| 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. | |
