The weekly democratic statesman. [volume] (Austin, Tex.) 1871-1883, 1878-11-28
DOES THE PRESIDENT GO
BACK WARDl

II is stated that Chandler, of Michi-
gan, is now master in the White
House. lie goes in and out at all hours
and has shaped the forthcoming mes
sage and will direct the future policy
Of the administration, especially as
this affects the South. Recent cleo
tons in the South have convinced the
President that any partisan change in
these States is wholly impossible. He
had been led to believe that strong
conservative party might be organized
here in support of his purposes, but
seeing ut last how impossible this may
be, he reverses his course, surrender
ing Internationally to Zach Chandler,
Conllling and Blaine. The Republi-
can party, therefore, is again an unit
and. this true the South becomes the
football of partisanship, its fortunes
ground to powder between the upper
and neither millstones of sectional par
ties. This state of facts delights par
ty-leaders. 1t invests them with office
and absolutism and perpetuates their
greatness. The people are the only
victims.
1t is hardly to be believed that the
President will listen to Chandler,
but each statement of facts
emanating from Washington declares
that recent Southern elections have
transformed the purposes of the Presi-
dent, and that he lepses into Grant
ism. His messages, like Grants, will
be jeremiads telling of the negro's
woes and his acts designed to exasper-
ate and consolidate the North against
the South. Northern Republican news
papers have but one text, and all are
preaching the same sermon. 1t is o
harp of q thousand strings, and sadly
and tenderly are its notes resonant of
Senegambian griefs. We read, in our
Northern exchanges, solemn, earnest
sentences that tell of negroes slaugh-
tered everywhere, and of negroes
bulldozed and bereft of every right
of citizenship. The President, too,
listens and absolutely believes. And
yet, even here in this district, it was
the white man, if anybody, who was
bulldozed, and it was the blessed ne
groeS that voted early and often and
stuffed ballot-boXes and defeated
even John Hancock. Cannot these
plain, unguestioned facts be so sub
stantiated that credence will be given
in Washington2 Here and there it
has happened in county and town
elections that the white people, utterly
disgusled and despairing of right,
honesty and justice, taxed too, till
local burdens became intolerable-it
has happened that these white people
have gone into the market and bought
enough negro votes to give the white
candidates majorities. Something
like this occurred in the negro-gov-
erned town of Marshall and county of
Harrison, in this State. By an acci-
dent, the white people, for the first
time since 1865, have achieved
supremacy in the county, and
while there was no violence, and
All m FOL nnlu nf
peculiar SenegHmbian virtues, the
North will howl, and the woe stricken
President, swathed in sackcloth by
Chandler, will weep like another Nj
ODE. 1t is very sad, but the blessed
ness of the whites of Harrison emerg-
ing from a wilderness of woes is so
ecstatic that we cannot help congratu-
lating them; and If the President and
Chandler could only reflect moment
dispassionately they, too, whatever
they may say as partisans, as honest
men and philanthropists, would con-
gratulate the honest, intelligent,
and once rich and prosperous people
of the ancient county of Harrison on
their emergence from Egyptian"
bondage and darkness. The Presi-
dents organs were in ecstacles only
last week, when they beheld New
York with the manacles of Tammany
and of "Irish despotism," as they
termed it, stricken from the paralyzed
limbs of the giant city. Much more
should the President, loving all his
countrymen alike, and just alike to
all rejoice in the escape OF his own
people, of his own race, from the dom
instion of negroes, or of those who
"own" these negroes.
Instead of rejoicing that the South is
solialy. Democratic and solidly free, and
even weeping that Wade Hampton
won more than two-thirds Of the Sene-
gambian votes of South Carolina, the
President and his Cabinet, it is every
where stated, deplonng all these bene-
ticent results Of recent elections, have
gone over bag anu baggage to Chand-
Ter, Blaine and the powerful dictator
of New York. We were very anxious
to disrupt aud destroy geographical
parties. We abhor them. They
hve upon sectiOnalism. They are
ghouIs digging open graves full
of reeking rotsenness. But we
cannot deplore the fact that
the South has at last won local free
dom and escaped by recent elections
from the clutches of local barbarism.
We have approved the conduct of Mr..
Hayes and, with fraDkness and fear
lcssness which he could hardly appre-
eiate, applanded his acts and commend
ed his virtues. Mr.. Potter, she Presi-
dents worst and most spiteful enemy,
had no more outspoken enemy than
the STATESMAN, but when the Presl-
dent because he fails to organize q
party in the South, turns away from
the South; when he becomes, because
these elections do not fiatter his vanity,
the friend Of Chandler and Blaine, we
can only console ourselves with the
reflection that the South Will live