The weekly clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1863-1882, 1874-08-13
what the VIcAksbmFg Election
Teaches.

Several things are taught by the
Vicksburg election:
LIST. Colored officials who had AFRO
gated the leadership Of their race and
party, had acted badly. They delivered
wicked and foolish speeches, which have
reacted-on themselves and operated pre-
judicially to their race. Boastful of their
strength and spoiled by success, they had
become overbearing and reckless, and
had forced on the city a VIGOROUSLY cor
rupt and dishonest ticket, thus putting
decency and honesty at defiance, and
Outraging the moral sense of the commu-
nity Their conduct not only aroused
the Indignation of their political oppo-
nents and excited their energies to the
point of desperation, but it Disguised
large numbers of their own party, through
whom their anticipated victory was ex-
pected to come, and It unnerved them
selves on the principle that conscience
makes towards.
ID Taxes in Vicksburg had grown to
be unbearably oppressive, and it is
charged doubtless with truth, that the
city government had become miniature
of TAMMANY whose villianies. sinking
in the nostrils of the world, had put its
stigma on the great historic Democratic
party of which it was the central influence,
and had hurled the authors Of the infamy
into disgrace and the Penitentiary, though
their sins were thick-plaited with the
gold which they robbed from confding
people. What New York city did with
her Tammany, backed by its political
prestige and money, Vieksburg has done
with hers, and every other community
will do with theirs when rendered desperate
by repeated and unbeara bic wrongs. Some
times this desperate resolve demonstrates
its fierce energies through Vigilance
Committees, and hanging, asin California,
some years ago. At other times it makes
itself felt through the wiser and better
agency of the ballot box, as in New York
and Vicksburg.
Sd. The election has taught these same
arrogant leaders the old lesson, that
''pride goes before a fall" Protesting
heretofore against the "color line" it
was plainly to be seen by the COM
plexion of their ticket that they had
themselves drawn it ia their own party.
As first nominated, we believe it stood
thirteen negroes to three white Repub-
licans; and the majority of the ticket
thus constituted on the color line, rep
resented the ignorance and depravity,
rather than the virtue and intelligence of
their race. 1t has taught them that the
colored people cannot take the machinery
of government into their own hands,
ignoring the claims of the whites. with
out running it into the ground; and that
if the colored people would prosper they
must respect the rights and sensibilities
of that proud spirited race who pay the
taxes and have shed rivers of blood in
vindication of that fundamental Re
publican maxim that taxation and repre-
sentation must go together.
4. 1t has taught them that the party
to which they themselves acknowledge
allegiance, has, through its accredited
head, PRESIDENT GRANT, decided that
Reconstruction is an accomplished fact
that it has carried with it the right of local
self government and of every community
to manage its own affairs for itself, free
from Federal control; and that the
presence of United States troops at
election places is no longer to be tolerated.
Nor can they say, that the President has
not reflected the will of his party. From
Maine to California not single Repub-
lican journal has dissented from his action
And if this has been done in the green tree,
what will be done in the dry? If the Re-
publican party takes this course, what
may be expected of the Democratic, or
any other Opposition party, that in the
course of human events may succeed it in
the control of the government?