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Ex-Governor
Vance, of North Carolina, who was a very active rebel, and who, not having
professed acquiescence in the result of the war, was therefore elected by
the Democrats Senator in Congress, wrote a letter to the Tribune
some time since, in which he said that immigrants into his State would be
welcomed gladly, and would be as safe as they would be "any where on
earth." In that faith, but before the letter of the ex-Governor was
written, Mr. H. C. Luce, in the winter of 1869, went with some friends and
settled in Western North Carolina, near Charlotte. They established
iron-works, spending, of course, a great deal of money, employed hundreds
of poor whites and poorer blacks, opening up markets, and doing precisely
what North Carolina needs to have done. They took no part in politics, and
asked for no office, but being seven miles from any town or regular church
or school, at the request of some of their colored laborers they opened a
Sunday-school for both blacks and whites. Admiral Wilkes's rich plantation
was near by, and he and his family were also educating the people, and
built a little church, to which they invited a clergyman, who had been a
rebel soldier. The colored workmen of the Admiral were attacked and
whipped, their school-books and Bibles were burned, and the clergyman was
warned to leave or he would be murdered.
Those who know Admiral Wilkes can
judge whether he was likely to permit any thing that could be considered
unfairly exciting, and Mr. Luce’s veracity is amply attested. The result
of the attempt at civilization was the appearance of the Ku-Klux, and the
consequent terror, scourgings, and burnings. Mr. Luce himself was menaced
with mobbing, as inciting the colored men to retaliation; and most of the
Democrats in the neighborhood excused the crimes as only punishing those
deserving of punishment. At last, of course, Mr. Luce and his friends were
driven away, and one of the most reasonable and promising efforts at
settlement and industrial development in one of the late rebel States was
violently ended, upon no plea whatever but that the laborers were
peacefully instructed in schools where two things were required—that the
races should not be taught together, and that politics should be excluded.
This barbarism, which is the work
of Southern Democrats, and which indefinitely delays real reconstruction,
is sustained by the Northern Democratic press, which sneers at the Ku-Klux
as a mere hobgoblin, and denies the truth of such tales as this of Mr.
Luce. And whether the Southern Democracy intends to acquiesce in equal
rights every body will judge for himself. |
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