Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1882-12-29
The Negro Question.

The negro question played very in
conspicuous part in the recent Congress
sional elections. This is the more re-
markable when we recall the habit of
the Republican press to make the most
of it in the midst of campaigns three or
four years ago. No reports of intimi-
dation, no tales of massacres, nothing
about tissue ballots, no attempt to in
flame the Northern people with pathetic
narratives of how cO,ored citizens were
driven from the polls and deferred from
voting by the still disloyal Southern
whites. A faint effort was made in
South Carolina to rouse the languid ne
groes into a troublesome attitude and
bring them in collision with the whites;
but there were no carpet-baggers to
work the plot and the Northern public
did not take kindly to it, and the re-
suit was failure. The elections in the
Southern States were quiet and peace
full, the Republicans made but feeble
show OF strength. and those States were
carried by the Democrats with the &C
custOmed maiorities.
1t may be that the quiet that marked
the elections in the South was the quiet
of negro submission and apathy, that
the blacks allowed the whites to have
their own way oat of sheer inability to
prevent it The negro is a passive ami
NAL, lethargic, heavy, impervious to
the motives that bring white men to-
gether in coherent action and utterly
averse to protracted, organized effort,
and it may be that, after violent and
exhaustive attempts to rule in certain
States through the mere force of num-
bcrs, the cOlored race have abandoned
the struggle and sunk into unresisting
submission to the rule of The whites.
Still the fact is interesting. The North
fern people are tired of the negro ques-
ton in the South. They have given
| 5000, 900 blacks the right to vote and
they have come to the conclusion after
many foolish experiments in the shape
of Congressional Election laws that if
the negroes do not exercise the right at
all proper times in their own way, it is
their own fault. Northern people have
their hands full with their own affairs
and it is too much to expect of them,
as the Republican party has expected
OF them, that they shall neglect their
own local business to assist the blacks
in Louisiana and South Carolina in per-
forming theirs. A race 100000
strong ought to be able to vote without
outside help; if it cannot, there is
no remedy for it. If this race must
sink into meek submission unless per-
petually held up, then it will have to
sink, for Northern people cannot per-
petually hold it up.
What is to be the political and social
future of the negro is not as clear as
could be wished; but it may be taken
for granted that the negro question is
taken out OF National politics for the
present The negro must paddle his
own canoe the best he can. The North
ern people are tired of performing that
homely an simple task for him, and in
the Democratic era that seems to have
set in, it Is pretty certain that the Fed
eral Government will be restricted to
Federal duties and general legislation
and restrained from passing special
laws for the benefit of the negro and
sending an invading force of Deputy
Marshals and Supervisors into the
States TO enforce them. How the col
ored race will get along when left en-.
, tirely to their own unassisted efforts car
only be con iectured. 1t is to be hopeG
both for their sake and that of the conn
try they will prove equal to the duty o.
becoming intelligent patriotic and use
ful American citizens. ST. Louis Repub
licGn.