To those who care for freedom things do not seem
to be going very well in America. In Connecticut the amendment of the State constitution so as to admit negro suffrage was voted upon on the 2nd inst., the democrats bbtaining the victory, and pro- hibiting the amendment by a majority of 5,000, whereas the republicans have recently had there a majority of 4,000. The Alabama Convention, while abolishing slavery, has nullified negro testimony in courts of justice by a vote of 59 against 16, and has prohibited negro suffrage by a unanimous vote. In Mississippi, General Humphrey, a Southern general still unpardoned, was elected Governor, and all the candidates op- posed to receiving negro testimony in courts of justice were elected. The Louisiana Convention has declared that " the Federal Government was made to be perpetuated for the ex- clusive political benefit of the white race." President Johnson has promised a Kentucky deputation that the negro troops should be withdrawn from Kentucky, and " the abuses of the Freedmen's Bureau corrected." Everywhere in the South the drift of events is the same,—to repeal slavery nominally indeed, but give the white oligarchy full power to restore it practically or destroy the negro race altogether. President Johnson is acting a disgraceful part. It was not only as easy for him to insist on the enactment of full protection for the civil rights of the negroes before restoring political power to the States, as to insist on the nominal abolition of slavery, but the one act was a mockery without the other. Unless the republicans bestir themselves the vile democratic prin- ciples which evidently poison the President's mind will restore the Southern society on its old basis, and all the glory of the war be obliterated by the victory of the caste principle which caused it.
