Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 April 1890 — ROUGH ON LITTLE BEN. [ARTICLE]

ROUGH ON LITTLE BEN.

A CAUSTIC LETTER FROM GENERAL LONGSTREET. He Exposes the Administration's Secret Policy in tho South —Carpet-Baggers Get tiie Offices in Return Tor Promises of Harri-on Delegates in 1892 How the People s Interest and the Part}’ Are Sold Out for Ome Man —Plain Talk from a Republican. [Washington special.} General Longstreet. of Georgia, the most prominent of Republican ex-Con-federates, has written to a friend in this city a letter upon the Harrison administrat on that is full of dynamite. It gives also an inside view of the means whereby the RepubLcanorg'nizationin the South is used simply to muatsin a hold upon the spoils without regard to the public good or even to party interests. In replying to an inquiry as to whether he had not voted for Mr. Harrison he said: “It is true that I did not exerci-e the privilege of voting for President at the election in 1888, for the simple reason that in this State the majority of the other party is so great that it availed bat little to throw a drop against a current that was overwhelming, and there were many more Republicans who declined to vote for the same reason, and many colored men not only failed to vote for the Republican candidate, but voted for the other side. Now, this indifference is due to a great extent to the management of the so-called Republican organization controlled by Colonel Buck and his associates. They have driven all the leading men of the party in the State from active co-operation in politics—such as ex-Senator Joshua Hill aud Jonathan Norcross, who was the last Republican candidate to run for Governor. To the list may be added all prominent men of the State; for they can not beoome reconciled to be led or managod by the agent of the Washington government, with his contingent of carpet-baggers and negroes. By his management the party in Georgia has about dwindled down to those who hold the United States offices under Republican administrations, and they control these places by sending themselves as delegates to the nominating conventions.” The general, reviewing his relations with the President, said he hal written several letters to Mr. Harrison after the election and had received cordial responses. He visited the President-elect at Indianapolis and explained his views “in regard to the enrpet-baager anl combination.” These views, he says, were fully approved in quite a lengthy interview with the President-elect, and he went so far as to announce that he would not give support to that element. General Longstreet recites the circumstances of the very cool treatment given him by Mr. Harrison afterward, and i s ribes it to the misrepresent ition of Colonel Buck aud his friends. He then savs:

“In announcing my ideas in 1867, as just stated, my purpose was to save the South from the ruin that must suiely follow the putting of our States under the rule of adventurers and n groes. I emphasize this in order to say that my opposition to that dpeful supremacy is now ihq,t which actuate I mo in my first political adveature. This Colouel Buck well knows, and he also probably knows that by the recognition of the Republican administration we could have brought several States of the South into ment of the party nominees in 1892, and in that way he and his and their little coterie would have been lost sight of in all further conventions.” The General concludes his letter thus: “I should not fail to mention that the asoresaid Republican managers sell the party to the Democrats either by failing to put oat candidates or by making nominations who will fell out to the opposing nominee, thus making of their places sources of revenue. Of this we took conclusive evidence to Washington at the inauguration in the shape of one of the books kept by Democrats giving the names of leaders who received the benefit of Democratic election contributions and amounts paid them. If that book were carefully examined I make no doubt we would lind the names of some of the preachers and leaders who have been in the conventions passing resolutions of complaint that negroes are unjustly dealt with South, and that the Republican vote is suppressed by the Democrats. I have no doubt that the vote i 3 suppressed, but its blotting-out influence comes from’the Republican management in support of the Democratic party and for the purpose of holding the Republican party here in limited hands. If a reputable Republican should stand for election to any office here upon his own responsibility and his own claims he must stand against Democrats and Republicans—the latter more bitter than the former—one with fire in front, the other with knives in the rear. All points weighed seem to warrant the conclusion th it it was not the failure to cast a useless ballot at the polls in 1888 so much as the promised vote of the delegates to the nominating convention in 1892 that threw the federal offices of Georgia into the hands and under the supremacy of the carpet-bag-negro alliance. Some Southern men have been appointed, but none can pretend that their influence at home is greater than their leaders’. On the contrary, it must necessarily be less.”