The Ouachita telegraph., 1879-01-17
THE RACE CONFLICT.
North and South Changing Front as to
the Status of the Negro.

[Austin (Texas) State Gazette]
AT last Northern people, through
private letters, through the few South
ern papers that reach the North,
through those who sojourn and travel
here and through those who, unlike
Bishop Haven, have access to the peo-
pie of the South-through all these
sources of opinion the North has learned,
as never before, the relations of blacks
and whites. The ho71e11ez1ne rulgiis of
the North believed, until recently, that
whenever negro was knocked on the
head In a vulgar bar-room, in drunk
en- debauch or at some obscure voting
place, that the rebellion was reor-
ganized and that q negro's blood
wrought madness everywhere and was
significant OF some frightful Southern
revolt. The Northern mob was per-
suaded by Blaine and the Inter-Ocean
that draft of the militia was immi-
nent, that armies were required, that
a negro's overthrow was the Unions
death-knell.
But this course of Northern opinion
has been thoroughly changed. It is |
finally agreed, as President Hayes has
suggested, that the relation of races has |
| no reference to that of either race or of
States to the Union. If the negro were
exterminated tonight the perpetuity
of the Union would be proclaimed even
by Cuffee's destroyer Tomorrow. With
| this apprehension of facts finally ac-
cepted the bloody shirt becomes very
useless banner. 1t fails to arouse the
Northern multitudes. In fact, the
press, in many portions of the North,
begins to ascribe the ruin of Southern
municipalities to the potency of the
ignorant, incapable rabble unWorthily
invested with the privilege of suffrage.
Enormous losses from this cause have
befallen banks and capitalists. Tney
grOan and are disgusted. They look
about for the reason for this practical
reputation of public indebtedness by
States, cities and countries. They ask
why pestilence ravaged places now
desolate and bankrupt. The answer is
/" knaves have plundered and ignorance
and filth destroyed, and knaves were
crowned and ignorance honored by
Senegambian Stupidity Blaine and
Bishop Haven may worship, but COM
mon sense and capital damn the dirty
mob, white and black, that achieves
such disasters and widespread ruin.
Philanthropy and generosity to igno-
| rance are proper enough, and Southern
people were once famed for generosity,
| but the virtue, even Northern eyes,
became vice when it resulted in the
concession of supremacy in local and
State governments to helpless, hope
less, incurab1e barbarism. The neces-
sary end was this wide spread bank
ruptcy, and worse than bankruptcy,
even, in money-lenders' eyes, was this
ghostly, hideous plague that befell the
cities and towns of wide districts of the
South, because stupidity had been in
vested with supreme local power by
polluted ballot boxes. Northern opinion
undergoes, therefore, a sure and speedy
transformation. Not only is New
England unwilling to have the negro
retain his representative power in Con-
gress, but New England confesses the
necessity for the restriction of the right
to exercise the privilege of suffrage to
intelligence, and in municipalities to
Taxpayers. Blaine, seeing how his adj
herents blundered in clothing Africa
seeks to assign a false reason for his
palpable purpose to disfranchise the
negro. He would deprive the negro of
representation in Congress, and simply
for the reason that only six of forty
Congressman to which the negro popu-
lation is entitled on the floor of the
House are Republicans. But the con-
stitution will hardly be changed.
The South may insist that the federal
organic cOue remain as 1t Is and South
ern power in Washington undimin-
ished. The only change probable may
occur in local laws exempting corpora
tions from tramp and savage donina-
| ton.
The South, in any event, is to be
congratulated that the purpose and
origin of race conflicts is finally COM
pretended by the President and masses
of Northern people. Our relations to
the negro have not the remotest con-
nection with our relations to the Union.
The black deity, preferred by Bishop
Haven and worshipped more sanctimo-
niously and more earnestly than Ha-
ven's everything God, has been thrust
from countless altars everywhere in the
North, and there is every reason TO be-
lieve that the South must assume at an
early day the position of the negro's
special defender and champion, and
even then the Union will be neither
more or less endangered.
R;rus is now admitted to be king
of the turf. His time of 2:13L, made
at Buffalo last summer, is the best on
record. Lately at Sacramento he has
beaten Goldsmith Maids time one