Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1882-06-23

The colored cadets at West Point have
not been credit to their race. The frs:
one to occupy public attention is colored
student who graduated, was assigned to
duty, embezzled the public funds passing
through his hands, was tried by court
martial and has been dismissed the SER
vice. Neither his accusers nor his judges
were prejudiced against him politically,
and his fate seems to nave been determin
by the merits of the case. Whether it is
the fair thing to these people. with tile
virus OF a century Of slavery still coursing
in their veins, to place them in some Pc
sitions of great importance, Is question
appealing to those who have taken their
race in special charge for an answer. But
for those who know the freedmen and
their descendants of this generation much
better than their political guardians CAR
possibly know them. We can answer that
it is an experiment as unfair to the Color
ed race as it is perilous to the interests
concerned. The schools of the country
can do all that is required of them in the
matte of education, but the home school,
the family is where the boy gets his first
and most lasting lessons in moral princi
pie. A people just out of slavery cannot
give their children this. 1t is true that in
an hour Of political madness the dominant
party of the nation gave the parents po-
litical power, but it is also true that the
gift produced corrupt legislatures aud in
some of the States where it had power in
augurated system of audacious public
robbery never squaled in the history of
civilization. It was gift that leavened
whole political State systems with dishor-
esty, lowered the standard of those who
had not been freedmen and furnished a
new material always open to the manipula-
ton of unscruplous politicians.
The failure is not so much in the color
ed race itself as in the attempt Of philan-
thropists and politicians to hurry up a
state of affairs that can only come by time
It is useless to pick out an intelligent.
honest, conscientious colored man here
and there and then holding him up as the
product of the race, attempt to force it in
to the same positions and representations
that the dominant race are qualified to as
sume. The colored people as race, with
the aid Of education will come up all right
in time, but one generation can't do it
nor two. The first inspiration of the air
of fresd0m does not make = freeman.
We haven't had any Spring to speak of,
and yet we are standing still, ready to
head towards the winter and shorter days
and longer nights, next Monday. The su-
which has been travelling northward stop
ped last Friday, and will think over 1t
awhile, and on Monday turn his steps
southwark again. He is resting in what
is called his Summer solstice, and during
the intervening nine days, the days remain
the same length, fifteen hours and sixteen
minutes. Next week he begins swinging
South, and towards Fall he will have got
ten to his old place back of Bessie Bell
Some days before Christmas he starts
North again, and the days that he piles
no will be the shortest and the same
length, and that is what he calls his Win
ter solstice. To be sure all this is only the
way we look at it, for as q matter of fact,
it is our own residence, the Earth, that
gets tipped over to an incline OF twenty
three and half degrees, which varies the
manner in which her surface is presented
to the Sun. The hot nights and days are
now not far off, for the maximum of the
Summer solstice comes in July and Au-
gust. From next Monday to just before
Christmas every day is little shorter and
very night Q little longer.