Clearfield Republican. [volume] (Clearfield, Pa.) 1851-1937, 1879-06-11
TESTIMON Y TAKEN on THE
GROUND.

lheproprelors Ofth Boston Herald
have employed special correspondent
who has been travelling through the
Southern States for the past Two
months, and sends his views 10 that
journal as he is impressed with them
right on the ground. In one of his
letters he says
"Riding down through central Mis-
sissippi, | encountered, in fellow pas.
senger in the sleeper, KentuclSian
who turned out TO be a nephew OF
John @. Breckenridge, and grandson
of that famous Senator Crittenden of
Kentucky, who served in the United
States Senate 81 years, seven years
more than old Benton of Thirty Years.
in-the-Senate fame.
My Kentucky acquaintance was an
eloquent fellow, and had the flow of
language which the blue grass country
produces in men as much as the flow
of milk from kline. He told me that
his father was an emancipationist, and
set his slaves free in 1862. q became
he added, "a Unfonist on the breaking
out of the war, although many OF my
family were in the Confederate army
This gentleman had, he said, little
confidence in evolution of the negro
race into selfcontrolled and reason
ing people. Why he added, the ne.
groes my father emancipated "a years
ago are to-day as thriftless and shift
less as in the days Of their slavery.
They come to me continually for pecu.
mary aid, seeming to think they have
claim upon our family. | have al
ways been an abolitionist o. emanci-
pationist as we say in Kentucky, but
/ have never followed all the steps of
your New England abolitionists. They
seem to have taken up all sorts of is
sues, and have become infidels, and
sometimes free-lovers. They, believe,
have theory of the final perfection Of
humanity Now, do not believe that
men will ever become perfect, and, for
that reason, look uron the predicted
future intellectual equality of the ne
gro with the white man as impossible.
Men transmit their vices as well as
their virtues to theirpostperity. Every
generation has to fight over again the
same old battle between impulse and
reason, between that which tends 10
barbarism and that which tends to
civilization.
The northern Radicals are senti-
mentalists. They ascribe to the negro
the same sensibllities as the white man
possesses. Recollect, my friend, that
the negro's ancestors were not reason
ing Anglo Saxsons, but slaves sunk in
the awful horrors of African slav-
cry. Every African chief is des-
pot absolute and autoeratic. Slav-
cry in America, even as it existed in
the cotton States, was anelysium CON-
pared with the terrible slavery of the
blacks in Africa You remember that
chief to whom the traveller presented
the rifle, which the chief Immediately
used upon his servants and wives,
shooting down these living targets with
hellish diabolism. Think of the hu.
man sacrifices on the death of chief.
From this hell the poor black was
brought to our shores, where selfin-
terest compelled decent usage, and
where cruelty was the exception, and
not the rule. With all his benighted
ancestry behind him, the black is hand
icapped in the race of life. He can
never catch up with the white man.
should despair of the negro if he were
never to improve upon his present low
condition but | hope for some sub
stantial Improvement in three or four
generations--not sooner.
al think, continued the Kentuckian,
"that the North has yet to take to it.
self the New Testament parable and
first pluck from its eye the beam before
trying TO remove the mote from the
eye Of the South. You have your
wronged and oppressed laboring men,
you have horrible social vices almost
unknown here. Only the other day
man slaughtered his little child amid
the high civilization of Massachusetts,,
and with the fanatic approval of his
co.religionists. Why does not Massa-
chusetts send itsintelligent colored men
to Congress or put them into its State
Government Ali what we need,
North and South, is charity. 1t is not
the mote in our neighbors eye, but
the beam in our own"
A large planter whom met at Hol-
ly Springs, Miss, was good deal of a
humorist. Regarding the negro exc.
dus, he said "Let EN- 60. We of this
State can afford to lose 100000 Of 'em.
We want white immigrants in their
place. / am willing to stand my share
to let our Republican opponent in the
North see how they like an influx of
the negro. will be one of 1000 men
TO give $50 apiece annually to send
negroes TO Massachusetts, free. When
they get hundred thousand there the
whites will all join the Democratic
party. Also try tho same thing in
Vermont give 'em 10000 negroes and
even Vermont would cease TO be Re-
publican State" While in Louisville
| was told by a newspaper man the
negro leaders and preachers were get
ting up an organization for the promo.
ton ofa Wholesale exodus to the West.
The Kentucky negroes have little
to complain of Slavery was never 30
harsh and cruel in Kentucky as in
Virginia, the breeding State, or in