Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 October 1874 — THE CHATTANOOGA CONVENTION. [ARTICLE]

THE CHATTANOOGA CONVENTION.

The Rc*oi«tUM Adopted end the Address Upon the Condition of AJTeirs In the Sonthern State*. Is the Chattanooga Contention on the 14th the Committee on Outrages reported progress and asked to be excused from reporting to the convention because of the voluminous matter they were required to handle. After some opposition the report was adopted, with instructions to the committee to present their statistics early in the session of Congress. The resolutions, unanimously adopted, are substantially as follows: Whrbbas, We recognize the equality of all men before the latr, ana hold that ft i* the duty of the Government In dealing with the people to mete ont equal and exact justice to all, of whatever race, color or persuasion, religion or politics; and Whereas, The Federal Congress has the undoubted power to enforce by suitable legislation the said rights; therefore, be it - . Resolved, That we reaffirm and indorse the platform of the National Republican Convention adopted at Philadelphia In BW, In declaring that the equal civil and political rights of all citizens should be enforced by appropriate State and Federal legislation. .. •" Besotted, That we fully Indorse the action of the National Administration in taking activs measure* to suppress the outrages, violence and intimidation winch exist in many of the Southern States, and maintaining law and order and the righto of all classes, especially aetion suppressing the recent insurrection and upholding the existing Government of Loniaiana. The third denounces in the strongest terms the perpetrators of the murders and other outrages in the South, and arraigns the Democratic party, which has fostered the existence of the Ku-Klux and White League, and Indorses the en. deavors of the Federal Government to bring the murderers to justice. The fourth recommends that, whenever the government of any State is overthrown by insurrection, that the Federal Government reinstate it. The fifth denounces the color line, and all measures which tend to the inauguration of a war of races, or division of citizens into parties defined by color or conditions. The sixth recommends the President to look into the character and conduct of Federal officers in the South, and remove any against whom there may be suspicions. The seventh recommends the sale of public lands for the benefit of education, the funds to be divided among the States according to the ratio of illiteracy. The eighth urges upon the Republican party in the South ana the Administration at Washington the necessity of selecting none but honest and capable men for •ffiee, and recommends the National Administration to remove all such as do not possess these qualifications. The ninth recommends the opening of rivers and water-courses in the South, and the maintenance of naval stations on the Southern coast. The last is as follows: Besotted, That we earnestly appeal to all citizen* of the United State*, whatever their political associations may be, who revere the sacred majesty of the law and the dignity of the nation, to aid ns in our honest effort to restore tranquillity to our people, to invite immigration to our States, and to develop the material interests of the whole country.

Other resolutions were subsequently adopted, demanding from Congress some action looking to the re apportionment of the Congressional districts in Georgia, and denouncing the misrepresentations and mendacity of most of the agents of the Associated Press in the South in concealing the outrages the Democratic party have committed and in traducing Southern Republicans. The report of the committee to prepare an address upon the condition of affairs in the Southern States was made and unanimously adopted. The address is as follows: A parallel to this convention finds no precedent in the political history of the country. The supporters of a grand humanity, which taxed to the utmost the blood and treasure of the nation to establish, are compelled to come together to vindicate themselves to their fellow-laborers in that cause against the persistent misrepresentation of those who to the death opposed the principles involved in that sublime contest. We meet here to repel the assertion that we are any less patriots than when many of us were found keeping step to the music of the Union, or less conscientious than when others of us upheld the cause of the Confederation. We shall deal truthfully with the Southern political situation, though our presentation of it will he marred by the necessity to condense the most prolific political theme of the day to the concise limits required to command attention. The record of the crimes that have stained Southern soil since reconstruction is testified to in terms by the Committee on Facts and Statis tics, presenting to the public a summary of outrages which staggers belief. We would endeavor to impress upon our political brethren of the North the vast distinction existing between the features of a political contest in their region and of tha same event in the reconstructed States. In the one case it is a rivalry; in the other it is strife. In the one it is confined to a brief period; in the other it prevails at all times and on all occasions, and the political situation seemingly becomes the material interest. In one region the struggle is brief and peaceably conducted; in the other it is prolonged and perpetual, marked by bitterness, intolerance, persecution, murder and assassination. In one section of the Union Republicanism is a badge of honorable patriotism j in the other a large proportion of the Democratic and Conservative classes prefer to regard it as a political leprosy, contact with which Is to be shunned, and those professing its principles are assumed to be the social, moral ana political enemies of the South; and the experience of numbers of this convention demonstrates the fact that within the land of their nativity and adoption their lives, and those of men of their party faith, are in constant peril through the maintenance of a political idea, and they find themselves without adequate protection from either the State or National Government. All the malignancy and bitterness generated by crushed pride of political and sectional opinion; by defeat upon the battle-field and the downfall of the lost cause; by the overthrow of the dominancy of the white race; by immediate poverty, pressing want, and the necessity to labor, are aggravated by the presence of the direct cause—in the opinion of the old citizens of the South —the colored man. The force of the very circumstances under which which the colored man was emancipated and enfranchised made him an adherent to the party In power, and put him in political antagonism with the disaffected white classes. The circumstances of reconstruction under which negro citizenship became a part of the organized law of the nation, and an element of Southern politics, divided parties in many States of the South as a fact, placing the whites in one body and the colored in another, almost as exclusively and distinctly as if the lines of the party demarkation were intentionally drawn upon the distinction of race, and this incidental, yet under the circumstances unavoidable, political distribution of the races into opposing party combinations serves most potently to augment enmity and provoke strife. When the unrepentant, unreconstructed old slaveholders see the long-despised race standing clothed with the dignity and prerogatives of American citizens, the former slave now the political equal before thefllaw of the master, no longer a chattel, but a voter, controlled by his own preferences and conviction, and determined in his political action and affiliation by his own will, not only the vaunted pride of race, but the arrogance eneendered by a vicious and oppressive institution, contribute to embitter many of the white men of the South, and they not unnaturally feel, though unjustly, that the black man's privileges have been acquired through the downfall and at the expense of the proud and hitherto dominant Caucasian. In the presence of these hostile political and personal prejudices the colored people feel that their rights are in jeopardy, and every contest, to them at least, involves not only the success or defeat of cherished political convictions, but the loss or safety of their political and civil rights, and this fear for the safety and perpetuity of interests so dear and vital to them comes in to intensify the anxiety and passion attendant upon every political campaign. The newly-enfranchised citizen is also obnoxious to the opposition masses because of the personal affiliations that the force of his necessities has occasioned. Beginning his new venture as a voter, and making his initial efforts as a citizen, not only embarrassed by the novelty of his duties and his inexperience m public affairs, but without the counsel and sympathy of his more experienced and better informed white neighbors, and in many instances against their bitteropposition, he has been compelled to select the new-comer among the whites as his adviser and leader. Accession to the number of Republicans from the native whites of the South has been retarded bv the business, social and family proscription enforced against this lees prejudiced and more liberal and advanced class of our citizens. The field for the selection of political guides by the colored citizens has been intentionally narrowed by the opposition through denunciation and oppression of every stranger and Southern-born man who espoused their cause; non have their selections always been happy or judicious. One class of their advisers, whether competent or not, is viewed with harsh prejudices as strangers; the other is regarded as worthless to the cause of the South, while the opposition of the masses of the resident white people to both classes has greatly contributed to

embitter the opposition against the colored men. There can be no doabt bat that the creation and introduction of this new political claws at the South, Republicans by necessity and preference alike, acting in concert as a race lor protection against political proscription and the personal prejudice* ottheir former masters, seeking connstsi PSSfSSUSfSI inSEJjg be considered the Srigmal, if not thdhnain, scarce of the violence snd turbulence Rhat manifest themselves in all political straggles in that section. Incidents of common occurrence and exkekep£ feseion* of the sincerity with which the situation l* accepted by the Democrat* in the South. Ourfear* may possibly be groundless, but we do believe that it is the well-matured and deliberate intentioa of the latent secession element to forever battle against the reconstruction measures, the constitutional amendments and against the politics! and civil righto of the colored man. Disregard of law, unless contributing to their obect., and determined hostility to all authority that does not cater to their views, are prevailing features, and we foil to discover any love for the Government against which they rebelled and which continues to repress their hopes and efforts to discard it. He that looks for loyalty among the Democratic and Conservative elements In the South to the American flag as symbolizing a Government based upon principles which they regard as obnoxious, will look in vain. Recent events have developed to the common conviction what we have long been satisfied of: that no Republican State Government will be able to maintain itself in the South without Federal assistance until the Democracy here shall become convinced that it is vain to make war against the idea of civil and political equality for all. Persistent and detetermined efforts are made by oor opponents to create a public opinion at the North that the Republicans at the South are but a horde of robbers and plunderers, and that the removal of the control of the States to thC old citiaens will insure honest administration, prosperity and peace. We find ourselves persistently maligned through a press mainly owned by the men who led the Boutn into rebellion, while the Associated Press agents are known to be hostile to us. Failures and extravagances in State financial affairs, even corruptions of insignificant amounts when compared with many notable instances in other sections, are magnified and declaimed against as ntter profligacy in the Republican party, while like occurrences of quite equal magnitude, happening under Democratic rule, are scarcely noticed ana rarely exposed. Crime, outlawry and violence are represented as peculiarly pertaining to Radical rule. The cry goes ont that all Republican officials are wanting in capacity and integrity, and the continued lament of proscription against the old inliSbitants is but an excuse and subterfuge to conceal the real object in view. Tennessee, Kentucky and Georgia are officered in every department by members of the Democratic party. In Tennessee and Kentucky the same lawlessness exists, though the excuses are gone. The w»r of class is continued as persistently in these States controlled absolutely by the Democracy aa it is in those States the Republican party yet have control of, and throughout nearly all the reconstructed States the power of the Federal Government is invoked to insure tranquillity and protect life. The laws of the States designed for the protection of life and property are not enforced with certainty, and in cases where they are violated by members of the Democratic party for political purposes they are violated with impunity. Congressional investigation has made known to the world that secret, oath-bound organizations exist throughout the Southern States; that their object is by force and violence to prevent the newlyenfranchised race from exercising the right of suffrage and thus to deprive them of political power; that in the execution of their design the members of the secret organizations have committed crimes without number of a fiature calculated to intimidate and terrify; that they are as free from fear of punishment or cause to fear bv the enforcement of the laws of the State* in which the offenses were committed aa though they were wholly guiltless. So prevalent and powerful is the sympathy for those that cothmit these acts that before it tire law is insignificant and powerless. In the rarest instances has a grand jury preferred a bill of indictment against any of the perpetrators of these crimes, and in no instance that has come to our knowledge has a petit jury been found to return a verdict of guilty against the perpetrator of even the most unprovoked and cruel murder when committed upon the person o a Republican for political reasons. In this country the law is sustained by public opinion, and public opinion is stronger than the law. Onr fathers in the formation of our system o government never realized that the day would come when the lives of American citizens could be taken unlawfully and in great numbers, and no witness to such deeds could be found to prefer a complaint to the Sheriff, to execute a warrant, and no sentiment in the community sufficiently strong to secure condemnation of the offense, or the fmnishment of the offenders. Yet this is the case n the Southern States to day. A powerful press preserves silence as to the offense, or persistently misrepresents the circumstances under which it was committed, or where concealment is no longer possible boldly defends the act of the criminal. The character of the dead victim is maligned, and a deed of blood, horrible in its details, is exalted into an act of patriotism. Where, under the laws of the General Government, the United States courts have jurisdiction of the offense, and succeed in arraigning the criminal, the more talented and influential members of the legal profession hasten to volunteer their services in his defense, and where bail is required for the appearance of the offender the wealthy members •f the community eagerly place their names upon the bond. Upon the trial it is simply mpossible to secure fairly, and in the manner prescribed by law, twelve men who will decide impartially between the Government and the accused, and render a verdict in accordance with the law and the evidence. Those men who have sworn to murder them, commanded by their secret organization, and who were perhaps accessory to the commission of the offense, readily appear upon the witness stand to prove that the prisoner was engaged in innocent occupation far from the place where the crime was committed. All the influence and power of the Democratic party are exerted in the defense of the accused, and he may well view with indifference the efforts of those wnose duty it is to secure the infliction of the penalty for the violation of the law. The criminal offenses over which the United States conrts have jurisdiction are limited in their number, and the only restraint upon commission of crimes of the nature indicated exercised by the Federal courts springs in most cases from the annoyance and expense of undergoing a form of trial, and not from the fear of conviction or its results. If in a rare instance a conviction should be had, the criminal, however heinons might be his offense, however much in violation of the laws of his country and of God. would find sympathy and comfort and support from the members of that party in whose cause he was required to suffer, with no sense of disgrace, no feeling of remorse; but with a mind jmbued with the teachings of his Democratic leaders he would endure the penalty for his offense with the pride of a patriot and the fortitude of a martyr. Allegiance and protection should go together. If the paramount allegiance of the citizen is due to the General Government, it should, in return for this exaction, assume the burden of his protection, instead of intrusting the matter to another power to whom a secondary allegiance is due, and from whose neglect or persecution there is no appeal. If the Constitution of the United States warrants it, it ought to be made just as much a crime to murder a citizen of the United States as it is to murder a citizen of a State. When public sentiment approves and indorses the assassination of prominent Republicans, as is the case in most of the Southern States to-day, the State conrts have no terrors to evil-doers; for men are never convicted of crime where the act of an assassin is applauded and regarded as the performance of a duty to the State. If, however, evil-doers are given to understand that the matter does not end with a verdict of acquittal in the State court, and that there is a tribunal clothed with power not only to review the facts and the law, hat to prosecute a murderer for the distinct crime of murdering a citizen of the United States, the spectacle annually presented of United States troops ordered into the different Sonthern States to prevent wholesale murder and violence would never again be witnessed. The fact that the General Government has to send troops into' the Sonthern States to protect one class of citizens from the violence of another, year after year, shows a defect in existing legislation and the necessity of a tribunal clothed with power to visit punishment upon offenders that cannot and will not be inflicted in the State courts. The presence of troops in many instances has had a restraining influence npon the murderous disposition of Southern Democrats, but of late it is only a cause of irritation and the awaiting of a retribution that gluts itself when the troops are withdrawn, with a full knowledge on the part of the assassin that the authority that furnished temporary protection to his victim cannot punish him for nis assassination. Though every feeling of humanity prompts ns to denounce onr political opponents we forbear to retaliate upon them in kind the abuse heaped upon us. We tell the story of Southern Democratic prejudice, malignancy and crime, and challenge refutation. We lay before the country unmistakable evidences that men in nntold numbers have been and are being daily sacrificed for adherence to that political faith which the patriotism of the nation vindicated at the cost of 300,000 lives and three thousand millions of treasure, and we leave it to the sublime sense of right and jastice that characterizes the American people to judge ns aright, and afford to ns upon their own soil that protection that is so readily accorded to the persons of their fellow-citizens in foreign lands.

—The other day a minister offered prayer at the laying of a corner-stone. A brisk young reporter bustled up and said: “Iwish you would give me the manuscript of that prayer.” “I never write out my prayers,” replied the preacher. “ Well,” said the reporter, “ I couldn’t hear a word you said.” “J wasn't praying to you," quickly responded the parson. —The German Emigrant Society reports that 31,779 Germans have arrived in New York since the Ist of January last. The number for the first eight months of 1873 was 73,724, showing a falling off this year of more than 50 per cent.