The Highland weekly news. [volume] (Hillsborough [Hillsboro], Highland County, Ohio) 1853-1886, 1876-12-14

SOuth-FactS to POn0er--N nat GresiuenI lyleT :
Son said to Our Correspondent.
WASHINGTON, Saturday, Dec. 8, 1876.
THE WEEK.
This has been week of incessant and intense
excitement There has been nothing like it since
the nominal surrender of the South at Appomattox,
except the black week that witnessed the assassi-
nation of Lincoln, and the stormy week in which
Johnson was impeached. Sensation has succeeded
sensation with Kaleidoscope swiftness and variety
and the changes in this living Kaleidoscope have
been made by human hopes aud human fears; by
snake-like craft and tiger-like ferocity-the devil
Gus tricks of the demagogue and the manly resolu-
ton of the patriot. The election of a Demo-
cratic Speaker; his consistently inconsistent de-
cisions-defying the rules of Justice, but obeying
the rulings of the caucus; the national triumph
achieved in the ''honest -snt of the votes' of Re-
publican Louisiana, Republican Florida, and Re-
publican South Carolina; the constant danger of a
bloody conflict of races and of parties at New
Orleans and at Columbia; the orang-outang device
Of the Democrats of Oregon-which is the strong
est proof yet offered of some mems descent from
the monkey, and demonstration that il will need
centuries still before Governor Grover ascends to
one the appointment of Democratic investiga-
ion into the recent elections in three of the Gulf
States, and the refusal of the House to extend its
operations into Mississippi; the mastery and
patriotic movement of Senator Edmunds, of Yer
mont, to institute inquiries into the methods by
which at least five millions of American citizens
in the ex-rebel States have been cheated out of
their electoral rights; Sherman's Louisiana report
and he fierca IN for
the calling of National Constitutional Conven-
tion; Morton's renewal of an amendment for a re-
form in the mode of electing our Chief Magis-
trates; the Presidents Message; the reports of
the Departments; the threat of impeaching Grant;
the election of Hayes and Wheeler the grave
Constitutional issues that have arisen from recent
complications, and the rapid development of the
new Southern Conspiracy-these are the chief, but
not the only transcendent topics that the annals
of the week present. full catalogue of them
would fill one letter.
WENDELL PHILLIPS OWL STORY.
Blu. if we act like the fanatic in Wendell Phillips
Owl Story we shall neither be dazed nor confused
by these novel and dazzling complications in our
National affairs. A farmer Says Phillips) saw an
owl on his barn. He shot ut it. The wadding
from the gun set the hay on fire. The barn was
burned down. When the news went to the village
a knot of men talked about it. One didn't see
how the wadding could have set fire to the hay.
Another wondered whether the property was in
sured. third saw ''nice legal question:" Would
the insurance company pay up when it should be
shown that the owner himself was the ''innocent
cause" of the fire? A fourth inquired, What the
Thara fiarra md
in lull of the talk, an old fellow asked: "Did he
shoot the o,Cii" That man (said Phillips) was
fanatic he was not to be led astray by side issues
THE NEW REBELLION.
ing to hide the real question of the day behind a
phantom host of false or irrelevant issues. Don't
let US be fooled by them. Let keep our eye on
the owl They failed to whip the nation in battle.
They trying to defeat its will in politics.
The tiger is a fox now. Fraud has succeeded
force. The old rebel leaders, by terrorism and
fraud, have established despotism in nearly all of
the Gulf States and in several of the other States
and by these foul means they now claim that they
''hunestly" elected the TammaDy Hall trickster to
the Presidency of the United States. Having con-
quered their own States, they seek to seize the
Capital. That is the secret of all this turmoil.
This is the owl on the barn.
''THE BLACK VOTE"
The thirteenth amendment abolished slavery.
The fourteenth amendment annulled the represent
alton of the old ''three-ffths of other persons"
The fifteenth amendment established universal
(male) suffrage. Under the ''three-ffths of other
persons" clause in the Constitution the old slave
States would have been entitled [under the census
of 1s4O) to twenty-five members of Congress, rep
resenting the black popuation-that is to say, if
the fourteenth amendment had not abolished it.
The $50 blacks now give the South thtTty-eight
members of Congress. There are s,3Os,OOO whites
in the old Slave States. Il we had not enfranchised
the blacks ''the Solid South, " on the ''whte basis"
would have had only IS Congressman instead of
the log which it has to-day. In every Southern
State, excepting South Caroliana, Florida, and
Louisiana, the blacks are actually or practically
disfranchised. While not one colored man in
hundred does not hate the Democratic party, they
are represented in Congress by the reddest of Re-
bel Democrats. This is the power that the rebels
are now fighting to hold.
There are 40 Republican districts in the South,
yet only Is Republicans in the 45th Congress-
Thus, while the banditti denounce negro suffrage,
Ito use Lamar's words) as scheme for Injecting
four millions of barbarians into the body polite,
we have given the South, by this enfranchisement
of the blacks, votes enough to offset all the New
England States and New Jersey, Kansas, Nebraska
and Colorado combined; as many as Indiana and
Illinois and Iowa combined; as many as New York
and New Jersey combined; nearly six times as ma
ny as all the Pacific States put together. and one
more than the "great Northwest" including Mich
igan, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota!
And yet the Southern Democrats are frothini
with constitutional" and "legal" indignation, be
cause, although we have allowed them to cheat III
at this last election of North CaroinGs 10 elec
toral votes, out of Mississippi's electoral votes
and out of Alabama's 10 electoral votes, we are no
also willing to be swinded ont of the 10 electors
votes cast in the Republican States of Florida, S
Carolina and Louisiaana-S. Carolina, with its le
gitimate Republican majority of 10000, and Loui
siana, that never gives US less, at free and fai
election, than 5,OCO MAJORITY
Hence these wells.