The Democratic press. [volume] (Ravenna, O. [Ohio]) 1868-1901, 1876-10-19
BOB INGERsoLL AND HIS FRIENDS.

BOB INGERSOLL AND HIS FRIENDS.
The following pithy and pungent
extracts are from Col. Donn Piatt's re-
! cent letters to the Cincinnati Enquirer.
They are instructive as well as
amusing. 5000
"Bob's political friends contracted
with some Yankees TO dig up collins
aud deliver at certain cemeteries The
dead of the Union army. The resur-
rectionists were to receive SO much
body for their services. The KEEN
eyed Yankee contractors went for the
Union dead, and exhausting them,
they went for the Confederate dead.
and, eXhausting them, they went for
the negro grave yards, and exhausting
the supply of departed darkies, they
went for mule bones and remains of
old horses. And this miscellaneous
collection of Union men, Confederates
bones, John Logan, Ben. Eggleston
and other Columbian orators 60 out
aud strew flowers over and weep.
John aud Ben. and other Columbian
orators know that half the graves are
sbams, but they strew and weep all
same. But after all this burying and
wailing of toot horns, flower strewing
aud burning eloquence, it was found
something more could be made out of
the dead boy in blue in the way of
tomb-stones. An appropriation was
made providing every grave, Union,
Confederate, negro, horse and mule
with a cheap stone, and one-half of
this was stolen. Nothing but the un-
expected Intervention of Democratic
House kept any part of it. There is
love for the soldier that surpasses the
love of women" - *H+
''If the Republican party had any
real love for the negro it would have
brought all the power of the Govern
ment to bear in an attempt to restore
material prosperity to the South, that
the Iaborer, the negro, might be bene-
fited. Instead of this it sought to de-
grade, oppress and abuse. Greedy
New England secured tax on export
ed cotton. They taxed tobacco to its
full value. They turned the carpet
bagger upon the helpless South, and
these camp followers, their negro
votes and Federal bayonets, possessed
themselves of the State Governments,
and finished all the party at Wash
ington had left. They contracted
debts by issuing bonds; they piled up
the taxation until between interest and
assessments, labor was reduced again
to slavery. These States are now
hopelessly bahkrupted, and nothing
on the face of the earth to show for it
but bloated carpet-baggers. No work
of internal improvements, no f1ourish-
ing towns or growing cities; no maiI-,
ufactories; no planting interest able
to exist, no laboriug class prosperous
and content. Through the entire
South we have desolation, nakedness,
and the beloved negro is free only in
name.
They gave him the right to vote, and
carpet-Dagger and a bayonet to teach
him how to vote, and that is all. They
created for him Freedman's Bureau,
that when turned over to be wound
up by the War Department was found
to be SO rotten, through fraud and
THEFT, that it smelied to heaven, and :.
for proof of that read the investiga-
tors report. They built up a Freed
mems Bank, and poor Cuff, proud to
initiate his old master in possessing a
bank account, deposited his hard
earned dimes until the deposits gath
cred throughout the entire, South
amounted to millions. Then the bank
failed, and when its affairs came to be
examined it was found that Bob's
friends, these soldier-loving negro
worshipers, had waltzed out at the
back door with all the money, leaving
Seneca sandstone, North Pacific bonds
and other fancy stock, not worth
waste paper, to satisfy the poor OPP
pressed negro depOsitor