The Charleston Daily News

CHARLESTON.
TUESDAY MORNING, JUNE 15, 1869.

Cuffee in the Postoffice.

For some time the Charleston Postoffice has been a coveted prize. DeLarge and other colored politicians, not satisfied with the dignities and emoluments of a plurality of offices, have looked with a longing eye upon the squat edifice with the Doric columns, in which the letters of the lieges of Charleston are delivered and received. The policy of General Grant has been about one-third smoke and two-thirds negro, and there is no good reason why an ambitious Radical South Carolina freedman should not desire to handle the postoffice stamps. The candidates have been encouraged by the course of events, and by way of throwing a tub to the black whale, two of the white postoffice clerks are to be removed on July 1st, and two negroes appointed in their stead.

Well! We have already negro jurors, and negro constables, and negro police, and negro magistrates, and negro legislators; and negro clerks in the postoffice will not break our backs. It will be unpleasant and disgusting; but while negroes make our laws, and, as jurymen, dispose of our lives and property, it will not kill us if they inspect the outsides of our billets doux and scrutinize the queer monarchical stamps upon the letters of our foreign correspondents. And in truth, as we cannot mend the matter by invective or expostulation, we may as well take the thing goodly until the time comes for the removal of Cuffee to a more congenial place.

Postmaster Trott has been rather a favorite in Charleston. No one doubted his Republicanism; but it was of a mild type and did not lead him into any intimate political or social communion with the colored Radicals. Mr. Trott attended thoroughly to his duties and has been a faithful and efficient officer. It is not likely, then, that Mr. Trott has been altogether a free agent. There has been outside pressure somewhere, and the Postmaster may have had to choose between colored subordinates and the official guillotine. This is our view of the situation, and we think that it is justified by the uniform respectability of Mr. Trott's behavior. If he has now fallen from grace, it is because he is determined to retain, if he can, a profitable and comfortable position.

It may not be considered necessary to a proper vindication of Radical principles, that the colored men to be appointed shall be the most ignorant and odorous of their race. The color of the skin should be enough to quiet the uneasy party spirit. If so, a pair of colored men may be put in who do not know the difference between a letter list and an election ticket; and under any circumstances, we presume that Mr. Trott will do all that he can to maintain the efficiency of his department, and to keep his new assistants as far in the background as possible.

We should have liked to defer the change until the cold weather, but white men have no control in these things, and we must try to worry through the next three years with as little damage as possible. The appointment of the colored clerks is another notch in the stick. When the proper moment comes, it will not be forgotten.