Year: 1874

your columns, to reply to an attack
recently made upon me in a public
address before a large audience of all
parties at our neighboring town of
Maryville.


The address to which 1 refer was
delivered by the Rev. p. NJ. Bartlett,
DID,, President of Maryville College.
For the information of my friends at
a distance who have not the honor of
knowing Mr.. Bartlett, or the charac-
ter of his school, will say that he is
Presbyterian clergyman, and that
his college is a mixed school, where
the whites and blacks are educated to-
gether.


1 have no personal feeling against
Mr.. Bartlett, and will say that have
always heard that his college was in n
flourishing condition, and that he was
a Jealous and capable instructor.


Mr.. Bartlett is mistaken in suppos-
ing that the passage of this Civil
Rights Bill will make his favorite
theory of mixed schools popular in
Tennessee and the South, or that it
will eradicate any prejudice now ex-
isting toward them. Mr.. Bartlett
seems to think that the passage of the
bill will break down social prejudices.
In this he is mistaken, for these are
and always will be beyond the reach
of legal enactments.


So far as my information extends,
the white people of East Tennessee,
of all parties, who endorse my posi-
ton on the Civil Rights Bill, have
never manifested a disposition to
throw any obstacles in the path of
Mr.. Bartlett in his mixed school un-
dertaking.


Mr.. Bartlett's school is mixed, but
it is a private school, and those pat
ronizing it are only exercising the
rights which the people of the South
claim for themselves, that is, local
self-gOverument and freedom from
Federal Intervention in the adminis-
tration of purely local and domestic
concerns. The white people who send
their children to Maryville College do
it voluntarily and because they have
no objections to the co-education of
the races. Now L should be utterly
opposed to any act of Congress which
would prevent this. People of all
classes ought to be left free to select
their own associations. What I object
to in Mr.. Bartlett is that he is unwill-
ing to accord to others the same
privileges which they accord to him,
and the patrons of his school. He is
a representative of small class of
white men in Tennessee, who may be
properly termed negro lcOrshiPpers.-
They are not content that the negroes
and whites should be educated togeth-
where they desire it, or that they
should have equal educational facili-
ties in separate schools, but they
want the Civil Rights Bill passed so
that all white people shall be eompell-
ed TO adopt this mode of education or
be taxed to support it whether they
adopt it or not. This civil rights bill
treats the black race as superior to the
white, and gives it superior privi-
leges. The New York Times sustains
this view of the ease, and, as the lead
ing organ of the National Republican
Party, it expresses the views of hun
dreds of thousands of Republican
readers. 1 quote from the Times of
but few days ago. In its issue of
May 9th, it says:


Nobody would think for a mo-
ment of making such law as the one
now proposed for the benefit of the
Irish or German immigrant, and it is
not singular that the popular sense of
| Justice, which is always in advance of
that of legislators, should be already
asking why the negro should be thus
| especially favored. If it is intended
to break down social preiudices it will
prove futile, for these are and have
ever been beyond the reach of legal
1 -
the negroes rights which are not ac-
corded to other classes of citizens, it
will be equally a dead letter, for the
people will not tolerate any distinc-
tions in the law for or against any
class. This bill is, In fact, distinc-
ton against all classes except the ne
groes, and as such it is sure to meet
with very general opposition. If it
is accepted as Republican measure,
the party is sure to suffer from it
This fact was very clearly recognized
during the lifetime of Senator Sum
ner. and we do not see that his death
has made any difference in the
case"


Mr.. Bartlett, though a white man,
seems to regard the black race as en-
titled to superior privileges to his
own. I do not believe that the per-
sonal freedom of all the white people
of the South, and all their rights of
local self-government, should be sac
rificed to accommodate a few thous-
and insolent negroes, or to crafty the
caprices of negro-worshipping white
men and selfish politicians.


Mr.. Bartlett, in the lecture he de-
liyered, is represented as arraigning
me for the letter 1 wrote in reply to
the attack upon me by the Nashville
Colored Convention. He character
lied my letter as "untimely," tout