The New Orleans Democrat. (New Orleans, La.) 1875-1876, 1876-04-08
AN UNGRATEFUL OLD FEMALE.
old Jane SwissheIn on Kentucky Demo
Gratis and SIave-Drivers.
from the Courier-Journal.l

mocracy done to wake the slunbering
lioness in the gentle breast Of Mrs. Jane
G. SwisShelm, and drive her forth roar
ing and raging in pursuit of blood?
Why, the mere sight Of Kentucky
Democrats name in print throws her
into fury, and she rushes into the
colums Of the Pittsburg Commercial,
where she yowls and spits, and sputters
and tears around like an enraged cat
and none of your common cats, either,
but regular rip-roaring hell-cat OF the
fiercest sort. ''Forty years ago." she
says. "the great, magnanimous, glo-
rious, grandiloquent Democratic party
lived and moved and had its being by
it's divine right of horse whipping
women and stealing babies" And then
she goes on to tell how Kentucky Demo
Gratis used TO do forty years ago, and q
shocking do it was, too. Thus:
"Do forget the Kentucky Democrat,
six feet three, with his shiny hat on the
side of his head, and his thumbs in the
armholes of his satin vest, the better to
display his diamond pin, gold chains
and seals, when he proposed to my hus
band, q man six feet one in his stock
ings, with bones like iron and muscles
like whipcord, that he should horse
whip an old woman one hundred and
two times in order to compel her to earn
5000 for his Democratic highness to
spend in Havana cigars and fast horses?
We were in Kentucky and wanted q
house servant, when this member Of the
virtuous, old-timed Democracy remark
ed to Mr.. S. Il have a woman / can lot
YOU have! She is a frst-rate washah
and ironah good cook, first rate house
keepah; and III let you ave her
foh two hundred dollahs a yeah; ;
I,,t Toll
you'll ave to hosswhip 'er about twice
a week youahself, for that wife Of youan
neveh could do anything with 'erP AS
we should have been required to feed
and clothe and lodge her in addition to
the 5000, this would have all gone to his
serene highness, whose sole dependence
for living was in Just such transactions.
The woman whom he proposed to hire
was over fifty, from appearance, ana
had been the mother of twelve children,
some of them his brothers and sisters,
some his sons and daughters, all sold,
sold and gone, to rice swamps dark and
lone and their prices expended in lux
uries and fast living. The old mother
was continuing to furnish her quota
toward sustaining Democratic simplici-
ty: and the means Of persuasion used
upon her were revealed by her masters
proposition. Her horsewhippings would
have been about one hundred and two,
as there are fifty-two weeks in the
year, and she would have one for
holiday, that between Christmas and
New Year, when she would have missed
her allowance! Do / forget that this
man, with his brawny muscles and big
black whiskers, who spent his life loaf
ing and staggering, and got u living by
selling his children and horsewhipping
their mothers, was q fair specimen OF
Kentucky Democracy Do l forget
that all around me they were living just
50, keeping harems, hiring out the sur
plus inmates and selling their children
as regularly as an Illinois farmer sells
his Young cattle? Do / forget the
hoary- headed old sinner who boarded in
the same house with us, hired girl OF
eighteen to the landlady for her board /,
clothing and 5000 a year, and required
her to spend every night in his room to
take care of him if he should happen to
need her Do / forget that such things
created no disgust or surprise, but that
the people were to the manner born ? -
No, dearest Jane you can forget any
Of those things. The creations Of the
imagination are not to be forgotten.
But how very easy it is to forget that
forty wears ago you could have bought
a negro carpenter or blacksmith for
$1,000 or for $1,000 with his wife thrown
into the bargain, and that you could
have bought just as many young, hand,
some, healthy women as you wanted
at three or four hundred dollars a
piece. And when that Kentucky Dem
ocratic scoundrel offered to hire you
the mother OF his twelve brothers and
sisters and sons and daughters for $20C
year and horsewhipping twice q
woak he ought to have been ashamed
OF himself. A more barefaced
face Of the earth We can't see how he
ever prospered after that. II he hac
said S35 and a genteel horse whipping
say, every Sunday morning just before
starting to church, we could have me
him ander the droppings of the sanctu
ary and hailed him as Christian
brother; but two hundred dollars ana
thrashing twice week Why, hattel
burglary was never perpetrated. But
darling, did your husband write anC
talk about the villainous Kentucky
Democrats then as you do now and
II 80 was the coat OF tar ant
feathers he wore out of the State Gu
| has or plain and was the rail he trav
eied on soft or not? Those were quee
times in Kentucky forty years ago, anc
Won know, love, when we newspaper
scribblers went down there to see il WE
couldn't steal negro or two, and ge
the Anti-slavery Society to pay US for it
we had to write the truth about tn
scoundrels and their families who live'
there, for, If we had drawn such fame
sketches as yours, for instance, the.
in less than no time. And, although
/ n