Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 May 1879 — A Democratic Prophecy. [ARTICLE]

A Democratic Prophecy.

Mr. George D. Tillman, who represents the First District of South Carolina in the present Cohgrpss, has been letting himself loose in a political letter that is just published, and which has elicited much comment among all parties in Washington. Tillman is a representative Southern Democrat, born and reared upon the sacred soil of South Carolina, entered the Confederate service at the sound of the first hostile gun on Fort Sumter, and fought it out on that line, like a loyal disciple of Calhoun as he ..is, until the cause of Secession was finally acknowledged to be lost at Appomattox. His district comprises the Counties of Aiken, Barnwell, Beaufort, Colleton, Hampton and Edgefield, which, before tho war—as their names indicate —was the home of a class of slaveholding aristocrats who were the most insolent, self-sufficient, overbearing, and proud-spirited that could be found in all the South. The plantations were immense in area, upon which numberless slaves swarmed like flies in summer, and where the indolent and domineering master lorded it over poor white and cringing black alike. Tillm.au is the natural product of this old nullification .soil and the legitimate offspring of this traditionallycursed social system. He was beaten in the race for the Forty T fifth Congress by Robert R. Smalls .(colored); but by a better system of bull-dozing, an appeal to the tissue ballot, and by the aid of Gov. Hampton’s White-Leaguers and Red-Shirt Democrats, Tillman beat Smalls by a vote of 26,409 to 10,664 for the latter. We are just a little particular about Tillman’s pedigree, antecedents, and social environment, because further on it will appear that this scion of an old aristocracy, nurtured upon - the accursed system of chattel slavery, is a lit representative of the Solid South, and entitled to speak for the more intelligent portion of it upon public affairs. Neither is it of any consequence to the purposes of this article that he holds his seat in the present Congress by the most outrageous and barefaced frauds that were ever perpetrated in this country, even in the South. There is not a Congressional District in Massachusetts, Ohio, or Wisconsin that would be more solidly Republican than the First District of South Carolina with a free and fair election and an honest count; and the reason that Tillman is to-day sitting in the seat in the House of Representatives that honestly belongs to Robert R. ’Smalls is ljecausd of the determination of the South’ Carolina Democrats to rule their State In defiance of the will of the majority and in defiance and in violation of all laws relating to holding elections and to counting and returning the votes. In alluding to some of the probable issues of the Presidential campaign of 1880 in yesterday’s Tribune, we incidentally remarked that the Demo-Con-federate party was just now in that business, and that very likely the country would soon be startled with propositions which would seem still more astounding and revolutionary than any that they have yet presented. That little off-hand prophecy is fulfilled sooner than we anticipated, for here comes Mr. Tillman with a programme for -the future action of his party that will create a disturbance in the United States, if seriously pressed, second only to the excitement caused by the great overt act of Rebellion itself. And if there is any law of heredity working in political affairs, as we know it does in the blood of the human family, this man Tillman is proving it to be trne by showing how the pernicious StateRights doctrine and the equally destructive theories of the nullifiers of 1832 may crop out down stream and leave their deadly taint on future generations. A native South Carolinian, a nullitier, an ex-slaveholder, a Secessionist, a Confederate soldier from choice, and a Democratic Congressman by fraud, with all that the term, implies, all conspire to make him a fit and honored representative of the party now in power in both branches of Congress, and prepared to speak for it. As to the future policy of the Democratic party of the Nation —for it will be observed, that Mr. Tillman assumes to speak only of National affairs —he says:

J * “At the worat, I hope and believe that our political oppression will cease very shortly alter the inauguration of the next President. If the President be a Democrat, it is reasonably certain that a majority of both houses of Congress will also bo Democrats, or at least Conservatives. If so, the lieconstruction acts will speedily be repealed, which would leave suffrage where itConstitutionally belongs, under control of the Urates. Then, admitting the coerced amendments of the Constitution to bo valid, the States could attach a property qualification to suffrage without violating those amendments, which would practically destroy negro suffrage as a disturbing element in the body politic. Again, after the Democrats get possession of the Executive and Legislative Departments, the present Judges of the Supreme Court, following public opinion ns law, in the futoro ns in the past, and no longer dreading either impeachment or deprivation of salary, may declare the Ueconßtinction acts, as well ns tbo two fraudulent amendments, unconstitutional, Dull and void, or, if they fail to do so the Court can be reorganized simply by an increase of Judges, even as the Radicals dftWn a memorable occasion, and, by making a proper appointment of new Judges, the Constitution of the fatheis oan be restored." The publication of this letter of Mr. Tillman’s may be a little premature as a mere matter of party expediency, so far as the Democracy are concerned; but that it fairly outlines the policy 1 ' which the South will insist npon, m the event of a victory in 1880, no man can doubt who has discerned the signs of the times. The South has been thoroughly impoverished by the war. Her loss hr property, beside the slaves, was almost beyond computation. The flower of her population was cut off, her fair fields were ; rhihleasly devastated by red-handed war, and .po strong hand has yet appeared to roll tho stone away from the sepulchre where the broken form of her crucified Industries lies buried- The banner of the Lost Cause has been folded and laid away; but it is still the idol of their imaginations and the insignia of their future hopes. They did not take kindly to their defeat—no brave people -ever dM-and j they see a way to repair Some of the l nameless damages they have sustained, and what seems to them a Constitu-, tioaal method whereby they can mend

their shattered fortunes, it ia Hot strange that they should adopt the plan marked out by Mr. Tillman's frank and extraordinary letter. , TVo important measures suggested by Mr. Tillman have already been adopted by the Democratic party, viz., the repeal of the Reconstruction acta —which is now being attempted by the Confederates iff Congress—and the-practical destruction of negro suffrage by the Democratic bulldozers of the South. The proposition for tho States to adopt a property qualification as a scheme that would effectually disfranchise the blacks is a little milder method than the prevalent custom to kill, intimidate, or shoot them, And on that ground the plan of Tillman is preferable to the Mississippi practice. The proposition to reconstruct the Supreme Court of the United States for the purpose suggested in Mr. Tillman’s letter will not be likely to escape the attention of the American people. it seems to us that this epistle is not only highly important, because of the responsible ana authentic source from which it emanates, but by reason of. the truthful, though utterly revolutionary and destructive sentiments uttered by the writer. These are the ideas that permeate the rank and file of the Solid South, and if they get full control of tho Federal Government, as they intend to at the n?xt election, they will proceed at once to accomplish their reactionary designs. But the Tillman programme is not quite complete. There are some important omissions; but perhaps he intended to leave all minor details to the imagination of the reader. He makes no mention of reimbursing the South for her losses during the war; but that was hardly necessary. With the President, both branches of Congress, and the Supreme Court of the United States reconstructed on the Confederate Tillman idea, it would be as easy as rolling oft - a log to provide ways and means to accomplish other inferior results.— Chicago Tribune.