The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1876-08-26
Lamar.

Representative Lamar, of Mississippi, in a
speech in the House last week expressed the
| following sentiments:
While the people of the North had reaped
the rich results of a victorious war and had
embodied and guaranteed them In the very
life and Constitution of the nation, the insti.
tutions of the South had been shattered and
destroyed, her industries had been disorgan.
lied, every foot of her soil sterilized by an
all-devouring taxation, her educational inter.
eSts languishing and waning, and her popu.
lation was so feeble in comparison with that
of the great Union, that with the South uni.
ted blacks and whltes), it would be impo.
tent to secure single Southern II an, or to
defend single Southern interest 1t was,
therefore, absurd for great people to appre.
bend that the people Of the South arrogated
to themselves the ruling of the interests of
The nation. There was no aspiration which
they had that was not bounded by the hori.
zon of the Union. If they were united with
the Democratic party, it was not for the pur.
pose of sectional ACKNOWLEDGEMENT; it was not
for the purpose of reversing the policy OF the
government, but it was because they had OBJ.
served an instructive and imperative law of
seltpreserYation.
lie proceeded TO argue against the idea that
TIE recession to power of the Democratic par.
ty would suspend the supervision of the ma
tional Government over the conduct of affairs
in the South, and that such suspension would
imperIl the rights of the colored race. He
quoted from speech made by Senator, then
Governor Morton, of Indiana in 1865, against
comforting franchise on the colorcd race, and
in favor Of postponing their political rights
for ten, fifteen, or twenty years, at which time,
he argued the Southern States would have
been 50 completely filled up by immigration
from the North and from Europe that the ne.
grOes would be IN IA permanent minority. If
that distinguished statesman away up In In.
diana had such view of the effect of a negro
citizenship, what must have been the appall
Ell feeling of Southern society on which that
avalanche was to be let lOOse9 In conse-
quence of the conflict between Congress and
President johnson, the worst or which meas.
ures was the establishment of the Freedmen'S
Bureau, which had cut the two races right
aSunder. The inevitable effect of that recon
structIon policy had been to draw one race
Ia It's support and drive the other race Ia its
opposition. He quoted Gibbon, the histor.
ian, as saying that the most absurd and op.
pressice system of government which could
be- conceived of, was that which subjected the
native ola country To the domination of his
slave; and also quoted from John Stuart
Mill, To the effect that when Government is
administered by rulers not responsible TO The
people governed, but TO some other commun-
ijy, it was one of the worst of conceivable
Governments; and he said that the hideous
system established in the South was a com.
poslte of these two vicious systems. The peo-
Pile were subjected to the domination of their
former slaves, and were ruled over by people
whose constituents were not the people for
whom they should act, but the Federal Gov
eminent.