Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1878-11-17
THE SOLID SOUTH.
4 sample OF Northern Public OpiniOs'
rs It Is TX pressed by Leading ReDub-
iienn PApers-What Can we DO TO
be HaEeds-OnIy Vote the he
publican Ticket.

ST. Paul Pioneer. Press: 1.-The southern
| policy of the President has not been attended
with the political results that political optl-
mists. and, among others, the President him.
SELF seem to have expected would follow
from it, 1t was said while Grant was Presl-
dent that the south was solid only In Its re-
sistance to the policy of military interference
with the arrangements of the white leaguers
for crushing out the negro and earpetbag gov
etnmehts, and that if this policy was with
drawn the solid south would dissolve into ii q
sweetest kind of moIasses. Mr.. Hayes took
them at their word. All the offensive ma
chinery of Federal interference with what Is
called local self-goTernment at the south,
which seems to mean government y the
whites, was withdrawn. The result Is that
the solid south was more thoroughly soldlhed
than ever before at the recent election. From
the ultra southern States of South Carolina,
Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi aud louisiana,
which on a free vote would send large ma
jority of Republican congressman, not SIN
gle Republican is returned. Florida,
whose small population has been been
by a large accession of northern i'm
migrants, people who have settled there for
reasons of health, returns one Republican;
North Carolina, three; Tennessee, one; Vlr-
ginia one, and Kentucky one. There are at
least thirty Republican districts In the south,
and these are all that escaped the tyranny of
sectional sentiment, which In all the southern
States, but especially in its cot on and sugar
belt, proscribes al opinions and all parties
which are not sectional In its most uncompro-
missing provincial sense. Postmaster General
Rev was right when he told a southern man
the other day that the north looked on the
solid south as a menace. Its evident mean
ing is that the south proposes, by crushing
out all internal resistance to the dominant
Soofionol rfu on6 nv tho aid nf IFS npn1O-
cratic allies in the north, to capture the gov
erument and to direct and control its policy,
and to make this southern section alisn; with
all its bigotry, the ruling spirit of the ma
tlonal government. But the southern poll
ticians mistake the temper of the
north if they suppose they can
carry through this programme: They will
find that if the northern people are mag
unanimous they are not weak. They have
yielded to the south all it asked-have yield
ed to it all the rights and powers which it
demanded in the name of local self-govern-
ment, but they will hold it responsible for
the manner in which it exercises those
powers. A solid south means simply that
they have exercised them with despotlc
and intolerable disregard of the rights of
large majority of their citizens. 1t means a
conspiracy for the permanent distranchise-
ment and prescription of the colored voters,
and for degrading the United States govern
ment into an instrument of prescription and
sectional hate and intolerance. These are
the aspects in which a solid south necessari-
ly presents itself to the northern people, and
it constrains them to an attitude of self-de
f;nse-of defense of the government and the
constitution from the threatened assaults of
its enemies. A solid south in 1873 means a
solid north in 1880, and don't you forget it,
But there are indications of fractures in this
solid, opaque mass of sectional intolerance.
While the arrogant and domineeriDg spirit
of the ex-slaveholders has swept all + :sist-
ance before it in the lower belt, where in
many districts the negroes largely outnum-
Der the whites; in the more northerly States
of the south, where there are more white
Republicans and relatively fewer negroes, we
have some hopeful instances of success full
self assertion on the part of the Republicans.
In those States no violence, apparently, has
been practiced or reported, and the result is
that the Republicans have won three con-
gressmen in North Carolina, one in Tennes-
see, one in Virginia and one in Kentucky.
The mere election of a few Republicans IN
these States is of little consequence in itself;
but it is of great significance as indicating a
broader political tolerance and more enlignt-
ened freedom in political controversy than
prevails further south. And these are trac-
tons of the solid south which are likely to
widen and multiply till complete disinte-
grafton of political parties In the south is
effected, and till they are reconstructed on
some other basis than the color line"