Valley Spirit

We have no disposition to drag the unhappy occurrences which are now taking place in Jamaica unnecessarily, and as it were, by the ears, into the discussion of American politics. But one lesson of the present terrible outbreak in Jamaica seems to us so timely, and so important in its relations with the commercial, practical, and therefore non-political aspect of our own national affairs, that we cannot properly pass it over in silence. It will hardly be contended, we presume, by any but the most extreme advocates of chattel slavery, that the negroes of Jamaica, after thirty years of freedom, are less fitted to be left to-day in a condition of uncertainty as to the constitution of authority under which they live than the negroes of the South, in whose ears the accents of the Proclamation of Emancipation have as yet scarce died away. Nevertheless, we see that disputes arising in Jamaica over petty questions of local administration have led the negroes in that island into excesses of violence and frenzy and brutality most horrible in themselves, most fatal to the industry of the colony, and most compromising to the fortunes and the future of their own unfortunate race.

Should not this teach reflecting men to understand the paramount importance to our own national peace and prosperity of the most rapid possible reconstruction of a regular civil authority at the South? The anxiety which President Johnson is known to feel on this subject may very fitly be supposed to originate in his own knowledge of the negro character, and in his thorough appreciation of the actual state of affairs in the lately rebellious Sates.

While the war lasted, and the authority of the so-called "Confederate States" was paramount at the South, the negroes were quiet and orderly, because they were still in a recognized condition of slavery. Throughout the vast regions which remained to the end unvisited by our troops there was no radical disturbance of the settled and ancient order of things. The negro populations remained under the moral, even where they ceased to be absolutely under the material, control of the institutions amid which they had had grown up from infancy. Now all this is changed. Everywhere throughout the South slavery has ceased to be; and the negroes, shaken out from their old routine of order, do not as yet clearly comprehend in what hands the authority of the State is now vested whose laws they are to obey, by whom or how their lives are to be regulated, and their rights assured. This is always a perilous condition with any race; how much more truly so, then with a race so impressionable and so ignorant as the African, emerging suddenly from the long darkness of slavery, no twilight interposed, in for the full and dazzling day of personal liberty. The Southern negro finds himself bewildered by and apparent conflict of laws. he sees military commanders interfering with the agents of the "Freedmen's Bureau."--and agents of the "Freedmen's Bureau" interfering with his own late masters. Whether he belong to himself, to the "Freedmen" Bureau," or to the military commanders, may well be a grave doubt in his untutored mind. Meanwhile, all things remaining in this uncertain, provisional condition, the capital and enterprise of the white race at the South, upon the activity of which the very substance of the whole population depends, remain inert and passive. Everywhere a scarcity of provisions, in some regions a positive famine, is apprehended. Want and misery will do their work at least as surely upon mobs of negroes as upon mobs of white men; and a season of suspense, enforced idleness, and general confusion will, in all human probability, be followed by a storm of insurgent passions, which the imagination shudders from contemplating. In the interest, then of humanity, as well as of commerce and the national prosperity, we hold it to be, as the President evidently holds it to b e, of the gravest practical import that society at the South should be remitted to operations of its ordinary and legal authority just as rapidly as is in any degree consistent with the consolidation of the authority of the Constitution over the lately revolted States. We have crushed a fearful political rebellion. God forbid that our victory should be so administered as to lead to a still more fearful social Jacquerie.

We do not at all believe it possible that this can be. WE are confident that the good sense of the Northern people goes heartily with the President in his eagerness to see law re-established and order re-adjusted through the mouth.

But it is plain that the men who really control the republican party, and will give tone to its action in the coming session of Congress, do not partake of this eagerness of the President, and that they will make a resolute, organized, and formidable effort to arrest the good work which he has begun, and to court for the country all the perils of which we see image and fearful foreshadowing in the actual condition of the unhappy island of Jamaica.--New York World.

It would be, we repeat: it, more sensible for the people of New England who are given to philanthropy and misanthropy (for the lover of the negro slave is the hater of the white slaveowner), if they would devote some attention to their home slaveries and sorrows. There are agonies in the poor-houses of the North which humanity might well seek to soothe. For some years past these institutions have been neglected, while the attention of the people has been turned to the war; but it is now greatly to be feared; that of the widows and children of the fallen soldiers, without other provisions, many must go there. It would be curious to know the rates at which the poor are now sold in the Eastern States. Can any one furnish statistics of this market?

The Hartford (Conn.) Times answers the inquire:

In Connecticut the State and town white poor (in many towns) are let out to the lowest bidders, and we find that the State poor have been let out for $1,200 to $2,000 a year; and that the towns have let their poor at rates as follows: Newtown, 4,000 inhabitants, $900 a year; last year, owing to the high rates of provisions, about $200 extra was paid in Barkhamstead, 1,300 inhabitants, the sum of $440 was paid, and the contractor was Mr. mason, of new Hartford, who also keeps the Hartford poor. Towns of 1,000 to 1,500 inhabitants pay $500 to $600 a year, the lowest bidders taking the paupers.

The La Crosse (Wis.) Democrat comments as follows:

What's the use of writing about the poor white people of New England? God has cursed them with Anglo-Saxon blood. Had these poor wretches, whose bones are sold to doctors, and whose lean bowels are made in to speculations, been black all over the country, their case would be presented to the people for interference, but these are simply poor, half-starved white wretches. Old men, who, with tolling limbs, hobble along to the grave, cursed with a white skin: Old women, who, with watery eyes, turn their wrinkled faces so their dull ears will catch the should of the pauper's hearse as it rattles over the stones of New England roads Wives, whose husbands are foundations for monuments to heroism. Sisters of brave men dead in battle. Children of white parents. God pity the poor whites! The negro is cared for by pious preachers and policical gamblers, out of the public purse. Curse hem; they are poor; and white besides! Most horrible crimes!

Let them paint their skins black.

Let them kink their hair, and powder it with burnt amber.

Let them cut their eyes open and double die their faces, dance the breakdown, be fat, saucy and happy. Then all "Christian" America will pity them. Of late years the happy negroes have been giving us a breakdown in blood--a breakdown of credit--a breakdown of white liberties.

Let them become purified by the odor of Ethiopia, and glory will burst on their vision instantly.

Churches will be opened.

Fairs will be held.

Taxes will be collected.

Bayonets will be ground.

Armies will be raised.

Debts will be heaped upon us as worthless ocean weed are heaped on surf-beaten shores.

Tax-payers of Connecticut, black up your poor ! and the Government will support them, and land them all safe in Abraham's bosom.

Black them--"shine 'em up!" and the West will support them for you.

Step this way, gentlemen; the sale is about to open. Here is the place to make money! Here is a lot of poor white wretches to be sold to the highest bidder! First is an old man eighty winters living. How little for him? He don't eat much! His teeth are all out! Examine his flabby gums, ladies and gentlemen! His appetite is poor! He can't hear what you say about him! He can't see the dirt in his porridge! He can't talk plain and don't go visiting. "One dollar a weak!" My good friends, this is extortion. He is old. You can feed him on broth, and sleep him in a hog-pen. Down he goes to Deacon Skinstones, at ninety cents a week. Let us pray.

And here comes the next on the catalogue an old female of seventy-six years of age. Hurrah for the days of '76! She is old and blind. She eats coarse much and nigger molasses. She don't get in the way--just sits and drools and mumbles in the chimney-corner all day, and sleeps on a pile of rags at night. Her son is a noted Abolition preacher--a bright star of Puritanism. How little for her? She has a bad thing against her--she is white. "One dollar a week!" 'Tis awful. Her daughter, Mrs. Hon.----, will keep her for that. It don't cost a dime a week to keep her. And down she goes to brother P. Nuribus for six shillings a week. Let us pray.

An here, patriotic cakes of humanity, baked on Plymouth Rock--here is a war widow--very white and very poor. She is forty years old and cursed with six white children. Her husband was Michael O'Brian, a fool do and Irishman who went to the war without getting a bounty. He was luckily killed. His widow will be sold to the lowest bidder, and the brats thrown in; she can earn money by washing, and her children will soon be able to earn their keeper money. How little, gentlemen? Figure close. She will earn twice her board and you can draw school money for her children. Down she goes to Deacon Righteous for twenty shillings a week. Let us pray.

The sale stands adjourned until we can attend a nigger pic-nic, clam-bake and bar becue, to welcome our dear brothers to freedom. Ladies will look as sweet as possible, and white men will pay the expense. After the pic-nic the sale will be continued. Let us pray.

The following document, issued to the Principals of the higher grade of Orphan Schools, will be found to embrace much valuable information respecting the manner in which those institutions are conducted. It will be understood that all children from six to fifteen years of age who have been made destitute orphans by the war are entitled to the benefits of these schools. The board and clothing being furnished as the expense of the State, the benefits of these schools will be readily appreciated.

Organization of the Higher Schools

Lancater, Sept. 10, 1865

SIR:--For the information of yourself and others who are in charge of Soldier's Orphans' Schools for the more advanced grade of pupils, and of those who may be contemplating the establishment of such schools, the following fundamental requirements, which have been previously stated in substance by letter, are now put in this circular form. All the schools of the above grade will be expected to come up to the standard now announced, as soon as the requisite arrangements can be effected; and any school which shall fail to do so by the first of April next, in any material particular, will be discontinued as a Soldiers' Orphan School at the end of the then current term.

1. Each school for the Orphans of the more advance grade,--that is, from 8 or 9 to 16 years of age,--is to have a building, or contiguous buildings, sufficient to afford school room , boarding and lodging accommodations for from 100 to 120 pupils of both sexes, with class, working, washing and bath rooms, and all other proper apartments and conveniences; and all these are to be sufficiently lighted, heated and ventilated.

2. The school and class rooms are to be properly furnished with comfortable seats and desks, and provided with all the necessary school room apparatus, and particularly with a sufficiency of black board surface.

3. There is to be an ample space of play and drill ground, immediately adjoining the main building, with a shed or other shelter of sufficient size for exercise in bad weather; and a separate portion of the ground, &c., is to be divided off and assigned to each sex, with all he proper arrangements for privacy.

4. Each school is to have not less than twenty acres of good arable ground belonging to it, and not more than one-fourth of a mile distant from the main building; to be tilled for the production of vegetables, fruit mild, &c., by the pupils; to be stocked with necessary horses, cows, and swine; and to have the proper stables, &c.

5. The teaching force proper, is to consist of a male principal and one male and two female assistant teacher:--The principal to be qualified to give instruction in all the school room studies of the institution; the male assistant, in addition to his own branches in the sceool room, to instruct in millitary drill, and light gymnastic or calisthenic exercises; the female assistants, in addition to their respective school room branches, to be qualified,--the one to teach vocal music and the other or both to teach sewing, including the use of the sewing machine and cutting out of garments.

6. The course and method of instruction to be uniform in all the schools, and to be as shall hereafter be assigned and explained by the State Superintendent of Soldiers' Orphans.

7. In each establishment here shall be a person of competent skill and experience, to direct the male pupils in their agricultural and other industrial pursuits, and a matron to similarly direct and superintend the female pupils in all the detail of household affairs and employments.

8. All the work of each establishment, that can be attended to by the pupils, shall be by them performed, but, so arranged as not to interfere with their schoolroom studies:--it being the great object of these schools to afford a generous education, connected with such knowledge of household affairs and everyday home pursuits, as a judicious father would impart were these children to have remained in a well regulated home.

9. The moral and religious culture of the pupils is, for the present, left to the wise discretion of the respective principals, who have been and will be selected with a view to their fitness for this most important position of their trust. More particular instructions will be issued on this head, and the aid of clergy of the vicinity of each school will be invited in this department of instruction. In the meantime, regular worship and other religious observances, according to the form of the denomination to which the principal belongs, are recommended.

Yours very truly,

THOS. H. BURROWES,

Supt. Sold. Orphans To------------Esp.,

Prin. S. O. School.

The poets and philanthropists, falsely so called, of the Republican party, are never weary of congratulating themselves and the country that, though

"John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave, His soul is marching on!"

Precisely what John Brown's soul is "marching on" to accomplish, they are however, a trifle unexplicit in telling us, and for the credit of their own humanity, says the New York World, we trust, a trifle obfusticated also in perceiving. They carry to the account of this unquiet ghost of theirs all the war for the Union fought by men the vast majority of whom would have gladly let a hand to arrest, in the most summary fashion, the "march" of John Brown's "body" while it was yet alive ad obedient to the dictates of his "soul," and all the victories won for a nationality which John Brown himself was ready and eager to disgrace and in imperil.

While the land was all ablaze with battle, this deification of a fanatical public enemy might have been excused, for men's blood was up, their weapons were out, and one trumpet was, perhaps, as good as another for the work of keeping armies in line and spurring soldiers to the charge. But now that the country is returning to that constitutional order which John Brown perished in striving to subvert, it is time for sane men to call things by their right names, and to adjure the devil's livery in serving the State.

John Brown's "soul" is verily "marching on" at this moment: and as we can trace its course by the light of burning homesteads and the shadow of gallows-trees, heavy with their horrible fruit, in Jamaica, it can do us no harm to consider whether we really desire to see that course pursued through all the valleys and over the hills of our own Southern States. The grand organ of the gospel of John Brown, the New York Tribune, is our authority for assuming that the hideous massacres which have just occurred and are now occurring in Jamaica are the work of a Jamaica John Brown. The Tribune asserts that the outbreak of the negroes in that island against the white race was planned, fomented, and led by a white man. This does not tally with the reports which come to us directly from Jamaica; but we passover that circumstance. We are willing to concede to a Caucassian brain the horrible merit of devising a project for the extermination of thousands of unoffending white men, women and children, in order that an unadulterated African civilization might be planted upon the ruins of a colony once the garden of England's West Indian empire. The existence of the Tribune itself, and of the party for which it speaks, is the irrefragible proof that such things are possible; and all that the Gordon of Jamaica is charged with carrying into fearful and practical effect, the Greely of America is inviting and praying for, day after day, as a matter of theory. "Negro equality," as preached by the Tribunes and the Independents of the United States, is simply the dream of which "negro empire," as aimed after by the insurgents of Jamaica, is the reality. In what that reality has resulted the whole world is now reading with shudders of horror and disgust.

The murder of white men, not slaveholders but abolitionists, not tyrants or "lords of the lash," but sympathetic British clergy-men and magistrates, full of hope for the "future of the African" has been accomplished with circumstances of scarcely human ferocity. A whole population have been throws into a fever of rage and terror by the sudden and lurid upleaping under their very feet of a social volcano, threatening them with nothing less than utter annihilation. And now the crimes perpetrated and planned by the movers of this new jacquerie are avenging by such wholescale executions as men had come to believe a nightmare of the past, not possible to be parallelled in our own time anywhere out of the Chinese empire. The highways of Jamaica fester with the bodies of insurgents, slain, red-handed, by the infuriated militia of the island, or strung up scores at a time by drumhead court-martials in the trees of the forests. The devouring wave of English victory in India rolling back over the revolted Sepoyus of Delhi and Cawnpore was not more merciless than the wrath of the whites of Jamaica who escaped from the horrible fate which the "soul of John Brown" had prepared for them. It is an obvious and easy thing to retort upon the British critics of our won course in dealing with rebellion with exclamation of horror as the ruthless inclemency of British justice in Jamaica. But these [unclear], alike of the conspiracy and of its chastizement, carry a deeper and far more woeful meaning for us.

What the maddened colonists of Jamaica are doing our own American forefathers did when the extertalfiation of the New England Indians became the condition of safety and progress for the New England whites. King Philip and his Pequots found as scant mercy and as short a shrift as Gordon and his Jamaican blacks. In our own times Minnesota and Kansas have repeated the story; and if the senseless fanatics who are straining every nerve to make a social war of races not only possibly but probable at the South, shall succeed in forcing their policy upon the country, our own times will see it repeated again on a far vaster and more appalling scale between the Potomac and the Mississippi.

It is very well to hold up one's hands in depreciation of such horrors after the events which develop them have worked their work. But whenever a lower civilization rises in force upon a higher, it is in the very nature of things that the outrages perpetrated by the men of the lower civilization shall be of such a kind and degree as to rouse in the men of the higher the most ungovernable instincts of vengeance. This truth has been dismally illustrated in a hundred incidents of the history even of men of the same race, from the days of jack Cade's insurrection in England, down to the terrible battles of the barricades of Paris, in June, 1848. When the antipathies of race, also, are brought into play, the matter, of course, is made infinitely worse. The philanthropy which takes no account of these certainties, and of the natural laws which make them certainties, may fitly enough take John Brown for its hero and its saint; but the triumphs which their faith is winning in Jamaica should suffice for one generation, at least, of the Anglo-Saxon race in the New World.

All eyes are forecast to the meeting of this body. Its session will be one of the most important and perhaps the most exciting ever held by any legislative body. The excitement will begin with its beginning. It is well understood now that McPherson, the late Clerk, will refuse to enter the names of the Southern members on the roll of the House. WE don't know that there is any remedy, but there many be punishment. We take it for granted that they will not participate in the organization. We do not regret it, for their presence would make not difference in the result, and we want the whole Abolition p[arty to take the responsibility which the Clerk will throw upon them admitting or rejecting seventy or eighty members elected on the President's own plan of reconstruction. We think they will be admitted, after great and violent opposition on the part of a majority for the Radicals. Some of that party will favor their admission from proper and patriotic motives, and others because they do not care to break with the President and his patronage.

However organized, Congress will have enough to do. The war has left a great many unsettled questions of its own, as well as unsettled all the ordinary matters of public policy. By far the most important of all these is the currency question. In this every man has a deep personal interest. The result involved is, whether we shall accept a financial crash now, or postpone it to some future time. Mr. McCulloch hopes it may be avoided, but it never has been under similar circumstances. That his directions will be judicious we have no doubt; but the chance is that they will not be regarded. He thinks the currency should be lessened; but so many influences will crowd in the opposite direction, that it is far more likely to be increased. Then we shall have a few more months of paper prosperity, terminating in such a wreck of men and theories as the world has seldom seen.

We do not think the Abolition party will outlive the coming Congress, as a controlling organization. Even now there is no sympathy between its brains and its passions. Each interest hopes to control the President and his patronage but his action within the next few months must necessarily settle the doubts the affect to entertain in regard to his purposes; and from that moment dates the dissolution of the Abolition party. Democrats are in a good position to wait. Though really a large majority of the voting population of the country they are practically without a particle of power or responsibility. This anomalous condition in a republic cannot last long. If we are patient and prudent, the country will soon enough appeal to us for relief from the misrule of the men who have drawn us all in to such disasters. We are not inclined to court Mr. Johnson at all. If he can drive the team now harnessed to his chariot, let him do it. If not he ought to know the qualities of the Democratic party well enough to trust himself to the old, regular, sure, and only safe line.

A lot of English and shoddy capitalists are in Washington, projecting a mammoth cotton company, for the production of the great staple of the South through free negro labor, and also for the manufacture of the same. Every day fresh evidence is appearing to prove that the "War for Freedom" was founded in the irresistible desire of Northern and foreign capitalists to share with the Southern slaveholders to solid advantages of negro labor. Their activity in cotton cultivation and manufacture now indicates how ardently they have pursued their darling but dishonorable project, and how much they hope for in the future in dollars and cents. They imagine they have things in a much better shape, with the negro free, than the Southerners had with him as a slave.

The negro himself will have a hard time of it, if he has to perform all that is expected of him. When a slave he had but one master, whose interest it was to preserve his health and lengthen his life by providing him with good food, first-class medical attendance, not too much work, and by exercising a careful scrutiny of his moral condition. As a freeman, he has to serve a plurality of masters, who can have no sympathy for him nor interest in either his welfare or longevity. He has already become the subject of calculation, by his new masters, who are anxious to know who much work they can get out of him for a given stipend of money. They measure him as they do the working capacity of a steam engine or other working machine; but, as they have nothing to pay in the shape of "first cost," they make no estimate of his lasting qualities, as they do in the case of machine. It is nothing to them whether he lasts one, two or twenty years, so that, while he works, he shall furnish the requisite amount of motive power.

Whether the country has gained anything by the change-wrought at a cost of billions in dollars and seas of patriotic blood-the future must determine; but it needs no great wisdom to see that the poor negro has not with liberty drawn a prize. He must continue to be the "hewer of wood and the drawer of water" for those who are smarter and more powerful, and though free from the benevolent or selfish care of an owner, he must still be a slave to the ignorance, the avarice, the greed, and the iron network of circumstances which the now masters will place around him. Slavery meant work-Liberty means work harder. The negroes may well ask-"War for the African and his Race?"--Patriot and Union.

"It is authoritatively avowed that the Secretary of the Treasury will urge that the revenues of the Government be increased to the highest possible figure, and that the excess of receipts over expenditures be applied to the payment of debt as fast as practicable. This is the true, if no the only economy." Thus "authoritatively" speaks John W. Forney, the mouthpiece of the Republican party.

Look at it, ye taxpayers, and especially ye who voted with and for the Republican party at the late election. "Taxes up to the highest figure." "This is the true economy." You, some of you groan and sweat and swear now, because the tax collector is haunting you at every street corner, and exhibiting for you inspection his little leather-covered book. But it is not yet enough. The burdens you now bear have failed to crush you. They must be increased to the "highest possible figure" that you can endure. Your lands which are now loaded with taxes equal to an ordinary rent, your labor, your produce, your incomes, your outlays, your shirts and your sheets, your pigs and your poultry, your meats and your drinks, all, all must be taxed up to the highest figure. Why? Because so many hundreds of millions of the money of the rich have been invested in Government Bonds which are exempted from taxation. And you, farmers, mechanics, laboring men must suffer this increased taxation to make up the deficiency. But Mr. Forney says, "We have heard on citizens moaning and complaining of what they conceive to be unjust taxation. Why the audacious creatures! To dare to moan and complain because their taxes are increased while their neighbor worth his millions, goes "sent free." What right have you or we to 'moan and complain' at what the government does? Is it not a kind government, a beneficent government? Why the government has aright to tax, and if it taxes one and passes by another, what is that to us? "Moan and complain" about paying taxes! Why in time of war such conduct would be treason foul, and even now, in those times of peace, it is unpardonable audacity. "Up to the highest possible figure." That is the Republican standard for taxation and then none of your whining, moaning and complaining.--Danville Intelligencer.

THE election of Rev. Dr. Kerfoot, to the Bishopric of Western Pennsylvania, is one of the best signs of the good time coming, which we have seen. He stood up in the General Convention as a christian and a patriot, and the storms of radical hate an rancor beat against him in vain. The Bineys and the Brunots and the Philadelphia "Loyal League" were powerless before his stern integrity, his lowly piety and love for the church. Place and position have sought him out, and having so well served his master's behests in an humble sphere, the word has gone forth "come up higher."

Bishop Stevens warmly and cordially endorses the election of Bishop Kerfoot.