n, are
sustained by the pulpit in the South. For example, the Presbyterian
church South repels all overtures for re-union with the Presbyterian
church North, because such a re-union would involve a practical
recognition of the equal manhood of the inferior race. The Presbyterian
church South does not stand alone on this platform. Other denominations
are arrayed side by side with it, and we fear that even the
Congregationalists in the South, with two Conferences in the same State,
one white and the other black, are in danger of being numbered with them.
This is the Southern position. It portends the renewal of the old
antagonism. It repels the North, denying its right to interfere, and thus
draws again the sectional line; and above all, it sets up sharply the
antagonism of races, consigning the Negro permanently to an inferior
place. This implies, of course, that if the Negro will not quietly accept
this place, he must be compelled to do so by force of arms, and in this
struggle the North is notified that it has no right to interfere. We can
only express our amazement at this theory! With the memory of the war so
fresh, when the North broke over all warnings against interference, and
stepped in to aid the helpless slave, can the South now hope to make
these warnings any more efficacious? Can it hope that the North will
acquiesce in a quasi slavery, that sets aside substantially all that it
gained and established by the long war?
And if the struggle comes again, what hope of success can the South
cherish? If in the last national struggle, it was overpowered when the
slave, as Mr. Grady acknowledges, guarded the house while his master
fought for his perpetual enslavement, what can it do when the Negroes
have tasted freedom for a quarter of a century, and now number nearly as
many as the whites in the South? It is for the white people of the South
to say whether that struggle shall come. The North does not desire it,
the Negro does not desire it, and we sincerely believe that a large share
of the people of the South do not want it. Rev. Dr. Haygood, the
efficient agent of the Slater Fund, in a recent article in _The
Independent_, in reply to Senator Eustis, voices, as we hope, the
sentiments of thoughtful and influential Southerners. But it remains to
be seen whether these wise counselors will be heard. Such voices were
uttered before the war, but they were drowned in the noise of sectional
hatred and the imperious deman
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