The South and the National Government | Page 2

parties tolerant and careful, helping them both and showing the utmost
freedom of political action. And these states contribute much to our
political life.
By the same token we rush in where Texas and Virginia fear to tread,
and we shall welcome the impending and inevitable breaking of the
Solid South (perhaps we shall lead it), not for the sake of the
Democratic party nor for the sake of the Republican party (although it
would help each party equally), but for the sake of open-mindedness
and of freedom of political action, so that all men there may walk by
thought and not by formulas, and act by convictions and not by
traditions. Where-ever one party by long power breeds intolerance, the
other falls into contempt. And what constructive influence have the
Southern States in our larger political life? From some of them, where
parties have fallen low, we have seen men go to one national
convention as a mere unthinking personal following of a candidate
even then clad in garments of twofold defeat; and to the conventions of
the other party we have sometimes seen office-holding shepherds with
their crooks drive their mottled flocks to market. We are tired of this
political inefficiency, this long isolation, and these continued scandals;
and we are tired of the conditions that produce them. If parties are to be
instruments of civilized government, the conditions that produce such
scandals must cease. We must have in the South a Democratic party of
tolerance and a Republican party of character; and neither party must
be ranged on lines of race.
We aspire to a higher part in the Republic than can be played by men of
closed minds or of unthinking habits or by organized ignorance. We
aspire again to a share in the constructive work of the government in
these stirring days of great tasks at home and growing influence abroad.
I am leaving party politics severely alone, but I am speaking to a
national and patriotic theme. A Republican Administration or a
Democratic Administration is a passing incident in our national history.

Parties themselves shift and wane. And any party's supremacy is of
little moment in comparison with the isolation of a large part of the
Union from its proper political influence.
The manhood and the energy and the ambition of Southern men now
find effective political expression through neither party. The South,
therefore, neither contributes to the Nation's political thought and
influence nor receives stimulation from the Nation's thought and
influence. Its real patriotism counts for nothing--is smothered dumb
under party systems that have become crimes against the character and
the intelligence of the people. The South gives nothing and receives
nothing from the increasing national political achievement of every
decade. Politically it is yet a province; and we are tired of this barren
seclusion. Men who prefer complaint to achievement may regard this as
treason: let them make the most of it. We prefer a higher station in the
Union than New Hampshire and Vermont and Pennsylvania and
Arkansas hold.
From the first our commonwealth conspicuously stood for something
greater than any party, something that antedates all our parties, that
spirit of independence in political judgment and action which brought
the old thirteen states into being and made the Republic possible. And
that spirit is not dead yet.
If it cannot regain its old-time influence through one party, it will
regain it through another.
We are the descendants of men who fashioned parties in their
beginning; and, if need be, we can refashion them. For the aim of
government is not to preserve parties but to give range to free
individual action in a democracy. And it is in this spirit of national
aspiration that we welcome our distinguished guest of honor--a man
now placed above parties, and too just to regard the Republic by
sections, our best equipped citizen for the highest office in the world.
TO THE PRESIDENT-ELECT: May his administration mark the
return of Southern character and sincerity to its old-time part in the
constructive work of government and the end forever of political

isolation from the achievements and the glory of the Union!

%The South and the National Government%
ADDRESS BY THE HONORABLE WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT
PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES
North Carolina presents an admirable type of the present conditions in
the South. It offers, therefore, a suitable subject for the discussion
planned for this evening, and I count it a privilege to be present to hear
it. One, in any degree responsible for the government and welfare of
the whole country at this time in her history, must take an especial
interest in the trend of public opinion and the conditions, material and
political, of the South.
The laws of the United States have equal operation from