The Louisiana Democrat. [volume] (Alexandria, La.) 1845-1918, 1868-10-14
sPEECHT
HON. ALLEN G. THURMAN,
BEFORE TIFF
Democratic State Convention.
West Virginia, at Grafton July 1e, 1865

Democratic State Convention.
West Virginia, at Grafton July 1e, 1865
| -, IcoNTINUED FROM FIRST rAt,E1
IF you are to hold the Southern people
and trust, in God, that no, one who is
now living, or who will live for thousand
years to come, will see us discovered
pr you will hold the people Of, this country
together as we want to bold them togeth-
or, you can only do it by treating each 9TH
erjwith mutual respect, with mutual con-
fdence, and with a regard for the mutual
interest of them all. In other words, you
can only do it by acting as you would Re
acted by. "But," says some pious gentle
man, "if you are in favor Of SO treating
white men, why not treat the negro as
well Are We not all of one blood Pr
And yet this man does not understand the
meaning of the text he quotes. sis not
our colored brother.a man and a brother =
he asks, and, at the Same time, holds his
nose as he walks by the negro. laugh
ter elias he not an everlasting soul 2"
Isays another man, who shows that he has
no soul himself by cheating the negro the
first chance he gets "a
In answer to all this argument, say
when l refuse to give the negro the right
to vote do him no more injustice-nay, I
don't do him 1.-THE of the injustice you
oil do when you deprive your intelligent
and patriotic mothers and sisters Of the
right of casting vote; when I say / am
not willing to put the negro politically
above my wife and sister and daughter lap
plause and cries of "Never, never l')
think / have answered it enough when
have said that. But, further than that, :
answer it by the history of this world,
which has but one side to this question
and what is that? History has been writ
ten for more than four thousand years. and
in all that time there is not one single re-
corded instance of q civilized negro gov
ernmeut. ("There never will be..) The
negro race is perhaps as old as our race
and yet, in all that time, with the same
advantages that the white race has had,
with the same advantages that the yellow
races of Asia have had, the negro race has
never, in single instance, organized and
maintained civil government A voice,
land never will" s
But that is not all. There has never been
an attempt made Of government Of mixed
races, like the negroes aud whites the at
tempt never has been made anywhere that
it has not proved most signal failures It
does not require that they should be as
opposite as white and black. Look at
Hayti. The negroes got free there, and
what was the FIRST thing they did after they
became free? Some were negroes and some
were mulattoes, and the first thing they
did, these negtoes and mulattoes began to
quarrel, and the negroes, being in the ma
jority, drove the mulattoes to the other
end Of the island. There they are to-day,
and what kind ola government have they 2.
You can not open newspaper that con-
tains the arrival Of o ship from Hayti that
does not give you an account of some war
or bloodshed going OH in that island
They have PLAYED Republic and they have
played Empire, with the Emperor Soulou-
que and the Duke of some grand name or
other, and Her Highness of some other
grand name. They have played all that
and they have strutted in gold epaulettes,
and have worn more gold lace than any set
of people on the face of this earth ever did.
They have tried all kinds Of government,
but General This kicks out General That
at the end Of a month or two, and they are
just now in the midst of o revolution in
which the Generals on either side are try
ing how many negroes they can mutually
kill. Applause: Taats
But, gentlemen, that is not all. It is
not all that the negroes have never origi-
mated or maintained civilized government;
that they have never successfully mixed
with other people, and been admitted to an
equality Of political rights; there is some
thing still more striking. Of all things in
this world, perhaps, that fortifcs religion
and n belief in the existence of the, soul,
that makes US think we are not all Of earth,
and that, when we are buried one more in
the bosom of mother earth, we do not
merely lie down and rot like the brntes-
that which, more than all other things ex-
cept divine revelation itself, teaches US i'm
mortality, is that wonderful intellect of
the human race, and its works that seem
like, not the works of men, but of the
gods themselves. Go into one of those
great mills at Wheeling at Pittsburg,
at Lowell or Philadelphia, and see their
wonderful machinery; see the precision
with which it acts, the certainty with
which its ends are attained, the iron fingers,
doing the work of ten thousand human
beings, all working with the harmony al
most of the solar systemitself See your
mighty steamboats, on the river; your yes
sells that pillow the ocean your iron rail
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