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mind, and soul, as O’Connell carried
that of old Ireland? Who is it that
tries to rouse you to throw off your
bondage and become once more free
as did O’Connell, the uncrowned king
of Ireland, when he marshaled the
oppressed of his native land to bring
the irresistible force of public opinion
to bear upon English tyranny? Show
me one of your leaders who has a
plan, a purpose, a definite aim, a
scheme of constructive legislation
which will remedy abuses, restore
prosperity, safeguard individual lib
erty, making the body politic healthy
and strong.
I stand squarely for white su
prema’cy as the best policy for the
blacks and the whites alike. The
law which was adopted by popular
vote today is the best guarantee of
the earnestness with which I speak.
In order to help you secure that law,
I made very considerable personal
sacrifice and did arduous work during
the campaign which brought success
to that issue.
On the other hand, consider the
attitude of Mr. Bryan with reference
to the negro vote. The leaders of
that race are organized, and they are
making relentless warfare upon the
Republican party, because the Re
publican party has at last recognized
the justice of the South’s contention
that she should be allowed to regulate
her own domestic affairs. Think
what this means! The Civil War w r as
waged to establish the right of the
South to local home rule. We lost
the case in the trial by battle, and we
lost our slaves, but the principle was
not lost, and now, after forty years
of bitterness and strife, the enlight
ened Republicans of the North and
East have said by actions which
speak louder than words that the
Southern people who made such heroic
sacrifices to assert the principles of
local self-government were right. It
vindicates every Confederate soldier
who marched and fought under the
stars and bars. It is a monument
erected by his enemy to the honor of
every dead hero of the Southern
Confederacy; it is a halo of glory for
every survivor of the followers of
Lee and Jackson, Johnson and
Forrest.
But the negro leaders of the North,
East and West are incensed against
the Republican party for having
adopted this position. There are
five points upon which they rest their
hostility to Roosevelt and Taft.
1. Because they haven’t enforced
the fourteenth and fifteenth amend
ments.
2. Because they have acquiesced in
the Southern disfranchise laws.
3. Because the President dismissed
from the army the negro troops who
shot up Brownsville.
4. Because of the defeat of the
Foraker bill, which was intended to
restore these troops to the army.
5. Because Roosevelt has appointed,
and Taft has said that he will con
tinue, as Secretary of War, General
Luke E. Wright, an Ex-Confederate
soldier.
Upon these points delegations
representing the negroes went to
Taft seeking satisfaction. They came
away from Taft without getting sat
isfaction. They then went to Mr.
Bryan, and they eame away satisfied.
What did he say to them? I don’t
know, but he must have said some
thing that sounded better to them
than what Taft said. If he said any
thing to them that was less favorable
to the South than the position of
Roosevelt and Taft, he has no right
to expect Southern support. If he did
not say something more satisfactory
to them than what Roosevelt and
Taft had said, he would not now be
getting the negro support. He can
not be ignorant of the fact that they
are circulating throughout the whole
country a written statement intended
to influence the negro to vote for him,
in which statement they say that they
have been in communication with Mr.
Bryan for weeks, and that he has
made them satisfactory pledges.
In coming to a decision in a matter
of this sort the people of the South
should remember that Mr. Bryan was
born in Illinois, in 1858. that he
grew up in the heated atmosphere of
sectional hostility to the South. By
heredity, environment and education
he was saturated with the idea that
the South was wrong on the negro
question, and that the North was
right. It is just as natural for Mr.
Bryan, born w’here he was, reared in
the environment of his Illinois home,
to take the side of Thad Stevens and
Chas. Sumner against the South, as
it is for a man like me, born and
reared in Georgia, to believe that the
South was right and that Stevens and
Sumner w’ere wrong.
Mr. Bryan believes in social equal
ity. I would not dare to say so if I
could not prove it. He lives in a
State where it is practiced, and he
has never uttered a word against it.
The laws of his State do not forbid
the intermarriage of blacks and
whites, and such marriages, so abhor
rent to us, are of frequent occur
rence in Nebraska.
The schools are mixed schools, in
which the whites and the negroes are
educated on terms of social equality.
The University of Nebraska is a
social equality school where young
negro men and women are admitted
and educated on terms of social
equality with young white men and
women. Mr. Bryan sent his own son
and daughter to be educated in this
institution, and he was not obliged
to do it, for he was able to send them
elsewhere had he had the slightest
objection to having his daughter
reared and educated in a school on a
plane of social equality with young
negro men and women. So highly
does Mr. Bryan approve of this
social equality University that he
donates $250 of his money every year
to support it.
In the City of New York there is
a club known as the Cosmopolitan
Club, composed of negro men, white
men and white women. The object
of this Club is to promote social
equality and the intermarriage of the
two races. They boast that they
have arranged several such marriages.
In the early part of this year, this
Cosmopolitan Club gave an elaborate
dinner, at which negro men, white
men and white women sat down to
eat and drink on terms of social
equality. During the banquet mis
cegenation was earnestly advocated,
and the theory advanced that by the
intermamage of black men with
3affar«onian
white women the black skin of the
Ethiopian would gradually bleach
into the whiteness of the Caucasian.
The Secretary of the Club is
Reverend Doctor Owen Waller, a
negro, and he is one of the Bryan
speakers in this campaign.
What will it mean to the South if
a Democrat holding such views as
Mr. Bryan does, is elected President?
A Republican President holding views
of that sort we can antagonize.
Against him we present the impas
sable barrier of the Solid South; but
how can we defend ourselves against
the dangers of such views as those
held by Mr. Bryan when we ourselves
give them the endorsement which
would be implied by our support of
him for the Presidency? If the im
pression goes abroad that he owes his
election to the negro vote, who can
calculate the disastrous consequences? •
We already have 4,000 Washington
negroes on the payrolls of the govern
ment. We already have white men
and white women working under ne
gro bosses in Washington City. We
already have white naval officers and
sailors holding inferior places to the
negro, Ralph W. Tyler, who is the
Auditor of the U. S. Navy. We have
white girls and boys working under
the negro, W. T. Vernon, Register of
the United States Treasury. We have
white lady clerks under the negro,
John C. Dancy, Recorder of Deeds for
the District of Columbia. We al
ready have a negro Judge of one of
the Courts of the District of Co
lumbia.
If the political importance of the
negro is to be enhanced, as Henry
Watterson, Bryan’s official mouth
piece, says it should be, how long will
it be before 8,000 negroes will be
feeding out of the public crib in
Washington City? If the Watterson-
Bryan policy of having the Demo
cratic party compete with the Re
publican party for the negro vote is
adopted, how long will it be before
we have a negro in the cabinet?
Instead of one Dr. Crum to quarrel
about at the Charleston Custom
House, w T e will have hundreds of just
such cases cropping out all over the
land.
Where are the Southern Demo
crats who are ready to endorse the
Watterson-Bryan proposition that
“the time has come for the negro to
divide his vote ai d thus become a
political factor, such as he is not to
day”? Is that what we have been
trying to do for the last thirty
years? Are the Southern people so
blind to logical consequences of
political mistakes that they will be
silently acquiescent while Mr. Bryan
and his lieutenants adopt a policy
which threatens to undo that which
we have been trying for thirty years
to do?
We feel that the integrity of our .
institutions, the purity of our civ-' v
ilization, of our home life and blood
requires the strictest maintenance of
white supremacy. It the Watterson-
Bryan policv should be adopted, what,
does it: mean except that the negro
becomes the umpire of a clispute
between the whites? When that time
comes, political equality is upon us,
and with political equality establish
ed, social equality cannot be kept
out; and with the coming of social
equality, the intermarriage of the
races is inevitable.
In the name of God, what are
Southern editors thinking about that
they make no protest while M'
Bryan and Mr. Watterson are Afri
canizing the Democratic party? Ever
since the war, it has claimed to be a
white man’s party. Because it was
the white man’s party the South has
alloived herself to be ruled by it; but
now, at the very time when the Re
publican party has come over to the
South’s position on the race question,
and wishes to put the negro out of
politics because he has become an
intolerable burden, the Democratic
party is leaving its historic position
on the negro question, and. is pitching
its camp on the ground which the
Republican party has abandoned!
Mr. Bryan should subordinate to
patriotism his monumental selfishness
and say to the negroes boldly—“I
agree with the President on the
questions upon which you are fighting
him; I agree with the Southern peo
ple, just as Roosevelt and Taft do;
I repudiate your support if you offer
it to me upon those grounds; I spurn
your co-operation if you offer it to
me upon terms which menace the
Southern people with a return of the
horrors of reconstruction.”
Instead of doing this, he deliber
ately makes an asset of the negro
resentment and takes up a position
which, if maintained, would turn the
Southern States into another Santo
Domingo.
Mr. Carlyle somewhere in his
voluminous writings has this sen
tence, “Cast forth thy act, thy word,
into the ever-living, ever-working
universe, it is seed-grain that cannot
die; unnoticed today it will be found
flourishing like a banyan grove after
a thousand years.”
The rain-drop slips from the cloud
above, sinks into the soil where the
seed lies buried and says to it, “I
am the Resurrection and the Life”;
trickles onward through field and
forest, seeking the brook, and with
the brook journeys onward, loitering
in the eddy, leaping in the cascade,
and faring onward until it reaches the
great blue sea, from which it is lifted
by the white hand of the mist back to
its home in the clouds, to start once
more from the skies with its message
to every seed of grass, and grain, and
flower, “I am the Resurrection and
the Life.”
Nothing is wasted. I believe that
the work of every true man, every
true woman, has in it a germ of
immortality. It is that kind of faith
which has moved me to do the work
which I have done in this campaign,
as in other years, since 1889. Politic
ally I stand now where I stood when
the Farmers’ Alliance sent me to
Congress. To the popularity of the
principles which that organization
adopted, I owed my success in my
race for Congress. The Tenth
District was overwhelmingly in favor
of the Ocala platform of the Farm
ers’ Alliance, and I was publicly and
solemnly pledged to adhere to those
principles, regardless of the caucus
dictation of the Democratic party. It
was my loyalty to this pledge that
carried me out of the Democratic
party and brought upon me such a
storm of misrepresentation and abuse.
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