Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1875-05-11
VICE PRESIDENT WILSON IN THE
May 9Th. 1915.

VICE PRESIDENT WILSON IN TIE
SOUTH.
Vice President Wilson appears to be
having pleasant trip through the South
ern States. Wherever he has been he has
been Hospitality received and treated with
marked distinction by the Southerners. If
his object is simply to enjoy himself on his
tour he is meeting with success we have
no doubt. He could hardly fail TO be graf
flied with the attentions which the
wealthy and educated class
lavish upon guests whom from
policy or other motives they attempt to
honor Their generosity and skill in
entertainment are of long standing and
wide reputation. Before the war they
were celebrated for their hospitality to
nothern people who went among them as
guests. or for business purposes. or to ex-
anime their section of the Union and its
peculiar institutions. BY that means they
succeeded very largely in covering the
deformity of Slavery, so that strangers
who came among them saw none of its
evils. and went away with the impression
that the reports which represented its enor-
mites were false and the institution wise
and benevolent one. Most Of our public
men who went down South to view the
country before the rebellion and became
the recipients of its hospitality, and thou
sands of our business men who were
wined and dined by the planters at their
family mansions, came back to the North
with very lenient ideas of Slavery and en-
HANGED respect for the slave masters. They
saw but one side of the picture-the mas
ter rolling in wealth and luxury, gener-
Gus, cultivated, representing himself
patriarch, without whose care the blacks
would miserably perish through inability
to take care of themselves. The other
side of the picture-the degradation of
Slavery, the auction block, the scourge in
the hands of the task master, the hunted
fugitive. the prostration Of manhood and
womanhood before the demands of I'M
bridled avarice and lust-was never seen
at all by them.
Vice President Wilson is shrcwd OBJ
server, but it is evident that there is side
of the picture of the Sonth as it exists to-
day which his entertainers will not per-
NIT him to see if they have the power to
do 80. The condition OF the humble class
he cannot know by mingling with the
wealthy class. He cannot see what Sena-
tor Anthony, travelling in a private capac-
uy, was enabled to see. If after receiving
the Inequalities of the rich he could spend
some time among the colored people and
white republicans he would then be pre-
pared to give an intelligent and impartial
opinion OF affairs in the South. The same
policy which was practised by the
slave masters before the rebellion to hide
the wickedness of slavery from soiourners
in the South, is now exercised to keep
from the people of the North, from public
and other influential persons especially,
knowledge of the true social and political
condition of the States lately in rebellion.
Mr.. Wilson knows as well as anybody
what their hospitality effected then. 1t
blinded those who were the subjects of it,
but the great mass of the northern people
were not deceived. and kept their faces
steadily towards the extirpation Of
the gigantic evil of Slavery. The re-
publican party can no more be deceived
now as to the South than it was in the earli-
er.days of its existence. The glamour that
Southern hospitality casts over the few can
not prevent the many seeing the facts as
they are. Too many yankees have felt
the social ostracism of the South, and wit
messed the persecution TO whica repnbli-
cans and the colored race have been sub
jected. to be duped by the fraternal speech
es Of Gordon, or the parade over dis
tinguished officer of the government max
ing a friendly visit to the southern States.
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