Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1889-03-22
PRESIDENT HARRLsON's REAL
TORk

dong, Wnen we say that 1t Is not his rea
work. He is having a hard time of it: as
hard a time as Cleveland had : as hard {
time as any man will have who is unwilling
to turn the government upside down t(
crafty the office hunters of his own party
But these trials endure but for a day and
he can afford to count them as nothing
compared with the exceeding glory OF a
| Nations gratitude if he will only drive
and clinch it-clinch it so firmly that 40
succeeding President, Democrat OF Repub-
lican, will be able to 1eturn to the old,
effete, topsy-turvy spoils system. His real
| task vet lies ahead of him. 1t has been
given many names-the breaking OF the
solid South, the solution of the Southern
question. the erection of free and fair
ballot in the South-but by whatever name
called the Republican party has seemed to
come to an acquiescence in the fact that
have been done that that party can do as
regards the South. and that this is to be the
end of it.
We believe that the President himself
feels anxious that if anything can be done
in this direction, it shall be done during his
administration. 1t may surprise him to
know it., but the same feeling prevails with
ninety -nine out of every hundred Democrats
in the South. No men feel lEeenly than
do the Southern Democrats, that at every
national election they are held up to the
country as a body of men with ballots in
their hands, demanding the right of self
government. and yet barring or driving
! from the ballot-boX other men who also
want self-government. They are fully
aware of the disadvantage this puts the
/ Democratic party at, in extending its
principles in the States that have always
| been free-States. How to remove it is a
problem that they frankly confess they are
unable to solve, OF even suggest solution
Of The black man is an anomaly on Amer
| lean sofia dark segment in the fair circle
of the Union. He neither understands the
| institutions of the country nor catches the
spirit Of them. -Four years after they were
SET lice Ill tlllS Ol(tUc, tllCg NOtCu ulllOOo w
a man-one hundred and forty thousand of
them-to disfranchise and make forever
| ineligible to hold Office OF vote, in this State
of Virginia. every white man in it ! And,
what is even graver yet, if this year-twenty
years later-the same proposition were put
before them, they would vote the same way
again and those who voted differently would
be prosecuted and ostraciZed by their race.
The ablest statesman must be puzzled to
deal with problem in which such con-
stituency as that is an element, And this,
| in State noted for the absence Of violence
both in its elections and at other times.
The wisest men of the South, who have
approached the subject with all the prepar-
alton that observation and experience can
give, can see no remedy for this but Time.
| 1t is something that cannot be remedied
from the outside. Some Of them thought
that another Democratic administration of
four years would give the blacks such a
secure feeling about their rights, that they
might have turned their attention to other
matters in politics, than color: but the
feeling exhibited since Republican admi-
nistration came in. convinced them that
there had been the very least, if any, i'm
situation by the blacks, and another four
years of Cleveland would have improved
the situation very little in that respect.
There seems nothing but Time that can
do it. Laws, force, bayonets, have not
helped it. The black man may be set up
by the bayonet, as was done in South
Carolina and Louisiana. Or by divisions in
the Democracy, as was done in North Car
DINA and Virginia, but he stays up but a
brief space. His voting leglons do not
seem to gather to themselves as leaders the
sort Of men who have the capacity for long
maintenance Of power. Taking our own
State for example. they captured the State
with one of the best political organizers in
it at their head, but at the next election
though they had the election officers, the
electoral Board, and all the counting pro-
cess under their contrOl-they were voted
out. 1t does not seem to be in the nature
of successful Republican government that
any ignorant constituency shall long pre-
vail against an intelligent one, though the
latter may be-in the minority. To us at
the South, daily observant Of the situation,
there seems to be but one remedy-Time and
Education, for they are so woven together
that the two constitute but one. When
| President Harrison comes to take up his
task. he will find in his notebook the record
of many unWise utterances on this subject
both in the South and the North-some of
them notably in Virginia just now-but it
will be as well for him to offset one with
the other and pass both into oblivion. This
is too great a question, too heavily freighted
with the welfare Of a great section of the
Union and of the Nation itself, to permit
these follies to have place in it's considera-
ton; and the calm, conservative, and SEN
sible people Of the South look to the Presi-
dent to treat it in that light. Always put
ting this to the credit of the Southern
people-that if they, who have all the evil
of this ignorance in their midst to suffer,
are willing to wait for the slow process Of
Time, the rest of the Nation which knows
and sees so little of it, can well afford to make
that waiting easier and not harder to BEAR
4 RARE FINANCIER.
The Hon. Joseph W. Fifer, Private
Joe, y who is now Governor of Illinois, is,