Spirit Of Jefferson

A RADICAL VIEW.

The New York Tribune, one of the most rabid of that unprincipled press that is unrelenting in its persecution of the people of the South, in its professed love for the negro, has a special correspondent who is now making a tour through South Carolina, Georgia, etc., for the purpose of making personal observation as to the true condition of things in these wronged and outraged States. The writer, in his Columbia letter, says that "South Carolina may be regarded as the typical southern State," and he gives the following picture of this type of the South:

"The slaves of yesterday are the masters of to-day, and the old haughty, ruling class is reduced to a condition of political thraldom. In order to comprehend the cause of the present disturbed condition of the State it is necessary to consider the elements of its population and their changed relations to each other. In a total of 729,000 inhabitants there are about 425,000 negroes, who, as a class, are ignorant, superstitious, semi-barbarians, but little elevated in intelligence above their kindred in Africa. I speak of the great mass of the negroes-of the plantation, field hands. They are extremely indolent, and will make no exertion beyond what is necessary to obtain food enough to satisfy their hunger. They rarely commit great crimes, but are given to petty thieving to a great extent. Toward the white man they are still deferential, and assume an air of abject submission; but they are distrustful of the white men, by whom they know they are hated. Upon these people not only political rights have been conferred, but they have absolute political supremacy. They are the governing class in South Carolina, and a class more totally unfit to govern does not exist upon the face of the earth. There are not a dozen highly-educated negroes in the whole State, and the whole number that can read and write is comparatively small."

The writer says that at first the whites, who own the property, could not believe that reconstruction was more than a farce; but when they found it to be a reality-when they saw "the negroes making law, levying taxes, holding office, and acting as jurymen-they passed into a condition of bitterness and rage of which violence and murder was the natural consequence."

The correspondent also enters into details about the efforts of the whites at conciliation, and the formation of a ticket of good and reliable men to save the State from the dominion of corrupt strangers and ignorant and incapable negroes. This effort the blacks seemed at first to favor; but wound up their conference by casting their votes unanimously for the Radicals. Ninety-one out of one hundred and fifty-five members of the two Houses of the Legislature were negroes.