Untitled article | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, October 15, 1867

FromThe Advent Review & Sabbath Herald, Vol. XXX, No. 18

Reconstructed Kentucky.

We reprint the New York Tribune’s letter from its Louisville correspondent, enumerating some hundreds of outrages, committed upon unoffending freedmen and upon loyal whites, in reconstructed Kentucky. The deplorable condition of affairs it depicts, is an exposition of what might be expected in the ten States now under military supervision, if readmitted to the Union without equal suffrage. To take the ballot from the blacks would be to leave them defenceless in the midst of their worst enemies.

The irrepressible conflict seems to be raging in Kentucky with greater fierceness than in any other portion of the country. There a black man insults a white man by looking him straight in the eye. There a colored girl, proceeding along the public highway to Sabbath School, may be ravished with impunity. There one of the dominant class can shoot down a darkey to test his skill as a marksman, without fear of arrest or punishment. There to sell a patch of ground to an “African” becomes an act calling for the prompt interference of the regulators. There persons of the persecuted race are liable to be ordered out of the country by an incensed people for daring to frequent the highways. There marauders are not brought to justice for robbing and burning the dwellings of freedmen. There these outrages are occasionally varied by toasting a negro’s feet at a slow fire. There mobs delight to drag from the jails colored men incarcerated for petty offences, and hang them to the first convenient limb. There Judges are pleased to discharge from custody, on writs of habeas corpus, criminals arrested by order of the Freedmen’s Bureau for committing the above deeds. There a band of guerillas, regularly

armed, equipped and mounted, overawe four counties, rule with a rod of iron, and defy the power of the State Government. There white sojourners are subject to have their right of presence brought into question, on account of their suspected political sentiments.

Such is Kentucky, a State in the Union. Such is Kentucky without impartial suffrage. It exemplifies what condition of affairs might be looked for in the unreconstructed States, if re-admitted on a basis of white voters only. Kentucky never formally seceded; but it contributed men to the rebel armies. Though part of the battle-ground of the war, it early comprehended the downfall of the Confederacy. Civil government, often imperiled, never ceased. Just near enough to the scene of conflict to feel its effects without being overwhelmed, and just near enough to the North to understand the temper of its people, Kentucky’s first act was to welcome home as heroes its recreant sons. In that State, treason has been growing more and more respectable ever since; and the sectional animosity that precipitated rebellion has been steadily intensifying. A proposition to enfranchise the negroes was met with scorn and derision. The whole political community has lapsed into the hands of disloyalists. Private rights have ceased to be respected. Officers of the law are derelict in the performance of duty. Free speech and a free press are under the ban of a pernicious public opinion, as in the old days of slavery. Color, irrespective of conduct, is a badge of disgrace, and subjects its possessor to persecution and outrage. Such is a picture of reconstruction without impartial suffrage.

The party that holds sway in Kentucky is the same party that wants to hold sway in States under military supervision. The spirit which animates Kentucky also animates its ten sisters. The theory of race put in practice by Kentucky, is also put in practice by the others, so far as they have opportunities. If these opportunities are increased by reconstruction on a white basis, Kentucky will be the model after which the new governments will pattern.

The proposition of the Democrats to disfranchise the negroes, on the plea of their ignorance, is, in other words, a proposition to leave the fate of the freedmen in the hands of their late masters and present enemies. What that fate would be can be learned from Kentucky’s example. Let the Democratic or Kentuckian plan of reconstruction prevail, and the complications awaiting adjustment would not only be augmented in localities where they exist, but would also spread to the halls of Congress, in which twenty disloyal Senators and fifty-eight disloyal Representatives would sow dissensions broadcast. The Reconstruction acts offer the only reliable and enduring settlement of the Southern imbroglio.—Chicago Tribune.