The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1876-10-06
THE GREATEST YET.
Garfield, the Pharisee, Put Upon the
Spit and Done to Turn.
SniVeliDg Hypocrisy and Lying Pa
triOtism Exposed and
Smashed.
Secession an Original Product of New
England Cupidity.
Some Account of the Puritan Slave
Drivers and Slave
Traders.
A Terrible Arrangement of Republ-
can Rascals, Cheatssand
Shams.
JUDGE BLACKS OPEN LETTER.

To Hon. JAS. A. GARFIELD, MENfBEl
| OF CONGRESS FROM OHIO: l have reaC
! the speech you sent me. | am aston
ished and shocked. AS the leader 0
| your party, to whom the candidate
! have specially delegated the conduct o
the pending campaign, you should have
met your responsibilities in a very diff
ferent way. 1 do not presume to lecture
so distinguished a man upon his errors
but if can prevent you, even to small
extent, from abusing the public creduli.
ty, it is my duty to try. PreHaising only
my great anxiety to preserve the frater
nal relations existing between us for
many years, follow the Horatian rule,
and come at once to "the middle OF
things"
You trace back the origin of present
parties to the earliest immigration at
Plymouth and Jamestown, and profess
to find in the opposing doctrines then
planted and afterward constantly cher
ished in Massachusetts and Virginia, the
germs of those ideas which now make
democracy and abolitionism the deadly
foes of each other. The ideas so planted
in Massachusetts were, according to
your account, the freedom and equality
of all races, and the right and duty
of every man to exercise his pri-
rate Judgment in politics as well as
religion. On the other hand, you set
forth as irreconcilably hostile the doc
trine of Virginia, " that capital should
own labor, that the negro had no rights
of manhood, and that the white man
might buy, own and sell him and his off
spring forever" Following these asser-
tiOns with others, and linking the pres
ent with the long past, you employ the
devices of your rhetoric to glOrify the
modern abOlitionist and 20 throw foul
scorn, not merely on the southern peo-
pie, but on the whole democracy of the
country.
This looks learned and philosophical
and it gives your speech dignity seem
ingly above the reach of the ordinary
demagogue. Happy is he who knows
the causes of things; felicitOus is the
partisan member of congress whose
stump speech goes up the river of time
to the 6rst fountain of good and evil.
But your contrast of historical facts is
open to one objection, which | give you
in form as simple as possible when | say
that it is wholly destitute of truth.
This, of course, implies no imputation
on your good faith. Your high charac-
ter in the church, as well as the state,
forbids the belief that you would be
guilty of willful misrepresentation.
TOLERANCE IN NEW ENGLAND.
The men of Massachusetts,, so far from
planting the right of private judgment,
extirpated and utterly extinguished it,
by naeans so cruel that no man OF COM
mon humanity can think of them even
now without disgust and Indignation. |
am surprised to find you ignorant of
this. Did you never hear OF the fright
full prosecutions they carried on system
atiCally against Baptists and Quakers
and Catholics? How they fined, i'm
prisoned, lashed, mutilated, enslaved and
banished everybody that claimed the
right of free thought? How they stripped
the most virtuOus and jnOfensive wo-
men, and publicly whipped them on
their naked backs, only for expressing
their conscientious convictions? Have
you never, in all your reading, met with
the story of Roger Williams? For
merely suggesting to the public authori-
ties of the colony that no person ought
to be punished on account of his honest
opinions, he was driven into the woods
and pu sued ever afterwards with a
ferocity that put his own life and that
of his friends in constant danger. In
fact, the cruelty of their laws against the
freedom of conscience and the unfeeling
rigOr with which they were executed,
made Massachusetts odiOus throughout
the world
These great crimes of the Pilgrim
fathers ought not to be cast up to their
children; for some of their descendants
U hope a good majority are high-prin-
cipled and honest men, sincerely attached
to the liberal institutions planted in the
more southern attitudes of the continent.
But if you are right in your assertion
that the abolitiOnists derive their prin-
ciples from the ideas entertained and
planted at Plymouth, that may account
for the coarse and brutal tyranny with
which your party has, in recent times,
trampled upon the rights Of free thought
and free speech.
SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS.
Nor are you more accurate in your
declaration that the old yankees planted
the doctrine of freedom and equality. er
opposed the domination of one race over
another. Messrs Palfrey and Sumner
have said something to the effect that
slavery never existed in Massachusetts,,
and you may have been misled by them.
But either they were wholly ignorant of
the subject, or else they spoke with that
loose and lavish unveracity which is a
common fault among men of their politi-
cal sect. The Plymouth colony and the
province of Massachusetts, bay were pro
slavery to the backbone. If you doubt
this | refer you to Moor's "History Oi
slavery in Massachusetts," where the
evidence (con-iSting chiefly of record,
and documents perfectly authenticated
is produced and collat:d with a fullnes.
and fairness which cannot be questioned
/ The IlymOIth immigrants planted pre-
cisely the doctrine which you ascribe tC
the jamestown 90 'Onists that is to saw
they held that "the negro had no rights
81 manhood that the white man might
/ buy. own AMI sell him and his offspring
/ forever Practically and theoretically
I they maintained thtt human slavery II
/ it's most unmi'i-ated form was a perfectly
/ Just, prOp,r aud desirable institution
/ entirely con istcnt with christianity 4.
| they understood H. and founded on prin
/ ciples of universal Jurisprudence. The,
| insisted upon 1t is an established anC
settled rule of tie Jaw of nations tina
/ when one government or community O
/ political organization made war upon it
own subjects, or the subjects of another
and vauquished then, the people of tn,
beaten party had no rights TO which tht
right OF the couquero-s was net para
mount. Whenever it was demonstrated
by actual experiment, that any peopl
were too weak To defend their f'milie
against an invadCrwho visited them Will
fire and sword, they might lawfully b,
stripped of their property, and they