The St. Johns herald., 1892-08-04
H Southern Mans Northern Views.

du amusing COIitflouIioH DJ M
 John s. Wise, republican candidat
 for governor of Virginiain 1885, O
 "Republicanism in the South," tn
 gist of which is that there isn't an,
 can'tbe a white republican party il
 the South. The fates-that is t,
 say, the policy and exigencies of re
 publicanism in the North are agains
 it. MT. Wise takes facts as he fnd
 them. A good republican himself
 and now citizen of New York, ht
 is in a position to play the role O
 candid friend, and does It. In the
 outset Mr. Wise attempts to clear the minds of his party associates oi the mist of error and prejudice through which they view the South ern question. There is no animos- ity toward the Union at present, he tells them, among Southern people.
 
 "Not one democrat in ten thousand in the South harbors," he says, "any resentment against the United States. There is no reason pertain ing to war issues why Southern whites should be solidly democrats" :" There is every reason-apart from republican policy since 1865-why they should be divided as Northern whites are divided into republicans and democrats. As late as 1860 Virginia and Tennessee cast their electoral votes against the demo- cratic candidate. Wings, federalists, etc., up to reconstruction times, vied with democrats in those and other Southern States for political control. What, then, fused the dis cordant elements into such a mass of democracy that it seems useless to attempt to break 1t up?
 Mr. Wise answers the question. It was. he says, "a course of idiotic legislation" now known as "recon- struction," which began by with holding the suffrage from all the whites and threatening to give it to all the blacks" Thus, all white citizens of the South were driven into opposition through resent ment and fear" Had the republi- can leaders been wise they would, Mir. Wise says, have reserved the l the question of negro suffrage" and permitted "the old whig and demo- cratic clements" who, he tells us, cordially hated each other," to re- new their war upon each other. In that case, when negro suffrage came, the negro vote would have been di- vided between the two parties, and "therc would have been . substan- tial element of whites in both par ties"
 But nothing like this happened. The whites were disfranchised. The state governments were turned over to utterly irresponsible whites and negroes" The result was the union of federalists, states rights men, whigs. know-nothings and demo- crats into a party which "professed no tenet save the purpose to assert and maintain white supremacy" This nonndescript combination af- terward assumed the name of de- and found friend and protector in the democracy of the North.
 The fear of renewal of negro is, MT. Wise ayers, the sole tie of the solid South. That fear compels all who identify them selves with Southern interests to vote the democratic ticket. Now and then there is bolt, like the movement in Virginia or the alliance movement in South I' Carolina. but the memory of recon fortified by race prejudice, steadily works. like the law of gray to bring everything back to the starting point. Even good re- publicans from the North who go I South to live, in few years, says ( Mir. Wise. desert their party and ( vote the democratic ticket on na- l