The Greenville times. [volume] (Greenville, Miss.) 1868-1917, 1884-05-24
4 ualon Soldier on The Political
Situation.
Memphis Ledger.l

memphis Ledger.l
The following full synopsis of an
interview with Col. Gilbert Nov.
ers, an hOnOred Union officer, and
true friend of the South as a
part of the common Union, ap-
peared in a late number of the
Washington Times, a Republican
paper that flies at its masthead as
Its ticket the names of James G.
Blaine and Robert 7. Lincoln for
President and Vice President. 1t
is full of truth and should be read
by the million, North and South.
On Friday a reporter for the
Times encountered Colonel Gil.
bert Meyers, who commanded a
Michigan regiment through the
Interstate war. Since 1866 he
has been a citizen Of Memphis,
Tennessee, where he is known to
be a modest, honest, industrious
and most worthy gentleman.
Knowing Colonel Meyers to be q
representative Northern soldier,
| asked him to give his views in
reference to the political and So
cial condition of the South. He
said:
think it most fortunate. Re-
cent events in and out of Con.
gress have substituted practical
for sentimental issues. The high
tariff East is arrayed against reve-
nue. retormers of the West, aud
now when ones statements affect.
ing the South may have an unpre-
JUDGED audience, | would tell
what do know with reference to
Southern inter-race relations. 1t
is proper to say that l was North
ern born, reared and educated, a
Union soldier commanding a vet
eran regiment in 1923 and 4,
which won a name as honorable
as that of any in the Union ser.
vice.
have lived since the war al
most continuously in a Southern
city. l have seen how federal
placeholders are appointed and
salaried and retained, simply be-
cause of their skill as inventors
and decorators of the bloody shirt.
The false regulations Of this class
have resulted in greater detriment
to the material interests of the
South in excluding immigration
and capital than even the war it.
self. Republicans from the North,
sharp shYewd fellows, are hired
with Federal offices to furnish
blood curdling negro murder
stories, for the eminently godly
Republican bloody shirt news pa
pers of the North; and | am only
amazed that Radicals preylng up
on those they revile, do not put
to death, at least on paper, as
many negroes each year Iii the
South, where there are about six
million blacks as fell of whites on
a single day in Cincinnati.
have seen Southern city
plundered to poverty and hopeless
bankruptcy, and the people taxed
six and quarter per cent by
scoundrels invested with power
by Wholesale ignorance.
| have seen the city government
finally abolished, and turned over
to a syndicate created by the Gov
ernor, even as here in Washington,
and people so dread negro su.
premacy, they submit to a Presi-
dent created despotic absolutism.
| | have seen a negro Governor OF
q Southern State pardoning a mur.
derer for $500 before the murderer
was tried. The man who paid the
cash is now in this city. | have
seen q negro governed county
taxed FIVE per cent by its negro
chosen white and black masters,
and the value of land reduced, by
negro sway, from $50 to 80 an
acre. And these are only speci-
mems Of facts, countless and uni
versal wherever untutoyed idle ne
groes are herded and voted by un
scrupulous knaves. | have seen
a former slave dealer and keeper
of a slave pen, who was fiercest o.
secessionists, and the executor o.
JEFF Davis Conscript Act, robbine
the cradle and the grave, that the
Union might be destroyed, filling
: every office of honor and profit
: in country in which blacks out
. number the whites as five to one
aud fhcn these innocent black