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READ AND CIRCULATE!
1872
Courtesy of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries, Documenting the American South
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This essay by an unnamed author urges North Carolinians to vote for a republican candidate. It argues that the Ku-Klux-Klan was effectively disempowered by the national government, but that democratic politicians have risen in its place to uphold the values of the former confederacy through any means necessary.
The elections in August impose upon the people of North Carolina one of the most solemn and important duties that citizens were ever called upon to perform. The misfortunes of war upon the social and material condition of the State are yet apparent, and the political elements are yet disturbed by the passions, prejudices, and demoralization which characterized the closing years of the rebellion. The falsehood and deception resorted to by the Confederate leaders and newspapers to mislead our people into protracting a hopeless struggle, are still resorted to for the purpose of nursing the remnants of the Lost Cause and postponing the hour when the last hope of its revival shall be buried forever. The Ku-Klux Klans were expected to be perpetual nurseries of sectional hate, of opposition to the rights conferred on the freedman, and of persecution and violence toward those who seek to nationalize the State and persuade its people to love and cherish the Union as the great safeguard of liberty and equal rights. But the crimes of the Klans, and the infamous perjury and falsehood by which it was sought to conceal and forward the purposes of their leaders, became so disgraceful to Southern society and so revolting to the feelings of men, that public attention was concentrated upon the conspirators, and the National Government interposed effectively for the protection of its citizens.
Unable longer to conceal the infamous means first deliberately chosen, the leaders have since sought to shield themselves and their followers from punishment by attacking the character of the officers of the law and deriding the State Government in all its branches. They are prolific in slanders upon others and arrogant in assumption for themselves. They fear to see the State Government, especially in its legislative branch, pass into the hands of those who threaten them with justice, and they equally desire to assume its control themselves, that they may hide or pardon the crimes which they have instigated or committed.
To accomplish this they readily assume to themselves all the virtue and respectability of the State, and scruple at nothing calculated to sustain their desperate purposes. They sustain some of their members--connected with the frauds upon the State Treasury -- by nominating them for high offices, and others, notoriously the perpetrators or investigators of the darkest crimes against humanity, by fulsome praises and public marks of confidence. They call upon the voters of the State to sustain them in this proceeding, regardless of the public interest and of that high and enviable character which the people of North Carolina have heretofore sustained in the nation.
Let the people seek information of these things. Let them consider and take counsel of their better judgment. Who is responsible for the strife and hatred that now saps the very foundation of the prosperity and peace of the State? Who show no disapprobation to criminals and their abettors, but offer rather to honor them and to revile and degrade their accusers and prosecutors?
For the first office in the gift of the people, our party puts forward the man who caused Swepson to be indicted, and who is pursuing Littlefield even into the borders of a distant State. For the same office the other party, thrusting aside the many of its able leaders who are above suspicion, puts forward the confidential and active adviser of the criminals -- the man who counseled them before, during, and since the perpetration of their frauds upon the treasury. With their counselor in the Executive chair, having in his pocket the money which they paid him from the funds stolen from the treasury, they may well expect to find safety in the prompt exercise of the pardoning power. Can the honest people of North Carolina fail to see the impropriety of this attempt to fill the Executive chair with a man sustaining such relations to such men? The managers of this nomination for Governor have given no explanation of their extraordinary proceeding, but have left it in its nakedness, trusting to effrontery and arrogant assumption to override the struggling aversion which all good and thinking men must feel to the consummation of the scheme.
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