Year: 1876




of Mr.. Tildens letter of acceptance. The
party needs to be educated, and we shall be
disappointed if it's Presidential candidate
does not teach it to exercise more sobriety
Of Judgment on questions connected with
the South.


The foolish levity and fippancy with
which democratic journals are asking why
the recent bloodshed in Newark is not made
topic of federal politics as we'll as the
affair at Hamburg, illustrates the shallow
ness and heartlessness which small politi-
clans bring to the consideration Of great
subjects. 1t is true enough that disturb
ances Of the peace and occasional bloody
that it would be absurd and ridiculous
for the federal government to take
any notice of them. They occasion
no anxiety because they are always on so
small a scale that the State governments
can easily suppress them. Even the miners
riots in Pennsylvania are confined to COM
paratively insignificant portion of the pop
ulation Of that State, but if fully one-half of
its people were laborers in the coal mines,
with q proportionally numerous body of
sympathizers throughout the North. we
could not ignore the magnitude Of the dan
ger. Now, there are several of the Southern
States in which the white and the black pop
ulation are nearly equal, and a local riot any
where in the South, growing out Of antag-
onism Of race, might suddenly spread over
wide areas. The passions both Of the ne
groes and the whites are in an inf1ammable
condition. and any chance excitement may
spread like wildfre The negroes would, of
course, get the worst of it in any conflict of
arms but if they were reused and maddened
to apply the torch of the incendiary to hun
dreds of thousands of Southern dwell
ings and outhouses, the smoke of
conhagration and wall of desolation
which would ascend from SO many planta-
tions would put the whole land in mourn
ing. riot in the South differs from riot
in the North by its infinitely greater
tendency to spread and become universal.
1t is like the difference between an occasional
fire in an ordinary town and the oversetting
of lamp in a COW stable in city like
Chicago, which had been converted into
vast mass of tinder by protracted dry winds
from the prairies. A mining riot in Penn
sylvania is limited by the number of miners;
the old anti-rent riots in New York were
limited by the number of tenants who held
leases under the PATRONS, but race conflict
in the South is liable to extend throughout
all the region where the two races exist in
pretty nearly equal numbers. 1t is pre-
posterous to make comparisons between
occasional riots in the North and race troubles
in the South. conflagration cannot
extend beyond the fuel that feeds it. In the
Southern States the combustible material is
spread over the whole section, and it would
be national misfortune if any event should
happen calculated to lash the excitable negro
mind into frenzy.


We do not expect to make any impression
on the minds of flippant democratic editors,
but We are confident that Governor Tilden
perceives the gravity of the race problem in
the South. We wish to recall his attention
to the former attitude of the democratic
party in respect to emancipation, and to the
main argument urged by enlightened ed demo-
cratic statesmen Of the last generation
against the abolition of slavery. We cannot
believe, and we do not believe, that those
great statesmen were fools. But either they
were idiots or the hippant democratic editors
of our time are idiots. 1t was constantly
maintained by the most sagacious and most
philosophical democratic statesmen of the
last generation that the abolition of slavery
To ~ Of
in the Southern States, resulting in
the determination of the blacks or
the whites. Not only great demo-
cratic statesmen like Calhoun, but
great whig statesmen like Clay promul-
gated this opinion. Owing to fortunate
combination of circumstances their predic-
tions have not as yet been realized but the
tendencies which SO deeply impressed them
are none the less real. Those tendencies
are likely to become operative after the
election of democratic President unless
special precautions are taken. The negroes
are ignorant and credulous, and the re-
publican stump speakers in this canvass will
attempt to convince them that if Mr.. Tilden
is elected they will lose all their rights. If
they are made to believe this there will be
spirit of universal mutiny among the
Southern blacks if the democratic party
elects the next President, and the tre-
mendous and desolating race conflicts which
former democratic statesmen so constantly
predicted as the certain consequence of
emancipation may then be fulfilled, unless
Governor Tilden is wise enough to reassurc
the negroes by declaring his purpose to
maintain their rights.


There was hardly democratic statesman
of any note or mark in the last generation
who did not predict an exterminating war of
races in the South as the probable conse-