The Negro Question

The Chicago Times, Cincinnati Enquirer, and Missouri Republican are the three leading pro-slavery journals at the West, and it is from these sheets that all the little whipper-snapper papers of the Vallandigham school obtain their stable of their editorials.  Though intensely slavery, and broadly sympathizing with the rebels, yet the forbearance of the Government, which they constantly abuse, permits them to live, and, like the carrion crow, fatten upon the vile aliment they serve up to the rebellious spirit of the country.  Our space forbids, or we should like to publish entire, a recent letter of the Washington correspondence of the first named paper, just to show our readers the kind of matter that is rebel editors are sowing broadcast throughout the loyal north.  We give an extract:

NIGRITUDINOUS.

Such a charcoal Sanhedrim as the Republican side of the House of representatives cannot be found elsewhere, except in the legislative councils of Liberia and Hayti.  Negrophobia has seized the entire party of the administration; they have the nigger on the brain, nigger in the bowels, nigger in the eyes, nigger, nigger, everywhere.  Steam power is surpassed, the caloric engines obsolete; water power, law power, constitution power, and all the powers, physical, moral and political, have found their superior in the great nigger power that moves the huge unwieldy, reeking and stewing mass of rottenness which makes up this administration and its party.

White soldiers, sick and wounded, wives and children of these soldiers, white men any and everywhere, may suffer agony, despair, famine, everything, and on humanitarian doctrines are preached for them by these nigger charmed saints of republicanism – no governmental disbursements for their support.  But for twenty-five thousand fat, shiny, greasy fragrant niggers, the government is giving a perennial entertainment.  This number of sable aristocrats, without labor, without care, without the asking, even, are fed, clothed and housed, by the administration of Abraham Lincoln at Hilton Head alone.  There are at least thirty thousand more negroes supported by the government in the same way at Fortress Monroe, Washington, and throughout the army of the West.  The Constitutional government of the United States is keeping a grand national “dance house,” AT A COST OF $50,000 PER DAY.  And every grain of wheat, every kernel of corn, every potato raised in the great Northwest, must be taxed to help pay for this philo-niggerous experiment of the abolitionists of New England.

Any one at all posted in the matter knows that the above is a consummate falsehood; the no negroes are supported in idleness at the expense of the Government, but that they are made to work and earn their livelihood.  The cheapest way in which our Government can hold the South in subjection, after it shall have been conquered, is to employ the acclimated negroes of the South for the purpose.  If the troops from the North be stationed at the various forts in the South which it will be necessary to keep manned, more in proportion will die from the effects of the climate than have been killed in battle.  Our Generals are right in employing negroes, who are accustomed to work, instead of imposing burthens upon soldiers who are unused to hard labor, and would soon sink under the enervating influence of the climate.  The pittance paid the negroes, about which this wiseacre snarls, would speedily be swallowed up in doctors’ fees, and the lists of mortality would soon swell to enormous length.  Yet even such frothy talk as the gibberish uttered by this knave, has its effect upon some weak minds; upon men who are unaccustomed to think for themselves, and who absorb everything they need, without the sense to discriminate between the most ridiculous falsehoods, and the unvarnished truth.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Friday Morning, May 16, 1862, p. 2