Western Reserve Chronicle clipping
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As evidence of the change going on in the democratic party, on the question of impartial suffrage, we copy the subjoined article from a Democratic paper published in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, called the "Weekly Copiahan." In its issue July 11, appears the following article:
LOYAL LEAGUES.
Every member of this oath-bound and midnight association should be marked. Many black men were deceived in this matter by the black and white agents of the Leagues; while many others, with the venom of the devil in their hearts, accepted and embraced the scheme gladly as a means to degrade and oppress the white people of the State. A distinction should be made between these two classes. The leaders and influential blacks, members of the league at the different precincts, are known, and should have from this time, no favors granted them. Existing contracts should be most faithfully carried out, but with end of the year all communication with them should end. We owe this not only to our own sense of honor, but certainly to those honest freedmen who came up and stood by us in the hour of peril. We refer in this matter to the leaders - those negro men, who against all argument, persuasion and even their own judgments, clung not only themselves to the foreign scalawags, but to the last urged their more simple minded fellows, to vote the Radical ticket - those who took the advice of Emanuel Handy, and determined to live on blackberries and lizards rather than vote with the democrats. To the great mass of those blacks who voted the Radical ticket, it becomes not only as magnanimous men, but as a mere matter of political and domestic policy, to encourage them to publicly to renounce the league, and associate themselves with us. If they refuse to do so after the argument is exhausted, then let them be ostracized - let them hunt their blackberries and lizards, for no man can longer feed them save at the expense of his feeling of self respect.
In Copiah, five hundred and fifty negro men voted the Radical ticket. Two-thirds of these, we doubt not, already feel that Radicalism deceived them and that it is nothing more nor less than a cheat and a swindle.
LOYAL LEAGUES.
Every member of this oath-bound and midnight association should be marked. Many black men were deceived in this matter by the black and white agents of the Leagues; while many others, with the venom of the devil in their hearts, accepted and embraced the scheme gladly as a means to degrade and oppress the white people of the State. A distinction should be made between these two classes. The leaders and influential blacks, members of the league at the different precincts, are known, and should have from this time, no favors granted them. Existing contracts should be most faithfully carried out, but with end of the year all communication with them should end. We owe this not only to our own sense of honor, but certainly to those honest freedmen who came up and stood by us in the hour of peril. We refer in this matter to the leaders - those negro men, who against all argument, persuasion and even their own judgments, clung not only themselves to the foreign scalawags, but to the last urged their more simple minded fellows, to vote the Radical ticket - those who took the advice of Emanuel Handy, and determined to live on blackberries and lizards rather than vote with the democrats. To the great mass of those blacks who voted the Radical ticket, it becomes not only as magnanimous men, but as a mere matter of political and domestic policy, to encourage them to publicly to renounce the league, and associate themselves with us. If they refuse to do so after the argument is exhausted, then let them be ostracized - let them hunt their blackberries and lizards, for no man can longer feed them save at the expense of his feeling of self respect.
In Copiah, five hundred and fifty negro men voted the Radical ticket. Two-thirds of these, we doubt not, already feel that Radicalism deceived them and that it is nothing more nor less than a cheat and a swindle.
Citation
Western Reserve Chronicle, “Western Reserve Chronicle clipping,” Mississippi State University Libraries, accessed April 24, 2024, https://msstate-exhibits.libraryhost.com/items/show/519.
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