The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1880-02-26

Tho Republican Party the Death of the
Soutll-Ringing Letter from Senator B. III.
HilI-How the Southern People Regard
Grant.
From the BranlcJoro TcrmonD Rctormer.
The letter below from Senator Ben
Hill is a manly, straightforward, temper
ate document, which does great credit
to the writer and to his constituency SO
far as his views represent it. 1t ought
to put to shame every bloody shirt dema-
gogue who is. trying to retain his grasp
of the plumber of Office by prolonging
sectional strife:
u. S. SENATE CHAMBER,
WASHINGTON, Jan. 26, 1880.
DEAR SIR-Be kind enough to attrib-
ute to a pressure of official duties, and
not to intentional neglect, the delay in
answering your letter of the 10Th instant.
You ask, "Do you favor Gen. Grant
for President under any consideration?
las some people claim. Has Gen. Grant
any following among the Southern Dem
ocrats? And, in case of his nomination
by the Republicans, do you think he
could carry single Southern State 2"
Answer: I do not favor Gen. Grants
election to the Presidency under any con-
tingency can now imagine. Gen. Grant
does have some following in the South
among those who say they are Demo-
Gratis, but if nominated by the Republi-
eau party he could not carry single
Southern State.
There few men in the South who are
still unfriendly to the Union. Having
failed to dissolve that Union by secession,
they hope now to see worse result prac-
tically accomplished through the oppo-
site extreme of centralism and despot-
ism. They believe this result can be
reached more certainly and speedily
through the election of Gen. Grant than
any other means. An illustration of this
class is furnished in Gen. Toombs, of my
own State, who sent congratulatory
message to Gen. Grant at Chicago, ending
with the expression, "Death to the
Union." But this class are all intense
original secessionists.
There are also q few men at the South
who, while not unfriendly to the Union,
have utterly despaired of the preserva-
ton of that Union under our constitu-
tional system who believe its subversion
in principle has already been accom-
plished, and its subyersion in form is only
question of time; and they believe
this inevitable result can be reached more
easily and with less shock through Gen.
Grant than through any other man. I
doubt whether both of these classes com.
bined number one hundred men in
Georgia, but they are men of intelligence
and they entertain with favor the idea of
electing Gen. Grant nominally for third
term and really for life.
There is third class in the South who
believe Gen. Grant will be elected by the
Northern people anyhow; who know his
partially for his friends, and who expect
by announcing themselves as his fore
most friends in the South to command
the offices which will then be in his gift.
These last are more numerous and more
noisy and less intelligent than the first
two classes mentioned above, but they
are too weak in every sense to authorize
any chance of giving the electoral vote
of any Southern State to Gen. Grant.
Nearly all the Southern people have a
kindly feeling for Gen. Grant. He is
stronger at the South than any other Re-
publican. Our people will never forget
his manly and magnanimous conduct to-
ward them at the close of the war. If he
had manifested the same magnanimity in
his administration of the government, he
would have become an idol with the
Southern people. But his seeming dis
regard or ignorance of constitutional OBJ
legations, his use of the army to sustain
the carpet-bag plunderers, his encourage
ment of the returning board frauds both
in State and Federal elections, and his
unexpected subserviency to bad men who
filled the world with scandals during his
administration, have fully convinced our
people that Gen. Grant was not equal to
his grand Opportunities, and ought not
again to b. trusted with power, however
personally honest and kind he may be.
1t is g. national calamity that the
Northern people are not permitted to un-
derstand the real views and feelings of
the Southern people, and those who pre-
vent such understanding are the worst
enemies of both sections. Let me state
one fact. All thinking men in the South
feel and believe that our constitutional
system of free government is in very great
peril of final and complete overthrow.
With the few exceptions mentioned be-
fore, we are naturally more anxious to
avert the overthrow than the Northern
people. Why should we feel more anx-
ious? It is because our Southern people
feel and believe that the causes which
produce this peril have derived much
strength, perhaps their chief strength,
from, their o,Dn act-the act Of secession.
While not so intended by them, they yet
see that the sectional spirit which domi-
mates the Republican party, and which
enables that party to dominate the North
ern people, has grown TO its dangerous
proportions through the passions engen-
dered by secession and the war. If,
therefore, this sectional spirit shall finally
plunge all sections of our country into
despotism, the Southern people feel that
they will be held in history as largely re-
sponsible for the result, although such
result will have been wrought by the Re-
publican party, and in the direction
directly the opposite of secession.
1t is thus proper and natural that our
people in the South should be anxious,
above all other people, to allay the sec
tional heats their own conduct so greatly
infamed; to restore the constitutional in
tegrity their own mistake so wofully un-
settled, and preserve the Union of States
their own madness so nearly destroyed.
The fact have just stated will explain
much of Southern history since the war.
There never was such social, industrial
and political revolution as that into
which we of the South were so suddenly
thrust by the result of the war. So, also,
there never was such an ordeal of humil-
iation, insult, robbery and wrong as that
through which we were forced to pass in
the negro domination and carpet-bag rule
of reconstruction. That some resent
ments we're provoked, l do not deny.