Slavery not Dead | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 17, 1876

Slavery not Dead.

The Washington correspondent of the Detroit Evening News, makes the startling statement, which appeared in the issue of that paper dated Feb. 9, 1876, that slavery is practically re-established in the South. Here is what he says:—

“I infer from the tone of the News that it is one of that class of papers which believes that the reports of this unrelenting and unreconstructed sentiment of the South, of their hatred to this government and the North, and of their determination to disfranchise and practically re-enslave the colored race, is all clap-trap and falsehood. But if you could see the real representatives of this rebel population, and see for yourself what progress has already been made in curtailing the rights of the negro, you would preach a different gospel if you are as honest as I believe you to be. Professor Seelye, of Amherst College, elected to Congress as an independent, came here with the notion that everything is lovely in the South, the people entirely reconciled and peaceably inclined, the colored people perfectly protected and generously treated; but within the last two weeks he has declared that his brief service in the house has completely undeceived him, and taught him how false are all the professions of good-will and loyalty by southern politicians.”

“Not only are there the strongest proofs that the old feeling of hatred to the North exists in all its original intensity, but also of their purpose

TO RESTORE SLAVERY

in some shape. Within a few days I have seen an advertisement in a Macon, Georgia, paper, offering a reward for the recovery of a fugitive colored man, whose services the advertiser had bidden off at auction for a certain period. Such advertisements are an every-day occurrence in Georgia and Alabama.

“Gen. N. B. Forrest, notorious for his wholesale murder of negro prisoners in Tennessee (Fort Pillow) during the rebellion, has recently furnished the country with an equally convincing proof of the purpose of old slaveholders to restore slavery. Some months ago a negro was arrested in Memphis for having a pointless knife in his possession, in violation of a Tennessee law, enacted for just such purposes. The fine was $200. To pay it, his time was sold to Forrest until he could work out this fine at twenty-five cents a day, his clothing being charged to him in the meantime, and two days charged to him for every day he was sick. It is asserted that Forrest has fifty other slaves bought in the same way for some technical violation of a Tennessee law made to entrap negroes. If they fail to do their task of one hundred pounds of cotton during the day they

ARE FLOGGED AT NIGHT,

precisely as in the days of legalized slavery. Restore the democratic party to power and there is not one of the old slave States but would establish such a system of slavery.”