war, have not devided the negro vote, and uniting with those who
were intelligent, gained control of the State so as to secure it
an efficient government? It would seem to the ordinary political
thinker that even three-sevenths whites could control the
four-sevenths blacks. One thinks of the Saxon in India with the
Hindoo, in Canada with the French, in Jamaica with the Negro, in
Ireland, after a turbulent fashion, with the mailed hand, and
yet his rule is now absolute. Why is it that in South Carolina it
is otherwise? My gifted and honored colleague, Mr. Nordhoff, in
his series of letters from the South, says it is because he has
been corrupted by the carpet-bagger. With all deference to that
distinguished authority, his answer is an imperfect solution.
Surely the Negro who knows his old master, who has lived with him
during his life, who in most cases looks with affection upon him
and all who belong to him--surely in the new relation he will
look to the master as a friend, and take his guidance in so
solemn a duty as entering upon citizenship. This too because as
we learn from all authorities, and from none more clearly than
Mr. Nordhoff, that the master, "accepts the new relation" and has
no purpose of renewing the war, and, so far as from wishing to
return the negro to slavery, feels that the old system was an
error, even from an economical point of view, and that in time
its abolition will prove to be a blessing to the white, whatever
it may be to the black. Why, then this being the case, has the
carpet-bagger been able to strangle a commonwealth like South
Carolina, and with the aid of the Negro, plunder his old master?
The only answer that I can see is that the whites have not taken
any pains to cultivate the blacks, who would naturally go with
them, or the intelligent and honest Northern men who came here,
meaning in good faith to make the South a home and to grow up
with the Southern people. In nearly every case with scarcely an
exception, the whites have drawn a line, just as Jefferson Davis
drew when he embarked upon the Confederacy. They alone have a
right here. Whoever opposes him is a "scalawag," a
"carpet-bagger," or a "nigger." A "scalawag" if as a Southern
born man he votes with the Republicans; a "carpet-bagger" if he
come