Year: 1879

There are some excellent Southern
gentlemen, in Congress and out Of it,
who are very much shocked at manifes-
tations of Southern lawlessness, like
the shooting of a postmaster in Black
vile, the expulsion of q postmistress
from Grenada, the murder of Dixon, and
the murder of the Chisholms; but are
still more indignant at the Northern
newspapers which make the facts pub
lie. "Why," they ask, twill the Rad
ical press persist in sowing discord be-
tween the sections by harping on these
unfortunate occurrences? There are
bad and violent men in the South, as
there are everywhere else, but they are
not the representatives of Southern
character. We have right to demand
that we shall be judged by our best peo-
pie and not by our worst.


This would be q reasonable remon-
STRANGE but for the inconvenient cir
cumstance that the bullies and men of
blood have taken the management of
Southern politics into their hands and
are not only running the administra-
ton Of "home rules after their pecu-
liar fashion, but are applying the same
violent methods to the government of
the whole country. The manner in
which they see fit to elect Congressman
and legislators and to treat Federal
officers concerns not themselves alone,
but us too. The bulldozer applies the
shotgun not merely to the correction
of the political opinions of the local
niggers," but also to the subjugation
Of the free North. Every political OUT
rage in South Carolina and Mississippi
is in effect an attack upon Northern
ballot-boxes. Every Southern gentle
man who is sent to Congress by a ter
rorized constituency. to make laws for
the whole Nation, is practically repeat
ing the bludgeon work which Preston
Brooks applied to his controversy with
Charles Sumner. 1t is the height of in
science to ask US to submit to it in
silence.


Southern gentlemen, so long as they
take office by the help of such Outrages,
have no right to hold themselves above
the perpetrators. There is more than
one Southern Senator whose credentials
are dyed in blood. There is one who is
known to have been in league with
gangs of desperate men to establish by
lawless violence the State Government
which afterwards sent him to Washing
ton. Yet no Southern Democrat thinks
the worse Of these gentlemen because
they have stopped to take advantage of
fraud and murder. They do not think
the worse of themselves. In truth,
there is no vigorous public condemna-
ton of political outrages in the South
ern States. Violence is sometimes Ia
mented, because it has bad look
abroad, or because it disturbs the COM
munity, or from some such feeling as
moved the engine-driver when he said
he hated to run over man-it mussed
up the track so. But of genuine indig-
nation at political mob-violence there
is hardly trace. A Mississippi jury
would not convict the Chisholm muir
derers. Republicans in South Carolina
beg their friends here to say nothing
about the murder of Brice, lest the local
courts and juries refuse to punish the
assassins :" if the political features Of
their crime are forced into promi-
nence."


The South cannot ask to be judged by
her best men until she herself accepts
these best men for guides. At present
they have no perceptible influence upon
the behavior of their townsmen. They
are models of department whom no.
body initiates. The real leaders are
the men with the shotguns.-N. y.
Tribune. ' ts