The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1875-09-30
BADLY Governed.

The Journal says the South has been badly
governed since the war. Well, whose fault
is it, if not the Republicans? Who es gov
orned the South since the war? Did not &C
credited representatives from the Southern
states come to the halls of congress and ask
admission as soon as the governors of their
respective states could give them commits
sions, thus msnifesting willingness to
place their states again in the normal rela-
ton to the Union2 And were they not
spurned away simply and solely because
they were Democrats? Did not
a Republican congress then adopt
such legislation as would necessarily
reduce these states to mere satrspies of the
government, and so conduct the elections
there as TO secure return to congress Of
the miserable csrpet-bag politicians sent
south especially for this purpose? And were
they not the merest tools in the hands of
the leading Republicans OF congress? And
was 1t not by the speeches and votes of such
men that all the obnoxious legislation which
the South endured was aided? Did they
not in the halls OF congress, with bitter and
infsmmstory and lying speeches, represent
the hearts of the southerners as shoulder
ing volcano of malice and wrath, ready to
burst out and destroy the help
lass negro race, and all white men
in whose breast single pulsation OF patriot
ism or love for the union was discovered or
suspicioned? Was not the responses to these
wretched ISLANDERS shaped into the cruel and
wicked reconstruction measures that re-
suited in the bad government that the jour
nal SCOTS at? These questions may be null
tiplied until they inquire into all The particu-
lars that have further crushed down the con-
quered South since the war, and If the Jour-
nal should answer each and every one, in a
spirit of truth and candor 1t very well knows
that the fault of nine. tenths of all the dis
tress oftbe South lies directly at the door of
the Republican party. There is blood upon
the very door posts of the Republican party,
not sprinkled there by the Angel of Mercy,
but as an outward sign of the wrath
and malice that has guild ed
and directed the legislation which has
proven the downfall of the southern credit.
II a wise system of legislation had been pur'
sued at the close of the war toward the South,
such as the heart of Abraham Lincoln, panied
and stunned as he was by the sight of that
PROSTATE section of the Union, conceived,
and the hand OF Andrew Johnson had the
courage to try to carry out, then, even after all
the trials of fruitless warfare had depleted
aud borne them down, The states to-day would
have been in a hourishing condition, and
the people again on the road to wealth and
general prosperity. But anybody knows
that the South has never been permitted
to enjoy the terms of peace that
were rendered whom they, exhausted, laid
down their arms. The warfare was con-
tinued against them only in another form,
not by the sword, but by system Of legis-
lation that was more bitter and distasteful
than the sword. If the shattered armies oil
Lee and Johnston had supposed the in
iquitous reconstruction legislation was to
follow the laying down of their arms, they
might have felt justified. and the world
would have applauded their acts, had they
, Ged 10 the mountains, he canebrakes and the