The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-12-26
 A CENTRE SHOT.

The Manufacturers Record, speaking of the much discussed race problem, declares its belief that many mistakes have been made ir dealing with the freed men, and that one of the gravest mis- takes has been the policy, under the auspices of the national government, of treating the negro as If the only dif- ference between him and the white race of the country was the color of his skin"
 No truer words have been written or spoken on this vexatious subject. We have often wondered whether the course pursued by the Federal Government and by certain Northern people after the close of the Civil War was the result of malice or ignorance, or both combined. It is difficult and distasteful to believe that 1t was malice alone, for one dislikes to think so ill of any portion of the American people as to admit that they would deliberately seek to place on their Southern fellow citizens calamity in- finitely worse than the four years of war which proceeded and led up to it.
 On the other hand, it is hard to imagine that those who controlled and directed the course which the government adopted were so densely ignorant and blno as to act on the theory that the only dit- ference between the two races was the color of their skin, as The Record ex- nresses it. There were men high in of flee, and who had @ controlling voice in public affairs, who were aware or the conditions prevailing at the close of the war, and who were fairly well acquainted with the nature and characteristics or the negro. They knew how densely ignorant and practically helpless he was. Whether that condition was the fault or misfortune of the colored man made no difference as to the fact. It existed, and common sense sound policy, and all the instincts of humanity demanded that a course should be pursued in the South which would be best for both races. A very limited knowledge of the South and the negro ought to have satisfied any man with half sense that the effort to at once place the negro on level with the white man, or above him, as was prac- tically done, was to build up an antagon- ism which had not previously existed and which was bound to injure the negro in all material ways, while 1t widened the breach between the races and cut off from the negro the sympathy and protection which he would have re- ca,ved from his late master under diff ferent circumstances. It was unjust to the whites.
 From whatever point we look at 1t we are bound to feel surprised that the statesmen of the North were so ignorant or so malicious as to undertake to reverse the laws of nature at the very worst time that such an. experiment could have been tried. The South had druhk the cup of bitterness almost to the dregs' Many of her best and bravest sons nlled soldiers' graves; others came back to ru,ned homes and impoverished familles' and all were worn out with the learl ul struggle and almost hopeless over the nrospects for the future. To add to all | their Encouragement and desponuehcy tbev saw their former slaves suddenly given the "toga viriliS" and were taunt- insly bidden to remember that all men
 were created free and equal and tna' in future the ignorant negro who hao just emerged from the cotton field was to have and exercise all the CIVIL ana political rights which the whites en- | joyed.
 Only the most besotted ignorance or the most Satanic malice can account for the conditions forced on the Southern people, and even now there are people in the North who are not satisfied, but sssm bent on reopening the old wounds and reincarnating, if they can' the monster of thirty years ago or more Sometimes we are inclined to doubt fl
 some prominent Northern people are
 altogether human.