Staunton Spectator

We devote a great part of our space this week to the proceedings of the Radical Convention, composed of "black spirits and white," which assembled in Petersburg on Tuesday the 9th inst., to nominate a State ticket. It will be observed that they nominated for the office of Lieut. Governor a mulatto by the name of Harris, thus showing whither that party is rapidly drifting. The proceedings, as might have been expected from the character of those who composed it, were of the most disgraceful character, and presented a scene unprecedented in the history of this State.

The negroes, it is due them to say, behaved better than the whites who sat side by side with them, mingled together like black and white pigs in a litter. This simile we are aware is not just to the pigs. It is not at all surprising that the negroes should behave better than their white allies, for the former are governed by some principle -- the latter by the want of it. The whites in the Convention cared not a fig about the negro, but wished to appropriate the spoils of office, and use the negro as the monkey did the cat.

The proceedings, as they really occurred, are indescribable -- they beggar description. They pulled and hauled each other, and behaved so badly that the Mayor of the city -- himself a Radical -- by the aid of his strong police force, dispersed the Convention, driving it out of the church, even before it was organized by the election of a temporary chairman.

The scene presented by forty-thousand tom-cats tied by the tails to each other in a garret, spitting, spluttering, cater-wauling, scratching, biting, making the fur fly like a thousand twanging bows in a hatter-shop, would be peaceful and harmonious as compared with that enacted in this Convention.

Wells, the so-called Governor of Virginia, was there working for himself like a beaver. -- "For the first time in the history of Virginia politics," says the Lynchburg Virginian, "a man occupying the gubernatorial chair, and a candidate, we not say for re-election, but for continuance therein, was present, advocating his own cause, and actually inciting to the disgraceful scenes that compelled the civil authorities to intervene and disperse, the ruffians! -- We repeat it: no such disgraceful scene was ever witnessed in Virginia until now. Yet, when we consider what hands our politics have fallen into, it is not surprising. A set of Bowery boys, Five Pointers, Plug Uglies and Wooden-Nutmeg Yankees -- all adventurers -- united with negroes and scalawags, have taken it upon themselves to "run the machine" in this State. It is no wonder, therefore, that they cut "fantastic tricks" and enact the role of the bull in the china shop. But it is astonishing that any Virginian, respectably connected, will so far compromise himself and friends, as to identify himself with such a set! We are utterly amazed, and can only hope that if any gentlemanly instincts are left to them, they will be so deeply disgusted with the acts of the Zebra Convention, that they will shrink from any further connection with such a disreputable party."

Time and again we have warned the negroes that those white men who have been professing to be their special friends, and who have participated in their meetings and talked glibly of political equality regardless of "race, color or previous condition of servitude," have been using them as the monkey did the cat, when he pulled the roasted chestnuts from the hot embers with the cat's paw. They will learn after awhile that we have been telling them the simple truth. The action of this class of whites at this time ought to be sufficient to convince the most stolid negro. The negroes constitute nine-tenths of the Radical party of this State, and if the white Radicals were disposed to treat them fairly and justly they would be willing to allow the negroes to hold that proportion of the offices at the disposal of their party. But instead of this, they meet in Convention where four candidates for office are to be nominated, and they nominate three white men and one mulatto, instead of nominating three negroes and one white man, and then because this mulatto, though only half negro, and though educated, receives the nomination for one of the four offices, the white Radicals turn up their noses in disgust, secede from the Convention, repudiate its nominations, and issue a call for another Convention.

It will be observed that the Radical State ticket is just as it was before except that for the office of Lieut-Governor the name of Dr. Harris (mulatto) has been substituted for that of Clements who labored in vain to get up a step higher on the ticket and to occupy Wells's shoes. These white Radicals say that Harris will cause the defeat of the ticket, and to save their party, they will nominate another ticket of more "respectable Republicans," hoping that the Conservatives will assist them to elect it. The Conservatives, however, who constitute nineteen-twentieths of the white voters of the State, have an excellent ticket of their own.