Year: 1876

aft ,irs, which are more important to them
than federal politics.


Governor Hayes Projected Southern
Policy.


While the country is looking forward
with ill-concealed fear and loudly ex-
pressed anxiety to the complications which
must and the national dangers which may
arise when the electoral votes come before
Congress for counting, anything which
gives glimpse into the possible future
beyond these will be grasped at with
avidity. The despatch from Cincinnati
which we publish elsewhere presents in a
form, vouched for as authentic, the policy
which Governor Hayes. should he become
| President, will observe to the South. As
the administration republicans, shirking all
the other issues, made their campaign upon
the Southern question alone; as the result of
the election still depends upon the
electoral votes of three Southern States;
as the process of counting the popular vote
in these States has fixed the gaze of the
entire nation upon these unfortunate Com





since they went into rebellion, the utterance
of Governor Hayes on the Southern problem
and how he would solve it will command
and receive the widest attention. How this
utterance comes to be made public
is explained in the despatch itself.
1t will be observed that Governor
Hayes assumed from the start that
he had been fairly elected President,
and hence spoke with the weight OF
the Office, as it were upon him. We
may, therefore, lay aside the disputed
question, and take up the matter
on its merits. With one sweep he
condemns the policy of President Grant and
his administration to the South, and with it
the loathsome parasitic growth which has
strangled tho States where it was allowed to
creep around and enfold the government. He
condemns at one stroke the nefarious work of
the carpet-baggers in the South and their
hackers in Washington. No such startling
pronouncement as this has been made before
in our politics against the immediate
work Of his party by man who believes
himself elected President by its votes.
He doubtless strikes q note in harmony
with all the honest men of the republican
party, North and South, but he discredits
and condemns the men who have been and
are still most strenuously working to secure
his Inauguration. Since Sextus V. arose
from his simulated decrepitude of mind and
body to declare to the College of Cardinals
who had elected him that Rome had found
master, not slave" we have had nothing
in history which will compare with this
declaration.


But what does Governor Hayes propose to
do? Firstly, he indicates that he will take
the advice of the best Southern whites
such men as Mr.. Lamar and Wade Hampton
upon the remedies best calculated to tran
| quillize and build up the South. He
will in proof of this take a Southern
democrat like Mr.. Lamar into his
| Cabinet. He means to have the
federal offices in the South filled by South
ern men he means to treat the Southern
whites as if they were human beings.
| On the other hand he will see to it that
the negroes have the fullest justice and
fair play, and to this end he intends
making the white men of the South
responsible for their care. BY putting the
onus of caring for the negro on the educated
whites of the South he takes the means which
have suggested themselves as the most natu-
raj to every fair-minded man who has
any knowledge of the condition Of Southern
society. This is brief sketch of what
must prove herculean task. if it is to be
done within the lines of the party
which conducted the campaign on the
basis Of the ''bloody shirt" and the count
ing of the votes by the returning
boards. 1t contains some elements which
will test even the credulous, and will
sorely try the fidelity of thousands of
republicans, but it is sound in every
phase. To hear such o decla ration from
the candidate whom General Grant has said
with ring of conscious physical power
..he would see inaugurated" cannot fail
at this conjuncture to prove gratifying even
to those who believe Mr.. Tilden was elected
and who look with well founded distrust upon
the continuance in power of corrupted party
which they are convinced has been rejected
by the nation. 1t will please the country, but
what will Grant and the administration"
say?


The RETURN OF THE GOVERNMENT APPRo-
pgrATIoN for the Centennial Exhibition out