The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1874-04-23
What the Northern Press says of the Plight
Of South Carolina.
From the NeW York Tribune.

The fact that committee of gentlemen,
representing the aristocracy of old families and
State Rights, is now in Washington supplicat-
ing for redress by the interference of the gen.
eral government, tells the whole sad story Of
oppression and humiliation. 1t is not spec
tacle that should crafty anybody. We believe
every count in their indictment OF the negro
majority in South Carolina can be sustained.
No American Commonwealth ever suffered
more from the domination of deprayity and
ignorance. The outlook seems hopeless. How
q State thus afflicted may be restored to
healthy condition is question demanding the
serious consideration of statesmen. We are
not surprised to find the sufferers proposing
quack remedies for the disease but with all
sympathy and concern for the patient it is the
duty of the wise physician to deny the request.
The proposition Of the South Carolina memo
rialists as expressed by individual members is
that the reconstruction acts be so amended as to
wrest the State from the hands of the negro
majority now in power, and place it under the
control of the taxpayers and the educated
class. 1t is always desirable that intelligence
and respectabiity shall rule; but it is not right
that even this good end should be accom-
plished by overriding the popular will by con-
gressional interference. No such dangerous
precedent should be set, even for good pur-
pose; anu if such precedent already exists,
it should not be followed. If this plan is
adopted in South Carolina, it would seem to
Justify not few of the political crimes which
have made the Republican party, as it exists
in some other Southern States, odious in the
eyes Of the world. 1t will not do. Special
legislation is not the proper remedy fer politi-
cal wrongs If the distressed people of South
Carolina ask "What then, shall we do?" we
answer, in the language of Gov. Kemper, that
"there can be no security for liberty but in an
immovable adherence to Fundamental princi-
ples." Precedents of the kind which ascribe
unlimited power to legislative body and as
sumo that it may subvert the dearest principles
of liberty at will, are but "bloody instructions,
which, being taught, return to plague the in
ventor." Abandon party alliances; strive for
union of honest men irrespective OF their
nativity, color or previous condition. neglect
no opportunity of exposing the rascality OF
YOUR present rulers show the nation that you
are not fighting on dead issues, but for living
principles, for good government, honesty IN
high places, and equal rights before the law;
purge your registration lists and keep the bal
lot-box free at any cost. With such policy
and by the use of such means you must succeed,
though patience may be necessary to await the
day of your victory. In the meantime know
that oppressed South Carolina has the symathy
of all friends of good government, and that
the battle now going on everywhere between
honesty on the one hand and corruption on the
other cannot but rebound to your advantage.
From the Springfield { (Mass.) Republican,
The story of the PROSTATE State has been
told too often and too fully in these columns to
need another retelling 1t is ptifu story,
shameful story. 1t has about it something at
once of the hideous unreality and the sickeu-
ing oppressiveness of the nightmare. 1t does
not seem possible, we can hardly bring our
selves to believe, that such q story can be
truthfully told of an American Commonwealth,
one of the Old Thirteen, theoretically the Sis
ter and equal of Massachusetts. The evidence,
however, is too vouminous coherent and Gu
mulative to admit of doubt. To all the other
proofs, a fresh and convincing one is now added
in the spectacle of the white citizens of the
State, the ex-slayeholders and ex-rebels, beg
ging at the hands of a Republican President
and Republican Congress the boon Of Fed
eral Intervention. These men, not so very
long since, were the fercest sticklers for State
rights to be found in the country, as their
fathers and graudfatuers had been before them
They would have gone to the death sooner
than tolerate any intermeddling on the part
of the general government in the internal af-
fairs of South Carolina. Now they invite and
even implore it. The fact is more eloquent
than anything in their memorial.
The appeal to the Federal authority having
proved failure the question recurs What TO
do? Two courses are open to these South Car
olina taxpayers. We assume that an armed
rising against the existing State Government
is out Of the question. The first of these
courses is, to organize passive, peaceable, re-
bellion in other words, to refuse to pay their
taxes, after the Louisiana precedent Some of
the delegates are quoted as having told the
House Committee that this plan would be
tried, unless relief was speedily forthcoming
The idea is, of course, to coerce Congress into
adoption of this plan would, of necessity,
cause great confusion and excitement in the
State it might easily lead to bloodshed even
if it did not, it might not prove so feasible and
efficacous Us to those who favor it profess to
believe. A much better and safer plan, as it
seems to us, will be to steadily and hopefully
perseyere in the path upon which they have
already entered undiscouraged by the disap-
pontments and meagre results of the past, to
redouble their efforts to secure the confidence
of the colored voters, detach them from the
carpet -baggers and the scalawags, and educate
them to the duties of citizenship. Concilla-
ton, education-in these two words lies the
hope of South Carolina The ex-slaveholders
have already made good beginning in divest-
ing themselves of much of their old partisan
ship and prejudice of race. Their best and
most hopeful plan is to 60 straight ahead in
this line. The circumstances and conditions
are more favorable than ever before. Let the
taxpayers be of good courage. They have
rcaped the harvest from bad sowing Let
them now SOW kindness instead of contempt,
sympathy instead of arrogance, justice instead
Of onpression. This seed, too, always come
up. They shall reap in due season, if they
faint not.
A New York paper says an extensive
conspiracy to cheat the United States Govern
n,ent of tho Tux ON MhiskeE has lust been dis