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WATSON’S EDITORIALS
Playing It Lolv Dolvn in "Old Mississip.”
I he speech macle at Lauderdale, Miss., by
one oi the candidates for the U. S. Senatorship
was just about the lowest dip ever made for
the vote of white folks.
1 have heard worse appeals made to negroes
■—Georgia had her share of that in the years
of the past when both factions of the whites
competed for the negro vote; but just such a
speech as John Sharp Williams made to the
white folks, at Lauderdale, is unprecedented.
Listen to J. Sharp:
“If such a thing as government control of
railroads should come into force, we would
have the old Reconstruction days’ conditions
BACK ON US IN A MINUTE.”
Listen again to J. Sharp:
“How would you like for a nigger ticket
agent or conductor on a train where your
wives and daughters may have to travel UN
ATTENDED? Something might turn up that
you would be compelled to whip a black feder
al employe, and then you would be tried by
a judge in sympathy with this very thing.”
Now, who ever heard the like of that?
If the government takes charge of the rail
roads, Reconstruction horrors will be back on
us in a minute, our wives and daughters will
be at the mercy of negro men, and if “some
thing turns up” and we “whip the negro,”
he will be tried before a judge who “sympa
thizes with that very thing.”
With what thing, Johnny?
Will your imaginary judge sypathize with
your supposed belligerent who has whipped a
fictitious “nigger ticket agent or conductor”
for an alleged insult of some kind to mythical
white wives and daughters traveling unat
tended? or will your imaginary judge sympa
thize with your fictitious nigger?
Explain yourself, Johnny.
Mr. Williams’ speech, as reported in the
Meridian, Miss., Weekly Star, is an amazing
performance.
His whole conception seemed to be that
his hearers could be imposed upon to an un
limited extent, and their fears of social equali
ty aroused to such a pitch as to deafen them
to reason. He talked as though he considered
them to be not only ignorant, but blindly
prejudiced, and incapable of resisting a pas
sionate appeal to sectional and race hatred.
In effect he told his hearers that if the Fed
eral Government should own and operate the
railroads their wives and daughters in becom
ing passengers upon the cars, would fall into
the custody of negro conductors, in personal
contact with and in personal custody of ne
gro men.
Mr. \\ illiams knows quite well that he could
make no statement which would kindle fiercer
flames of passion. He knows quite well that
the Southern people would again grab their
guns and fight their bloody way to another
glorious Chancellorsville, sublime Gettysburg
and doleful Appomattox, before they would
submit to any such condition of things as he
predicted.
Therefore, when John Sharp Williams, in
the absence of his rival in the race, took ad
vantage of his audience in that manner, he was
playing it pretty low down on the people of
Mississippi.
WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN
A Newspaper Devoted to the Advocacy of the Jeffersonian Theory of Government.
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ATLANTA, GEORGIA, THURSDAY, JULY 11, 1907.
For John Sharp Williams knows, just as
well as I do, that the Federal Government
would never repeat its Reconstruction mis
take of putting the negro over the whites. -He
knows that the North now looks back upon
the Reconstruction Era with sorrow and re
morse. He knows that the orgy of sectional
hate and revenge which took place imme
diately after four years of furious fighting was
nothing less than the final campaign of the
war itself; and that now, when there has been
forty years of peace, with social and business
relations of all kinds established in all direc
tions, it is the reckless play of the desperate
office-seeker to talk about renewing the policy
which made the Reconstruction era the black
est chapter in the book.
• Negro conductors handling our passenger
coaches, and handling our wives and daugh
ters?
WHO’S TO PUT THEM AT IT?
Will New England try it on ?
Hardly.
In the first place, New England is more de
pendent upon Southern cotton fields and
Southern customers than ever before. Will
all New England unite in trying to do a
thing which they know will kill business?
In the second place, how does Mr. John
Sharp Williams happen to know that New
England is in favor of negro conductors?
New England has many railroads, of course;
has she put a single negro conductor in charge
of one of her own passenger coaches?
Not that I ever heard of. If Mr. Williams
knows of an instance, let him cite it.
Not even the street cars have negro con
ductors—so far as I ever saw or heard.
How about the Northern states? Do they
want the negroes put in charge of the South
ern passenger trains?
There is no evidence of such an intention
or desire. The passenger coaches of the North
are, every one of them, in charge of white men.
Their street cars ditto.
Dos not John Sharp Williams know that
the Northern and Eastern and Western whites
are WHITE FOLKS, just as we Southern
whites are? Race pride is just as strong on
one side of Mason and Dixon’s line as on the
other. Temporarily the Abolition Crusade
made a difference; and there are now some rel
ics of that movement; but the white man who
wants to eat and sleep with negroes, who wants
his wife to practice Social Equality with negro
women, who wants his son to marry a negro
girl, or his daughter to wed a negro man,
is not to be found in any section of this great
Union—
SAVE AS AN EXCEPTIONAL MON
STROSITY.
Mr. John Sharp Williams knows this; and
he, therefore, knows the other sections of this
country would never accept negro conductors
for themselves, nor attempt to inflict negro
conductors upon the South. He knows that the
North knows such a policy would be resisted.
And he knows that the next time there is a war
about the negroes, all the blacks will be in one
battle-line and all the whites in the other.
When Mr. Williams makes so desperate an
appeal to an imaginary danger, admitting by
his plea that, were he in the Senate, he would
be powerless to show the other Southern Sen
ators how to safe-guard the South against
such a danger even if it were threatened, he
demonstrates one thing, very clearly:
HE IS NOT THE MAN TO FIGHT THE
BATTLES OF THE SOUTH IN THE
UNITED STATES SENATE.
n n n
Federal Judges Errant.
In no other civilized country on the globe
would a single citizen, happening to have been
appointed Judge, be allowed to set his own
opinion, no matter how honest, against the
combined opinions of the Executive and of
those who constitute the Legislative branch
of the Government. In no other country would
a judge be permitted to practice nullification.
Nowhere else on earth does one man, sitting
on the Bench, EXERCISE THE SOVER
EIGN POWER to say what shall be THE
LAW OF THE LAND.
Yet that is precisely what is taking place in
the United States.
Some federal judge who may have had, pre
vious to the accident of his appointment, no
prominence as a lawyer, none as a scholar,
none as a patriotic citizen, leader, publicist or
legislator, assumes by virtue of his office to
set aside an Act of the State Legislature, or
an Act of Congress, made by men chosen by
the votes of the people, and supposed to rep
resent the governing quality known as the Will
of the People. The federal judge may not be
a man of more than average capacity; he may
not be learned in Constitutional law, or any
other kind of law; he may not be a learned
man at all ; yet, immediately upon being ap
pointed federal judge by the Executive, he
arrogates to himself the authority to cancel
whatever may be done by all the wise men of
the National Council. Presidents, Senators,
Representatives, Cabinet Officers, Pleads of
Departments, Governors, State Legislatures,
accomplished statesmen, profound lawyers,
cultured editors —all, all, ALL are reduced to
mere nullities by a federal judge who may not
possess the least advantage over any one
member of the Senate, and who certainly can
not be supposed to be wiser than every one
who was concerned in the making of the Law.
Is it not monstrous that one man, not elect
ed by the people, should exercise this tremen
dous power in a Republic?
Is it not monstrous that the people should
in this manner have to obey an irresponsible
master, in a democratic government, when no
such power is claimed or exercised by the
judges in Great Britain, or France, or Germa
ny, or other civilized lands?
Where did the federal judges get this author
ity to nullify laws?
They got it by judicial usurpation. There
never was a day when the President could not
have set the limit to these alarming encroach
ments. Without the strong arm of the exec
utive to enforce its judgments, the Judiciary
is helpless. The framers of the Constitution ex
pected that the Excutive would always be jeal
ous of its own authority and could be depended
on to assert itself whenever the Judiciary went
too far. Under Jefferson, Jackson and Lin
coln, the precedent was set of reducing to
naught the mandates of the Judiciary. The
Executive simply ignored the Court. Conse
quently, the Court was unable to enforce its
will.
ii Bl*