Democratic Sentinel, Volume 4, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 May 1880 — NO PLACE ON THE TICKET FOR THEM. [ARTICLE]

NO PLACE ON THE TICKET FOR THEM.

Senator Bruce, Frederick Douglass, Milton Turner and other prominent colored men of the Republican party, says the New York Sun, have been holding counsel at the capital with a view to obtaining recognition at Chicago on the Republican ticket. This ambition is not unworthy, but the managers of the machine are not likely to give it much countenance. They cultivate the colored vote very earnestly, and profess abundant sympathy for the race, but when the practical test is made this sympathy exhausts itself in sentimental phrases. There are distinguished colored men in different parts of the North, yet none of them have been sent to Congress, and very few have gained seats in the State Legislatures. Senator Bruce will soon close his career in Congress, without any prospect of re-entering public life from Kansas, which is destined to be his future home. The prejudice against color will follow him on to the free soil, where the great battle for his race was fought more than twenty years ago. When the commission which was sent to San Domingo to whitewash that nefarious job returned to Washington, Grant invited all the members of it to dine at the White House, with the conspicuous exception of Frederick Douglass. He had messed with his white colleagues on terms of perfect equality during the trip, and had joined with them in signing a report that stands to-day as a stigma and a reproach to every name that it bears. But Grant would not admit him to a seat at his table. It is well known that the Republican majority of the Senate was theoretically disposed to admit Pinchback to a seat m that body. But they kept him dancing attendance for three years, and then dismissed him, with a consoling allowance of full pay for a place to which they denied his title in the end. Pinchback is a colored patriot who does not prefer a back seat when he can get a front one. Modesty is not his most shining virtue. He was virtually rejected by a vote of the ladies of the White House, the Cabinet and the Senate. They knew if “ Pinch ” was once admitted he would assert every political right and social privilege of a Senator, and claim as much for his family. Mrs. Grant, Mrs. Fish, and the other grand dames of that shoddy epoch, determined that it would never do to have Mrs. Pinchback figuring at their feasts. They passed an order in council of the boudoir that the husband of Mrs. Pinchback should be sent back to Louisiana. For political effect Frederick Douglass was made* United States Marshal at Washington, but he exercised none of the social functions which belong to that office. Colored men have been sent to Liberia and Hayti, and some of them are messengers and clerks in the departments. But there the recognition stops. Senator Bruce and his associates, who are now organizing for a demonstration at Chicago, will only have their labor for their pains. Conkling. Cameron and Company have no other use for them than as hewers of wood and drawers of water in the party.