Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1885-04-24
THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AND
THE COLORED PEOPLE.

ocratic Administration would do it, for,
unhappily. no political organization of
any magnitude is so fortunate in its COM
position that any administration taken
from its ranks would be able to deal with
such finely tempered question success
fully. Nor are we SO sure that all the
members of the present Administration
understand how to deal with the colored
citizen; but four of them have given I'M
mistakable evidence that they do-the
President himself, Secretaries Lamar and
Garland, and the Postmaster General
And by understanding it we do not mean
an understanding based on that inferior
plane so much Wanted as standard by
unrefecting whites IN the eX-slave States.
Many of this kidney cherish the idea that
a Negro is Republican simply as an ex-
preston of his hatred of the whites around
him, Gust as the Republican party hold
Southern white man is Democrat as an
expression of his hostility to itselD while as
matter of fact the Negroes politics is
simply matter of self defence. He stands
in this respect towards the Republican
party precisely as the mass of white peo-
pie stand towards the Democratic party.
Without the Republican party the Negro
would have been slave to-day, and with
/ out the Democratic party the whites of
the Southern States would be in politi-
cal slavery at this moment. The full
emancipation of the former has been more
difficult, and slower than that of the latter.
| The Negro had been slave, he was igno-
rant, uncertain. timid; he approached
freedom slowly with suspicion of every
body around him. The white man, when
be was overthrown twenty years ago, set
his face at once towards regaining self
government, he was brave, shrewd, OBJ
| serving and untiring. He carried the
Republican State governments, here by
assault, there by undermining, elsewhere
| by gold, and at last saw his flag flying in
| every ex-slave State. The Republican
party saw the Negro going under and
| made every effort to save him. 1t tried
vigorous persecution of the whites; it
melted the blacks to bloody effort, but
the whites worsted them: it tried bribery
of Office and gold on the whites, but they re-
| fused both, and in 1875, after eleven years
of effort to keep him On bis feet it let the
Negro 60 down. AS its struggles for him
had been purely for selfish ends, so when
| it sold him out it was from the same mo-
tive, and Louisiana and South Carolina
were given UP without struggle that
| Republican President might be peacefully
counted in. During all the eleven years
Of the struggle this picture was presented
to the ignorance perverted apprehension of
the Negro-a great party at the North
unseifshly seeking to make him trnly free,
and a great party at the South selishly
trying to enslave him. He could not
understand that the white man was think
ing only of freeing himself, and had moth
| ing against the Negro except in SO far as
he might be used by the Republican party
! to keep him ia poli ical slavery. Nor did
the Negro have access to any class Of
white men that could remove this delu-
fusion. Separated by color from all South
ern white men, the black man emphasized
the separation yet more strongly by sus-
picion and distrust. He came to believe
that the man whose creed with regard to
him. was condensed in the term
dam nigger," was the representative of
his race. He certainly was DOT to blame
if be held aiO3f from Il people who held
that opinion and expressed it, and allied
himself with another people who with po-
little polteness refrained from SO frank an
expression. So we are not blaming the
Negro for being Republican, but all the
same there is one thing that we had rath-
er see him titan see him a Democrat or
| Republican either, and that ia a self re-
spectlng, energetic, contented citizen, aud
it is that sort OF Improvement which Pres
ident Cleveland seems determined to
make in Kim.
This policy of the President is being re-
cognized with The quickness Of what al
mnst seems to be instinct by The Negro
! himself, and The evidences of it are becom.
| ing so frequent that they force themselves
On the attention. AT Wytbeviile last
week the Virginia Conference of the
| African M. E. Church was in session. In
| the regular report On the State Of the
| Country the following sentence occurred:
"Encouraged by the promises of the new
Executive, new ra has begun, and the
whole country INDUCES new hope. Peace
has taken her dwelling in our homes and
the outlook is unusually beautiful"
When the reader reached that SEN
tence. a report says "the excitement
became great, and one spontaneous
outburst of applause was given, not
J only by members Of The conference, but by
the white and colored visitors present."
An occurrence took place in Washington
city on Friday that goes along with this
subject. The African Methodist ZION
Conference in session there called on the
President in body. Their spokesman.
Bishop Howard Day, in his address, said:
For the first time in many years we
chee1fully pay our respects to d President
who is Democrat. Ne believe him to
be a Democrat in she true sense Of that
term. We trust the President. We have
asked. and will ask. oar people TO
trust him. The Democracy of the Presi-
dent Was OF that character which asks
nothing but what it comedies, aud con-
cedes nothing but what it demands, which
is destructive only to despotism and the
sole conservatcr of liberty. labor; and
pr0perty-the law of equal rights and
equal obligations. To such President we
pledge our support and earnest prayers
that his life may be presel wed and his
heart strengthened to maintain bis earnest
purposes.
PRESIDENT Cleveland in his renlx TO the |