The weekly clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1863-1882, 1869-06-17
COLONEL WALKERS SPEECH.


patient and deferential attention.
IA We present herewith the report Of
COLONEL WALKERS SPEECH.
| appear before you tonight under a
stress Of circumstances very unfavorable
\ to myself. For many years unused to
public speaking, the several engagements
(which / have fulfilled in the lastfew days,
and the travelling incident thereto, have
so affected my lungs and impaired my
strength that | can discharge the pleasant
N duty Of disclosing my views to you with
Fneither ease nor efficiency.
have said that it has been years since
/ acted as public speaker, and then it
\ was not as a politician. | never was
Rpotitician, | am not now, and if my life
was spared for half a century to come |
never should be one. And in addressing
YOU tonight come as a plain, honest,
earnest business man, and shall talk to
YOU in the same business manner and with
the same business style of thought as if we
were consulting in regard to material en-
terprise, or conducting a bargain.
1 am not politician and did not come
bin search of office But circumstances
have conspired to make it seem duty
Z that / should break through the estab-
lished rule of my life, and, in obedience
Ito the voice ofthe people, and the CON
Eviction of my own mind, have come for
ward to do what l can to restore Virginia
10 peace and prosperity, and to call her
old power and glory back again. And |
wish to say just here that, if elected, /
will feel it to be not only my duty, but
#my pride, to give to the old State the aid
v Of all the ability / have. Its prosperity
shall be my first thought-that and to
mete out equal and exact justice to every
fcitizen of Virginia, be he white or black.
Y If L shall be elected Governor by your
suffrages, fellow-citizens, do not intend
Ito be the Governor of any city, county,
ssection, or locality Of the State, nor to
pander to the interests of any, but to be
sGovernor of all Virginia, distributing my
Influence as the Executive with perfect
timpartiality in behalf Of all plans for the
advancement Of all communities within
her borders. Her public improvements
nov are languishing, some unfinished,
heome not even begun.
Il Fellow-citizens, there are in this can
vass few prominent ISSUES, to one side
N or the other Of which the mind of every
man must incline. Upon them | give
] you my opinion do not consider negro
Suffrage question az this coapass. / look
gtpon tt os settled and sealed by q potger from
qchich there Is no appeal and I staU not
qcaste time IN discussing 1t. Some of you
have opposed, some have favored it; that
is no matter now We have the common
duty and policy, whatever our past con-
victions, to accept the situation as it is
to make the most of it, and to reconstruct
Virginia from the materials which are at
hand.
But there is another question, and one
which is not settled. The negro's right
to vote is established by law; but the
question is, Shall the ,rhite man hare an
equal right of suffrage, BY the constitu-
ton, which is to be submitted for your
rejection or ratification, large numbers of
the white people of Virginia are prohib-
tied of franchise, and ninety-fve per cent
are debarred from the holding of any of
fee, State or Federal. And the provi-
sions which so deprive the white men of
privileges declared to be the rights of
colored men | here pronounce infamous.
No republican government can exist per-
manently or successfully in which one
portion of community is thus elevated
to the detriment of the other. Glass leg
islation, in all its various phases, is odious,
lis as unstatesmanlike as unjust, anti-re-
publican in every point Of view, and GER
ftain to destroy the government which re-
scurs to it. And the same reason which
makes a man acknowledge the right of
negroes to suffrage should logically lead
him to champion the right of the white
man. The platform upon which / was
dominated, upon which | address you,
upon which hope to be elected, and the
principles of which | should carry out,
$50 far as politics entered my administra-
ton Mt all, is UnigersaI amnesty and I'm
partial Suffrage.
And, fellow-citizens, there is another
subject involved in the canvass, which
overshadows and dwarfs all other consid-
erations 1t has been little discussed, and
is, perhaps, little understood. Without
a proper solution of this question nothing
in this State can ever prosper. Shall the
State be so restored that all its people can
live in mutual confidence and harmony in
the same district, the same county, and
ttiC SStlAC 1AtALACb- VII SlIlAA Ills
trust, bitter feeling, luminosity of al kinds
in short, war of races? The man
who goes to the polls in the coming cleo
ton and votes for the Underwood eonsti-
tuition without expurgation, votes for strife
eternal and to the death, between the two
elements of our population. They are
laboring to establish here the ancient strife
between Guelph and Ghibelin, devasta-
ting, exterminating, everlasting. But
the man who goes to the polls and votes
for the policy / represent here tonight
goes to the polls with an olive branch; his
ballot is an invocation of ''Peace and good
vail among men"--his voice is not for war
he will have save his country. Upon
that basis only-of universal amnesty and
impartial suffrage accorded as freely to
one as the other, can these races harmo-
niously dwell within the same boundaries.
That party which favored tests and pro-
scriptions, those people who are telling
you, eolored men, to vote for the consti-
tuition as whole, without" as says the
Petersburg platform, alteration or mod
ifcation, that party and those people are
sources of discord and fomenters of strife.
They are enemies not only to their own
1aCS, Jul VoduAy SnculleS 10 TIE AeSIOSS-
Is there any hope for peaceful prosperity
in this land while the master fears his
servant and the servant suspects his mas
ter? Can either prosper, hated and ha-
tingg No! a hundred times, and remem-
Der it, no. If such is to be the state of
feeling and no other can result from the
adoption of those clauses In the Under
wood constitution-the one race or the
other must 60 down. The platform upon
which stand settles this dangerous ques-
ton, and puts it at rest forever. It ban
ishes the causes of trouble. and with them