The New Orleans Daily Democrat

The New York Tribune foresees a revival of South Carolina Republicanism. A few months ago it was thought that if there ever was a dead party in the world, it was the Southern Republican party, and particularly the Southern Republican party of South Carolina. The party was formed strictly on the color-line; it had been conducted on the worst principles of theft and spoliation. The whole country had just been treated, in the Carpenter and Cardozo cases, to an expose of its full inside workings, and the fiercest Radicals of the North were compelled to admit every charge made against their Southern allies.

These disclosures, and the fact that they no longer had their hands on the public treasury, appeared to have completely disorganized the Republicans of South Carolina. They gave up politics for some months and failed to vote or to participate in any way in the elections. Charleston county, although boasting of a large negro majority, was carried by the Democrats without opposition, and a half a dozen other counties followed its example and returned Democratic members to the Legislature instead of Republicans, as they had been in the habit of doing since 1868. But a few weeks ago the paralyzed Republican party of South Carolina seemed to revive, and Beaufort county was carried by 3000 majority for one of the most impudent and extreme Radicals in the State. Two other elections within a month in Sumter and Georgetown counties produced similar results, and every Republican candidate was elected by a large majority.

It is true all these counties are negro counties—Georgetown and Beaufort by immense majorities—and the Republicans therefore might be reasonably expected to carry them in any event, but the unpromising feature is the fact that the elections were the regular old color-line elections of reconstruction. All the candidates of the Republican party were negroes, and all the negroes voted solidly the straight Republican ticket.

It is this fact that makes these elections important. Notwithstanding the efforts of President Hayes and of Gov. Hampton, the negroes of South Carolina are endeavoring, it appears, to revive once again that color-line which they, equally with the whites, have so much reason to regret. The dangerous lethargy that always comes after an exciting political contest is seen in these elections. The white people of South Carolina, perhaps of Louisiana as well, have grown careless about politics, satisfied with the victory of last November, and by this carelessness are apt to allow half the fruit then won to be seized from their hands. It is to be hoped and expected that the Democrats of South Carolina will quickly quench this threatened revival of color-line Republicanism in the Palmetto State.