Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1889-01-04
.sIDAY MORNING. JAN. 4, 1859
RACE WAR MYSTERIES.


What is the matter with the Southern
papers which are filled with editorials and
head lines about Trace War?' If one
! of them hears cap snap, he concludes
that there is Race War. This is new
and nervous role for our friends to appear
in. It could be tolerated if it didn't have
the same effect on the South as the cor
don of evil reputation that the Re-
publicans used to draw around it in
Reconstruction times and since, land which
to this day they attempt to string up every
time Presidential election comes off.
There has not been, is not. and never will
be any Race War in the South. Neither
race desire it, nor as far as we have seen,
have countenanced it. In Mississippi re-
Gently band of Negro assassins laid in
.. ambush and killed two and wounded ten
white men constituting the whole of
sheriff's posse. Those Negroes were not
backed up by any other Negroes; but On
the contrary the Negroes of the vicinity
fed to escape general vengeance by the
whites which they feared. On the side of
the whites there was as little appearance
of any race war or any desire for one.
They made no general attack on the
Negroes. and though out I'D large num-
Der and heavily armed in pursuit of the
assassins, are not reported to have kill
ed anybody but two of the criminals
whom they shot in effectlng their cap
ture. There Was certainly no race war
in that, and yet it was heralded all over
the South and North as the beginning of
one. Coming closer home, we find tele-
grams in the Northern papers, and in
some Virginia papers, characteriZing
broil In Stafford county in this State as
"The Race War; The facts. as we learn
them from the Star. staunch Democrat
ic paper published in Fredericksburg, are
that it was rather Whiskey war than a
race war. A number of whites and blacks
gathered at country store and all pro
crossed in harmony until enough were
nudge between white man aud black
the memory of which was revived by
hiskey. The two principals COM
menced e. !hting, and the fighting became
general, Thomas Hefin, white. being
killed. and colored man, name unknown,
also being killed.
There is no more peaceable Common
wealth in the Union, nor one in Which
) race war or anything like it, is more re-
mote from the thoughts of either race,
than is the State of Virginia. and
it is exceedingly bad policy to seize
on fight between drunken men at
country crossroads store, and because
they are of different colors herald it to the
world as ''Race War" The very idea
OF a race war where the Anglo-Saxon race
is numerous, is absurd. They would put
it out as suddenly and effectively as a
candle is snuffed out. But there is no
provocatioH, no irritation, no dispute, be-
tween the Whites and Negroes at the
South Of sufficient magnitude to torn the
ground of any war" of higher grade than
cross roads scrimmage under the in
Auence of Christmas. The South during
the Democratic Administration about to
close, has superbly lived down the false
reputation given it by Republican Ad-
minlstrations in past years, and no we'll
wisher desires to see it resurrected.
Certainly we of the South should not give
helping hand to it by exaggerations and
historical descriptions of local troubles.