Year: 1866

From the Raleigh IN. c.) Progess.1


Driving Dat the Qnakers-ExeA~s fr>..


tAe 8ontA.


We have already noticed the arrival OF 4
party of some twenty five persons belonging
to the Society Of Friends, in Washington
City, en- route for the North, and now We
learn that on Monday night about eighty
more passed through this city for the same
destination, and that one hundred and ffty
more will follow in few days. This is 4
cheerful picture, truly While nkite laborers
are invited from aoroad, the best white labor
ers already here are leaving us, and leaving
because they are denied that equality and
protection which they ought a loyal
citizens to enjoy.


The Qnakers, - these people are CON-
monty called. are patient, peaceable, indus.
tr1ous, law-abiding set of people; they will
have no strifes among themselves or with
other people. they took no part ia the late
war beyond what they were forced to do at
the point of the bayonet; they were true TO
the United States Government at heart and
in act as far as possible, all the time, and
they hailed the day Of their deiiverance as an
era OF great JOY. They did their own work,
would never own slaves, and did not look on
slavery as the greatest Of blessings, or slave
holders as being any better than other re-
spectacle people. They have not given any
one just cause of offense, and vet because
they would take no voluntarily part in the
war against the Government, and hailed with
joy the coming Of their deliverers, they are
driven out from the land Of their nativity and
the homes of their childhood by prosecutions
and expressions heaped upon them BY the
disaffected.


These Quakers are honest and strnirhtfor-
ward, frank and truthful; these are the tales
they tell here before leaving, and will repeat
the same at Washington and as they journey
North, and the simple recital will have
more powerful effect upon the Northern mind
and the Congress of the United States than
the studied stories Of all the witnesses that
have been before the Joint Committee of Re-
construction relative to the condition of
affairs in North Carolina. They tell that
they are driven out by prosecutions. and that
they have been hunted down because of their
opposition to the war and their devotion to
the Union, and all the smoothing over Of Mr.,
Graham and others as to the harmony and
loyalty which they assert exists here will not
counteract their simple narrative.


Every man in the South that refused to
have anything to do with the. war, and who
clung to the Union all the time, was odious
while the contest lasted, and is odious now.
and the majority are not willing to recon.
struct unless they can have il nominated in
the bond that they have done nothing wrong,
that the cause of the rebellion was holy
cause; and that the only thing wrong about It
was its failure. This is the feeling in this
and oil the States; and if Congress yields
and allows those who ruled in the insurrec-
tionary States before the war, and whose
reasonable plottings and conspirings plunged
the people into woes unutterable, to rule
again, there will be no peace or safety for the
Quakers or other persons at the South, who
havebeen and are true TO the general Gov
ernment.