Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1884-01-26
THE sLoooY ssIsE.

All indications point to the conclu-
sion that the Republicans have deter
mined on vigorous waving Of the
bloody shirt as the chief means of car
rying the next Presidential election.
Questions that effect the material in
terests of the country are to be thrust
into the back ground, while the apos-
ties OF the party of great moral ideas
proclaim from the stump the bar
barity and complete unregeneracy OF
the Southern white, and the martyr
dom of that pet OF the nation, the
Southern negro.
The leading Republican newspapers
have been harping on this key for
some time past, and have stopped at
no depth of meanness and mendacity
to give effect to their statements and
keep alive the hatred of the South.
They keep reporters in the South, not
to gather legitimate news, but to give
political significance to every cross
road fight, and to magnify petty in
stances into indications OF disloyalty
and rebellion. A good example of
this kind of exaggeration, and one of
many that might be related to show
how simple facts are distorted in or
der to SANDER the South and fire the
Northern heart" is the following:
The State Capitol building at Col
umbia, South Carolina, is generally |
adorned with two fiags-the stars and-
stripes and the palmetto flag of the
State. 1t has always been so, before
the war and away back into the early !
days of the republic. Recently the
Federal flag was blown down by a
wind storm and was not Immediately |
replaced. The enterprising emissary
OF the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette
seized ON this trivial incident to tele-
graph to his paper that freedoms glO-
rious emblem had been hauled down
Capitol, and that the palmetto flag
alone waved over that building. The
paper, of course, Immediately took a
fit of the horrors oyer the news and
all of its Republican contemporaries
caught the infection. This is sample
of some of its editorial remarks on the
subject
The dirty blue flag with a white
palmetto tree, and a snake, resem-
bling the old wood cuts of the Devil
in Paradise, that does duty for the
South Carolina standard Tor as they IS
say in that chiyalrous country, gon-
falon) should be on exhibition some
where in Washington. If it cannot
be displayed froms-the mast over the
House OF Representatives, it might,
along with a pair of butter-nut
brooches, be arrayed on hickory pole
and pol1ed out of a window of the
south wing of the Capitol, as sort of
signal to Arlington.
As an illustration of the over-readi- i
ness of Republican papers to misrep-
resent the South and to distort facts
into some SANDER of the Southern
people, the following from the same
paper quoted above is an average spec
linen. This dispatch was sent as
special to the Commercial Gazette of
he 2Sth of December, giving an ac-
count of the affrly at Yazoo City,
Miss:
YAZoo CITY, Miss, Dec. 26.-One of
he most cold-bloOded assassinatiOns |
hat ever occurred in any community c
oefell this town on Monday night
bout 10 o'clock by which three men,
n the prime and vigor of young man.
hood, were shot down like dogs, and
wo others seriously, one of them h
MORALLY wounded, by ne .
,roes.
From this piece of news, the only
the paper could have had u
N the subject of that date, the follow "
ng editorial comment was drawn: a
1t appears that the whites who '
damned an attack on some negroes in
yazoo City were not expecting the
1arm reception which they received.
he negroes are severely censured for
aving defended themselves so well.
1t is easy to understand why Repub- C,
lean papers and politicians begin to S
rind out SANDERS of the South ON the n
We of every presidential election. The CT
bject, of course, is to keep the party n
n power and its leaders in office, but /"
Thy the people of the North, the citi- m
ems of a section of such boosted intel oil
gence, should be influenced by such CT
Malicious utterances and transparent al
alsehoods is really a mystery. That it
hey have been so influenced in the al
asst can be ascribed only to the fact v
nat the animosities growing out of ii
he war were not dead and were easily b.
ekindled by such inflammatory liter II
.ure. But while hate can exist for HI
yer in the breast of an individual, it oil
not-ratural that such feeling could fr
ong survive with whole people, es- fo
ecially when directed toward an m
her people so intimately connected n
v blood and all kind of relationship M
the people of the South are to those at
the North. For this reason we can nj
1t believe that a bloody shirt cam sh
ign by the Republicans will weaken al
cir cause and inure to Democratic
ceess. ID
= We
Courier Journal: Louisville wants fu
e next National Convention of the cli
emocratic party. AT a citizens on
Getting held at the Mayors Office it gil
i decided TO appoint committee of 40
taen to go to Washington and con- th
u 80 -. National GOnn nniffea Of ~