The South and the National Government | Page 5

Again, the Democratic party has not preserved inviolate its traditional
doctrines as to state's rights and other issues, and has for the time
adopted new doctrines of possibly doubtful economic truth and wisdom.
Southern men, adhering to the party and the name, find themselves,
through the influence of tradition and the fear of a restoration of
conditions which are now impossible, supporting a platform and
candidate whose political and economic theories they distrust. Under
these conditions there was in the last campaign, and there is to-day
throughout the South, among many of its most intelligent citizens, an
impatience, a nervousness, and a restlessness in voting for one ticket
and rejoicing in the success of another.
Now, I am not one of those who are disposed to criticize or emphasize
the inconsistency of the position in which these gentlemen find
themselves. I believe it would be wiser if all who sympathize with one
party and its principles were to vote its ticket, but I can readily
understand the weight and inertia of the tradition and the social

considerations that make them hesitate. I believe that the movement
away from political solidity has started, and ought to be encouraged,
and I think one way to encourage it is to have the South understand that
the attitude of the North and the Republican party toward it is not one
of hostility or criticism or opposition, political or otherwise; that they
believe in the maintenance of the Fifteenth Amendment; but that, as
already explained, they do not deem that amendment to be inconsistent
with the South's obtaining and maintaining what it regards as its
political safety from domination of an ignorant electorate; that the
North yearns for closer association with the South; that its citizens
deprecate that reserve on the subject of politics which so long has been
maintained in the otherwise delightful social relations between
Southerners and Northerners as they are more and more frequently
thrown together.
In welcoming to a change of party affiliation many Southerners who
have been Democrats, we are brought face to face with a delicate
situation which we can only meet with frankness and justice. In our
anxiety to bring the Democratic Southerner into new political relations
we should have and can have no desire to pass by or ignore the
comparatively few white Southerners who from principle have
consistently stood for our views in the South when it cost them social
ostracism and a loss of all prestige. Nor can we sympathize with an
effort to exclude from the support of Republicanism in the South or to
read out of the party those colored voters who by their education and
thrift have made themselves eligible to exercise the electoral franchise.
We believe that the solution of the race question in the South is largely
a matter of industrial and thorough education. We believe that the best
friend that the Southern Negro can have is the Southern white man, and
that the growing interest which the Southern white man is taking in the
development of the Negro is one of the most encouraging reasons for
believing the problem is capable of solution. The hope of the Southern
Negro is in teaching him how to be a good farmer, how to be a good
mechanic; in teaching him how to make his home attractive and how to
live more comfortably and according to the rules of health and
morality.

Some Southerners who have given expression to their thoughts seem to
think that the only solution of the Negro question is his migration to
Africa, but to me such a proposition is utterly fatuous. The Negro is
essential to the South in order that it may have proper labor. An attempt
of Negroes to migrate from one state to another not many years ago led
to open violence at white instigation to prevent it. More than this, the
Negroes have now reached 9,000,000 in number. Their ancestors were
brought here against their will. They have no country but this. They
know no flag but ours. They wish to live under it, and are willing to die
for it. They are Americans. They are part of our people and are entitled
to our every effort to make them worthy of their responsibilities as free
men and as citizens.
The success of the experiments which have been made with them on a
large scale in giving them the benefit of thorough primary and
industrial education, justifies and requires the extension of this system
as far as possible to reach them all.
The proposition to increase the supply of labor in the South by
emigration from Europe, it seems to me, instead of being inimical to
the cause of the Negro, will aid him. As the industries of the South
continue to grow in the