Newspapers / The Catawba County News … / Jan. 3, 1890, edition 1 / Page 1
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n The Ni EWTON TJTTA VOL. XI. NO. 47. NEWTON, CATAWBA COUNTY, N. C, FRIDAY, JANUARY 3, 1890. PRICE: 81.00 PER YEAR. JLJJJ POWDER Absolutely Pure. This powder never varies. A marvel of purity strength and wholesomenets. More economical than Le ordinary kinds, and eanaot be old in eampetition with the multitude of low tent, short Weight alum of phosphate powders. Said only in mm. Kotal Dasiho rovsn Co., IOC Wall St., . V. JfDFlELDS MENSTRUATION OR MONTHLY RICKNUf tr TlttN OURtHQ at VV CMLkT .TJKKSEA SUTYiRlHS WILL BE M 0VQ1 CHAS. W. RICE, ATTORN EY-AT-LAW, Newton, N. 0. jyj- L. MrCORKLE, NEWTON, N. C. YUNT HOUSE. W.E. YOUN2 Proprietor, NEWTON, N. C. well furnished room ; polite and attentive ser vant) table supplied with the best the market affords. A. P. LYNCH, Attorney at Law, NEWTON, - - - N. C UOSBT to LOU O. IMPROVED FAHMS IN sums of $300 and upwards, on long time and easy terms. For par tioulars, apply to L. L. WITHEItSPOON, Attobney-at-Law, NEWTON, - - - N. O. MONEY TO LOAN. We will loaa money on good real estate security en better terms than erer before offered In this ute. For full information call en the under signed. A. P. ljTJfCH & M. E. Lowbaxgb. J. E. THORNTON, KEEPS constantly on hand all sues of Woo Coffins. Also burial Kobes Strsngers sending for Coffins must send good se .pant Shop ant mile north af Court Hauae, Newton, N. C: J. B. LITTLE, RESIDENT DENTIST. NEWTON, N.C. tOJlea in Tount f Skrum' ButUtnf. Dt P F LAUGENOUR, DENTIST. M Graduate of Baltimore Vtntat Oolltgt, with trot yoer etperieuce.) Does everything pertaining to dentistry In the best manner possible, at reaaoiiale prices. Aching teeth made easy, treated and filled to that they will never ache again. Kxlraoting dene without pain by uslug gal. OJlaeanMainatrattOppoaif thai. C. Merrill Building SHOE SHOP ! ! We hare employed good workmen and and ar running a flrsfclasa Siioe Sln.op la tit second story of our brillding. Boots and hoes of any grade made to order. Shoes kept on and. Mending promptly done. YOZNJL SHE TIM. A WORD TO THE PUBLIC! THE NEWTON KAltllER SHOP. We are prepasad te i all kinds of work in ( W lne in first class style. Soberness and eleanliaeet strictly obserTed. Will do our utmost to make onr shop a pleasant place te our customers. Careful attention glTsn ( Ladies and Children at residence or shop' Earnest I. KEoore, Porp. S,, regulator ft III "1. GRADY'SLASTSPEECH A BRILLIANT EXPOSI TION OF THE" RACE QUESTION THAT OPENS THE EYES OFNORTPERN PEOPLE. KOBTH AKD SOUTH. Far to the South, Mr. President, separated from this section by a line once defined in irrepressible differ ence, once traced in fratricidal blood, and now, thank God, but a vanishing shadow lies the fairest and richest domain of this earth. It it the home of a brave and hospitable people. There is eenterM all that can please or prosper humankind A perfect climate above a fertile soil, yields to the husbandman every pro duct of the temperate zone. There, by night the cotton whitens beneath the Btars, and by day the wheat locks the sunshine in ils bearded sheaf. Iu the same field the clover steals the fragrance of the wind, and tobacco catches the quick aroma of the rains. There are mountains stored with exhauatless treasures; forests vast and primeval, and rivers that, tumbling or loitering, run wanton to the sea. Of the three es sential items of afl industries cot' ton, iron and wood that region has easy control. In cotton, a fixed mo nopoly; in iron, proven supremacy; in timber, the reserve supply of the republic From this assured and permanent advantage, against which artificial conditions cannot long pre vail, has grown an amazing system of industries. Not maintained" by hu man contrivance of tarift and capital, afar off from the fullest and cheapest source of supply, but resting in Di vine assurance within touch of field and mine and forest not set amid bleak hills and costly farms from which competition has driven the farmer in despair, but amid cheap an 3 sunny lands, rich with agricul ture, to wuieu neither season nor soil has set a limit this system of industries is mounting to a splendor that shall dazzle and illumine the world. That, sir, is the picture and the promise of my home a land bet ter and fairer than I have told you, and jet but fit setting, in its materi al excellence, for the loyal and gen lie quality of its citzensbip. Against that, sir, we have New England re cruiting the republic from its sturdy loins, shaking from its overcrowded hives new swarms of workers, and touching this land all over with its enersry and courage. And yet while in the Eldorado of which I have told you but 15 per cent, of lands are cultivated, its mines scarce, ly touched, and its population so scant that, were it set equidistant, the sounds of the human voice could not be heard from Virginia to Texas while on the threshold of nearly every house in New England stands son, seeking with troubled eyes some new land in which to carry his modest patrimony, and the homely training that is better than gold the strange fact remains that in 1880 the south had fewer northern born citizens than she had in 1870 fewer in '70 than in; '60. Why'isthis? Why is it, sir, though the sectional line be but a mist that the breath may dispel, fewer men of the north have crossed it over to;, the south than when it was crimson with tbe best blood of the Republic, or even when the slaveholder stood guard every inch of its way ? THB HIDDEN SET. There can be but one answer. It is the very problem we are now to consider. The key that opens that problem will unlock to the world the fairest half of this Republic, and free the halted feet of thousands whose eyes are elready kindling with its beauty. Better than this, it will open the hearts of .brothers for . 80 years estranged, and clasp in lasting comradeship a million hands now withheld in doubt. Nothing, sir, but this problem and the suspicions it breeds, binders a clear understand ing and a perfect union. Nothing else stands between us and such love as bound Georgia and Massachusetts at Valley Forge and Yorktown, chas tened by the sacrifices of Manassas and Gettysburg, and illumined with the coming of better work and a nobler destiny than was ever wrought with the sword or sought at the cannon's mouth. If this does not invite your patient hearing tonighthear one thing more. My people, jour brothers in the south brothers in blood, in des tiny, in all that is best in our past and future are so beset with this problem that their .very existence de pends on its right solution. Nor are they wholly to blame for its presence, The . slave ships of the republic sail ed from yonr ports the slaves worked in our fields. You will ( not defend the traffic, nor I the institu " tion. But I do heio declare that in its wise and humane administration, in lifting the slave to, the heights of which he hod not dreamed in his savage home, and giving him a hap piness he has not yet found in free dom our fathers left their sons a saving and excellent heritage. In the storm of war, this institution was lost. I thank God as heartily as you do that human slavery is gone fors ever from American soil. But the freed man remains, and with him a problem without a precedent or par allel. Note its appalling conditions. Two utterly -issimilnr races on the same soil with equal political and civil lights almost equal in num. bers, but terribly unequal in intelli gence and responsibility each pledged against fusion one for a ceutury in servitude to the other,and freed at last by a desolating war tbe experiment sought by neither, but approached by both with doubt these are the conditions. TJuder these, adverse Vt every point, we are required to carry these two rapes in peace and honor to the end. AX UNPALLELED TASK Never, sir, has such a task been giveu to mortal stewardship. Never before in this republic has the white race divided on the rights of an alien race. The red man was cut down as it weed, because he hindered the way of the American citiaea. The yellow man was shut out of this republic beeause he is an alien and inferior. The red man was the owner of the land the yellow man highly. civiliz ed and assimilable but they hinder ed both sections and are gone 1 But the black man, clothed with every privilege of government, affecting but one sect.iou, is pinaed to the Boil, and my peoplo commanded to make good at any hazard, aud at any cost, his full and equal heirship of Amer ican privilege and prosperity. It matters not, that every other race has been routed or excluded, without rhyme or reason. It matters not that wherever the whites and blacks have touched, in any era or in any clime, there has been irreconcilable violence. It mntters not that no two races however similar have ever lived anywhere at any time, on the same soil with equal rights in peace ! In spite of these things we ar com manded to make good this change of American policy which has not, per haps changed American prejudice to make certain here what has else where been impossible between whites and blacks and to revise, under tbe very worst conditions, the universal verdict of racial history. And driven, sir, to this superhuman task with an impttience that brooks no delay a rigor that accepts no excuse and a suspicion that dis courages frankness and sincerety. Wo did not shrink from this trial. It is so interwoven with our industrial fabric that we cannot disentangle it if we would so bound up in our honorable obligation to the world, that we would not if we could. Can we 6olve it ? The God who gave it into onr hands, He alone can know. ButHhis, the weakest and wisest of us do know; we cannot solvo it with less than your tolerant and patient sympathy with less than the knowl edge that the blood that runs in your veins is our blood and that, when we httve done our best, whether the issue be lost or won, we shall feel your strong arms about us and hear the beating of your approving hearts. Trie resolute, cleat headed, broad- minded men of the south the men whose genius made glorious every page of the first seventy years of American history whose courage and fortitude you tested infiveytars of the fiercest war whose energy baa made bricks without Btraw and spread splendor amid the ashes of their war Wasted homes these men wear thit problem in their hearts and their brains by day and by night. They realize, as you cannot, what this problem means what they owe to this kindly and depen dent race the measure of their debt to the world in whose despite they defended and maintained slavery. And their feet are hindered in its undergaowth, and their march cum bered with its burdens, they have lost neither the patience from which comes clearness, nor the faith from whicn comes courage. Nor sir, when in passionate moments is dis closed to them that vague and awful shadow, with its lurid abysses, and its crimson stainB, in which I pray God they may never go, are they struck with more of apprehension than is needed to complete their consecration ! THB BACa PROBLEM. Such is the temper of my people. But what of the problem itself? Mr. Presidentjwe ned not go one step further unless you concede right here that the people I speak for are as honest, as sensible and as just as your people, and seeking ae earnestly as you would in their place to rightly solve a problem that touches them at every vital point. If you insist that they are ruffians,blindly striving with bludgeon and shotgun to plunder and oppress a race, then I shall tax your patience in yain. But admit that they are men of common sense and common honesty wisely modi fying an environment they cannot wholly disregard guiding and con trolling as best they can the vicious and irresponsible of either race compensating error with frankness, and retrieving in patience what they lose in passion and eonscious all the time that wrong means ruin admit this, and we may reach an un derstanding tonight. The President of the United States in his late message to Congress, dis cussing tlia - plea that tha south should be left to solve this problem, asks: "Are they -at work upon it? What solution do they offer? When will the black man cast a free ballot? When will he have the civil right that 13 his?" I shall not here pro test against a partisanry that for the first time in our history, in time of peace, has stamped, with the great seal of our government, a stigrna upon the people of a great loyal sec tion; though I gratefully remember that the great dead soldier who held the helm of state for the eight stormiest years of reconstruction, never found need for such a step and though I can think of no peison al sacrifice I would not make to re move this cruel and unjust imputa tion of my people from the archieves of my country . But, sir. backed by a record, on every page of which is progress, I venture to make earnest and respect ful answer to the questions that are asked. I bespeak your patience, while with rigorous plainness of speech, seeking your judgment rath er than your applause. I proceed step by step. We give to the world this year a crop of 7,500,000 bales of cotton, worth S450,000,000. and its cnsli equivalent iu grain, grasses and fruit. This enormous crop could not have come from the baiuls of sullen and discontented labor. It comes from tlie peaceful fields iu which laughter aud gossip rise above the hum of industry, and con tentment runs with the singing plough. It is claimed that this ig norant labor is defrauded of its just hire. I present the tax books of Georgia, which show that the negro, 25 years ago a slave, has in Georgia alone $10,000,000 of assessed prop erty, worth twice that much. Does not that record honor him and vindi cate his neighbor? What people penniless, illiterate, has done so well? For every Afro-American agitator stirring the strife in which alone he prospers, I can 6how you a hundred negroes, happy in their cabin homes, tilling their own land by day and at night taking from the lips of their children the helpful message their state sends them from the school house door. THE SCHOOLS. And the school house itself bears testimony. In Georgia we added last year $250,000 to the sehool fund making a total of more than $1,000 000 and this in the face of preju dice not yet conquered of the fact that the whites are assessed for $380,000,000, the blacks for$10,000, 000, and yet 49 per cent of the bene ficiaries are black children and in the doabt of many wise men if edu-. latiou helps or can help, our prob lem. Charleston, with her taxable values cut half in two since 1860, pays mor6 in proportion for schools than Boston. Although it is easier to give much out of much than little out of little, the south, with one seventh of the taxable property of the country, with relatively larger debt, having received'only one tenth as much of public lands, and having back of its tax books none of the half billion of bonds that enrich the north, yet gives nearly one sixth of the public school funds. The south since 18G5, has spent 8122,000,000 in education,and this year is pledged to $73,000,090 more for slate and city schools although the blacks paying one the thirtieth 6f the taxes, get nearly one-half the fund. Go into our fields and see whites and blacks working side by side. On our buildings in the same squad. In our shops at the same forge. Of ten the blacks crowd the whites from work, or lower wages by their greater need or simpler habits, and yet are permitted, because we want to bar them from no avenue in which their feet are fitted to tread. They could not there be elected orators of white universities, as they have been here, but they can enter there a hundred useful trades that are closed against them hem We hold it better and wiser to tend the weeds in the garden than to water the exo tic in the window. In the south there are negro teachers, lawyers, editor.-, dentists, doctors, preachers working in peace and multiplying with the increasing ability of their race to support them. In villages and towns they have their military comrnijs equipped from the armo ries of the state, their churches and societies built and supported largely by thpjr neighbors. What is the testimony of the courts? t THE CBIMISAL RECORD. i In penal legislation we have steadi ly reduced felonies to misdemeanors, and have led the world in mitigating punishment for crime, that we might save, as far as possible, this depend. ent race from its own weakness, la our penitentiary record 60 per cent. of the prosecutors are negroes, and in every court the negro criminal st-.'. s thr. colored juror, that white men may judge his cf.sa. In..Jhe north one negro in every 185 is in jail iu the south, only one in 446. In the north the percentage of negro prisoners is six times as great as that of native whites in the south only four times as great. If preju dice wrongs him in southern courts, the record shows it to be deeper in northern courts. I assert here, and a bar as intellig nt and upright as the bar ofMassachusetts will solemn ly indorse my assertion, that in the southern courts from highest to lowest, pleading for eitnr liberty or property, the negro has distinct ad vantage because he is a negro, apt to be overreached, oppressed and that this advantage reaches from the juror in making his verdict to the judge in measuring his sentence. Now, Mr. Prssident, can it be seri ously maintained that we are terror izing the people from whose wil.Tng hands come every year $1,000,000,. 000 of farm crops, or have robbed a peopls who, twenty-five years from unrewarded elavery, have amassed in our state 20,000,000 of property? Or that we intend to oppress the people we are arming everjr day? Or deceive tbem. when we are educating them to the utmost limit of our ahil-it- ? Or outlaw them, wh. n we work side by side with them? Or re-cnslave them under legal forms, when for their benefit we have even imprudently narrowed the limit of felonies and mitigated the severity of law?. My fe'.low country men, as you yourselves may sometimes have to appeal at the bar of human judg ment for justice aud for right, give to my people tonight the fair and unanswerable conclusion of these in contestible facts. But it in claimed that under this fair seeming there is disorder and violence. This, I admit. And there wiii be until there is one ideal com muuitiy on earth after which we may pattern. But how widely is it mis judged. It is hard to measure with exactness whatever touches the ne gro. His helplessness, his insolation, his century of servitude, these diss pose us to emphasize and magnify his wrongs. This disposition has been inflamed by prejudice and partisanry, until it has led to injus tice aud delusion. Lawless men may ravage a county in Iowa and it is accepted as an accident. In the south a drunken row is declared to be the fixed habit of the community. Kegulators may whip vagabonds in Indiana by plantoons and it scarcely arrestsattention, a chance collision in the south among relatively the same classes, is gravely accepted as evidence that one race is destroying the other. We might as well claim that the Union was ungrateful to the colored soldiers who followed its flag, because a Grand Army post in Connecticut closed its doors to a negro veteran, as for you to give racial signification to eyery incident in the south or to accept exceptional grounds at the rule of our society. j I am not one of those who becloud American honor with the parade of the outrages of other sections, and belie American character by de claring them to be significant and representative. I prefer to maintain that they arc neither, and stand for nothing but the passion and sin of our fallen humanity. If society, like a machine, were no stronger than its weakest part, I should de spair of both sections. But, know ing that society, sentient and re sponsible in every fiber, can mend and repair until the whole has the strength of .the best, I despair of neither. These gentlemen who come with me here, knit into Georgia's busy life as they are, never saw, I dare assert, an -outrage committed on a negro ! And if they did, no one of you would be swifter to pre vent or punish. It is through them, and the men who think with them making nine-tenths of every south ern community that these two races have been carried thus far with less violence than would have been possible anywhere else on earth And in their airnesss and courage and steadfastness rxtOre than in all the laws-that can be passed, or all the bayonets that can be mustered is the hope of our future ! THE ELECTIONS. But , admitting the light of the whites to unite against this tremen dous menace, we are challenged with the smallness of our vote. This has long been flippantly charged to be evidence, and has dow been solemnly aud officially declared to be proof, of political turpitude and baseness on our part. Let us see. Virginia a state now under fierce assault for this alleged crime cast in 1888 75 per cent, of her vote.. Massachusetts, the state in which I speak, 60 per cent, of her vote. WTas it suppres sion in Virginia and natural causes in Massachusetts ? Last month, Virginia cast 69 per cent, of her vote, and Massachusetts, fighting in every district, cast only 49 per cent, of bers- II Virginia is condemned be cause 31 per sent, of her vote was silent, how shall this state escape, in which 51 per cent, was dumb? Let us enlarge this comparison. The 16 iouthern states in '88 cast 67 per cent, of their total vote the six New England states but 63 per cent. ' of theirs. By what fair rule shall the stigma be put upon one section, while the other escapes ? ,A congres sional election in Jew" York last week, with the polling place in touch of every voter, brought out only 6, 000 votes of 28,000 and the lack of opposition is assigned as tlie natural cause. In a district in my state in which an opposition speech has not been heard in l5 years, and the poll ing places are miles apart under the unfair reasoning of which my section has been a constant victim the small vote is charged to be proof of forcible suppression. Iu Virginia an average majority of 10,000, under hopeless division of the minority, was raised to 42,000 ; in Iowa in the same election a ma ; jority of 32,000 was wiped out and an opposition majority of 8,000 was established. The change of 42,000 votes in Iowa is accepted as political revolution in Virginia an increase of 30,000 on a safe majority is de clared to be proof political fraud. I charge these facts and fig-res home, sir, to the heart and conscience of the American people who will not assuredly see one section condemned for what another section is excused ! If I can drive them through the prejudice of the partisan, and have them read end pondered at the fire side of the citizen, I will rest on the judgment there formed and the ver. diet there rendered ! It is deplorable, sir, that in both sections a large percentage cf the vote is not regularly cast. But more inexplicable than this should be so in New England, than in the south. What invites the negro to the ballot box ? He knows that of all men, it has promised him most, and yielded him least. His first appeal to suf frage was the promise of "40 acres and a mule." His second, the threat that democratic success meant his re-enslavement. Both have been proved false in this experience. He looked for a home, and he got the Freedman's Bank. He fought under promise of the loaf, and in victory was denied the crumbs. Discour aged and deceived, he has realized at last that bis best friends are his neighbors with whom his lot is cast, aud whose prosperity is bound up in his and that ha has gained nothing in politics to compensate the loss of their confidence and sympathj that is at least his best and his enduring hope. And so, without leaders or organi zation and lacking the resolute heroism of my party friends in Ver mont that makes their, hopeless march over the hills a high and in spiring pilgrimage he shrewdly measures the occasional agitator, balances his little account with poli tics, touches up his mule, and jogs down the furrowk letting the mad world wag as it will ! THE KEGRO VOTE. The negro vole can never control in the south, aud it would be well if partisans at the north would under stand this. I have sees the white people of a state set about by black hosts until their fate seemed sealed. But, sir, some brave man, banding them together, would rise, as Elisha rose in beleagured Samaria, and, touching their eyes with laith, bid them look abroad to-see tbe very air "filled with the chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof." If there is any human force that cannot be withstood, it is in the pewer of the banded intelligence and responsi bility of a free community. Against it, numbers and corruption cannot prevail. It cannot be forbidden in the law or divorced in force. It is the inalterable right of every free community the just and righteous safeguard against an ignorant or corrupt tuffrage. It is on this, sir, that we rely 7h the south. Not the cowardly menace of mask or shot- but the peaceful majesty of in telligence and responsibility, massed and unified for the protection of its homes and the preservation of its liberty. That, sir, is our reliance and our hope, and against it all the powers of earth s'iall not prevail. It was just as certain that Virginia would come back to the unchalleng ed control of her white race that before the moral and material power of her peopls once mere unified, op position would crumble until its last desperate leader wa3 left alone vainly striving to rally his disordered hosts as that night should fade in the kindling glory cf the sun. You may pass force bills, but they will not avail. You may surrender your own liberties to federal elec tion law this old state which holds in its charter the boast that it "is a free and independent commonweath"' it may deliver its election machine ry into the hands of the goveiuiuen? it helped to create but never, sir, will a single state of this Union, north or south, be delivered again to the control of an ignorant and inferi or race. We wrested our state government from negro supremacy when the federal drum-beat rolled closer to the ballot-box aud federal bayonets hedged it deeper about than will ever again be permitted in this free government. But, sir, though the cannon of this republic thundered in every voting district of the south, we still should find in the mercy of God the means and the courage to prevent its re-establishment ! THE SOUTH MUST SOLVE IT. t I regret, sir, that my section, hin dered with this problem, cannot align itself, stands in seeming esi trangement to the north. If, sir, any man vdll point out to me a path uown which the white people of the south, divided, may wall; ' in peace ftisd honor, I will take that path, though I took it alone, for at its end, and nowhere else, I fear, is to be found the fall prosperity of my ac tion and the full restoration of this Union. But, sir, if the negro had not been enfranchised the south would have been divided and the re public united. Ilis enfranchisement against which I enter no protest holds the south united and compact. What solution can we offer for the problem ? Time alone can dis.cose it to us. We simply report progress and ask your patience. If the prob lem be solved at all and I firmly believe that it will, though nowhere else has it been it will be solved by the people most deeply bound in interest, most deeply pledged in honor to its solution. I had rather see my people render back this ques tion rightly solved than to se3 them gather all the spoils over which facs tion has contended since Cataline conspired and Ciesar fought. Mean time we treat the negro fairly, meas uring to him justice in the fullness the strong should give to the weak, and leading him in the steadfast ways of citizenship, that he may no longer be the prey of the unscrupu lous and the sport of the thought less. We open to him every pursuit in which he can prosper, and seek to broaden his training and capacity. We seek to hold his confidence and friendship and to pin him to the soil with ownership, that he may catch in the fire of his own hearth- stone, that sense of responsibility the shiftless can never know. And we gather him into that alli ance of property and knowledge that, though it runs close to racial lines, welcomes the responsible and intelligent of any race. By this course, confirmed in our judgment in the progress already made, we hope to progress slowly but surely to the end. ' RACE FEELISG. The love we feel for that race you cannot measure nor comprenend. As I attest it here, the spirit of my old black mamnry, from her home up there, looks down on me to bless and through the tumult of this nierht, steals the sweet music of her croning 30 years ago as she held me in her black arms and led me smiling to sleep. This scene van ishes as I speak, and I catch a vision of an old southern ho-ae with its lofty pillars, and its white pigeons fluttering down through the golden air. I see women with strained and anxious faces, and children alert, yet helpless.1 see night come down with its dangers and its apprehension,and in a- big and homsly room I feel on my tired head the touch of loving hands now worn and wrinkled, but fairer to me yet than the hands of mortal foman and stronger yet to lead me than the hands of mortal man as they lay a mothers blessing there, while at her knees the tru est alter I yet haveijtfound I thank God that she is safe in her sanctua ry, because her slaveF, sentinel in the silent cabin, or guard at her ehamber door, puts' a black man's run : loyalty between her and danger. I catch another vision. The crisis of battle a soldier struck, stagger ing, fallen. I see a slave, scuf3ing through the smoke, winding his black arms about the fallen form, reckless of hurtling death bending his trusty face to catch the words that tremble on the stricken lips, so wrestling meantime with agony that he would lay down- his life in hi3 master's stead. I see him by the weary bedside, ministering with un complaining patience, praying with his humble heart that God will lift his master np, until death comes in mercy and in honor to still the sol dier's agony and seal the soldier's life. I see him by the open grave mute, motionless, uncovered, suffering for the death of one who in life fought against his freedom. I see him, when the mound is heaped and the great drama of his-life is closed, turn away with downcast eyes and uncertain tep start out into new and strange fields, faltering, struggling but mov ing on until his shambling figure is lost in the light of a better and a brighter day. And from the grave comes a voice saying "Follow him! Put your arms about him in his need even as he put his about me. Be his frieud as he was mine." And out into this new world strange to me as to him, dazzling, bewildering both - I follow! And may God forget my people when they forget these! THE FUTURE. Whatever the future may hold for them whether they plod along in the servitude from which they have never been lifted since the Cyrenian was laid held upon by the Roman soldiers and made to bear the cross of thefainting Christ whether they find homes again in Africa, and thus hasten the prophecy of the psalmist who said, "And suddenly Etheopia shad hold her hands unto God"' whether forever dislocated and sepa rate, they remain a weak people, be set by stronger, and exist, as the " Turk, who lives in the jealously, rather than in the conscience of Eu rope, or whether in this miraculous republic they break through the casts of 20 centuries and belying universal history, reach the full stat ure cf citizenship and in peace main tain it we shall give them uttermost justice and abiding friendship. And whatever we do, into whatever seeming estrangement we may be driven, nothing shall disturb the love we bear this republic, or mitis gate our consecration to its service. I stand here Mr. President, to pro -fess no new loyality. When Gen. Lee, whose heart was the temple of our hope and whose arm was clothed with our strength, lenewei his alle gience to the government at Appo mattox, he spoke from a heart too great to be false, and he spoke for every honest man from Maryland to Texas. From that day to this,Ham ilcar has nowhere in the south sworn young Hannibal to hatred and ven geance but everywhere to loyalty and to love. Witness the veteran standing at the base of a confederate monument, above the graves of his comrades, his emty sleeve tossing in the April wind, adjuring the young men about him, to serve as earnest aud loyal citizeLS, the government against which their fathers fought. This message, delivered from that sacred presence has gone home to the hearts of my fellows! And, sir, I declare here, if physical courage be always equal to human aspiration, that they would die, sir, if need be, to restore this republio their fathers fought to dissove! Such, Mr. President, is this prob lem as we see it, such the temper in which we approach it, such is the progress made. vVhat do we ask of you? First patience, out of this alone can come perfect work. Sec ond, confidence; in this alone can you judge fairly. Third, sympathy; in this you can help us best. Fourth, loyality to the rapublic for there is sectionalism in loyalty as in es trangement. This hour Httle needs the loyalty that is loyal to one sec tion and yet holds the other in en during suspicion and entrangement. Give us the broad and perfect lojal ty that loves and trusts Georgia alike with Massachusetts that knows no south, no north,no east, no west; but endears with equal and patriotic love every foot of cur soil, every state of our Union. A mighty duty, sir, and a mighty inspiration impels every one of ua tonight to lose in patriotic consecra tion whatever enstranges, whatever divides. We, sir, are Americans and we fight for human liberty! The uplifting force of the American idea is under every throne on -earth-France, Brazil these are our vie? tories. To redeem the earth from kingcraft and oppression this is our mission! And we shall not fall. God has sown in our soil the seed of Continued on 4A page.
The Catawba County News (Newton, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Jan. 3, 1890, edition 1
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