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 THE SOLII3 SOUTH 
 
 SPEIEICH 
 
 OF 
 
 EMORY SPEER 
 
 OP GEORGIA 
 
 DECEMBER 19, 1902 
 
 AT THE BANQUET OF THE 
 
 INDEIPEINDEINT" CLUB 
 
 OP BUPPALO. NEW YORK. 
 
 1908 
 MACON PRESS— PRINT 
 
THE SOLID SOUTH 
 
 SPEIEICH 
 
 OF 
 
 EMORY SPEER 
 
 H 
 
 OF GEORGIA 
 
 DECEMBER 19, 1902 
 
 AT THE BANQUET OF THE 
 
 INDEIPEINDEINT CLUB 
 
 OP BUPPALO. NEW YORK. 
 
 1903 
 MACON PRESS— PRINT 
 
F/ 15 
 
 HonH.O.Loago 
 
 juoeieoa 
 
THE SOLID SOUTH 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Independent Club : 
 
 Very happy am I to come from my distant Southern home to 
 meet on this felicitous occasion tlie Independent Club and its 
 honored guests. The opportunity is perhaps salutary. "Home 
 keeping youths," we are told by the Bard of Avon, "have ever 
 homely wits." Indeed it may be feared that all Americans are 
 not a little provincial. It is then, advantageous for a dweller in 
 that clime, whose soft breezes from the Atlantic or the Gulf are 
 tempered by "the wandering summer of the seas," to visit these 
 hyperborean skies which it is not difficult to discern impart a 
 glorious vigor to man and a glowing beauty to woman. Nor, be- 
 lieve me, would you regret if like Aladdin in the Arabian story I 
 could whisk this comely gathering to a land I know and love, 
 where even now 
 
 "The sweet Soutli breathes o'er banks of violets." 
 where the rose gardens yet bloom, and where the soft moonlight 
 lingers on fields as white as yours, but with the snowy luxuriance 
 of our royal staple. Indeed, the heritage of Americans m those 
 magniticent states somewhat generally known as bhe Solid South, 
 and the charm of their redundant beauties would kindle a prouder 
 Americanism even in minds accustomed to the opulence of this 
 Empire State, and sated with the wonders of Niagara. 
 
 The resuscitation of the Southern people since the great civil 
 war will be deemed by the future historian as an epoch m the 
 progress of civilization. Speaking as a Southern man, "native 
 and to the manner born," as one who loves his people with every 
 fibre of his being, while I do not claim that they are all saints, 
 and concede that among them there is a considerable sprinkling 
 of sinners, I yet contend that their record for a generation past is 
 impossible to a people who, however mistaken, were otherwise 
 than intrepid, patriotic and sincere. Said Edward Everett, "Men 
 
do not gather the grapes and figs of science, art, taste, wealth and 
 manners from the thorns and thistles of lawlessness, venality, fraud 
 and violence." But are there no shadows across the bright prom- 
 ise of their future? Are there no portents of impending evil in 
 the political and social forecast which should arouse their best 
 and most anxious thought, and since they are your brothers in 
 blood, and since your happiness and prosperity is indissolubly 
 united with theirs, is there nothing in the conditions which envi- 
 ron them to awaken your solicitude, and to invoke your assistance. 
 
 These are indeed not merely Southern problems. They are 
 also your problems. Is it consistent with your safety, that 
 so many millions of white men there, blood of your blood and 
 bone of your bone, should exhibit so much indifference to national 
 matters of the most vital concern, that they should hear and 
 consider but one side, and that not always the right side, of every 
 .political question, that they should fail to respond to the consen- 
 sus of American public opinion, that they should forever submit 
 to abnormal and uiihealthv political methods, where the skill 
 and cunning of the slatemaker and wire puller, may supplant, in 
 the selection of representatives whose votes may control the 
 policies of the nation, the pure Americanism and lofty patriotism 
 which should be at the service of the people; that the w^hite 
 Americans of fourteen states should fail to exert that effective 
 force on the policy of the country, which of right should belong 
 to their numbfrs, their means, and their capacity for clear, 
 patriotic and decisive political thought. These are the questions. 
 They have been propounded at home. They are propounded here. 
 Is it not true that if we are to maintain in these United States 
 a government which is republican in fact, and not merely in 
 name, that these un-American conditions must be removed ? 
 And is it not also true that to this mightv task there should be 
 devoted the most patient, the most liberal, the profoundest, the 
 most patriotic thought and statesmanship of this country ? No 
 hopeful step can we take unless we banish partisanship and the 
 desire for party advantages from our minds, and unless we con- 
 sider this question in the light of impartial history. Nor is he 
 worthy to approach this lofty duty who does not at once rejoice in 
 the accomplished lact of the union restored, and in the accretion 
 
of ite strength from the manhood, courage, faith and integrity of 
 the Southern people. 
 
 It is undeniably true that the political attitude of the 
 Southern people toward the government, is directly ascribable to 
 the swift bestowal by the reconstruction acts of unlimited man- 
 hood suffrage upon members of the African race The emancipa- 
 tion of the slaves, whatever may be believed to the contrary, was 
 far less consequential. After Appomattox, none so visionary 
 who did not know that slavery was at an end. The thirteenth 
 amendment making human bondage forever impossible was rati- 
 fied by the original constituency of the states lately in secession, 
 by the votes of those men whose bayonets for four years had 
 upheld the fortunes of the Confederate States. Thirty-one years 
 ago I listened at the University of Georgia to a carefuUv pre- 
 pared oration by Senator Benjamin H. Hill, perhaps the 
 foremost Southern man of that day. After stating that for more 
 than thirty years Southern genius had been chained by some 
 cffended god of jealous vengeance to the solid rock of slavery, he 
 exclaimed in tones that yet ring in my memory: 
 
 '"Tis loosed! We inquire not how, whether by fate or by 
 
 folly; whether in right or in hate; we thank Thee, God, for the 
 
 fact, 'Tis loosed!" 
 
 The possibility of unlimited suffrage among the negroes was 
 
 at first not contemplated even by those great Americans whose 
 eloquence,' statesmanship and militarv talents had been devoted 
 to the preservation of the Union. In his famous speech on rais- 
 ing the flag on Fort Sumter, on the 14th cf April, 1865, Mr. 
 Beecher declared. "We should educate the black man and by 
 education make him a citizen." In a private letter to Governor 
 Hahn, congratulating him as the first tree state governor of Lou- 
 isiana. Mr. Lincoln wrote, "You are about to have a conven- 
 tion which amongother things will prepare and define the elective 
 franchise. I barely suggest for your private consideration whether 
 some of the colored people may not be let in, as for instance, the 
 very intelligent, etc." It is interesting to know that the vice- 
 president of the confederacy entertained views similar to those of 
 the president of the union. In his testimony before the recon- 
 struction committee, Alexander H. Stephens said, "individually 
 I should not be opposed to, a proper system of restricted or limit- 
 
ed suffrage for this class of our population." In the ])lan for re- 
 construction offered by the brilliant Henry Winter Davis of 
 Maryland and adopted by congress during Mr, Lincoln's admin- 
 istration, it was provided that so soon as resistance to the na- 
 tional authority had ceased in any state, the governor should en- 
 roll the white male citizens, and tlien an election of delegates to 
 the constitutional convention should be ordered. Said Oliver P. 
 Morton, the great war governor of Indiana, in a speech delivered 
 in his state in 1865, in regard to the question of admitting the 
 freedmen of the Southern states to vote, "While I admit the 
 equal rights of all men and that in time all men will have the 
 right to vote without distinction of color or race, I yet believe 
 that in the case of four million of slaves just freed froru bondage 
 there should be a period of probation before they are l)rought to 
 the exercise of political power." 
 
 Nor does it appear, that more than their leaders, the 
 masses of the Northern people had attained the conclusion 
 that unlimited negro suffrage would be either salutary or 
 right. Widely varying indeed in the two sections was the 
 importance of the question. In the South there was one 
 negro of voting age to two white men. In the North the 
 proportion was eighty-four whites to one negro. Notwithstand- 
 ing the inappreciable numbers of the negro in the Northern states, 
 the constitutions of all but six had the word "white" as a quali- 
 fication to manhood suft'rage. A few illustrations will show the 
 strong prevalence of the opinion that this was essential. In 1868 
 the people of Michigan attempted to change the constitution. A 
 distinct issue on the question of negro suff'rage was made between 
 the two parties, and at the April election the constitution was 
 rejected by a majority of forty thousand votes. In 1867 the peo- 
 ple of New York assembled in convention at Albany. The laws 
 of the state had attached a property qualification to the right of 
 suffrage by negroes. It was insisted that the discrimination 
 should be abolished, and the vote on this question was taken Nov.. 
 2, 1869. Again by a majority of 40,000 the people refused to 
 change the constitution in this respect. The action of many 
 other Northern states might be cited to demonstrate the existence 
 a strong public opinion against unlimited negro suft'rage. 
 Certain it is that it formed no j)art ot Mr. Ijincoln's plans for tiie 
 
restoration of the union. And yet liow ennobling the generosity, 
 how benevolent the love of Abraham Lincoln for his fellow men. 
 In the history of those terrible days the majesty of his benignant 
 face is lifted above the clouds of human passion that rolled around 
 his constant breast, and his rugged features are lighted with a 
 radiance which fadeth not away. With the concurring opinions 
 of such men as Abraham Lincoln and Alexander H. Stephens, 
 but for the intense political passions of the period, and the 
 mistakes of leading men North and South, a restricted torm of 
 negro suffrage in all the country would soon have admitted the 
 superior individuals of that race to the elective franchise and 
 would have spared the Southern States an immovable provincial- 
 ism in matters political, which may well be regarded as the great- 
 est menace of our country's future. 
 
 The accession of Andrew Johnson did not materially change 
 the presidential policy which had been marked out by Mr. Lin- 
 coln. It is true that the new president said much about the 
 blackness of the crime of Southern treason, much about the ne- 
 cessity of inflicting extreme measures upon the Southern leaders.' 
 But it is also true that Mr. McCullough, who was secretary ;, f the 
 treasury under both, in his "Men and Measures of Half a Cen- 
 tury" declared that "the work of reconstruction was taken up 
 just where Mr. Lincoln had left it." This statement is confirm- 
 ed by the testimony of Gen. Grant beforr-^ the committee for the 
 impeachment of Johnson. It is further confirmed by the fact 
 that the cabinet remained in office under Johnson, and in the 
 early da>8 of his administration were unanimous in support of 
 this plan. Johnson unhappily possessed little of the per- 
 suasive and commanding influence of Lincoln. That he was hon-' 
 est is no longer questioned. That he was patriotic is conceded. 
 But in self-importance he was unsurpassed. "Toil and honest 
 advocacy of the great principles of free government," the new 
 president observed, "have been my lot." He added, "the duties 
 have been mine, the consequences God's." The complacency of 
 this observation has not been attained by any other ruler, save 
 by that perhaps imaginary monarch commemorated in the melo- 
 dy of Admiral Coghlan's famous song, "Myself and God." 
 
 The new administration worked rapidly. Witn the assist- 
 ance of William H. Seward and the other statesmen who had com- 
 
8 
 
 posed the war cabinet of Mr. Lincoln, in six weeks the plan of 
 reconstruction was put forward. It was substantially that of 
 Mr. Lincoln for Louisiana and North Carolina, and thus the res- 
 ponsibilities for reconstruction were placed upon the qualihed 
 voters according to the laws in force at the time of secession 
 and the rehabilitation of the states lately in secession was given 
 over to the hands of the white race. 
 
 In a period remarkably short the Southern State govern- 
 ments were reorganized, their legislatures were enacting laws, 
 governors were elected, judges appointed, the courts were in 
 session, and senators and representatives to the national congress 
 were chosen. No one who knew the men chosen for officials and 
 representatives of the new Southern governments could hesitate 
 m the opinion that they were among the most enlightened of that 
 time. It has been objected by one of their detractors, that the 
 Southern people sent to these conventions men who had been 
 high m rank in the Confederate armies. That Confederate 
 soldiers were selected for Southern conventions will not be sur- 
 prising when it is reflected that practically every able-bodied man 
 in the South had borne arms in the great struggle. It was saidi 
 I believe by Mr. Greely, that for its soldiers the Confederate gov- 
 ernment had robbed the cradle and the grave. Nor is it surprising 
 that the force and decision of character, and imperturbability of 
 judgment by which individuals won high rank in the Southern 
 armies, peculiarly fitted the same men for responsible duties in 
 political bodies. The same writer has pointed out the impro- 
 nriety with which such delegates attended the conventions of 
 their respective states, while clothed in the uniform of the rank 
 they lately held in the " rebel " army. A change of costume 
 would no doubt have been appropriate, no doubt was desired, but 
 when one has but one coat, he is oblighed to wear it. Few, if 
 any, will now question that these men belonged to as high a class 
 of statesmanship and public virtue as the South has ever pro- 
 duced. With an exercise of popular discretion which may well 
 be deemed exquisite, they were selected with great regard to con- 
 servatism ot record. Many of them had been resolute opponents 
 of secession, and had cast their fortunes with the Confederacy in 
 deference only to that overpowering sense of duty to the state, 
 which against his every inclination had controlled the action of 
 
Robert Edward Lee, and which, by most Southern meu of eleva- 
 tion of character, was at that time regarded as the unquestionable 
 dictate of principle and honor. 
 
 If I should call the gilded roll selected by my own state, the 
 superiority of the new governments would plainly appear. The 
 governor was Charles J. Jenkins, an ex-justice of the supreme 
 court, who had been offered the position of secretary of the inte- 
 rior under President Fillmore, and who had been named as can- 
 didate for vice-president with Daniel Webster. In recent days 
 Georgia has named two of her illustrious sons for statues in 
 the American Valhalla, the old Hall of Representatives in the 
 capitol at Washington. One of these, Alexander Hamilton 
 Stephens, who, though vice-president of the Confederacy, to the 
 last, had struggled to assuage the fires of passion in the angry 
 breasts of his countrymen, and to dissuade them from the mad- 
 ness of secession, was elected as one of the senators from Georgia. 
 
 When the Charleston convention of I860 was disrupted, a 
 Southern man of commanding position, and unflinching devotion 
 to the union was sought as a candidate for vice-president on the 
 ticket with Stephen A. Douglass. Herschel V. Johnson of Georgia 
 was selected. For his powers as a jurist, orator and statesman 
 and m nobilitv of character, it will be disputed whether the 
 state has ever produced his superior. I have known many elderly 
 citizens of my state who believed that but for a ruthless trick, 
 the commanding and classic eloquence of that great patriot 
 would have mastered and swayed the Georgia convention against 
 the ordinance of secession, and made the union loving princi- 
 ples of the masses of its people triumphant. This noble Geor- 
 gian was elected by the new legislature to be United States senator 
 with Alexander H. Stephens. 
 
 By selecting such men as their representatives the Southern 
 people gave evidence that with them the war was over and that their 
 reconciliation was complete. Nor were the people of the North 
 behind them in this feeling. The first acts of the provisional 
 governments were regarded with the friendliest interest, and the 
 apparent success of his reconstruction measures, won a high de- 
 gree of popularity for the president. 
 
 At this critical juncture, most unhappily for the future of 
 the countrv, the Southern state legislatures entered upon a course 
 
lO 
 
 of legislation with regard to the negro, which proved that they 
 wholly misunderstood the public opinion in Northern States. 
 And the result, with equal clearness proved that the Northern 
 leaders did not comprehend the motives or the exigencies of the 
 Soathern yjeople. Thy attempt was to enact laws to compel the 
 excited and idle masses of negroes to go to work. 
 
 In the light of the present day, it will, I think be seen, that 
 this was not unnatural, nor wholly inexcusable. To the negro of 
 all others, a novel sensation is the most delightful. The possi- 
 bility of emancipation had been wholly beyond the comprehen- 
 sion of the masses of this light-hearted race. As a child regards 
 a new toy, so did millions of these black people regard then- 
 freedom. They had no comprehension of the dignity or necessity 
 of labor. Indeed, to teach them the indispensable lesson is now 
 the supreme task of the soundest philosopher and the most prac- 
 tical philantropist the race has ever produced. No one can doubt 
 that I refer to Booker Washington, the unselfish president of the 
 great Alabama institution tor the industrial training of colored 
 youth. 
 
 In slavery labor had been a tas-k. Slavery was now gone; 
 Henceforward they would sail through life "on seas of milk, in 
 ships of amber." , It followed that few of them could be induced 
 to worK at all. No matter how explicit the contract, how favor- 
 able the wage, how great the exigency, whether seed time or 
 harvest, how trivial the excuse, away they went by the hundreds 
 and thousands, rejoicing in their newly acquired freedom, leaving 
 the stern and anxious paroled prisoner of war to coUitemplate 
 his ruined home, his wasted farm, his rotting crops, the wife and 
 daughters struggling with unaccustomed conditions; the prospect 
 of hunger for his family, and sale by judicial process of the rem- 
 nants of his estate. The result was that the representatives of ■ 
 these people began to legislate, and such legislation as they worked 
 out, plausibly appeared to the great leaders of anti-slavery thought, 
 as an efiTort on the part of Southern men, notwithstanding all 
 that had been done and siiffered, to perpetuate the slavery of the 
 African race. Having 1,0 deal with unprecedented conditions, it 
 is true that much of this legislation was ill-considered and unjust. 
 The excitement it created m the north was ominous. It is how- 
 ever, difficult to do justice to the motives which prompt politica.1 
 
1 1 
 
 V 
 
 action, unless the point of viev.' of the actors is clearly seen. No 
 other than a Southern man who lived through this period, can 
 understand the desperation and despair of a ruined people which 
 prom-pted measures for the control of their former slaves, idling 
 away the precious hours, hours of labor indispensable to the salva- 
 tion of the whites, and the sustenance of the blacks themselves. 
 That many of these measures were as unjustifiable as they were in- 
 effective, the truest friend of the South may now plainly concede. 
 That they were prompted by odious and detestable motives, by 
 malignant cunning, or by hatred of the negro, as has been 
 charged, may be as plainly denied. Some of the worst of these 
 measures were promptly vetoed by such a high-minded ex-Con- 
 federate as Governor Patton of Alabama. Others like that en- 
 acted in the State of Georgia, were either set at naught by re- 
 peated decisions of the courts or repealed by subsequent legisla- 
 tures. Mdst unhappily, however, for our country in that day 
 of fierce political passion, they were held to justify the overturn- 
 ing of the state governments which had been re-established, the 
 refusal of the Southern States representation in congress, the 
 declaration that they were "dead states" subject to the disposi- 
 tion of the victorious section, the appointment of military 
 governors over every Southern State, and first instance in the 
 history of mankind, the complete subordination of the Caucasian 
 to the African race. 
 
 The leader at this period of the great Republican majority 
 in the House of Representatives was Thaddeus Stevens. This fa- 
 mous man was one of the strongest, and one of the most remarka- 
 ble, of that multitude of statesmen and patriots who have sprung 
 from the granitic soil of New England. Ever a hater of human 
 slavery, he had made his home in a county of Pennsylvania 
 bounded on the south by Mason and Dixon's line, and the fre- 
 quent spectacle of fugitive slaves worn and wasted by their night 
 marches toward the North star to gain the protecoion of free soil, 
 intensified in him this feeling until it became the strongest pas- 
 sion of his nature. He was the peculiar champion of that help- 
 less people, and when emancipation had been accomplished he 
 had no purpose to stop short of the complete enfranchisement of 
 the negro. It was this man who, with full control, on the meeting 
 of the 39th congress, was novv to direct the legislation which would 
 
I 2 
 
 govern the relations of the Southern white people with their for- 
 mer slaves. 
 
 When the 39th congrees assembled, Mr. Stevens immediately- 
 offered a resolution to provide for a joint committeee on the sub- 
 ject, ai]d on December 18, 18(55, the house proceeded to the con- 
 sideration of congressional reconstruction. With the clear con- 
 ceptions of a great logician, he outlined a premise upon which the 
 whole frame-work of congressional reconstruction, must necessa- 
 rily rest. It involved the power of congress to enforce negro suf- 
 frage in the Southern States, even before such suffrage had been per- 
 mitted by the states which had retained their fealty to the union. 
 It will be recalled that section 2 of article I of the constitution 
 provides that the electors in each state shall have the qualifica- 
 tions required for electors of the most numerous branch of the 
 state legislature. When Mr. Stevens arose and began that mem- 
 orable speech, the electors of every state, North and South, ex- 
 cept Kansas and five New England states, were members of the 
 white race. If the Southern States retained their statehood, no 
 one saw more clearly than Mr. Stevens, that by virtue of that 
 clause of the constitution, congress had no power to prescribe 
 the qualifications of electors. The constitution in this respect 
 had not been changed. Then it was necessary to his purpose 
 that this statehood should be denied. "There is," he said, 
 "fortunately no difficulty in solving this question unless the 
 law of nations is a dead letter. War between two acknowledged 
 belligerents severed their original compacts and broke all 
 ties that bound them together; the future condition of the 
 conquered power depends on the will of the conquerer. They 
 must come in as new states, or remain as conquered provinces." 
 He referred contemptuously to the "dreaming theorists who im- 
 agine that these states have never been out of the union." It 
 will i.ot subserve any good purpose at this time to question either 
 the sincerity or the patriotism of that great debater and parlia- 
 mentarian, nor do I question them. But was this proposition, 
 fraught as it was with immediate and inconceivable disaster to his 
 countrymen, and with their estrangement for more than a genera- 
 tion, maintainable as American law? As these words of Mr. Stevens 
 were uttered m the House of Representatives, that august court, 
 the final arbiter of this and every other question arising under 
 
the constitution and laws of the United States capable of submis- 
 sion to a court of justice, was sitting hard by in that historic 
 chamber, which in years past had resounded with the stately elo- 
 quence of the great Defender of the constitution, Daniel Web- 
 ster was dead, but we may believe that his spirit will ever love 
 the chamber where once his conquering lance rang full on the 
 shield of every champion of disunion, that chamber where now 
 sat the court, in which he had counseled and Marshall and Story 
 had ruled. Three years had passed. The state of Texas had ap- 
 pealed to the original jurisdiction of that court, in a case which 
 involved the precise proposition on which the reconstruction leg- 
 islation was based, namely, that the seceding and conquered states 
 were dead and no longer a part of the Union, and the supreme 
 court of the United States declared through Chief Justice Chase : 
 •"The constitution in all its provisions looks to an indestructible 
 union, composed of indestructible states. The ordinances of se- 
 cession were utterly without operation in law. It certainly fol- 
 lows that the state did not cease to be a state, nor her citizens 
 to be citizens of the union. If this were otherwise, the 
 state must have become foreign, and her citizens foreigners, the 
 war must have ceased to be a war for the suppression of rebellion, 
 and must have become a war for conquest and subjugation." 
 
 From that lucid and impressive declaration of the indes- 
 tructibility of the American Union, in all the years since then, 
 even by a hairsbreadth, that august tribunal has never departed, 
 and the Hon. George F. Hoar, m recent years eulogizing the 
 supreme court to the Virginia State Bar Association, said: 
 "I have spoken in behalf of a tribunal whose judgments 
 upon the greatest questions with which it has ever had to deal, 
 have overturned, baffled and brought to naught the policy in re- 
 gard to the great matter of reconstruction of the party to which I 
 myself belong, and the school of politics in which I have been 
 trained." 
 
 The reconstruction law, in the language of General Gar- 
 field "was written with a steel pen made out of a bayonet." 
 As passed it provided that when the people of any of the insurec- 
 tionary states should have adopted a constitution passed by a con- 
 vention of delegates chosen by male citizens of whatever race, 
 color or previous condition, and when such constitution shall 
 
14 
 
 jjrovide that the elective franchise shall be enjoyed by all such 
 persons as have the qualifications herein stated for the election of 
 delegates, said state shall be declared entitled to representation in 
 congresss. "This," said a biographer of Thaddous Stevens, 
 "practically treated the Southern States as conquered provinces, 
 and as entitled to no rights under the constitution. It prescribed 
 universal suffrage for the black as well as the white man, not 
 merely in formation of the new state constitutions but as an 
 ouduring part of those instruments." 
 
 It is unquestionable that Mr. Stevens, and the great leaders 
 of the union who acted with him, had no conception of the disas- 
 ters to the South, the disgrace to the country, and the continued 
 calamities which this reconstruction legislation would en- 
 tail. The history of the world had given no account of an 
 assembly of Africans tor the purpose of framing a government. 
 Without a precedent in fact, it is not surprising that such 
 assemblies in the South should have been startling in result. 
 The governments of the Southern States had ever been and are 
 now conducted with the most scrupulous regard for economy 
 and frugality. It cannot be said that Mr. Blaine in any of his 
 speeches or writings was too partial to Southern statesmen, but 
 in the first volume of his "Twenty Years of Congress," we find 
 this language: "They constituted a remarkable body of men. 
 * * * They gave deep study to the science of govern- 
 ment. They were admirably trained as debaters, and they be- 
 came skilled in the management of parliamentary bodies. As a 
 rule they were liberally educated. * * * They were 
 almost without exception men of high integrity and they were 
 especially and jealously careful of the public money. Too often 
 lavish in their personal expenditures, they believed in economical 
 government, and through the long period of their domination 
 they guarded the treasury with rigid and unceasing vigilance 
 against every attempt at extravagance, and against every form of 
 corruption." From the government of such men to the govern- 
 ments of the reconstruction era, the declension was indeed precipi- 
 tous. 
 
 The figures of the census of 1870, in all their nakedness, 
 yet eloquently, depict the consequent misery of fourteen American 
 states. The briefest citation will suffice. In 18G0 the assessed 
 
J5 
 
 value of jjroperty in Massachusetts was but one hundred and 
 seven million dollars more than the assessed value of property in 
 Georgia. In 1870 the assessed value of property in Massachu- 
 setts was more than one-half the entire taxable wealth of the 
 fourteen Southern States. In 1860 the South owned 44 per cent 
 or nearly half the taxable values of the whole country. In 1870 
 the assessed value of property in New York and Pennsylvania 
 alone was greater than that in the whole South. South Caro- 
 lina, which in 18G0, had been third in wealth per capita of its in- 
 habitants, had fallen to thirtieth, Georgia had fallen from 
 the seventh to the thirty-ninth place, and Alabama from the 
 eleventh to the forty-fourth. The Constitutional History of the 
 United States by Francis Newton Thorpe, states, that excluding 
 the value' of slaves, the people of the South, in the five years of 
 the war had' lost in property, in funds and by the increase of in- 
 debtedness, nearly three thousand million dollars, and in ad- 
 dition to this they were indelited to the merchants of the 
 North for goods purchased and money borrowed for four hundred 
 and eight millions more. Their indebtedness exceeded by nearly 
 fourteen hundred millions the assessed value of all the property 
 of the Confederate States in 1865, and was more than two hun- 
 ,drt;d millions greater than the national debt at its highest point? 
 To superadd the losses from the saturnalia of reconstruction was 
 indeed unendurable. The debts of the nine states, Alabama, 
 Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, South 
 Carolina, Texas and Virginia, at the close of the wa'', was $76,- 
 416,430. The debts of these same states at the end of negro 
 control was $289,868,584. The history of the Southern States 
 under negro rule has been suiumed up by that brilliant 
 w-riter, Mr. Lecky, in liis "Democracy and Liberty," as a 
 "grotesque parody of government, a hideous orgy of anarchy, 
 violence, unrestrained corruption, undisguised ostentatious in- 
 sulting robbery, such as the world had scarcely ever seen." 
 
 The appalling significance of these conditions is plain to 
 every man who is capable of their realization, and it requires 
 little imagination, and a slender acquaintance with economic 
 affairs to conceive the desolation and despair among the people 
 of that vast and prolific territory unsurpassed by any on 
 earth in the variety and value of its productions. It also re- 
 
i6 
 
 quired little knowledge of the iatrepid and resolute Anglo-Saxon 
 population of those states, to perceive that these conditions would 
 not last. The reconstruction governments as we have seen were 
 accomplished in disregard of the constitution. This, it is plain, 
 was revolution, and by revolution these governments were swiftly 
 overthrown. 
 
 Was the material prosperity of a people the measure of their 
 happiness, there would be nothing in the conditions of these 
 Southern States of the American Union to arouse the alarm of 
 those who love them. An increase in population since the days 
 of reconstruction of 44 per cent., in acreage of farms from two 
 hundred and thirty-three millions to nearly four hundred mill- 
 ions, a positive iiicrease of a million farms m twenty years, a 
 percentage of 68 for the South as against 42 for the whole coun- 
 try, an increase in farm values in the same period of upwards of 
 one billion two hundred and seventy-one millions, or about 100 
 per cent., with a profit on farm investments of 25 per cent, as 
 against 16.2 in the whole country, in co ton manufacturing an 
 increase of 297 per cent in mills, 609 percent in capital, and 
 1024 per cent, in spindles, an increase of railv>'ay mileage of 33,- 
 512 miles, or 162 per cent., and other facts equally marvelous, all 
 *mark a phenomenal recuperation of the South, as significant of, 
 the abounding resources of that favored land, as of the constan- 
 cy, energy and integrity of its people. Indeed Southern men 
 deserve the sympathy and admiration of the world for the cour- 
 age, tenacity and fortitude with which they have struggled with ^ 
 penury, the heroism with which they have triumphed over ad- 
 verse fortunes, the swerveless courage with which they have 
 marched through the valley and shadow of their griefs and sor- 
 rows, now perchance under the providence of God, to rest and re- 
 joice in the green fields and by the still waters of our reunited 
 land. 
 
 But it IS true, that no people can build securely unless the 
 foundations on which they build are also secure, and the founda^ 
 tions of popular government are to be found alone in the freedom 
 and purity of the ballot, in the equal distribution of political 
 power, in the freedom of political thought, and in independence 
 of political action, which can alone make free thought valuable. 
 
 The history of reconstnictioa has leftan indellible impres- 
 
17 
 
 sion upon the minds of the Southern people. The words "negro 
 domination" can invoke a hideous specter which will not down. 
 That it is spectral merely has made little diiference. It matters 
 not that in a political sense we are now and have been for years 
 politically in as little danger from the negro as we are from the 
 subjects of the Iman of Muscat or the Ahkound of Swat. Negro 
 domination is the monotonous slogan, and notwithstanding the 
 widely varying view^ of aur people on the great questions of the 
 day, we behold the solid South. 
 
 In the recent election, by majorities the most unequivocal, 
 the policies of the government have received the approbation of 
 the people of every Northern and Western state. But the Solid 
 South has been immovable. Of the 125 representatives from its 
 homogeneous AiLerican population, onlv four are in apparent 
 sympathy with those measures of the government, through which , 
 the people of the United States have attained a plane ot prosperity 
 unexampled, and the country itself the attitude of a world power, 
 at once so equable and so irresistible, that the authoritative ex- 
 pression of its people's will seems to have the force and effect of 
 international law. While this is true, it is also true that multi- 
 tudes of Southern men of the most forceful character are in full 
 accord with these policies. I believe that a majority of Southern 
 men would be as little likely to denounce the treaty of Paris, as 
 the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, as unlikely to surrender the 
 Philippine archipelago, as the prairies of Texas. The truth is, 
 our reflecting people know that if the economic policies of the 
 administration were reversed, a wave of bankruptcy would over- 
 whelm our every interest as completely as the boiling floods from 
 the West Indian crater swept a people from among the names of 
 men. They know that the whirr of the cotton mills would 
 be hushed, that the mines would be closed, the forges voice- 
 less, the lumber mills shut down, and the railways no longer 
 taxed to their capacity to move the products of field, forge and 
 factory. They know that in lieu of the remunerative price they 
 now get, they would do well again to secure 5 cents per pound for 
 their annual crop of 10,500,000 bales of that indispensable product 
 of which we hold the monopoly for clothing three-quarters of the 
 human race. Yet they vote with mechanical reiteration against 
 their every interest. Why is this? 
 
i8 
 
 In the December number of the North American Review 
 may be found the last of the many contributions with 
 which Thomas B. Reed has enriched the political litera- 
 ture of his country. The first sentence was: "The elec- 
 tions for this year have taken place, and we have escaped the 
 one great danger of a Democracy, which is the decision of great 
 questions without discussion." In the Southern States this ''one 
 great danger to Democracy" is an accomplished reality. In noth- 
 ing is the unnatural suppression of political independence there 
 more clearly apparent than in the utter absence of public discus- 
 sion of national questions. And yet the Southerner is by nature a 
 debater. He debates as the New Englander mechanizes, as the 
 Venetian paints, as the modern Italian sings. Most of the fa- 
 mous men of our past have been noted as great popular orators. 
 The popular assemblies to hear tne joint discussions of men and 
 measures resembled the folkmote of the Anglo-Saxon. When such 
 men as Patrick Henry. John Randolph, Zeb Vance, John 
 C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, John Forsyth, Alexander H. Stephens, 
 Robert Toombs and Benjamin H. Hill met the people on the 
 hustings, the preparation and efforts of the speakers, and the 
 great interest of the auditors were "bark and steel to the mind." 
 The whole plane of popular mentality was lifted, the whole cur- 
 rent of popular thought quickened and clarified. The late Justice 
 L. Q. C. Lamar, himself a marvelous popular orator, once said to 
 me: "I have no skill as a wire puller. Whenever I heard ot a 
 combination against me I would go there, speak to the people, and 
 break it up." With such training was it surprising that the 
 Southern statesmen of the historic past were names to conjure 
 with, or that their constituents, though in large numbeis deiiied 
 the advantages of careful education, took an intelligent interest 
 in the affairs of the country and divided upon patriotic principles 
 almost equally between the great parties of the day? Now this 
 is all gone. Of the measure it is no longer inquired with Henry 
 Clay "is it right, will it conduce to the general happiness, and to the 
 elevation of national character? Of the nominee it is no longer 
 asked with Thomas Jefferson, "is he honest, is he capable, is he 
 faithful to the constitution? To such a pitch has this perilous 
 indifference gone, that m the last Kansas City convention a dele- 
 gate from a noble Southern state arose and declared that became 
 
19 
 
 V 
 
 from a state which would support any candidate the convention 
 might nominate, on any platform it might draft. 
 
 It is true that the Southern people see Republicanism in its 
 most unattractive guise. And when was the occasion within the 
 memory of this generation, where any Northern statesman of na- 
 tional reputation and attractive eloquence undertook to make 
 plain to a Southern audience the great policies of government 
 upon which Republicanism is based? Was there ever a political 
 campaign conducued in a Southern state, by the authorities of 
 the Republican party with the energy, skill and thoroughness to 
 which the people of every Northern state have become habituat- 
 ed? I know that there is an opinion abroad that it would be dis- 
 agreeable and perhaps dangerous for Republican statesmen from 
 the North to address the masses of the Southern people. If this 
 was once true, it is true no longer. The great leaders of Northern 
 thought would be welcomed with kindly hospitality and heard 
 by courteous if not enthusiastic thousands. No surer means 
 could be adopted for breaking there the hitherto unbroken solid- 
 arity of political action. With such campaigns as are conducted 
 in New York, Ohio, Indiana and other Northern states, with a 
 wide dissemination ot the great newspapers and other literature, 
 with the "spell-l)inder" abroad in the land, the people would be- 
 gin to think for themselves, interest m national politics would 
 be awakened, white men would dit^'er, and black men as well, and 
 as a consequence hopeful progress would be made toward the pu- 
 rity and freedom of the ballot, the restoration of the American 
 spirit, and the return to constitutional methods. Even now 
 thousands of men in the South, mainly young men, are ready to 
 exclaim with Emerson, "Let there be an entrance opened for me 
 into realities, I have worn the fool's cap too long." There are 
 thousands of other men termed by a great Georgian "the educat- 
 ed leaders of labor, who hold in their grasp the ever enlarging 
 fields which employ improve and control mankind." These men 
 especiallv, and many others resent the fact that they are contin- 
 ually drawn into a political machine which kills thought and sti- 
 fles reflection. At the University of Georgia, the alma mater of 
 hundreds of the foremost leaders of Southern thought, at the 
 commencement this year, the original addresses of not less than 
 six of the students, were protests against the continued surrender 
 
20 
 
 of polititical independence on the part of the young men of the 
 South. To me it matters not whether such men ally themselves 
 to the Democratic or Republican party. My plea is for the revi- 
 val of the American spirit, for the resioration of constitutional 
 methods. I pray to see the handicap of provincialism stricken 
 from the minds of the aspiring youth of my state and my section. 
 I pray to see the imputation of a sullen and immovable resent- 
 fulness toward the government and its ennobling purposes re- 
 moved from my section. Indeed with the masses of the people it 
 does not exist. No man has the right to place the Southern 
 people toward our government in the attitude of Ireland toward 
 the government of Great Britain. 
 
 The fear of an impossible negro supremacy is the only ob- 
 stacle. But is this insurmountable ? The argument seems to 
 demand a practical suggestion to relieve the minds of the South- 
 ern people from the fear of that supremacy, however unreal it 
 may be. The remedy seems to be as obvious as just. It is to be 
 found in the enactment of impartial laws for white and black alike, 
 which will admit to the franchise the intelligent, upright and 
 responsible of both races, and exclude the venal, the ignorant 
 and the worthless. And such measures need not be confined to 
 the Southern States. The polyglot vote of our great cities, be- 
 cause more effective, seems not infrequently not less dangerous 
 to sane government, than the massed vote of the ignorant blacks. 
 And if the statesmanship w^hich controls the policy of the forty- 
 five indestructible sovereignties, declines to consider such 
 laws as will secure a pure ballot and a free ballot, is it not 
 the part of wisdom for the National government to begin 
 the consideration of a reform so vital to the stability of 
 our institutions ? Is it illogical or dangerous to entrust to na- 
 tional law the qualifications of the electorate for national of- 
 fices, and to entrust the enforcement of the law to the national 
 courts ? That it would require a change of the constitution is 
 true, but shall not the constitution be changed if this is plainly 
 essential to effectuate its ennobling, its sublime purposes ? Said 
 Mr. Justiice Miller, for a unanimous court, in exparte Yarborough, 
 110 U. S. : "If the very source of power may be poisoned by corrup- 
 tion or controlled by violence and outrage without legal restraint, 
 then indeed is the country in danger and its best powers, its 
 
21 
 
 highest purposes, the hopes whicli it inspires and the love which 
 enshrines it, are at the mercy of the combinations of those who 
 respect no right but brute force on the one hand, and the un- 
 principled corruptionist on the other. 
 
 It is true that to a Southern man worthy of the name, 
 aye to every informed American, negro domination is un- 
 thinkable, but, he is neither a humanitarian nor a patriot, 
 who would see nothing in the future of nine millions of 
 those black people save a piteous story of decadence, degredation 
 and death. It is true that there are negroes whose desperate and 
 beastial savagery have brought the coverts of those horrid jungles 
 where their forebears sweltered, ravished and slew, close to the 
 homes of helpless innocence and trembling virtue. But these 
 brutish beasts are the outcasts of the race, and besides, they are 
 not distinguished for great longevity. It is not just or wise to 
 judge millions of black men by their vilest criminals. He is a 
 poor studeiit of that singular people who does not perceiv(i 
 among them a multitude of types as varying in tribal charac- 
 teristics as the racial traits of the composite white population of 
 our land. The explanation is easy. The slave-catcher may have 
 captured the cruel cannibal of the Congo, the Bechuana ot the 
 Transvaal, the Makololo of the Zambesi, the tribesmen of the 
 gentle black men who followed and nurtured Livingstone in his 
 long travels, or of the brave Zanzibari who marched and fought 
 with Stanley in his tremendous journev across the dark continent. 
 Are the kindly and intelligent, the industrious and faithful of 
 this people to be deprived of hope because others are stupid, 
 treacherous, corrupt? Indeed, thousands of these colored men 
 are good citizens and useful members of society. ^Vhen they 
 were emancipated, every member of the race might have joined 
 as most ot them no doubt did, in the old Methodist hymn : 
 
 "^io foot of land do I possess, 
 No cottage in tliis wilderness." 
 
 How is it now? On the iOth inst., the Director of the Cen- 
 sus kindly favored me with a statement which shows the most 
 marvelous advance in the acquisition of property by this people. 
 From this it appears that m the United States the negro farmers 
 own and operate 746,717 farms. These include 88,288,983 acres. 
 Their value is $499,948,734-. The value of the products for the 
 
22 
 
 year 1899 was $255, 751,145. It will be observed that this im- 
 mense sum of productive capacity in one year is more than 
 50 per cent, of the entire value of the farms, and to pro- 
 duce it they expended only $8,789,792 for labor and $5,614,841 
 for fertilizers, leaving them a net profit on one year's opera- 
 tions $241,346,512, which is 48 per cent of their investment. An 
 easy explanation of this is that most of their labor is the work of 
 themselves their wives and children . The doctrines of Malthus have 
 had as yet no appreciable effect upon these American citizens of Af- 
 rican descent, and when a colored farmer in Georgia is asked how 
 many children he has, he will usually reply, "I have five hoe hands 
 and six cotton pickers." In my own state of Georgia, there are 
 nearly 88.000 farms owned and operated by negroes with an acreage 
 of nearly 5,500,000, and a value of $48,992,879. The value of 
 their products for the year 1899 in that state alone was $29,989,- 
 421. They expended for labor $1,208,860 and for fertilizers $1,- 
 684,010. From these figures an easy calculation shows that 
 the negro who owned his farm in Georgia, in an average 
 year made a profit of 61 per cent, on his farming operations. 
 It is idle to speak of the deportation of a population so valuable. 
 The truth is, w^e could not get along without them. They have 
 no purpose to become extinct themselves. Then it follows that 
 it is the duty of every true man to do all in his power to make 
 them better citizens and better men. 
 
 A danger to the welfare of the Southern States is the possible 
 reduction of the existing number of representatives apportioned 
 upon millions of this population whose men of voting age are by 
 state action denied the suffrage. This may any day startle the 
 country, as nothing has done since the reconstruction era. No 
 change of the constitution is here required. A majority of the 
 congress, under the provisions of the fourteenth amendment have 
 the power if they have the will. Thirty-six representatives are 
 apportioned to the Southern States upon the basis of the black 
 population. Surely anxious thought on a matter so vital is 
 timely when it is reflected that in an entire state with a popula- 
 tion of 557,807 whites and 782,821 blacks, in electing seven con- 
 gressmen, there were cast in the last election only 741 votes in 
 opposition to the prevailing party. But no measure, however 
 stringent will be effective for good government or stable prosper- 
 
23 
 
 ity if it engenders the universal hostility of a resolute people." 
 This will be inevitable from a reduction of our representation. 
 We may trust that this will not be attempted. But it is at least 
 timely to stimulate if w^e may profound political thought among 
 our people, which may avoid the necessity of a measure so dras- 
 tic and so exciting. To stimulate such thought I understand to 
 be a mission of the Independent Club. Would that there were 
 such an organization in every Southern community, an associa- 
 tion of high-minded and disinterested men whose love for coun- 
 try and humanity prompts the consecration of their powers to 
 the promotion of independence. 
 
 "Heaven's next best, gift 
 To that of life and an immortal soul !" 
 
 After all that has been said and done, we have abounding 
 reasons for gratitude to Him who holds the destinies of nations 
 in the hollow of His hands, for the blessings we enjoy in our 
 national life. The swiftness with which the wounds of our 
 great Civil War were healed and its scars obliterated is literally 
 without precedent in the annals of time. In the space of a 
 moment, if counted by the life of a nation, the men who were 
 leaders in the Confederate struggle were restored as leaders in the 
 official life of the union. Not a proscription, not a confiscation, 
 not an execution under the charge of treason, marked the ter- 
 mination of that titanic struggle which utterly destroyed seven 
 billions of values and seven hundred thousand numan lives. 
 And let me say that this national magnanimity, only pos- 
 sible where government is controlled by the great heart of the 
 people, was not undeserved by Southern men. There was on their 
 part no disloyalty to the principles of the constitution. It was 
 merely a question with them as to where their allegiance was due. 
 Of these men General Grant penned with the faltering hand of 
 the dying his conviction that they were as sincere as were his own 
 gallant troops in their faith in the cause for which they fought. 
 And said our living president, himself a soldier, but like your 
 own Hamilton, "formed for all parts and in all shining variously 
 great," they "had a most hearty faith in the justice of their 
 cause," and "he is but a poor American whose veins do not 
 thrill with pride as he reads the deeds of desperate prowess done 
 by the Confederate armies." 
 
24 
 
 Nor are they without claims upon your gratitute. Blot from 
 the flag every star placed there by the statesmanship 
 or valor of your Southern brethren and there will be diminished 
 by half, its scintillating glories. Well do I know that people. 
 It is a temperate people, a devout, God-fearing people, faithful to 
 home and wife and little ones, as jurors true and impartial. 
 Less than one in a hundred of any other save the old American 
 strain. Clear and shrewd in mind, in frame tall and slender, but 
 strong and sinewy, with Huguenot, Anglo-Saxon or Scotch-Irish 
 faces — the faces of their sires of old who on the field of Ivry, 
 pressed where led the helmet of Navarre; faces of sires who 
 greeted good Queen Bess at Tilbury, when she rode down the 
 lines of her yeomanry marshalled to meet the dreaded infantry of 
 Spain ; faces of sires who at Dunbar spurred after the gleaming 
 sword of Cromwell when he shouted, "Let God arise, let His ene- 
 mies be scattered!" faces of sires who hurledthe enemies of civil 
 and religious liberty from the battlements of Londonderry and with 
 William of Orange breasted the shot-riven waters of the Boyne; 
 faces of sires who fell in 
 
 "Witli the old Continentals, 
 In ragged regimentals, yielding not." 
 
 Think you, my countrymen, when the military scientists of 
 other lands are estimating the fighting strength of the American 
 people, that while they count the hero boys in blue, they will 
 overlook the sons of that far-flung battle line of gray whose 
 daring and constancy will live in song and story to the 
 latest times? Nol' The tangled chapparal of Guasimas, the 
 ensanguined summit of San Juan, the winds that woo 
 Manila bay, the waves of ocean that moan through the shot- 
 riven hulks of Spain, have told the story to the ages that now and 
 forever in its need, our every heart is steeled and every arm is 
 nerved to uphold in safsty and in honor the Flag of the freeman's 
 home and hope. 
 
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