Search the Newspapers Browse Newspapers by Date Articles Indexed by Topic About the Newspapers Valley of the Shadow Home

Staunton Spectator: August 20, 1867 Go To Page : 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |

[No Title]
(Column 01)

Summary: Argues that "there is nothing more certain than that, under the negro rule which the radicals have imposed upon the Southern States, the white people will be compelled to leave, and that ere long the whole Southern portion of our country will be a vast negro province."

Full Text of Article:

There is nothing more certain than that, under the negro rule which the radicals have imposed upon the Southern States, the white people will be compelled to leave, and that ere long the whole Southern portion of our country will be a vast negro province. Ex-Governor Perry, of South Carolina, in a late letter, truthfully and forcibly says "it is idle folly to tell the people of South Carolina that capital and immigration will flow into the State when reconstructed on the Black Republican platform.-On the contrary, as soon as this negro government is organized, every dollar of foreign capital South Carolina will be withdrawn, and not one cent will come here seeking investment. Nor will any foreigners move here to settle, under negro rule, and the confusion and disturbance which it will give rise to in the State. Mr. Calhoun predicted, years ago, that if the negro was set free the northern people would insist on his right o suffrage, and, if allowed, the negroes would seize the government and the white people would have to leave the State."

[No Title]
(Column 02)

Summary: Reports that John Myers of Hardy County was robbed of seven hundred dollars when "seven persons disguised as negroes" forced their way into his home and plundered it.

[No Title]
(Column 02)

Summary: Reports that the official report of the head of the Freedmen's Bureau shows that the black population of the South has decreased by 1,308,000 "since their freedom."

Speculations on Coming Political Events
(Column 03)

Summary: Contends that, under the "threatening danger of negro supremacy," the "late governing whites of the South" will be subject to "the caprices and revenges of the black race, relieved but yesterday from the moral darkness, oppression, wrongs, and disabilities of African slavery."

Origin of Article: New York Herald

Editorial Comment: "One of the most striking and significant articles that we have seen in the political weather cock, the New York Herald, for a long time, appears in its issue of Friday last. It is a leading editorial on the Johnson-Stanton imbroglio, commencing as follows:"

Full Text of Article:

"The rupture between President Johnson and the refractory and defiant Secretary of War, considered in connection with recent events and developments bearing upon Southern reconstruction, brings forward the new issue of Southern negro supremacy into bold relief. It is morally certain that the stringent anti-rebel and universal negro suffrage policy of reconstruction now pursued in the South the ten excluded States will be reorganized and reinstated in Congress by the predominant negro vote. Let us see what is the inevitable drift of this business, as now progressing, from the facts and figures before us."

The Herald then figures up a victory for the new voters with their few white allies, in every Southern State. Evidently alarmed at the portentous display of its own figures, it submits the following:

"Thus it appears from the developments and all the evidence before us touching the reconstruction programme of Congress, that if carried out according to the laws as applied by Secretary Stanton and the present commanders of the five military districts, the whole ten of the States involved in this ordeal will be at the mercy of the blacks. We are called, then, to meet the question of the probable consequences of this negro supremacy. The return of twenty, thirty, or forty colored Senators and Representatives to Congress is but an item among the results which may be reasonably anticipated.-The consequences of negro ascendancy in the Legislature of this or that State are most to be feared when we consider the unsettled balances as slaves which these Southern blacks will be apt to enforce against their late white masters. Some very significant hints in this direction have already been thrown out in the resolutions of the negro reconstruction meetings of South Carolina. We know, too, that those Northern white radical stumpers in the South who have most broadly suggested the possible application from Congress of 'Old Thad Steven's' panacea of confiscation have excited the liveliest enthusiasm among the blacks. Is it any wonder, then, that Ex- Gov. Perry, of South Carolina, and other leading Southern men counsel the policy of quiet submission to their present military government indefinitely as preferable to this reconstruction and restoration scheme, which will place the State absolutely under the control of the blacks? Do we not also perceive that in this matter there is an opening for a decisive political diversion on the part of President Johnson in his execution of these reconstruction laws in the interval to the next meeting of Congress?

"Granting that the Northern States are prepared for the recognition and acceptance of equal suffrage to the blacks, is New York, or is Pennsylvania, or is Ohio prepared for the full-blown experiment of negro supremacy in ten Southern States, as contemplated by republican radicals in Southern reconstruction? Assuming that if, with a conservative acting Secretary of War, in the place of Stanton, and with five military commanders of Mr. Johnson's way of thinking in the places of the five commanders who think and act according to the gospel of Mr. Stanton-assuming that the result will be to delay the work of Southern restoration for even two or three years-will this not be wiser than to rush headlong into this danger of Southern negro supremacy? Will not the inevitable tendency of negro supremacy in South Carolina, for example, be to drive out the white population or to precipitate that war of races which, if commenced, will be apt speedily to ripen into a war on both sides of indiscriminate extermination? Will social harmony or peace, or financial confidence, or active and systematic industry ever be restored in the South under the threatening danger of negro supremacy?

"We cannot answer these questions truly without recognizing the sagacity and wisdom of President Johnson's policy of giving to the Southern whites as far as possible under the terms of Congress a chance to recover their lost ground, and to take the lead in Southern reconstruction. We are, indeed, so far impressed with the idea that in this view of the question he stands in a strong position that we feel bound to advise him to make the most of his opportunity in bringing the issue before the people of the Northern States for their 'sober second thought' upon it in the coming fall elections. There is no security, and there are a thousand dangers, in the radical programme, which now distinctly foreshadows the placing of the elate governing whites of the South under the political control and subject to the caprices and revenges of the black race, relieved but yesterday from the moral darkness, oppression, wrongs and disabilities of African slavery.-These dangers are so menacing that they must be appreciated by thinking Northern men.-We hold, accordingly, that the time at last has come for a Northern reaction, and, the time, therefore, for decisive measures on the part of President Johnson."

There is food for thought in the above.

[No Title]
(Column 04)

Summary: Argues that allowing blacks to participate in democracy is comparable to John Milton asking his cook to participate in the writing of Paradise Lost, and suggests that "if free governments are subject to such fits of insanity, they are in imminent danger of self-destruction."

Origin of Article: Petersburg Express

Editorial Comment: In speaking of the party madness which confers the right of suffrage upon the colored people of the South in their present state of ignorance, the Petersburg Express says:

Full Text of Article:

"If John Milton had gone into his kitchen and asked his cook to assist him in writing Paradise Lost, or if Isaac Newton had called a convention of his scullions to invoke their aid in the solution of some of his mighty astronomical problems, it would not have been a more insane proceeding than that of this great American people insisting upon bodies of ignorant negroes co-operating with them in reconstructing this magnificent Republic, and working out the experiment of man's capacity for self-government. They know just as much of politics as they do of poetry or mathematics, and no more. Nothing but party madness for power could ever have prompted such gigantic folly, and then comes the melancholy conclusion that if free governments are subject to such fits of insanity, they are in imminent danger of self destruction."

Local News
(Column 01)

Summary: Robinson's Circus and Menagerie gave two exhibitions in Staunton last week, performing for large crowds on both occasions. Dan Castello's Circus and Menagerie will give a performance tomorrow, allowing citizens to compare the two shows.

Winchester Times
(Column 02)

Summary: Argues that nothing is left for white Southerners to do but "hold fast to our integrity, to contribute no aid and give no countenance to the infamous scheme of degrading the white race," and wait for "a wholesome reaction at the North" to end Radical control.

[No Title]
(Column 02)

Summary: Argues that John Minor Botts and "the conservative wing of the radical party" will not win out, and the actions of the Radicals will precipitate a "wholesome reaction" in the North that will "overthrown the vile party which seeks to ruin the South by degrading the only citizens capable of governing it."

Origin of Article: Winchester Times

Marriages
(Column 03)

Summary: Fannie Baylor and Christian Baker were married in the Lutheran Church in Staunton on August 14 by Rev. J. I. Miller.
(Names in announcement: Rev. J. I. Miller, Christian S. Baker, Fannie Baylor, Col. George Baylor)

Marriages
(Column 03)

Summary: F. M. Gilkeson, formerly of Augusta, and Fannie Greene were married at the Culpeper court house on August 13 by Rev. McMurran.
(Names in announcement: Rev. McMurran, F. M. Gilkeson, Fannie R. Greene, McGill Greene)