Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1881-03-01
From the Philadelphia Americana
Professor B. Puryear.

| Professor Puryear, of Richmond Col
lege, chairman of the Faculty, discharg-
ing the functions of president, writes
courteously and frankly, but with the
strongest tinge of Bourbonism as vet
observable in the letters that have
reached the american.
RICHMOND COLLEGE,
RICHMOND, Va, January c8, 1881. !
To the Editor of the american:
Sir,-Your late favor, requesting my
views on certain topics. was duly re-
ceived. I do not deem it necessary to
reply to your inquiries seriotina, but will
so express myself as in effect to embrace
them.
The people of the North, you tell us,
complain of the ''solid South" and
wish to destroy this solidity. 1t seems
to me that the first thing to do is to as
certain the cause Of this state of things
in the South-though may remark, in
passing, that the North is about as solid
as the South.
The people of the South. at the close
of the war, accepted its results in good
faith, and were prepared to return to
their duty as law-abiding citizens. In
their ingenious simplicity, they sup
posed that as the North had fought for
the maintenance of the Union the first
consideration would be its eternal in
tegrity. Instead of this, however, the
Federal Constitution, which was the
bond of union, was Immediately assailed
and overthrown by the dominant N North,
now flushed with victory and thirsting
for vengeance. Then cOmmen ced the
war of reconstructioD-a war waged
with muskets and cannon on an una
armed and PROSTATE people. Amend
ments to the Federal Constitution were
declared to be ratified which simply de-
strOyed that once sacred instrument,
The Federal Government, by virtue of
these amendments, really prescribes the
qualifications of suffrage in the States,
and is actually present at elections in
the States to control the results. The
Constitution of our fathers is thus com.
pletely overthrown; State autonomy is
dead. Over the grave of the Confed
Grated Republic, as formed century
ago, floats triumphantly the flag of q
consolidated despotism. Under the op-
erations of these pretended amendments
savage race in large numerical ma
| jority in several of the southern States,
| is lifted in a moment into citizenship,
armed with the ballot, and, in many
cases, goaded and stimulated by the
Federal Government, its agents and
emissaries, into wrath, lawlessness, and
crime. They were taught to believe
and they did believe-that the whites of
the South were their irreconcilable ene-
mics, whom they might injure and in
suit as they pleased These semi bar
barians, infiamed with wrath and ha-
tired, and supremely incompetent to the
duties of citizenship, were thus made
the governing majority. Such sight
the world had never seen before: such
an act of cruelty and wrong finds no
analogue in all the annals of crime. If
pillage, plunder, arson, murder, rape
which, indeed, largely followed-had at.
once become universal throughout the
South. the law would not have been
mole guilty than it is, for it was the
logical tendency of the law to produce
exactly these and similar results. That
these results did not fully and every
where ensue is due to cause more DO
tent than human statutes. Negro equal .
ity was the boon and the declaration /
the law; but the negro, governed b. y
his God-given instincts, refused to &C :
cept the boon, and denied the doctrine J.
In the presence of race superior G
him by birth and blood, instinct will ,
the doctrines and traditions OF civi! anti
constitutional freedom, though frequent
ly galvanized by inflammatory rhetoric
into spasmodic courage, and braced by
the promise and expectation, in the su
preme crisis, of foreign sympathy and
aid, realized, after a few years of con
vulsive struggle, that political rule was
not his role, and that his only security
was to be found in his natural place Of
acknowledged inferiority. This is the
lesson. Mr.. Editor, that be has learned
or is learn learning i, quite different lesson
Now, when millions of these negroes.
born and raised as slaves, were turned
loose among US. and armed with the
ballot, infamed with hate, their sense