Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 October 1885 — GENERAL GRANT AND THE BLOODY SHIRT. [ARTICLE]

GENERAL GRANT AND THE BLOODY SHIRT.

LFrom the Chicago Tribhne.l The<Democratic papers ar6 making a great flourish of a statement made by General Grant during his . dying moments and reported by his son as follows: I feel that we are on the eve of a new era, when there is to be great harmony between the Federate and the Confederates. I cannot stay to be a living witness to the correctness of the prophecy, but Ifeel it within me that Jt is to,be so. The universally kind feeling expressed lor me at a time when it was supposed that each day would prove my last seems to me the beginning of the answer to “Let us have peace.” Assuming that Col. Fred Grant has reported his father’s words correctly, it is not remarkable that Gen. Grant should have uttered them at a time when the affairs of this world had no further interest for him and he was anxious to be at peace himself and to leave the earth with some kindly message of farewell. Under such circumstances we may well imagine that what seems a prophecy was only a wish, and that had Gen. Grant been aware, as he was when he was well, of the condition of things in the South, his lips would either have remained silent or he Would have uttered indignant protest. When he was in robust health and in the prime of his physical and mental powers he expressed himself on political subjects as follows: There Is not a precinct in this vast Nation where a democrat cannot cast his ballot and have it counted as cast, no matter what the predominance of the opposite party. He can proclaim his political opinions, even if he is only one among a thousand, without fear and without proscription on . account of his opinions. There are eight States, and localities in some others, where Republicans have not this privilege. _ In one of his messages to Congress he described as follows the objects of the South Carolina Bourbon Democracy: To deprive colored citizens of the right to a free ballot; * > * to suppress schools in which colored children are taught, and to reduce the colored people to a condition akin to slavery. * * * To effect these objects many murders and crimes of minor degree have been perpetrated and have been left unpunished. As the situation has not changed since Gen. Grant uttered these emphatic protests against Southern injustice and intolerance and the suppression of the liepublican vote in that section, it is absurd to suppose that his opinions haqUchanged, or that because he hoped for a change in these respects and was magnanimous in his expressions towards ex-rebel soldiers he thereby gave his consent to outrages at the polls and to the terrorism of colored voters, as it is to deny that these outrages are committed because Gen. Grant gave utterance to a hope for reconciliation in his dying moments. Suppose that Gen. Grant were living now and were fully cognizant of what is going on in Virginia, what would he be likely to say? Supposing that he should visit V irginia and travel about the State, what would he behold ? He would see the Bourbons gather together at their meetings to be addressed by Fitzhugh Lee. He would see Fitzhugh Lee, mounted upon his uncle's war saddle and the horse he rode arrayed with Lee’s old rebel war trappings, ridingover the public highways, escorted to his meetings by a troop of rebel cavalry carrying their old rebel battle-flags and banners inscribed with mottoes intended to recall the lost cause. He would hear the rebel yells and the Southern war songs sung at these Democratic meetings. He would hear speakers who had been officers in the rebel army appealing to their hearers with arguments based upon the memories of the slaveholders’ secession re- ’ bellion and the good times of the chivalry in the days of slavery, and trying ing in the most incendiary manner to inflame them with a hatred of colored Republicans and their white friends, and to intensify their hatred of the National Union North. All about him would be flaunted the rebel bloody shirt. He would witness a fierce and malicious rebel bloodyshirf campaign, and see the rebel bloody shirt exhibited at all Fitzhugh Lee’s meetings and wherever a meeting of Democrats was held. He would see more intense bloody-shirtism at one Virginia Bourbon meeting than at all the Republican meetings addressed by John Sherman in Ohio during this campaign put together. n If he should go to Mississippi—a strong Republican State —he would see a campaign without a Republican ticket in the field at all, because the colored Republicans are prevented by the shotgun and ballot-box stuffer from voting. And when Gen. Grant had seen these things, is there any doubt what his utterances would have been? Does any one doubt that he would have flamed out with honest indignation, and that some of the severest and sharpest comments that have ever been spoken by him would have characterized his opinion of these outrages? If to protest against them is to wave the bloody shirt, would he not have waved it ?