The weekly democratic statesman. [volume] (Austin, Tex.) 1871-1883, 1875-04-22
WHAT SENATOR MORTON saw, AND
WHAT HE THOUGHT ABOUT 1T.


rally tell Of what he had seen. He dared
not distort facts too violently, and there.
fore, in describing the country from Rich
mond to New Orleans, we are given amod.
erately faithful picture. But when the
Federal Senator would account for those
differences between Northern and Southern
farming districts which have been ever rec
ognized, he forgets that there is nothing
new in what he sees. When slavery sub.
sisted, the hand of negro genius in art,
architecture, in barns and fences, was dis
tinguishable on the southern, as was every
evidence of white superiority on the north
ern, shore of the Ohio. No genuine Afri-
can ever recked Of the morrow. His era
mum is round and thick, and not elongated
like the Caucasian's. Instruct him to do
any three things. He will obey, but never
observe the proper successive order OF
events. He Will, therefore, toll when want
and force directs, and never otherwise.
Such industry is never persistent, and
though African servitude was pronounced
the ''sum of human villainies," even when
recognized by constitutional law, African
slaves were never forced by white masters
to make the southern as charming as the
northern bank of the Ohio. Nowhere in
the South were there, in farms or homes or
gardens, evidences of that pains-taking
care and taste and industry distinguishing
villages and dwelling places of the North.
The negro could not be compelled, to this
extent, to provide for future comfort when
a slave; he cannot be hired to accomplish
the same results when q freeman. Poor
white people would not toll in the same
fields, or in the same community, before
emancipation, with blacks, and since that
event prejudices of race are infinitely more
repellant. Therefore, it was true, as stated
by the Senator, that he saw many negroes
at work in Mississippi and only one white
man. He should have gone farther and
stated that he saw countless whites in the
sand hills of Alabama and Georgia and the
Carolinas following plows and never a ne
gro in their midst. The process of race
segregation is rapidly progressive. White
families, for the security of women and
children, are gathered IN villages, and
blacks in the suburbs of villages and towns,
or in the gloomiest purleus of crowded
cities. The poor whites, known in ante
dilu0idD times as "mean white trash," are
rapidly growing rich. 1t is to the extraor-
dinary industry of these white farmers, in
unknown districts, in inaccessible, secluded
valleys, and even on rugged hillsides
in Georgia and the Carolinas, that
the commerce of the world is in
debted for extraordinary cotton crops
produced since the war. The iowlands and
rich prairies of Alabama and Mississippi
and Arkansas, where blacks are supreme,
do not produce one-half the quantity of
cotton sent to market by the same number
of 'laborers in years prior to 1860. The
former owners of these slaves, in most in
stances, are impoverished, and spend their
lives IN paying premiums to enormously
rich Northern life insurance corporations,
and of course have no money to invest in
paint or pine lumber. Houses and FENCES
go to decay, and desolation relgns where
wealth and comfort and intelligence were
once enthroned. The blacks were then
we'll clad, well fed and sheltered. They
have learned nothing; are ragged and
homeless. But the Indiana Senator forgot
another fact that stared him in the face at
every railway station. He must have asked
the weary looking people why roses no
longer bloom, and magnolias are withered;
why fences have fallen, and why countless
houses, once white ana fresh ald beautiful,
have green mould on their roofs, and desc
lation inscribed above every doorwayl
There Is sanegro-governed county of Eastern
which Morton may have ira
Blacks, within its confines, out
number whites as four or five to one. There
is white sheriff and white treasurer.
Magistrates and other officers are mainly
black. In any event negroes hold all
offices, the tenure of which does not re-
auire a bend or sureaes. The rate of local
taxation varies from two and one-half TO
five per cent, and assessments are made by
rogues whose valuations are bought and
sold. The capital Of the county is ravaged
by the same imbruted black rabble, and the
Senator could hardly expect q better condi-
ton of things than that which be faithfully
defines. But when he began to tell why
this retrogression is 50 fearful, in former
slaveholding districts, was it not easy to
tell that these are now negro-voting dis
tricts; that there can be no vitality or pros
perity or industry In county in which all
profits of toll are absorbed by taxgatherers; /;
that the South Is destroyed by negro and
rabble-ruled municipalities. The Senator
found the choicest land ever cultivated, in
a faultless climate, selling for ffty-fold less
than less productive farms IN the vicinity
Of his own home. But Morton's home
is in the land Of free white men,
born free, and that can never be
Africanized or taxed to poverty under con-
stitutional amendments sectional in opera
tion though general in terms, and for this
reason abhorred by a people who are robbed
and then degraded by all their incidents.
The desolation Of towns and villages by
universal suffrage is disastrous to the people
of the neighboring country which pays for
losses, when paying for dry goods and gro
ceries to which commercial classes are
subjected by savage suffrage II thus
happens that if the country town escape
the clutches Of adventures and thieves, and
the country is stricken down, the thrOttling
Of one is disastrous to the other. These
facts were before the good Senator'S eyes
everywhere and yet he never dared to see
them. The sheriff Of one Of those eastern
Mississippi counties i've years ago vas
beggar. He now owns six plantations once
worth $500, 900 and employs tve hundred
black peeaa Through these as voters be
has robbed the whole county and then,