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I fol. 37
It was a glorious success, in every way. The
crowd was the largest ever seen in this place; and
it was representative , orderly , intelligent, and
deeply interested. Men stood for three hours,
eagerly listening to the addresses of Mr. B. J. Stev¬
ens, (Chairman) and of-the young ex-soldiers,
Lieutenant J. W. Holbrooke, John I. Kelly and
Grover Edmondson.
In the assemblage, were delegations from North
Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Texas
and Tennessee.
•There were people who came from every sec¬
tion of Georgia: there were ladies who told me that
they had traveled hundreds of miles to be present.
In the immense throng, I recognized “the old
familiar faces” of those who have been my devoted
friends for many and many a year.
The first playmate of my boyhood was there,
Fayette Goolsby. Numbers of those who support¬
ed me in my first race for Congress were on hand.
Old Screven County, where I taught school, was
largely represented; aitd it gave me a peculiar pleas¬
ure to welcome these visitors.
Will Stanford, of Valdosta, was the first to
mention the birthday celebration: and therefore he
may be considered the God-father of the grandest
mass-meeting we have ever held.
There were mang beautiful gifts presented to
me and to my good wife; and our appreciaion could
hardly be expressed.
The president of the Senate, lion. Sam L. Olive,
presented one of these mementoes, and lion. Ben M.
Blackburn, another.
No speeches of presentation could have been
more appropriate and touching.
The gift presented by Mr. Olive was from the
State House officers; and that of Mr. Blackburn
from one of the great orders of Atlanta.
My friend, Giles, of Deep-Step, Washington
County, said—“Mr. Watson, my old mother wanted
to be here today, but she was too sick to come: she.
went out and gathered some plain old-fashioned
flowers for you, and she sent them by me”
When 'one possesses the esteem and the love of
the common people as I have been made to feel that
I possess it, one is prouder of that than any king
could be of his crown.
James W. Hill, assisted by Robert Ray, cooked
the barbecue; and everyone who partook of it pro¬
nounced it perfect.
It would be hard to estimate the number of
those; who enjoyed the hospitality of Hickory Hill;
the house was crowded, as delegations came and
went: the tables under the trees were lined with
relays .of guests, one after another, until late in the
day.
Everybody wanted to see “Miss Georgia,” and
she shook more hands that day than you could easily
count.
Rev Dr. E. J. Forrester, of Sparta, was a re¬
minder of Old Mercer University, and of the primi¬
tive, immemorial democracy, of organized Christi¬
anity: he offered and read the Resolutions, which
Ben Blackburn seconded in a brief but perfect
speech; and which were unanimously adopted when
Chairman Stevens put them to a vote..
The, speech which follows was written Out be¬
fore hand, and I leave it a.s it stood, without in¬
terpolating the “applause,” “cheers,” “laughter,”
etc.
The audience must have numbered more than
7,000—possibly 8,000—and I never addressed one
that was more responsive and unanimous.
In the afternoon, there was a free-for-all ses¬
sion addressed by Hon. J. J. Brown, Commissioner
of Agriculture; Hon. Thos. G. Kent, representative
from Glasscock County; Mr. Beck Hogan, of Lin
coin County, and a number of other visitors whose
names unfortunately were not handed up to Chair¬
man Stevens.
Mr. Watson's Speech.
There never was a time known to history
when our great Anglo-Saxon race did not love
liberty, self-government, the honor of manhood
and the purity of woman.
Before the voice of John the Baptist was
heard crying in the wilderness, our ancestors, in
the vast woods of Germany, were practising democ¬
racy; making their own laws, in their public
meetings; choosing their own magistrates in
times of peace, and their own chieftains in time of
war.
The Anglo-Saxon home, as Julius Ga?sar found
it, 2,000 years ago, was the same in its main
features that it is today—one wife, a help-meet and
not a slave; and a high standard of morality which
punished with death the unfaithful woman who
brought shame upon the household.
A conquering race of men the Germanic tribes
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Price $2.00 Per Year
THE THOMSON IVfASlg : e TING
AND
1VIR. WATSON’S SPEECH.
have ever been; and away back in those dim ages
we find theiii sweeping down upon the sunny plains
of Italy, France, and Spain, establishing empires
with their swords.
They crossed into Britain, conquered' the
natives, and changed the name of the country into
that which it bears today—Angleland, England.
Into this British Isle, our ancestors carried
their distinctive, primitive institutions, the one
wife home; the freeman’s liberty of person and of
speech and of property; the right to be tried bv a
jury of his equals, in the neighborhood, in which he
lived; the right to dwell undisturbed in the house
ihat was his castle—his castle which, as the great
Lord Chatham declared, might be a rickety luit,
into which beat the rain and the snow, but into
which even the King could not come, without^he
warrant of the law.
In course of time, another tribe, Northmen
and conquerors, crossed into England, bearing ban¬
ners blessed by the Pope; and they caught the
Anglo-Saxons divided and unprepared. One great
cattle at Hastings, gave England to the Norihans;
and then came the suppression of Anglo Saxon
liberties.
Later on, the Norman robbers fell out
themselves, partly because the burdens of the
Feudal System had been illegally increased, arid
partly because the government of the realm was
rapidly becoming a personal despotism of the King.
Free-men were arbitrarily arrested, thrown in¬
to prison, and put to death.
Estates were, confiscated, goods and
seized android, without the judgment of any court
or the sanction of any law.
Personal freedom was violated by compulsory
military service, which exceeded the legal require¬
ments of Feudalism. Men were forced to leal
England, to fight in Flanders or in
when the causes of the wars did not concern
people, but were personal quarrels and ambitions
Kings. i
The Norman conquerors ' mpre ' a
minority: the great mass of the people was com¬
pose^ of the submerged Anglo-Saxons; and
original Britons; therefore, when the
Kings created a division among the conquering
minority, the conquered majority began to re-as
sert itself, as the tree, bending to the storm,
recovers, when the tempest has passed.
To prevent the rebellion of the Anglo-Saxons
—who spoke English —against the tyrant
—who spoke French — the Kings granted
in which they promised to restore to the Englisli
people their ancient liberties.
When those Charters had served the
of the King in quieting the people, they weVc for¬
gotten—as political platforms are, today.
But when Richard the Lion-hearted was killed
in France, and his perfidious brother, John,
the crown which belonged to (he son of his
brother, the. Norman lords who were
•rith the personal government of their Kings, fie¬
ri rmined that the feudal abuses should be correct¬
ed and the ancient liberties of the land restored.
They formed a military federation against
usurper, John, who had pusillanimous!/
rigned away the Kingdom of England to the
and made it a tribute-paying province of the Papal
Monarchy.
Finally j those rebellious barons, at the head
a great volunteer army of Anglo-Saxons,
ed the Norman tyrarit, in the Meadow of Running
Mead, near London and forced him to sign the
Charter, June 15, 1215, seven hundred years ago!
And those re-established liberties had been
existence among the Angles and Saxons immemor
iablv—“time whereof the memory of man
not to, the contrary.”
Let me sav, once again, that I have never
tentionally cast a slur upon any man on account
his religion.
With the conscientious belief of the
Catholic, I have nothing whatever to do.
his business, not mine.
But when any church adopts a code of
which say, that no civil marriage among
tians is anything more than legalized
that the Church should lie united to the State
supported by taxation; that the Church
have control of education; that in governmental af¬
fairs the Church comes first, as the higher power;
that freedom of speech and of press are pestilential
heresies; that the layman must not read the
without the permit of the bishop; that the
have no right to rulo themselves; and that
State should not allow to each citizen the right
worship God according to the dictates of his
conscience—when any Church adopts a code
that, and endeavors to put it into operation in
country, then it becomes my right and my duty
Harlem, Ga., Friday, September ‘12, 1919.
combat the encroachments of that Church.
The Norman tyrants who took away the liber¬
ties of England, were Catholics: the people whom
they oppressed, were Catholics: in those, days,
everybody who wanted to live, had to be a Cath¬
olic.
The barons who rebelled against the Catholic
tyrant, were Catholics, also; but they were patriotic
Englishmen, first, not papal serfs, as their Norman
King was.
What did the Pope do, when he heard that the
barons of England had rebelled against King John,
and had compelled him to sign, swear to and give
security to observe, the Great Charter?
The Pope was the earthly God of the Catholic
world: his power, supreme; his word, law; his
judgement, infallible.
Wheel did the Pope dof
He excommunicated those. barons;
and, in the fearful language of Rome’s diabolical
curse, he consigned their souls to the (lames and
tortures of an eternal hell!
As to King John, the Pope assumed the
authority to cancel his bonds, and to release him
from his oath.
As to the Great Charter, the Pope damned it,
and annulled it; and, to this day, the curse of
Home rests upon the written enumeration of your
time-honored Anglo-Saxon liberties.
Yet, you are told by irresponsible American
priests, that Popery has always been, is now, and
ever will be, the ardent champion of civil and
religious liberty.
Dpen the Pope tell yon sof
(No, indeed, he does not.
In the Popes official declarations, and in the
lav of his Church, you find the same implacable
comity tojlm rights of man, that was displayed
when Pope ‘Innocent III. excommunicated the
Catholic barons for re-asserting the. ancient liber
lies, tlle which Angles and Saxons had been enio ying o?
lit 'fbhcSf&^'Hf NdffhCT’nT'Efiirope, 'Hundreds
years before the Apostle Paul unfurled the banner
of Jesus Christ at Romo.
The Articles of the Great Charter which chief
Iv concern us. read:
“XXIX.' (39). No Free-man shall be
taken, nor imprisoned, nor disseized, nor outlawed,
■not banished , nor in any ways damaged, nor shall
the King send him to prison, excepting by
t! ( judgement of his Peers and by the Law of the
land.
“XXX. (40) No right shall be sold, delay¬
ed, or deniedP
Magna Charta, the Great Charter!
Yes, a Great Charter, a beacon light of his¬
tory, a Bible of the elementary rights of the
human race, a voice of inspiration ringing down
the corridors of time, a banner in the skies, wav
mg humanity upward and onward, a return of lost,
liberties more glorious even than the return of the
Israelites from the Babylonian captivity, in which
they had hung their harps upon the willows and
mingled their tears with the waters of the
Euphrates.
A Great Charter! You hear its clarion voice
ringing in our Declaration of Independence; you
hear it in every constitution adopted by the eman
cipated peoples of Europe; you hear it in the Bills
of Rights of the forty-eight States of this Union;
you hear it in the Amendments which our fore¬
fathers compelled the Federalists to make to the
Constitution of the United States.
For 700 years, Great Britain venerated these
Charters, upon which the Kings endeavored to en
croach, again and again; and to defend which, the
English people shed their blood like water, again
and again.
In our Mother Country, there has bee’n strug¬
gle after struggle, between the principles of royal
prerogative, Anglo-Saxon and the principles embodied in the
primitive institutions.
By bloodless Revolution of 1688, it was fondly
believed that the Common people had decisively
anil permanently won the right to choose their own
rulers, make their own laws, control their national
destinies—secure, under the law, in the enjoyment
of life, liberty, and property.
When Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, John
Adams, and the other pioneers of the American
Revolution, rose against British tyranny, what was
the burden of their complaint ?
It was, that the Mother Country had denied to
the English colonists, in America, the rights which
belonged to Englishmen, in England.
The Revolutionary War made good that claim.
And the supreme question before the Ameri¬
can people today is, Arc we now in full possession
of the rights which the Revolutionary War con
firmed to ust the rights reasserted in the English
Revolution of 1688? the rights re-written into the
Issued Weekly
Great Charter wrung from King John and his sue
cesors? the riglits which our remote ancestors
were enjoying in their tribal home:;, long before
the eagles of the Roman conquerors Hew over tlie
Rhine:
-Ire we still in possession, of those liberties,
those primary rights of man.'
hour Revolutionary forefathers fought seveu
years, to rind:rate, their title to them. You are
the lixk.w legal heirs ! Yov still h ave tub
title • m T ARK YOU IN’ 1 ‘OSSESSION (
I ou arc assembled here on (lie soil of the
youngest <>1 the original Thirteen Colonics that
defied the power of the greatest Empire the sun
ever shone on.
From Georgia, went the powder used at the
battle of Bunker Hill.
From Georgia, went food for the starving
troops of Washington,
from Georgia, rode a band of volunteers
v.ho fought with the volunteer Tonin'-wans, Vir
g mans, and Carolinians to win, as King's. Moun¬
tain, the turning-point battle of the Revolutionary
War.
From Georgia, the Continental Congress asked
T.iO volunteers: nearly 5.000 patriots answered the
call.
From Georgia, went the first war-vessel to
defy the 1 uion Jack of Great Britain; and that
little schooner captured from the British the
powder that New England was so glad to got.
It was in Georgia, that Sergeant Jasper of
South Carolina, won the fame that shall be his, as
long us the Savannah runs to the sea.
In Burke County, almost adjoining us, a. bat¬
tle was fought; in Richmond County,, our neigh¬
bor, battles were fought; in Wilkes County, ano.o
er neighbor, a battle was fought; and Columbia
County, which then embraced the ground you
stand on, furnished volunteer soldiers who helped
do the fighting.
ribjali u Conntj ti lie. the hopes of General
Clarke, a hfero of the Battles of Kettle
Creek and of Ifing's Mountain.
In Jefferson County, you'll find the grave of
as true a patriot as ever lived, General Solomon
\\ ood, whose name, I am glad to see, is handed
down to future generations by the brilliant, true¬
hearted Georgian, Lucian Lamar Knight.
In the old Midway Cemetery, in Liberty Coun¬
ty, you will find Georgia's primitive Westminster
Abbey, whose dome is the heavens above, whose
‘bm aisles are the moss-draped live-oaks which
stood there before the Pale-face had come
to drive the Red Man out.
The bannered moss waves, and waves, and
waves,—all the day long, all through the solemn
night—above the monument, above the marble
slab, above the sunken, nameless grave: and as you
stand among those memorials of Georgia’s Rev¬
olutionary' heroes, you feel moved to the depth of
ur soul, you bate your head, you lower your
voice, for you know that indeed your feet have
touched holy ground.
On land and. on sea, those men fought and
died, for you and for me, that wo might he free—
free to exercise the elemental rights of man; free
to govern on reel res; free to express and publish
honest convictions; free to do as we pleased, so
long as we pleased to do right; free to adopt
whatever principles—political, or religious—our
consciences dictated.
George Washington’s monument towers into
the clouds, in the City that bears his name, and it
is none too high for the man it commemorates;
but that noble tribute to a patriot’s military suc¬
cess ivpuld not he there, had lie not been served by
the fearless forgotten heroes of Dixieland.
Georgians, I call on you today—today as I
stand under the gray hairs of sixty-three years—
1 call on you to remember tite glories of your past!
Americans, everywhere, I call upon you to
remember how your fathers struggled to establish,
a government which the people, having made,
would control, for the benefit of the common¬
wealth, and not of a privileged aristocracy!
Your hard-won, blood-bought liberties are al¬
most gone: if you mean to regain and keep them,
you have no time to lose in starting about it.
You may own a farm that you inherited from
your great-grandfather: your chain of title may
reach back to the colonial days, when George III.
was your great-grandfather’s King.
I myself have just such a place, near old
Wrightsboro; and to the original deed hangs the
largo wax seal of the Royal Council, and the deed
is countersigned by Charles Watson, Clerk.
Your title to your place is undisputed, but in
i lie course of the long yeare; the boundary lines
(Continued on Page Two.)
Rio. 51
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