20
Meanwhile there can be no peace or safety. What underwriter
will insure houses in a district infested by burglars and incendia¬
ries? But burglars and incendiaries will not be permitted to stay
without a contest. Vigilance committees will be formed, and will
hang and shoot. But what then becomes of law and order? Who
will occupy houses you cannot insure, and are obliged to protect by
the shot gun and the halter? With such risks from the negro and
the scalawag and the Republican, with the best of our own popula¬
tion driven away in greater numbers than immigration can balance,
we invite immigrants to take the places of those exiles, and tell
them we will teach the incendiaries "good behavior" by "lessons
learnt out of school books." But immigrants are timid and cau¬
tious, perhaps have a grain of sense, and will not come; and our
young men are despondent and restless and will not stay; but go and
leave their mothers and sisters behind. Meanwhile our population,
dominated by negroes, becomes degraded into a worse than Mexican
civilization; our 4ands revert to woods, our streams form pestilential
marshes,
" And then from hour to hour we rot and rot;
And thereby hangs a tale."
August, 1889.
Permalink: http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/ntxkf
