Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 October 1882 — Grief in South Carolina. [ARTICLE]

Grief in South Carolina.

Gen. Hampton is not an alarmist or an extremist, and when he says that “we shall be ruined, if we lose this election,” it is evident that he sees a possibility of the loss and consequent ruin. Thd News and Courier sounded the alarm weeks ago, and there is still time for the canvassing that will make the victory sure and complete. But the people do not realize the hazards of the situation. They have an idea that the election will carry itself, and that the Democracy cannot be defeated. This is a terrible mistake. We say sincerely that we do not believe that, if the worst come’ to worst, the Democratic candidates for State officers will be beaten at the poils; but it is within the probabilities that the Democracy will lose their control of the lower branch of the State Legislature. * * There is still a large neSro majority in South Carolina. Yet heedless emocrats speak and act as though the State candidates cannot lie imperiled. We say that they can, and if the Independent break continue they will. —Chorleston News and Courier. The Democrats of South Carolina are like a family whose chimney is on fire; the neighbors can all see what the trouble is, but the people in the house know nothing about it. The Democrats of South Carolina have set up the doctrine that the negro shall not vote in that State except in such a way as will not endanger Democratic control. There has been no concealment about this, for it has been openly proclaimed year as( er year. The tissue ballots, concerning the wholesale use of which in 1880 nobody makes any question, have never yet been condemned by a single Democrat, high or low. A South Carolina Democrat who should publicly protest against any fraudulent proceeding, in cases where there was no way to carry f*n election without fraud, would be a Democrat no longer, for he would be read out of the party without a moment’s warning. The News and Courier, one of the ablest and most intelligent papers in the South, has never yet ventured a word in condemnation of any of the Democrat c election frauds in its State. It contents itself with saying in effect that the Democrats must carry the elections, fairly if they can, forcibly if they must. The State is to-day overrun by red-shirts who are organized for no purpose in the world except to intimidate the colored voters, and, if need be, stir up fights with them and shoot them. Everybody in South Carolina understands this, and on the side of the Democrats, who claim to possess most of the wealth and intelligence, there is not a voice found to object. The law gives a negro a right to vote in South Carolina, and its operation is not suspended, even when the negro chooses to vote the Republican ticket. In the long run, that right cannot be denied. No party will ever rest secure in power until it does so by the will of a majority of the voters. Tissue ballots may carry an election one year and red-shirts may carry it another; but after awhile the real majority of voters will come into power. It behoove:! South Carolina to educate her citizens, nearly all of whom have been native to her soil for generations, up to such a degree of intelligence as to make them worthy of the ballot which has been put into their hands. If the negro is ignorant, it is because white men make it a crime to instruct him. The fault lies not with the North nor with the Republican party, but right at home among the white people of South Carolina. If they have not done their duty, they must suffor the consequences of their mistake. They cannot exterminate the race whose growth they encouraged for more than a century, nor complain if an enforced ignorance during the whole period of slavery does not in a moment yield the wisest political judgment. The first issue in South Carolina is the issue for a free ballot and fair count. That has got to be settled—perhaps this year, and perhaps in the next, or the next —before there will be a peaceful election there or one whose results will be accepted in or by the country at large. The State will be perpetually in danger of what Senator Hampton calls “ruin” until the methods of 1876 and 1880 are given up.— Detroit Post.