The News And Herald

BLOWING HOT AND COLD.
HOW THE CARPET-BAGGERS ARE
VIEWED BY OLD FRIENDS.
A few wholesome truths from influential
Radical Journals--Blaine still bowing
the pregnant hinges of the knee to
the political Baal.
Now that the sceptre has for ever
passed away from Southern Radical-
ism, none are more severe in their
denunciations of carpet-bagism and
negro domination than those very
journals which were hotly urging negro
philistines and foul-mouthed calum-
niators of the Southern whites as
long as such a course brought grist
to their mill. Here is what the
Chicago Tribune has to say in com-
menting upon Packard's recent
defiant letter :
"Mr. Packard mistakes the value
of the services of the carpet bag
governments to the Republican par~
ty. They have been a disgrace and
a reproach to the Republican party.
They have been a burden under
which the party has staggered for
several years. It was the reproach
that the Republican party was
coercing the people of the South at
the elections by the use of bayonets
that caused the wide-spread de-
fection of 1874 and 1876."It was
the disgraceful character of the
carpet-baggers and the reproach of
'bayonet rule' that cut off 30,000 of
the Republican majority in Illinois
in 1876, which rendered Wisconsin
a doubtful State, reduced the ma-
jority in Ohio to a handful, and lost
to the party the electoral votes of
Indiana, Connecticut, New Jersey
and New York."
The New York Tribune, which
was founded by Horace Greeley, and
which for years has been the special
champion of abolitionism and uni-
versal suffrage, now boldly abandons
the cause of the down-trodden
African,"and literally flays him alive.
We quote from one of its recent
editorials, giving a retrospect of
Radical rule in the South :
"The result is before the world
In one way or another, by fair
means or by foul, the control of
several of the States has been secur-
ed to the colored race. They have
occupied the bench and the jury
box, made the laws, collected the
revenue, voted the appropriations,
handled the money-done every-
thing
except
pay the taxes.
They
have
had
ample op-
portunity to develop their own
latent capacities, to get an educa-
tion, to make fortunes, to acquire
land, to rise in society. What have
they done of all these things? Our
correspondent in Charleston drew a
picture of the condition of the col-
ored people of South Carolina, and
it is about the same in every State
where the negro has held sway. As
a race they are idle, ignorant and
vicious. They neither learn nor
save.
They were fond of their
books in the first novelty of freedom
but they care for them no longer.
They were eager to get their little
farms, but they have let them fall to
ruin. Why should a man go to
school, asks the usual type of South
Carolina freedmen, when it is so
much nicer to go to the Legislature
or get elected Justice of the Peace?
Why should a man work when he
can make a living by stealing chick-
ens, and sit on the fence for amuse-
ment? Let us face the truth. Our
Southern policy has not only been
a curse to the whites, but it has
been a curse to the freed people for
whose benefit it was adopted. It
has not made them good citizens.
It has not taught them how to use
the ballot. It has introduced
among them a demoralization more
dangerous to the country than the
violence of the white league, for no
Republican government can stand
which is not founded upon the
suffrages of the virtuous and in-
telligent."
Other Radical journals and politi-
cians have similar unkind words for
the carpet-baggers, while few
apologists are found for them any
where. Yet they are not totally
bereft. The Massachusetts Metho-
dists and Beast Butler and a
few kindred spirits still wall-
ow in the mire. And last but not
least, Jim Blaine, the bond thief
avows himself their special cham-
pion. He has penned the following
characteristic epistle :
"To the Editor of the New York
Herald :
Your Columbia correspondent is
in error in his statement that I had
a conference with Governor Cham-
berlain in New York. I have seen
Governor Chamberlain but once for
a year, and that was in the private
Cabinet room of President Hayes on
the 27th of March; nor have I
written or telegraphed him or heard
from him in any way. The same is
true respecting Governor Packard,
except in the matter of one telegram
received from him, which I read
publicly in the United States Senate,
but I am sure that Governor Chain-
berlain knows that he has the pro-
foundest sympathy in the heroic,
though unsuccessful struggle he
has made in South Carolina for civil
liberty and constitutional govern-
ment-and equally sure that "Governor
Packard feels that my heart and
judgment are both with him in the
contest he is waging against great
odds for the governorship that he
holds by a title as valid as that
which justly and lawfully seated
Rutherford B. Hayes in the Presi-
dential Chair. I trust also that
both governors know that the
Boston press no more represent the
stalwart Republican feeling of New
England in the pending issues than
the same press did when it demand-
ed the enforcement of the fugitive
slave law in 1851.
Very respectfully,
JAMES G. BLAINE.
Augusta, Me., April 10."
The Radicals North and South,
are a queer lot, and it is a matter of
rejoicing that their power is irren
trievably lost.