Viewing page 108 of 229

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

A Negro Insurrection 
How to render the negro population of the South available in the industrial system is a question that grows upon the public attention. The freedmen do not seem to be much inclined to solve the problem by voluntary submission to the demands of society, nor yet are they prepared to accept the Ttribune's theory that they must work or perish. There are several millions of these people, not well fitted by nature or education to enter abruptly into a social sphere that leaves them to their own resources, and not, thus far, appreciative of the solemn realities of their situation. These people must be dealt with, not only with respect to their own comfort, but with regard to the safety of the disarmed and comhelpless white populations of the South. The history of San Domingo teaches us what the African race are capable of doing, when once with the instruments of mischief in their grasp, they yield to the promptings of their ferocious and vindictive instincts. The savage who is determined not to work, and who is equally determined not to starve, constitutes a dangerous element of society in a civilized land, and the philanthropists who have sacrificed so much of the blood and treasure of their countrymen to achieve the aim of their social philosophy, may find that philosophy at fault to discover the process of laying the fiend that they have raised. 
It may be claimed that if the Southern whites are unarmed and helpless, the freedmen are in a like condition. We have, we regret to say, assurances to the contrary: and the evidence of a purpose on the part of the Southern blacks to realize their peculiar conception of liberty by force of arms, is the inspiration to the warning and appeal that we address to the Government and to the Abolitionists of the North. We can say, upon good authority, that the negroes of the South, through some mysterious agency that we are not now prepared to disclose, are being secretly provided with arms of a very efficient and formidable character. Our informant, instructed and guided by a friendly negro, discovered and collected in the cabins of the black population within the limits of Russel County, Alabama, concealed fire-arms amounting in value to the amount of three thousand dollars. If it could be surmised that these weapons were simply the waifs of the recent struggle, picked up or pilfered here and there from battle-fields, or from the line of march of retreating and disbanding Confederate soldiers, the circumstance might be dismissed and barren of significance. But they were exclusively Spencer Rifle's, entirely new; virgin to powder and ball, and superior in finish and power of destruction to any weapons used by the Confederate armies. How came they there? What facilities have those ignorant, improvident and impoverished negroes to procure arms of that description? From what arsenal in the North or elsewhere, are these implements of warfare, of unrivaled pattern and exquisit mechanism, forwarded clandestinely to the negroes of Alabama? The blacks were quiet enough while the military organization of the Confederacy was unbroken, and the Southern whites were amply supplied with arms and ammunition; but it does not follow that their subordination will not be as complete, now as they are free agents in the presence of their late masters who are disarmed and without even the power to organize for the defence of their homes and families.
How far throughout the South this secret arming of the negro population extends, we cannot tell; but it is not probable that it is confined Russell county, Alabama. In various localities of the Southern territory, and especially in Texas, the freedmen are under the impression that, on next Christmas Day, the lands of their late masters will be parceled out among them, and that they will become lords paramount of Southern soil. Whether they have been tutored to this wild expectation, or whether it is due to their natural extravagance of sentiment, the evil that they may come upon the encouragement of such ideas calls for the adoption of all precautionary measures. The more observing and intelligent of the Southern whites are so conscious of the danger that threatens that they are strongly averse to the withdrawal of white Federal troops from their respective neighborhoods, preferring the humiliation of military surveillance to a condition of incessant anxiety for the safety of their families. In many localities the negroes far outnumber the whites, who without arms or organization, would be powerless to resist an insurrection. The African is impulsive and imitative, especially in the perpetration of crime; and the firing of the first roof would be the signal for general incendiarism; the first dagger thrust and rifle shot would usher in a saturnalia of horrors, a reign of assassination, rapine and destruction.
We bid the abolitionists beware of such a sequel to the war for the negro; for with it will come such a reaction in the North, such a detestation of negro equality, that its apostles will be personally responsible by popular opinion for the crimes that may be committed in its name. If the tidings should come some day from the South, of homesteads given to the midnight torch, of women ravished and slain, of children murdered, of men slaughtered while serving with naked hands to defend their loved ones from pollution and death; if the terrors of an Domingo massacres should be repeated in the South, with the additional horror that instead of by thousands, the assassins and the victims should be counted by millions, it will be too late for the abolitionists to plead philanthropy. The civilized world abroad and at home will brand them as accessories to those crimes, and retribution will fall upon them, no less than upon the irresponsible race in whose bosoms they have lit and fanned the fires of savage instincts and passions, if in their hands they have not placed the weapons of murder and the torch of incendiarism. - N.Y. News.
Selma, Alabama - Its Business and Freedmen.
A correspondent of the Jackson Mississippian, writing from Selma, says: After a journey of twelve days, I arrived here