You may make as many reductions in the appropriations as you please. But until there shall be brought about by a revolution in the public sentiment of the South a better condition of affairs, that part of our country will never prosper as it should. What we need is to have the people of that portion of our country, the tax-payers, those who are interested in the soil, to rise up in their might and to declare that these men who go about from place to place appealing to the passions and prejudices of race and riding into power upon the demerits of others and not upon any merits they may themselves possess shall be forced to that position which they deserve. That is what we want, and I hope my colleague agrees with me that we must have the good men of the South of both races unite so as to render impossible the elevation to power of a class of men who go about creating confusion, stirring up strife, and trying to keep the country all the time in an unsettled condition.
When this shall have been brought about, then and not until then will merit, honesty, capacity, efficiency, be made the test of political preferment, and not a man’s capacity to appeal successfully to race prejudices and the baser instincts of mankind. I can assure my colleague that what we want is to have his party inaugurate a liberal, fair, generous, reasonable policy that will tolerate an honest difference of opinion upon political questions. We want his party to pursue a policy that will convince the colored voters that their identification as a mass with any one political organization is no longer a matter of necessity.
Sir, I express it as my honest opinion that the identification of the colored people as a mass with one political organization, especially so far as local matters are concerned, is not so much a matter of choice as it is, in consequence of democratic hostility to them as a race, a matter of necessity. The affiliation of the masses of the white people in the South with one political organization is not so much a matter of choice with them as it is the result of the existence of a public opinion which in some localities does not tolerate an honest difference of opinion upon political questions except at the sacrifice of social position and success in business.
These are the evils that must be removed. White men must be allowed to disagree upon political questions without being socially ostracised and destroyed in business. Colored men must be convinced that they too can divide in political matters without running the risk of losing their rights and privileges under the Government. When this can be done all will be well and the South will prosper, but not till then.
We hear a great deal about emigration to the South. But how can we get emigrants to go there; how can we get capital there, when men must know before they go that their status in society, their success in business will depend upon their political affiliations? How can you get them to go there when it is understood beforehand that a public expression of an honest political opinion, unless it happens to be in accordance with the popular views of the hour, means social ostracism and destruction in business? How can you get capitalists to invest in southern communities when they are informed beforehand that public opinion there will sustain and tolerate a class of men who make it their business to ignore the Constitution, disregard the laws, defy the decrees of courts, outrage the rights of private citizens, and revolutionize State, county, and municipal governments?
Sir, I say let us have peace, let us have toleration, let us have an honest difference of opinion without being socially ostracised and without being destroyed in business, and then the South will prosper as other sections of the country do, and not till then. These are the evils under which we are laboring and under which we are now struggling.
Now let me appeal to my colleague, [Mr. SINGLETON,] for he is aware of the fact that I look upon him as one of the best men in the House; that I have the highest respect and admiration for him; that I love him, [laughter;] I hate to disagree with him; it pains me to be compelled to dissent from him—let me appeal to him to endeavor to get his party leaders and party managers to re-adopt and faithfully adhere to that grand old democratic doctrine of former days “the Union, the Constitution, and the enforcement of the laws.”
February 10, 1876
THE “BARBAROUS” HAMBURG MASSACRE:
WASHINGTON, D.C., JULY 1876
Ulysses S. Grant to Daniel H. Chamberlain
Washington, D. C. July 26th 1876—
DEAR SIR:
I am in receipt of your letter of the 22d of July—and all the enclosures enumerated therein—giving an account of the late barbarous massacre of innocent men at the town of Hamburg—South Carolina—The views which you express as to the duty you owe to your oath of office—and to the citizen—to secure to all, their civil rights, including the right to vote according to the dictates of their own consciences, and the further duty of the Executive of the nation to give all needful aid, when properly called on to do so, to enable you to insure this inalienable right, I fully concur in—The scene at Hamburg, as cruel, bloodthirsty, wanton, unprovoked, and as uncalled for as it was, is only a repitition of the course that has been pursued in other Southern States within the last few years—notably in Mississippi and Louisiana—Mississippi is governed to day by officials chosen through fraud and violence, such as would scarcely be accredited to savages, much less to a civilized and christian people—How long these things are to continue, or what is to be the final remedy, the Great Ruler of the Universe only knows—But I have an abiding faith that the remedy will come, and come speedily, and earnestly hope that it will come peacefully.—There has never been a desire on the part of the North to humiliate the South—nothing is claimed for one State that is not freely accorded to all the others, unless it may be the right to Kill negroes and republicans without fear of punishment, and without loss of caste or reputation—This has seemed to be a privilege claimed by a few States.—I repeat again that I fully agree with you as to the measure of your duties in the present emergency, and as to my duties—Go on, and let every Governor where the same dangers threaten the peace of his State, go on in the conscientious performance of his duties to the humblest as well as proudest citizen, and I will give every aid for which I can find law, or constitutional power.—Government that cannot give protection to the life, property and all guaranteed civil rights (in this country the greatest is an untrammeled ballot,) to the citizen, is in so far a failure, and every energy of the oppressed should be exerted, (always within the law and by constitutional means,) to regain lost privileges or protection—Too long denial of guaranteed rights is sure to lead to revolution, bloody revolution, where suffering must fall upon the guilty as well as the innocent—Expressing the hope that the better judgment and cooperation of the citizens of the State over which you have presided so ably, may enable you to secure a fair trial and punishment of all offenders, without distinction of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude”—and without aid from the federal government—but with the promise of such aid on the conditions named in the foregoing—I subscribe myself
Very respectfully.
Your obedient servant—
U. S. GRANT
REPUBLICAN CORRUPTION:
NEW YORK, JULY 1876
The Nation:
The South in the Canvass
ONE OF the saddest features in the condition of the South just now is the part it plays in the political contests at the North. We do not think we are at all uncharitable when we say that, during the next three or four months, Mr. Chandler and Mr. Cornell, and their subordinates and assistants in the canvass, will look for outrages and murders of negroes in their paper every morning as the most welcome bits of news on which their eye could light. To hear that a negro in Georgia or Mississippi was taken into the woods and whipped will make them smile; but to hear that several negro houses were burnt down, and the occupants pushed back into the flames, or that twenty negroes, arrested on a charge of chicken-theft, were taken from the custody of the sheriff on the way to jail and butchered in cold blood, will make them laugh and clap their hands, and run lustily to the nearest stump to improve an
d spread the story. We do not say that the Democrats are incapable of experiencing under like circumstances the same unseemly joy; but, luckily for them, the best news they can hear from the South at present is the news of peace and order. It is for the interest of their party that the negroes should be prosperous and secure, and that, if anybody at the South is uncomfortable, it should be the whites. It is of no slight importance to a party to have its interests and those of society identical, and no slight misfortune to be even in a small degree dependent on public calamities for success. The Democrats have in fact had recent and dismal experience of the Republican state of mind, for during the four years of the war a Union defeat and disaster supplied them with almost all their political capital; they wept when their neighbors were glad, and made merry when they were sad. But they may now thank their stars that from this devilish temptation they have been at last delivered, and that the more peaceful the South is, the better for them and their cause.
We are led to make these observations by seeing the great importance which the Republican orators and editors evidently attach to the Hamburg affair. Some of them, in fact, talk of it with as much gusto as if it were likely to exert a decisive influence on the Presidential election, or, at all events, as if one more good, substantial slaughter of negroes would make Hayes’s election sure. Now, no language can well be too strong in condemnation of the state of manners which makes such occurrences as that at Hamburg possible. Nothing the negroes had done or tried to do, according to any version of the affair, could make the shooting of the prisoners anything but a piece of atrocious savagery. It is ridiculous for a community in which such things are either sanctioned or tolerated to talk of itself as civilized. There is no use in being white in color if your conduct is that of an Ashantee, and the shooting of unarmed and suppliant prisoners is in all respects worthy of the society of Coomassie. In resorting to such modes of repressing negro excesses, the Southern men reach the lowest negro level. But then the atrocity of the affair, and of all such affairs, does not necessarily connect it with the general politics of the country. There is no sense in allowing it to determine how one will vote at the Presidential election if the vote is meant merely to be an expression of disapprobation. To vote for Hayes, for instance, without regard to other considerations, merely to show Southerners that we disapprove of such conduct, would be little short of folly. Southerners know already that the whole North, and the whole civilized world, disapprove of such conduct. They would not know it any better if we elected Hayes ten times over. Moreover, the election of Hayes would of itself not necessarily act as a deterrent from such acts. Stump orators and party organs talk as if it would, but they know it would not. Electing a Republican President, or keeping the Republican party in power, is not of itself sufficient to mend matters at the South. We have had a Republican President and a Republican House and Senate for eight years, and yet the South is, according to those who are most clamorous for a further trial of the remedy, in a terrible condition, as the Hamburg matter shows. Mr. Boutwell thought, only last year, that we were on the eve of another civil war; and Mr. Dawes, when stumping for Butler at the last election, assured us that all Southern negroes went to bed every night in confident expectation of arson or murder. Now, if this is the result of eight years of Republican legislation and administration in time of peace, it is useless to urge us to try four years more of it as a certain specific. Nor is it easy to see why matters should get any worse under a Democratic Administration, for the same prospect of impunity exists now which would exist then. As long as the State governors do not call for Federal interference, the President, whether Republican or Democratic, could do nothing for the protection of negro life and property, and of this call there is little chance anywhere now, except in South Carolina or Louisiana, and in a year more there will be none in Louisiana. Nor is there much likelihood that any President will be permanently armed, as under one of the late Force Acts, with the ordinary police duty of protecting life and property at the South, because this would involve a complete change in the structure of the Government.
In fact, when we lay aside rhetoric and think out the answer to the question, In what way is a Republican Administration such as we have had likely to be more beneficial to the colored people of the South than a Democratic one? we are driven to the conclusion that the only difference would be in the fact that Federal office-holders would probably be more friendly to them under the one than under the other, and that the vague dread which has lingered in the minds of Southerners since the war as to the extremes to which the North might go if roused, would die out more rapidly under a Tilden than under a Hayes—we say more rapidly, for die out it will under either. But then, it is hardly worth while for rational men to allow anything so important as a Presidential election to turn on considerations so vague and shadowy as these. Nor will it do to overlook the fact that there is nothing to which all the corrupt politicians of the Republican party cling so eagerly as to the theory that their dislodgment from power will in some mysterious manner be followed by undefined disasters at the South. It is this which constitutes almost their whole political capital at present; and so frantically do they cling to it that, even when detected in knavery, they try to escape by alleging that some of their accusers or the witnesses or bystanders served in the rebel army—reminding one of the American consul who fought on the Papal side at the battle of Mentana, and who, when called to account for it by Mr. Seward, made answer that the man who saw him fight and reported him to the State Department was an Englishman.
We are, however, very far from asserting or insinuating that the condition of the South ought not to enter into the calculations of a voter who is making up his mind on which side he ought to cast his ballot at the coming election. On the contrary, we think it ought to engage his attention as seriously as, if not more seriously than, any other topic. But we do say, with all the earnestness at our command, that he is not the friend but the enemy both of Southern blacks and Southern whites who votes for the continuance of, or with the design of continuing, that form of protection which General Grant has extended to them through Casey, and Packard, and Durell, and Kellogg, and Ames, and Scott, and Parker. If the success of the Republican ticket is going to perpetuate this shameful and demoralizing system, every honest and patriotic man ought to think twice before voting it; and if anybody infers from the occurrence of such incidents as the Hamburg tragedy that the system ought to be continued, he may be sure that his reasoning apparatus needs overhauling. The reason why we did not think Mr. Hayes’s letter satisfactory touching the Southern question was that he was not sufficiently explicit as to the proper remedies for the Southern disease, but simply talked of his desire for peace and conciliation in general terms, such as pacificators of the Grant school have all along used, and which may cover almost any kind of policy. The statesmanlike view of the Southern difficulty is simple enough. It is that a slave society in a thinly-peopled agricultural country, at the close of sudden emancipation and a bloody civil war, is in a semi-barbarous condition, out of which nothing but the combination of the leading civilizing influences which have raised all other societies will raise it, such as education, growth of population, manufactures, and trade; and that even these influences, powerful and beneficent as they are, can do but little without the aid of the great healer and restorer, Time. The Carpet-Baggers’ and Politicians’ view of the case is also simple—viz., that here are six millions of “unrepentant rebels,” who ought to be in all respects like the inhabitants of Massachusetts, and who only need to be literally treated with grape and canister and the penitentiary to make the whole South a pleasing reproduction, in the matter of free discussion, brotherly kindliness, and general culture, of the town of Concord in that State; and that when they attack negroes their case is exactly like that of a party of Bostonians who should abandon their workshops and warehouses and suddenly begin slaughtering the inhabitants of the next block. We were glad to see that Mr. Wheeler, in his letter of acceptance, g
ave in his adhesion to the nobler and more rational view of this great national affliction. We wish Mr. Hayes had been equally explicit, so that we might know that when he comes into power his reform of the civil service will consist, above all things, in the representation of the Administration at the South by the best and purest men it can find, so as to satisfy the whites that we are at least honest and worthy of respect, and the blacks that real liberty has no necessary connection with corruption and disorder or the exaltation of ignorance and the abasement of intelligence.
July 27, 1876
“EVERY ONE WAS A DEMOCRAT”:
INDIANA, SEPTEMBER 1876
Robert G. Ingersoll:
from Speech at Indianapolis
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, FELLOW CITIZENS AND CITIZEN SOLDIERS:—I am opposed to the Democratic party, and I will tell you why. Every State that seceded from the United States was a Democratic State. Every ordinance of secession that was drawn was drawn by a Democrat. Every man that endeavored to tear the old flag from the heaven that it enriches was a Democrat. Every man that tried to destroy this nation was a Democrat. Every enemy this great Republic has had for twenty years has been a Democrat. Every man that shot Union soldiers was a Democrat. Every man that denied to the Union prisoners even the worm-eaten crust of famine, and when some poor, emaciated Union patriot, driven to insanity by famine, saw in an insane dream the face of his mother, and she beckoned him and he followed, hoping to press her lips once again against his fevered face, and when he stepped one step beyond the dead line the wretch that put the bullet through his loving, throbbing heart was and is a Democrat.
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