The remarkable editor of the New York
Tribune astonishes people sometimes by his outspoken candor about men and measures.
The telegraph on Saturday quoted the substance of one of these outbursts, viz: a denunciation of
Tennessee and her Governor.
We suspect that the assailed party will have as few defenders as ever appeared for any man or cause in this world.
We give
Mr. Greeley's pithy article entire:
Tennessee Loyalty.--The telegraph has informed us that the bill allowing blacks to testify in the courts of
Tennessee, which passed the Senate by ten to nine, has been defeated in the
House by thirty to twenty-seven--the
East Tennessee Unionists generally opposing, while many of the ex-rebels supported it. This is what we had been led to expect.
Those
East Tennessee Unionists have been permitted, by a weak and worthless Union general commanding, and a reverend blackguard, who is styled Governor, to murder two or three negroes to balance each of the paroled and returned rebel soldiers whom they have seen fit likewise to dispatch, until they have good reason to deprecate the admission of negro testimony; for it would hang hundreds of them if there was any semblance of law or justice in that region.
According to our information, not less than a hundred rebels and negroes have thus been butchered since June last in and around
Knoxville alone; and there will, of course, be more if the strong hand of authority be not stretched over them.
Tennessee has many staunch
Unionists and worthy men among her citizens; but she is nevertheless a Pandemonium of passion and crime, and no more fit for self-government today than
Dahomey.
She needs the strong arm of military power stretched over her for months yet; and she needs that this rule should guarantee the freedom and legal equality of all her people as the solid basis of a true reconstruction.
