Black and White

ot to

Table of

heater upon which the hostile factions decide by superior prowess, or numbers, or sagacity, the questions at issue. In these conflicts, right usually, but not invariably, triumphs, as it should always do. Revolutio

Rebellion are to-day as far from solution as if no shot had been fired upon Fo

untry, Fate had written upon the walls of the nation that it "must go," and go it must, as the result of wise statesmanship or amid the smoke of battle and the awful "diapason of cannonade." No man can tell whether

eneral amnesty for all their sins of commission is seriously to be debated. If we may judge of the proper treatment of treason by the example which, according to Milton, High Heaven made of Lucifer, amnesty is a failure; if we may judge by the almost absolute failure of the results of the war of the Rebellion, we may

cy, was ever more fatuous in every detail. How could it be otherwise? How could the men who devised it expect for it anything more than a speedy, ignominous collapse? All the past history of the Southern states unmistakably pointed to the utter failure of any policy in which the whites were not made the masters; unless, indeed, they were subjected to th

r, with his musket strapped to his shoulder and the sharp thorn of ignominious defeat penetrating his breast; the master class, educated for two hundred years to dominate in his home, in the councils of municipal, state and Federal government; the master class, who had been taught that slavery was a divine institution and that the black man, the unfortunate progeny of Ham, was his lawful slave and property; and the slave class, born to a state of slavery and obedience, educated in the school of improvidence, mendacity and

, a poor, despised people, without lands, without money, without mental resources, without moral character-these peoples equal, indeed! These peoples go peaceably to the ballot-box together to decide upon the destiny of government! These peoples melt into an harmonious citizenry! These peoples have and exercise mutual confidence, esteem and appreciation of their common rights! These peoples dissolve into one people! The bare statement of the case condemns it as impracticable, illusory, in the extreme. And, yet, these two peoples, so different in character, in education and mat

avery, when sordid interest dictated a modicum of humanity and care in treatment. And I arraign the "Reconstruction policy" as one of the hollowest pieces of perfidy ever perpetrated upon an innocent, helpless people; and in the treatment of the issues growing out of that policy, I arraign the dominant party of the time for base ingratitude, subterfuge and hypocrisy to its black partisan allies. With the whole power of the government at its back, and with a Constitution so amended as to extend the amplest protection to the new-made citizen, it left him to the

on of affairs in the late Insurrectionary States," on the part of the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States, reported February 19, 1872, my

nnocent citizens at Danville, Virginia, in 1883-even unto the present time? If the shot upon Fort Sumter drew down upon the South the indignation and the vengeance of the Federal government,

The arm of State authority was paralyzed, the operation of courts of justice was suspended, lawlessness and individual license walked abroad, and anarchy,

d upon the Holy Evangelists of Almighty God, do, of my own free wil

and constitutional liberty, as bequeathed to

ose the principles o

ress, or pecuniary embarrassments. Females, friends, widows, and the

r, or any of the foregoing obligations, I must meet with the fearful punishment of

and Constitutional liberty"! Let us see what kind of "justice, humanity and

history, to realize that even its existence has been for so long a mooted question in the public mind. Especially is this remarkable in view of the effects that are disclosed by some of this documentary evidence to have been prod

he purpose of the organization at that time, whatever i

tee which took that te

rrendered all claims, and then the election was carried by the Democracy. The parish of Orleans contained 29,910 voters, 15,020 black. In the spring of 1868 that parish gave 13,973 republican votes. In the fall of 1868 it gave Grant 1,178, a falling off of 12,795 votes. Riots prevailed for weeks, sweeping

ad a registered majority of 1,071 votes. In the spring of 1868 they carried the parish by 678. In the fall they

hirteen captives were taken from the jail and shot. A pile of twenty-five dead bodies was found half buried in the woods. Having conquered the Republicans, killed and driven off the white leaders, th

w how cruel men can be under conditions favorable to unbridled license, undeterred by the strong arm of constituted authority; they show how helpless the freed people were; how ignorant, how easily led by unscrupulous adventurers pretending to be friends and how easil

ot detail, the horrors of the Ku Klux period. They are a link in the chain: and though today's links are different in form and g