Valley Spirit

Thaddeus Stevens has offered in the lower House of Congress a bill to establish universal suffrage throughout the United States, and John Hickman has offered in the lower House of our State Legislature an amendment to the Constitution conferring the elective franchise upon every male freeman over twenty-one years of age who is able to read the said Constitution. Thus we find the leading Radical in the House of Representatives at Washington and the leading Radical in the House of Representatives at Harrisburg both moving to fasten Negro Suffrage upon Pennsylvania. One of them proposes to do this by an act of the Congress of the United States--the other by an amendment of the Constitution of the State.

After the verdict pronounced upon this question last fall, wherever the People had an opportunity to express their sentiments upon it either directly or indirectly, it might not unreasonably have been expected that the Radicals would desist from making any further attempts to force the Negro up to the political and social level of Whites. A few of the Radical leaders, though none of the more conspicuous among them, have shown some little disposition to back out of the Negro business; but the ruling spirits of that party are determined to go on with it, and they will force their weaker-kneed brethren to stand up to the work, whether they like it or not.

This question of Negro Suffrage will have to be settled by the People, and it is for them to determine how it shall be settled. The triumph of the Radical party would settle it one way. The triumph of the Democratic party would settle it another way. If Stevens' bill should be rejected by Congress and Hickman's amendment meet the same fate in our State Legislatures, this would not settle the question. It would merely postpone it. Some Radicals in Congress, and some in our Legislature, who are really in favor of conferring upon the Negro the right to vote, may possibly vote against the Stevens bill or the Hickman amendment, (as the case may be) on the ground of expediency. They may not be disposed, on the eve of a great Presidential election, to incur the heavy risk of attempting to force the Negro down the unwilling throat of White people. But let them carry the next President and the next Congress, and just as surely as the sun rises in the East and sets in the West, so surely will Stevens' bill or another of the same tenor be passed and approved. Or let them carry the next Legislature of Pennsylvania, and with equal certainty will the Hickman negro amendment to the Constitution be adopted by that body.

Let no White man flatter himself that the adoption of a bill like Stevens' or an amendment like Hickman's would confer upon the Negro the right to vote only. Along with this right will go the right to sit on juries and to fill offices; and when the Negro becomes your equal in the jury box and in the halls of legislation, where will he not be your equal? Accustom yourselves to association with him on terms of equality in public and will not this inevitably lead to association with him on terms of equality in private? And would not such association, continued through a few generations, break down the repugnance of one race to the other and bring about their intermarriage, finally resulting in a nation of people as streaked and speckled as Jacob's cattle, or as many-colored as Joseph's coat?

We find ourselves supported in these views by a very distinguished member of the Republican party, who is also a prominent member of the Presbyterian church--Hon. David Agnew, one of the Judges of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. In delivering the opinion of the Court in the case of Mary E. Miles, a colored woman, against the Philadelphia and Westchester Railroad Company, in November last, speaking of the two races, Judge Agnew said:

Why the Creator made one black and the other white we know not; but the fact is apparent, and the races distinct, each producing its own kind, and following the peculiar law of its constitution. Conceding equality, with natures as perfect and rights as sacred, yet God has made them dissimilar, with those natural instincts and feelings which He always imparts to his creatures when He intends that they shall not overstep the natural boundaries He has assigned to them. The natural law which forbids their intermarriage and that social amalgamation which leads to a corruption of races, is as clearly divine as that which imparted to them different natures. The tendency of intimate social intermixture is to amalgamation, contrary to the law of races. The separation of the white and black races upon the surface of the globe is a fact equally apparent. Why this is so, it is not necessary to speculate, but the fact of a distribution of men by race and color is as visible in the providential arrangement of the earth as that of heat and cold. The natural separation of the races is therefore an undeniable fact, and social organizations which lead to their amalgamation are repugnant to the law of nature. From social amalgamation it is but a step to illicit intercourse, and but another to intermarriage.

The Radicals constantly appeal to the soldiers for support. We appeal not only to those who have been soldiers, but to all who are liable to do military duty, to consider well the consequences before they aid in conferring the right of suffrage upon the Negro. When the Negro votes he will hold office. He will go to Congress. Congressmen have the appointment of Cadets to the Military Academy at West Point, from which Officers for the Army are furnished. Negro Congressmen would appoint Negro Cadets, and these in due time would receive their commissions and be assigned to the command of companies and regiments of White men. Then we should see Black Captains of Cavalry galloping about, with White Orderlies riding behind them at "regular" distance, and holding their horses when it pleased their Sable Highnesses to dismount!

We are certain to be engaged in war at some future period, and we may be so engaged before many years. There are questions pending between us and our old enemy Great Britain which might lead to hostilities, before they can be settled. Many of our own soldiers in the late war, and still more of our voters who have not been soldiers, may be called upon to take the field at the next summons to arms. Could they endure to have Negro Officers set over them? If not, let them remember that the only way to insure themselves against such degradation is to aid in defeating the Radical party.