The New York herald., 1875-08-24
The Republican Party and the South.

Grant, immovable, while the condition of
the South was undergoing very rapid and
great change. What may have been sound
craftsmanship in 1868 was not necessarily so
in 1872, and was as events have abundantly
I shown, very blundering craftsmanship in
! 1874 The problem which the administra-
ton party had before it, after the war, was to
make the conquered part of the Union con-
tent to secure to all its people safety In
/ person and property, and to satisfy them all
| that the Union of the States is for their best
interest and happiness. The republican
! leaders began wisely. They gave the vote to
the negro and placed him in every politi-
/ cal respect upon the footing of an
American citizen. This they were bound to
do and they were bound also to see that,
| during the turmoil which so tremendous a
change was sure to produce the black man
should be protected from attack. So far the
| party acted wisely and courageously, and it
was sustained by the people.
Where the republican leaders have erred is
i'll not keeping themselves thoroughly and
4 accurately informed of the effects of their
policy ; in not remembering that the change
they commanded would, year after year, gain
more general acceptance; that their policy
must necessarily vary with the variation of
| public sentiment; that-to use o seamans
| fgure-it would not do to keep the helm
hard down after the ship had gone about.
! Yet it is this blunder which they
have made, and even worse: for they
have attempted to add repressive meas
ures, and this SO late as in the last Congress,
when they actually adopted civil, or more
properly a social rights law, and attempted
to pass a monstrosity in the shape of the
Habeas Corpus and Force bill, while the
President allowed federal troops to disperse
a State Legislature and forced the people of
Louisiana to submit to the most glaring
frauds in State election returns
The results of this cast-iron Southern pol
icy are seen not only in serious discomfort
in the South, but also in the gradual extinc-
tion of the republican party in those States.
That party had in 1868 among its member
ship considerable proportion of the white
population; it has to-day in no State except
North Carolina more than handful of the
whites; and these are almost everywhere ex-
clusively federal offce-holders and their
| friends, and for the most part men of no in
fuence in the communities in which they live.
In Louisiana, in Mississippi, in Alabama, in
Georgia, almost everywhere in the cotton
States, the republican party has lost and is
losing adberents among the reputable white
population, and is to-day in moribund con-
dition. 1t is only necessary to remember
how great is the influence of federal ad-
ministration in the politics of the States, how
powerfully it has often been used by able
statesmen to build up or to maintain and in
crease party to see that the republican pol
| icy has been blunder.
The prime source of this blunder has lain
in the propensity Of the republican leaders
to reject the help of Southern men in the
government Of the country. They have
Jumped the whole Southern white population
as ''rebel," and have undertaken to govern
without their aid. During the whole of
General Grants administration no Southern
man of prominence and great influence has
been called to the Cabinet; not one has re-
ceived any of the great prizes of the federal
administration. Attorney General Akerman
was not prominent Georgian; and Mr.. Orr
was sent to Russia, where his influence was
lost.
Now, if the republican leaders had been
shrewder men they would have remembered
that there must necessarily be elements of
opposition among the leading men in every
State, South as well as North; they would
have remembered how bitter was, in the old
times, the antipathy between the wings and
! democrats in all the Southern States which
could never entirely die out; and they would
have carefully sought to make use of this
feeling to build up their party in the South
on solid base, as quickly as the turmoil
left by the war and freshened by the recon
struction measures began to die down.
Instead Of vigorously excluding all the lead
ing minds of the South from Office and coun-
ell they should have carefully looked over
the field and called to the Cabinet at least
two of the most influential Of the younger pub
lie men in the South; they should have called
into their party councils leading and con-
spicuous men from every Southern State,
and given to these the disposal of the federal
patronage in their States; they should have
arranged the important foreign missions
so that several Southern men of real
influence would represent the country abroad;
they should have forgotten that there had
been war and insisted only that the men
whom they called to their councils should
take care that justice was done to all in the
South, and that good men, men of influence
in their communities, should be put in Office.
In this way they would have built themselves
up in the South and would have split that
great white vote which their actual policy
has only more and more consolidated.
Of course in doing this they would have
had tala the az dnica nf thnir thnr,, nIline