[BY MAIL.]
From an Occasional Correspondent.]
JACKSON, MISS., February 25. – Knowing the very large circulation of your paper throughout the northern part of this State, I have thought that a letter giving a bird’s eye view of things about our State capital would prove interesting to a large number of your readers. Our legislature has been in session since the first of January. They have wasted much time and thousands of dollars, and have literally done nothing, save to pass one law of general interest or rather of general infamy; of which more anon. Most of the time of the body has been consumed in listening to elaborate orations on “pints” of order from sundry sable or saddle-colored statesmen, who have abandoned the business of boot-blacking and shaving for the more lucrative employment of controlling the affairs of State, at the moderate price of seven dollars per day and the stealings. There are between thirty and forty of these African Solons in both houses, embracing all shades of color from lampblack to pale cream, and of all shades of intellectual development from the Chimpanzee to Fred. Douglass. They would delight the soul of Charles Darwin as affording a magnificent illustration of his successive development theory. The leader of the band, and, indeed, the leader of the Republican party in the legislature, is your late distinguished fellow-citizen, Ham Carter, who is followed by the blacks in love and admiration, and by the white radicals in slavish fear. With the early career of this great statesman the citizens of Memphis are sufficiently familiar. They have, doubtless, missed and mourned his untimely departure, and craved some knowledge of his later history. Be it known to them, then, that when Brownlowism ceased to rule in Tennessee, and Alcornism began to rule in Mississippi, Captain Carter “left his country for his country’s good,” and casting his eyes over the fertile plains and teeming black population of Mississippi, he said to himself that it was a goodly heritage and straightway moved down to possess it. Stumping the State with and for Governor Alcorn in 1869, he became at once a man of mark with his race and in his party. Subsequently elected to the legislature from the city of Vicksburg, he has forced himself by his energy, impudence and capacity, to the leadership of his party in the legislature. He possesses the unquestioning devotion of the negro members, and backed by them and by the consciousness that the negro constitutes in Mississippi almost the entire Radical party, he lords it over his weak-kneed white brethren with an insolence that would be amusing if it were not humiliating. He has just achieved the acme of his greatness in the passage of the law referred to above, which is generally known as the social equality bill. By the terms of this delightful piece of legislation, all hotels, steamboats, restaurants, railroad cars, etc., are thrown open alike to white and black, and any hotel-keeper, steamboat captain or restaurant propriety, who shall make any difference or distinction of race, of any sort whatever directly or indirectly, shall be fined three hundred dollars for each offense, and imprisoned one year. This law goes into effect on the seventh day of March; and Captain Carter, who is its author, and sundry other negro politicians have notified the proprietor of the leading hotel here that on that day they will present themselves, with their wives and children, for board, and shall demand the best rooms and claims seats at the best table. This bill was voted for by every Republican in the legislature, including the baker’s-dozen of southern whites who have joined the party, and who call themselves moderate Republicans, or Alcorn men. Its passage was celebrated by a grand supper and drinking party at the governor’s mansion, where whites and blacks danced vis a vis, and hand in hand.
Since the passage of the social equality bill the legislature has been principally engaged in investigating the various charges of fraud and thieving against prominent Radical office-holders, with which the air here is rife. A committee composed of a majority of Radicals has already made a unanimous report, charging the Governor of the State with gross violations of law and derelictions of duty in some moneyed transactions with certain railroad officials. The auditor of the State is openly charged with all manner of peculations, and both branches of the legislature have adopted a resolution to have his official conduct investigated. A committee of the lower house has been engaged for several weeks in investigating the most damning charges against the attorney general, and, it is said, have already discovered that in less than twelve months he gave three conflicting official opinions upon the same subject; that in two days after he gave one of them he received a check for five hundred dollars from an interested party, and two days after he gave the other opinion his law partner was paid two thousand dollars by another interested party.
Indeed, about the only high officials here who are not charged with high crimes and misdemeanors are the negro secretary of state Revels, who has only been in office a few months, and the state treasurer Vasser, who, it is said, is so honest a man that he stands no earthly chance for a renomination by his party in the approaching State canvass. It is now generally conceded that the Radical party will nominate our present senator, Ames, of Maine, the son-in-law of Butler, for governor, and the negro, Ham Carter, lieutenant-governor, with the private understanding that Ames is then to be re-elected to the United States senate, and Carter is to be the governor. Some of the home-made radicals will make wry faces at these nominations, but they will all swallow it, every one of them, just as they did the social equality bill.
Much high-sounding talk has been indulged in by Governor Alcorn’s friends, and, it is said, by Alcorn himself, to the effect that he would not support Ames. Indeed, it has been said that if Ames were nominated Alcorn would take the stump against him. Now, as bitterly as I believe Alcorn hates Ames, and as bitterly as he has denounced him, I have never believed one word of his opposing him, if nominated, on the stump or elsewhere. On the contrary I believe, and I venture to prophesy, that Ames will be nominated, and that Alcorn will support him. Indeed, it is already being whispered about here by Alcorn’s friends, that, while he would regret Ames’s nomination, yet, if “the party” should deem it best, he will acquiesce. In doing so he will doubtless feel humiliated, but he knows that “the party” consists of the negroes, and that they are for Ames. He knows, moreover, that the negroes have a majority in the State, and to that majority he proposes to cling, cost what it may.
It is not known who the white people of the State will run. Walthall, Lowry, Governor Clark and General Martin, of Natchez, are spoken of. Any one of them would make a noble standard-bearer. The odds against us are heavy, but we intend to make a gallant fight. We invoke the sympathy of our redeemed brethren in Tennessee, and we ask the strong aid of the Memphis press.
OCCASIONAL.