The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1880-12-29
THE ARKANSAS TRAVELLER.
Customs and Desires Of the
People.
The Accumulative Carpet-Bagger, and
the Present Status OF the Afri-
can-Interesting Letter from
Luther Benson.


Three great railroads pour a tide of trade
and travel into the metropolis, but the Ar
kansas River is the most powerful business
artery. The location of the city upon the
stream, near the confluence with the Missis-
sippi gives it an advantage that no number
of freight lines will make up for inland
towns. The employment given TO vast num-
bers of men by the railroad shop, together
with the shipping OF cotton-the great staple
and quite universal industry-imparts an
atmosphere of briskness that have wit
messed in no other place.
THE CLIMATE.
The weather, akin to the mild, sleepy
threatens to burst or bud into full-blown
spring, attestS that / am in a latitude where
the winters are not severe.
NATURAL ADVANTAGES.
Arkansas is especially rich in soil, climate,
minerals, timber and area of land suscepti-
BILE of cultivation. Nor is the States geo
graphical location, the unequaled market
always at her DOORS the least of her attrac-
tons to wise emigrants and settlers. To
those who make no study of the cause 1t
would seem strange that people push West
into far Kansas, or still further Nebraska,
where they must undergo the hardships and
endure the privations incident to pioneer
life, amid seasons of relentless inclemency.
But these advantages of the State, not
withstanding the political universities,
have not gone wholly unnoticed
by home seekers, and, as a
consequence, the population has almost
doubled within the last ten years. But a
small fraction of this people was here during
the war, to say nothing OF the number who
participated in the Rebellion.
THE FESTIVE cARPET-BAGGER
All of what the grasshopper and drouth
was to Kansas, Republican supremacy and
the character of officers il spawned in high
places, was to Arkansas. 1t entailed upon
the Commonwealth a burden of debt that
generations of toll and frugality can only
| liquidate. When in the name of loyalty,
in 1868, the Government of this State was
taken from the people, the public debt on
all accounts was s., 252, 491.5 so. AT that time
there was upon hand in the State Treasury
| the sum of 1919, 237.35. Between July g. of
that year, and October /. 1874, there was
paid into the Treasury the sum of S6,674,-
| 51105-something over 81 ,0Oo 900 per an
mum. A faithful estimate shows that a
proper administration of the State Govern
ment between the years 1868 and 1874 would
have cost not more than 81, 800, 600. The
floating debt added to what was collected
gives a total of S., $50, 228.59, the
amount stolen. This is enough to have made
reasonably rich, at least half dozen
Secretaries of the Republican National Com
mittee. Nor is this all. The plunderers,
while fraudulently holding the offices, voted
land, railroad and County bonds, by the
million, and afterward manipulated them
in their own interest, besides saddling upon
the State a bonded debt of SIS. 900, 600.
When the State fell into the hands of the
people the Treasury was as barren of dollars
~ = =. - IF N,N,x
The Governor told me to day, that the State
was being run upon borrowed money. Why
the South is solid, is not very strange after
all, when we come to think upon the sub
ject
THE NEGRO.
While the Republican party was in power
ii perpetrated the great mistake of its life,
by refusing to divide the offices with the
negroes. The Democrats control every
County in the State but four, and there are
more negroes in public positions than at any
time within the history of the Common
wealth. The African here appears happy
and contented, and nowhere does he find
such a friend as his old master and with the
people who have always been accustomed to
him. | am thoroughly satisfied that the
law is not Observation-Disclosures he has every
right Labor is plenty and remuneratiye,
and am glad that the black man is accu-
mulating property. As at the North, in
proportion as he becomes rich, he becomes
respected. 1t is one of the pecsliarities #
money borrowing that it knows no distinc-
ton in race, color or previous condition of
seryitude.
SOCIETY.
/ have not had the experience of the
tabled Arkansas Traveller. The people are
cosmopolitan. They desire immigration,
and are so bHsily engaged in building up the
waste places and founding new homes that
they care but very little for politics. They
are bright intelligent and thrifty. The
poorest have an abundance. The statistics
show that according to the number of in
habitants but very little crime is commit
ted. 1t is only for idle hands that Satan
finds work, and that lets the Arkansas peo-
pie out
A SAMPLE LETTER.
To show the great wrong that is being
done the South by the teaching of the Re-
publican party opponents, L append the fol-
lowing. The advertisement was clipped
from a newspaper and posted at the top of
the epistle
Peerless Honest Virgin Soil!
Moderate Climate.
Over 10000 acres of good. rich agricultural
4
lands, stock-raising lands.
Low PRICES! TERMS EAsYi
THOMAS ESSEX,
Land Commissioner,
l2-ly LITTLE ROCK, ARK.
Peerless Observation-Disclosures which the in
mates liable al any hour of the day or night,
| 10 be dragged and mercilessly butchered, unless
| they are Democrats--unless they believe in
| white mans government'-unless they Will bow
down and worship the god which the Southern
| fiends have set up
Oh, Thomas Essex Land Commissioner; you
may advertise in Northern papers much as you
/ please: you may talk to us of your peerless
| homes "''virgin soil" moderate climate" ETC.,
but we know all about it: We know all about
| the barbarity, the cruelty, the oppression
the iendisf ness, the horTid. awful deeds of your
Southern devils-deeds ut which savage would
| blush and hide his head in shame and horror.
We know that the whole South is hell of des-
potic cruelty. and we believe that the tokens of
your peerless homes will be few, II any, from the
| North, or the East, or the West People who seek
| homes pretty likely to seek them in a free
| country, where they can be free to worship God
according to the dictates of their own consciences
and free TO speak OF vote as they please For one,
1 would not accept as gift your million acres of
land to be obliged TO reside there. The Southern
people have got big lesson to learn, and the
sooner they set themselves right down to the bus
mess of learning IL the better 1t will be for them
The lesson Is this: The South must and shall
/ be as free for all as the rest
| of the Union IS The North the East and the West
i are determined upou this and the South had bqt