peared in the african Repository, the coloni-
cation organ, which advocates the expatria-
ton of the whole negro race from this
continent.
The publication of such stuff as Mr..
Northrop writes would have been consistent
with the religion which has respect to per-
sons, and with the craftsmanship which
desires to deplete land of its laborers, but
to find the Christian Union giving currency
and almost endorsement, by silence, to the
false assumptions, the fallacious reasonings,
and the impotent conclusions of such bad
hearted man as Mr.. Northrop proves himself
in his communication to be, excites our utmost
surprise.
Has Mr.. Beecher NO time to inspect the
matter which goes into his powerful and
widely-read journal, or has our young and
talented friend, Moses Colt Tyler, the liter
airy editor, had his radical ardor cooled by the
conservative influences of Newly ork resi-
dence: We trust that the event may prove
that Mr.. Northrop's letter found shelter and
protection in such sacred place wholly by
inadvertence.
The sum of Mr.. Northrop's complaints
against mixed schools. is:
First, that the white people Of the South
don't want them.
Second, that rather than accept free schools
the Southern whites will break up the free
school system if they can.
Third, that they will do this because they
hate the negro.
Nobody in their senses has ever disputed
any Of these statements. But then, all these
applied in reference to every anti-slavery
reform, from the check put upon the spread
OF slavery into the Territories down to the
enactment Of the Fifteenth Amendment.
Aud yet the triumphant party Of freedom has
never halted 10 take counsel of its fears, nor
to bother about the preferences of its enc
mics. Why should it do so now:
Suppose the free-school system should
prove to be the object of the devastating
purposes of the whites of the South! What
then? A system of any sort is no better
than the great political parent which gives
the system life, aud the Southerners tried to
lay the hands Of distinction upon the nation
itself, and while the system is no better, We
may safely conclude that the genius of our
institutions is made no worse. So it will be
found that prejudice and hate will be as pow
erless to break up the school system estab-
lished by law in the Southern States as self
ishness and inordinate ambition were in the
effort to break up the Union.
Mr.. Northrop says the white South is moi
NOW ready. What does he mean by now
Has wrong ever been ready to let go its hold
upon its victims? The no,O of every move.
ment has proved to be bugbear. NoO al
ways comes when authority calls it; Law
makes public opinion quite as much as it re-
fleets it. and if mixed schools are guaranteed
by imperial statute, the necessities of the
people will compel the white South to accept
! them.
1t is we'll that Mr.. Northrop confines him.
self to North Carolina and Virginia as illus
trations, for Louisiana and South Carolns
are against him. Those States have mixed
schools which are doing well and destined te
do still better. No matter whether white
people take advantage of the system or not
The primary object of free schools is not te
provide Tor the rich who are able to pay FOL
their prejudices against the poor, nor to fur
nish an arena where the poor white boy may
whallop the negro boy by dou ble-teaming on
him in the playground; the real object is to