Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 October 1878 — “Publicans and Sinners.” [ARTICLE]

“Publicans and Sinners.”

Gov. Wade Hampton, of South Carolina, in a recent speech at Greenville, in that State, relates the following: I was told the other day by a distinguished clergyman that he had had a discussion with one of his old colored friends, and had asked him, among other things, why he was not a Democrat. The old man said that he had been taught that it was contrary to the teachings of the Bible. The clergyman wonderingly asked where that doctrine could be found, and the old man replied that the Good Book only only spoke of two political parties—the ’publicans and the sinners—he thought he must choose between them and be either a ’publican or a sinner, which was but the Bible name for a Democrat. Gen. Fremont says that his Indian policy, as Governor of Arizona, will be to interfere with those agreeable gentry as little as possible so long as they do nothing to retard the development of the Territory,