Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 February 1875 — What is it all About? [ARTICLE]

What is it all About?

While the country is drifting into an acrimonious political agitation, the end .of which puzzles and confouuds wise' statesmen —who were hopeful all through the compromise troubles of 1850, the fierce struggle between freedom and slavery for the possession of Kansas and Nebraska, as well os during our terrible war for the is well to bear con stantly io mind the why and wherefore of all this terrible commotion. It all turns on a single point—that Of an enforced legal ine quality of men. All of the talk of “the of the noble, people of the South,” “military despotism and interference,” the denunciation of carpet-baggers—all of the riff-raff of week-kneed Republican and Democratic Speeches—is simply a moss of irrelevant slush—the merest froth and scum on the great deep current which moves ever on beneath the surface. If to-day there were in the South a concession of the equal legal rights of men as men, the agitation would be quieted instantaneously. No man of the Republican party has ever contended for the enforcement of social equa-ity ol the blacks and whites, for that is a question which every man regulates for himself. But what the White Leagues of the South and their Democratic, abettors in the North demand at this time—what a limited number of place-hunting Republicans are willing to concede—-is, that the laws of the country shall continue to give to the white race a position of legal superiority—advantage- I—over 1 —over the colored race. That is all that this great agitation is about, when you get at the' kernel of the whole busi- : ness. That is what the Republican party contends for. That is whgt the Republican party contends so is the issue which everybody thought the war had settled tor all time. The question now before the A merican people is simply tbi6: Shall all the fruits' of the war be wiped out hy fraud, intimidation, and violence ? Is this the entertainment to whioh the country is invited, after all our struggles to perpetuate the government, and our more than paternal kindness to the worse than prodigals who sought to destroy it ? The issue is just as well defined today as it was when Alexander H. Stephens declared in 1861 that human slavery was the corner-stone of the new confederacy! There - is a fixed and clearly defined determination on the part of representative Democrats in the South to break down acd overturn the last vestage of the results of the war. They intend to win hack on the floor of Congress all that they lost from 1860 to ’65, and the great danger to the ootlPtry today is, that Northern Demagogues, with their eyes fixed upon the Presidency, will become as completely subservient tojjthe South as that brood of reptiles was previous to 1860! There has been a gradual encroachment upon the enfranchised rice by “the noble people of the South” ever since they commenced taking part in politics after the war. In some parts of the South colored men have been sold into limited periods of servitude for alleged crimes I What is this, but the first step in the direction of making that again their permanent condition ? Their intimimidation from the polls places them entirely at the mercy of their old masters, in whom rankles a spirit of hate as bitter and envenomed as hell itself. Shall we abandon this struggle, or shall we still contend through weal or woe for the legal equality of all men ? Shall we give all an equal chance in the race of lifts, or shall We confer upon the Southern white man any aids save those of his brains? In all the Northern States, we ask that no brand of legal inferiority shall be put upon any race of meD! We concede to every man the chance to win all that his mental powers enable him to. Shall we concede a different right to white men in the South ? This is the great question of the day, and the one noT to be lost sight of. We believe the country will say, No! and with more emphasis than ever before. “Nothing is settled which is not right.”— lnter-Ocean.

Think of that! When you take a girl to spelling-school in Nevada, you have to ride twenty-four miles, and she expects you to keep your am around her all the tone I An lowa father, who has succeeded in raising seventeen of the Worst children in in hie neighborhood, njn he is bound to have a representative in heaven, if it takes seventeen more. “If labor is not degrading.” asks a Michigan paper “why is it that leading citizens always hire boys to carry in their coals f” Why, simply because the boys won’t carry it unless they are hired. A Toledo paper wants to know why a bootjack wasn’t called a fenning-mifl by the inventor. Here now, in the midst of life’s busy struggle, is something tor a scientific mind to stop and grapple with. Tho Georgia negro ha* no more faith in banks. He lays Lis money out In store cloths and hair oil, and the news of a bank suspension causes him to exclaim: “Bust away wid yc, bet you can’t hurt dese lavender pants.” There is nothing so refreshing and soulsatisfying in this cold, wicked world as the spectacle of a grateful woman. After she hsa knocked you down and pounded you over the head five or six minutes with a roll-ing-pin, and yeu get up and say you are sorry and willing to beg her pardon, tho look of gratitude that illuminates her heavenly countenance will do all but pay the doctor’s bill. We have received number two of the Lakeside Library, Donnelly, Loyd & Co. Publishers, Chicago. The proprietors propose to publish a volume every two weeks for the low price of $2.15 per annum poet paid. Each number is intended to be complete in itself containing a single story by spme of our best writers. The number be- ’ fbre us contains a story by Charles Reade,, entitled “The Wandering Heir,” printed in large type, chtar and nice. We believe the Lakeside Library is destined to become very popular.