The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1874-09-05

SPEECH OF JEFF DAvIs-The meeting at
sion to the public sentiment concerning the
outrages in Gibson county, was addressed by
Jefferson Davis as follows:-
Friends and COant1ynaea You have assem-
bled tonight not for the bare purpose of giving
that expression which humanity demands, but
you have assembled for a hoer duty. 1t is
what you owe to yourselves; what you owe TO
your posterity; what you owe to the living;
what you owe to the gallant dead who died
fighting for the sacred cause of Southern indie
pendence Aud you, men of Polk, of Grundy,
of Gibson, beware that you do not dshonor the
dead nor tarDish the living. You are not here
to express your horror of particular crime, IL
is crime to be panished, and to be punished as
it deserves crime that appeals to the officers
of the law that they will do their duty You
have come here to appeal to the country abroad
that you are not a race OF assassins; that you
don't wear masks, and that, in asserting YOU
rights, you will go forward to the end of your
lives never wearing mask nor ever blackening
your face. Applause. was the other day
particularly struck at reading the testimony of
negro before one of those investigating COM
mttees ia South Carolina. He was asked If he
knew Wade Hampton. Oh, yes, they had been
raised together from childhood. Did he believe
he was engaged in any of these Ku Klux out.
RACES? No, he did not. Why? Because,
said the negro, {" if Massa Wade Hampton had
anything to do with those men, 1t would nave
been the white men be would have been after,
and not the negroes" [Applause.] The South
ern men are the only friends the negro has in
any part of the world. 1t becomes US to be
their friends. Every Southern mans memory
runs back to the good old black woman who
narsed him in his infancy, and then to the boy
who hunted and fished with him, and the man
who learned him to ride. All remember with
what JOY and manifestations of love the nurse
welcomed him back home after he had reached
manhood. While these memories cluster
around him, he can never forget them when
they stood in those relations which l believe
God intended they should occupy IT these re-
ldtiOnS haze been disturbed, 1t has been 6y those
5ncendidrieS aCl0 haze come an among us only 10
stir atp strife. 1t now rests with you to snow to
the world that you incapable OF secret
CRIME: that YOU hate the men who wear the
mask or black the face, aud that whatever is
necessary for the public peace that you will do
in an open maDe-, with the visor raised and the
helmet open. Applause The colored people
require the white man to provide for and look
| after them as much now as they ever did.
| Now, there are men who think that in the
| event of war of races, the blacks should be
exterminated, and that we would then have a
happy and roseate future. have no sympathy
with those men. The negroes were my friends
in the olden time, and took care of our wives
and children and homes in the time of war.
They brought the grand Mississippi valley into
cultivation, and are the only ones, think, that
can or will be ever able to successfully cultivate
it. IApplause. But l don't intend to touch
upon a question upon which every man has
formed an opinion. haze no feeling against
| the colored men. The only indignation ochich l
feel is against those aohte men aoho haze carried
then, into the position aohich they noao occupy
LIE, us haze our vengeance against them, not
against the poor blacks. [Applause.l