Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1880-11-20
should the SCUM Eema.n sella.


Since the election a number of our
republican contemporaries have been
laboring to persuade the southern
people that the interests Of the south
lie in division, and not in unity.
To state this proposition seems to Des /
almost enough to refute it 1t III
true that a sectional division Ct
parties is most unf0i tunate for the
country, and that every effort ought
to be made to avoid such a division.
But if the stronger section is 'tsOlidn
against the weaker the weaker has
no choice. The south is a f0rmid-
able element in politics. A divided
south would be weak in proportion
to the extent of the division, and
the break up of the south cannot
possiblycOme about except by the
substitution of other issues for the
sectional issue upon which the re-
publicaBS have made their canvass.
1t is not sufficiently borne in mind,
even by disputants who mean to be
quite fair in discussing the inter
ests of the south, that the opposition
of southern communities to republi.
can rule is in great part matter of
self-preservatiOn. In states like
Mississippi, Louisiana and on h
Carolina, republican state COVE IN
ments mean simply a government
of thieves. 1t is simply not possible
that any respectable and induStri-
Gus person, who only asks of gov
eminent that it shall protect him in
his lawful business and secure to
him the fruits of his labor, should
be a republican in state politics. If
the case is not so bad in other south
ern states, the reason is that in those
States there is no danger of the re-
publicans getting control of the state
governments. This state of things
the republican party is responsible
for, since the attempt of the repub-
lican party to reconstruct the state
governments of the southern states
brought it about. If the ground
which Gen. Hancock took at New
Orleans had been taken by con-
gress, and the local law, except that
part of it which related to slavery,
had been left to be administered by
the local courts, it would have been
possible for the southern people to
separate state politics and national
politics, and to support a protec-
ZIONIST or free trader, a strict con-
structionist or an advocate of liberal
internal improvements, a federaliSt
or a democrat, without helping to
hand over the government OF his
own state to gang of criminals.
| But congress, and not the south,
! chose to make the interests of the
republican partyin hesOuth identi-
cal with the interests of Chamber
| lain, and Moses, and Kellogg, and
Madison Wells, and to make it i'm
possible for any respectable and rep
resentative southern man to belong
to the republican party.
Mr.. Hayes administration has
done something to amend this state
of things. The southern states have
been left free to order their domes-
tic affairs in their own way, and the
result has been state governments
immeasurably cleaner and more re-
spectacle than the state govern
ments which they succeeded. But
there is no reason TO suppose that If
these governments fell again into
the hands of southern republicans
they would not be as dangerous and
as disgraceful as they were before.
Every man in one of the plundered
southern states who ShOul assist in
bringing back the scoundrels of the
period of reconstruction would be
looked upon as public enemy. He
would be a public enemy, and so
long as this danger exists, so long
as this danger exists, so long
as the cause of the carpet-bag-
gers is the cause of the republic
can party in the south, so long
it is quite certain that the south can
not, will not and ought not to cease
to be solid against the republican
party.