The weekly clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1863-1882, 1875-01-28
Hon. h. q. &. Lamar ON the POIit
fcaI Situation i'm Mississippi.
From the n. Y Herald.I
WASHINGTON, Jan. 9, 1875.
To the Editor of tie Herald:

/
WASHINGTON, Jan. 9, 1875.
To the Editor of tie Herald
SIR: In reply to your request that shall
state to You "what, socially and politically,
would be the result in your (my) State if
the federal government should at once and
entirely cease to interfere in the affairs of
your State and leave Mississippi to govern
itself, and its people to manage their own To-
cal affairs, just as the people of New York or
Pennsylvania manage their own" | an
swer:
LIST. The rights ofpersonal security and of
property would be, under the changed cir
cumstances referred to, as secure as they are
in any community on earth. The disturb
ances there now are purely of political ma
ture. Public opinion in that State regards
any white man as ignoble and cowardly
who would cheat a negro. or take advantage
of him in a trade, or who would wantonly do
him personal injury. A jury, if it
should incline in its sympathies either way,
would favor the weaker man in an appeal to
the laws.
End. As to political rights. l presume
your question points to those rights which
the Northern people have insisted upon be-
ing secured to the black race, tO-wit: The
right of suffrage, of service on juries and le-
gal eligibility to office. | do not believe
that any serious movement would be made
in my State to iniure or abridge any of those
rights In the exercise of them there
might be some slight occasional distur-
Dances
They would, however, be the more tran
silent incidents of the resumption by our peo-
Pile of local selfgovernment to which they
have been unused by ten years of Tepres-
sion, and would entirely cease in a very short
time.
As to the political complexion of the State
if the people are allowed to rule their own
local affairs, as those of Northern States are,
it cannot be doubted that with us, as with
you, brains, intelligence and moral strength
viii ultimately rule; and it is certain that
as the negro population is, for the most part
poor and ignorant, it will fall under the in
tiuence, in great degree Gas the same ele-
ment does everywhere of its employers
an influence which it will be to the employ
ers' interest to increase by kind treatment
and protection. This cannot be helped. 1t
is the natural course in free State, and it
will have in our case the great advantage of
obliterating the color line and ranging men
in parties without regard to race which can
never be done while the present system of
federal interference continues. Let me
not be misunderstood. There is among the
whites in our State no color line organiza-
ton, in the sense usually attached to that
term. The history of political combinations,
since the war in Mississippi, shows a con-
slant but fruitless effort to break down a po-
litical barrier which federal power has erected
and which federal power can alone maintain.
The white man is made by the direct action
of the federal government the political an
tipathy of the black, and is pointed out to
the latter as the common enemy and the
enemy of both himself and the government
BY constituting itself as the negroes sole
protector in the State it drives him to trust
only its agents and partisans, often men of
the vilest character, and rarely men who have
any material relation to the State or to soci-
ETY. among us. The negro is thus isolated
from the white people among whom he lives,
and the federal power thus makes him an
alien in our society, though invested with
the highest political prerogatives, thus
forcing him into an attitude which tends also
to force the white race into similor position
toward him. Here is the true cause of the
disturbances of which you in the North have
greatly exaggerated accounts L repeat,
they are invariably political Withdraw
the disturbing force, leave our population to
the responsibility of local selfgoyernment
and to the natural operation of social and
industrial forces, and all that is now de-
ranged and disorderly viii certainly and
permanently arrange itself-not, perhaps, at
first, without friction, but with, | am conf
dent, an immediate decrease of friction and
a gradually but surely lessening amount of
disorder. At the very worst it will be as
nothing in comparison with the strif e and in
testine connection with which our land is
now@cursed. ~ 80
Is there not craftsmanship enough among
our rulers to perceive that such governments
as we now have in some of the Southern
States must be constantly running down,
and that these appeals to the United States
Army and this use of it which is now start
ling the country must continue constantly
recurring evil, or, rather, must tend toward
becoming a fixed and permanent element in
our system of government? Very truly,
Your obedient servant,
T. O @ LAMAR