Canton Weekly Register

Negro Suffrage—The Views of a Life-long Democrat—An Honest Convert.

[Correspondence of the Philadelphia Press.]

MOBILE, Ala., June 21, 1865.

I have come down to this part of the country with the intention of casting my lot with it for the future, and feel impelled to send you a line, to tell of my impressions of the people. I have been, for some six weeks, in daily contact with Southern people of all political shades, and, though I am a poor talker, I am a good listener, and not a very bad hand at forming conclusions from a great deal of hearing. I came to the Gulf States full of very fine theories about the necessity of educating the negro before we could extend to him the privilege of suffrage. He was ignorant; he was bigoted; he was prejudiced; he could not be trusted with the privileges of a voter until he had attained a certain standard of education.

Well, sir, I never was farther away from the truth in my life. I have listened by the hour to the familiar, social, unrestrained talk of Southern people: and I have been sorry to conclude, from all that I have heard, that the damnable heresy of the States rights doctrine, upon which—with imagined evils threatened to the institution of slavery—they based their acts of secession and rebellion, is as deeply rooted in their convictions as it ever was. They have failed to establish their principles at the bayonet's point and at the cannon's mouth, but those principles lie as near the hearts of the great mass of them as ever; and true loyalty to the Government, as constituting a principle with the mass of the people at the North, is entirely foreign to the South. The same hostility that was openly displayed in arms exists secretly in the breasts of the Southern people, and is ready at any time to exert itself, no longer in overt acts, but in every possible pacific way to thwart the unity and progress of the Republic. On the other hand, the negro has but one principle and one affection. His principle is devotion to the Union: his affection heart-whole for the cause that has restored him to manhood. No doubts of the justice of the cause cross his mind. No clouds of casuists' raising obscure his vision. His instincts alone point out to him the path he is to tread as a freeman, and point it out unerringly. Who so safe to trust with the ballot of a freeman as he? Can demagogues lead him astray with arts and sophistries? I trow not. He may not know so much of book-learning as his paler skinned brother, but he is less likely to be deceived in what pertains to the advancement of all members of the human family. himself included. And if you could see, as I have seen. the colored people of these Southern cities, sitting at their door-steps, in the moonlight, on hot evenings, teaching each other to spell and count, regardless of the comments of those who passed by, you would not be slow in coming to the belief that even the supposed amount of education gently will not be long wanting. I, for one, contrary to all my previous expectations, am fully convinced that the only safety for the South is in the extension of free suffrage to the people of all colors, and I mean to throw myself into the advocacy of this cause with all my energy. Far better is the instinct that teaches loyalty to the Union than the false education that makes States rights traitors. Shall we trust the future of our country to the instinct that inevitably leads to the right, or to the educated sophistry that inculcates what is false and ruinous?

We are by no means ready for a reconstruction under the domination of defeated but unconvinced traitors.

We have had a terrible war; let us not cast away its fruits. Let us have military government in the Southern States until the sentiment of true loyalty begins to be felt; or. if we must have civil governments reconstructed, let those who have every cause to love the Union not be put aside. while its interests are confided to the hands of those who have been its open enemies.