The weekly clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1863-1882, 1875-06-02
What the Rev. Mr.. Clark Of 1AAe
PfGIsburg Methodist Recorder

.
PfIIsburg Methodist Recorder
The Rev. Alexander Clark, editor of !
a prominent religious journal, the Metho-
dist Recorder, at Pittsburg, Pennsyiva-
MIA, has been touring in the South, and
in Mississippi and Louisiana,
and is telling the Northern public what
he has seen. His attention was especial |
ly directed to the moral status Of the col
ored race, and as his membership with
the Church to which a large majority Of
them belong, he had excellent opportu-
mites for seeing and judging their condi
ton and marking their progress accu-
rately. He publishes as his candid be-
lief that after ten years Of freedom, du
ring which time the Government has
placed in their hands the ballot, and
committed to their own guidance, in Co
partnership with the Northern political
emissaries whom they have regarded as
their "best friends, the administration
Of the reconstructed States, and lavished
upon them untold millions in addition to
the contributions they have received from
Northern benevolent societies and the
immense sums which they have levied on
the Southern whites for their uses ; that
the race is morally in a worse condition
than it was before the war that the ten
commandments, even in the churches,
are obsolete ideas, and that ''the race is
q deteriorating, and will ultimately be
g come extinct, unless there is a check
ito RIGHTEOUSNESS.
! The reverend gentleman has evidently
bestowed deep thought upon the problem,
and has presented the statistics from
which his grave conclusions have been
drawn.
Now, if any Southern man, who has
experienced the bitterness of carpet-bag
government welded through the agency
of negro votes, had written these things,
his statement would have been set down
to partizan prejudice, if not downright
/ disloyalty. But the Rev. Mr.. Clark, it
must be understood, is Northern Re
publican, and jealous member of the
Church whose discipline from its foun-
dation characterized " slavery as an evil
to be extirpated." The style in which
he refers to the extinct institution shows
his adherence Of its very memory
And vet here is his testimony and this
the solemn problem which he propounds
But the Rev. Mr.. Clark evidently
writes somewhat in ignorance of facts
of which he ought to have been possessed.
He says that the school-house is needed
for the reclamation of the colored race
from this downward and g deteriorating"
condition, 'Fas we'll as the ballot box"
| If he had prosecuted his researches in
Mississippi a little further, he would
have ascertajned that nearly double the
amount required TO carry on the State
government before the war; is now raised
by taxation to keep up public school
| system. This amount exceeds six hun
bred thousand dollars per annum and
there is not village nor a district in the
| whole State in which school-house is not
! located for the benefit of the colored
| children. The taxes are paid-forty nine
out of every fifty dollars-by the white
people, many of whose children are kept
toiling at hard labor in the fields from
years end to years end to meet the lev
les for these and other governmental .pur-
poses but the school system itself and
the schools, are under the control of
persons mainly selected by the negroes
and claiming to be their God-appointed
| guardians and protectors.
The misfortune is that the colored peo-
pie have been led by designing, self
seeking demagogues, who have pandered
to, instead of corrected, their vicious
propensities, and employed them as tools
to advance their own schemes of ambition
and aggrandizement, and until this evil
is checked, the 'deteriorating" process so
wildly pictured by the tourist, will go
on fro m bad to worse.