Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1874-08-28
THE ALABAMA REPUBLICANS.

The platform adopted by the Alabama
republicans at their recent State Conven-
ton stamps with falsehood the assertions
made in democratic papers and repeated
in democratic platforms that the republi-
cans design to force social equality be-
tween the whites and negroes in the South,
and that this is the cause of the troubles
which afflict that section of the country.
There never was any foundation for such
a charge against the republican party.
All that it ever demanded for the negro
was equality in civil and political rights
with the whites. 1t never attempted to
interfere with the social relations, but left
these as untrammeled in the South as in
the North. The civil rights bill does not
ask for social equality. 1t does ask for
equal rights in the courts, at the ballot
box and in the public schools for the
blacks, but there is not word in it in fa-
vor OF forcing the blacks and whites to oc-
cupy the same social plane.
The Alabama republicans have placed
this matter in its true light in their plat
form. The democracy are left by it with
out a peg to hang their race issue upon.
If there is to be war of races in the South
the responsibility for it must rest upon the
democracy. They make it an issue for
the purpose of banding the whites to-
gether and acquiring supremacy over the
blacks. Let our readers examine the fol
lowing resolutions adopted by the Alabama
republican State convention and see how
false is the charge that they demand social
equality for the negroes:
The Republican party of Alabama in State
Convention assembled, again declares its I'M
shaken confidence in, and its unalterable de-
votion to, the great principles ofhuman liber-
ty which called it into existence, namely, the
civil and political equality of all men, without
distinction OF race or color.
2. In the practical application Of these
principles we have neither claimed nor de-
sired the social equality of different races or
OF individuals of the same race, neither do
we claim or desire it now, and all assertions
to the contrary are without the slightest foun-
dation. In point of fact we reject the issue
OF race against race, which is rendered US by
the Democratic party, as fraught with meal
culable evils to our whole people, which sows
the seeds OF ruin to all our national, social,
and political interests, and which, if persisted
in by that party, will plunge US again into
war with the Government Of the United
States.
3. We have not mace race issue 10 the
past, neither do we make, or tender such an
issue. What we demand for one man we de-
mand for all, without distinction of race or
color, and we point with pride ard confidence
to every line of our political record in proof of
this declaration, and we denounce the asser-
tons that have made it necessary for whole
people to unite and act together in selt-de
fence and for the preservation of white civil
ization as untrue and an emanation of tina,
selfish spirit which in the past demanded ev-
erything tor one race and was unwilling to
concede anything to the other; that the race
lssue rendered by the Democracy of Alabama
10 but the outcroppng, and is the natural Sc
quence OF the ambitious spirit which led
peaceful people into war with their Govern |
msnt in 1861; which, during that war rode
rough shod over the people of the South. ard |
aiter the war perpetuated its carnival of blood |
by career OF crime in the Ku-Kux Klans. |
which, in the extent of its organizations, the |
numbers involved in it, the multiplicity and
Nervousness OF its crimes and the manner Of
their commission finds no parallel on the rolls
OF human history. 1t is now as it was then.
each in its different mode for resistance to the
Constitution and law of the land. Again. they
will commit the same acts with vengeance.
sbarpened and envenomed by continued and
repeated persistence in wrong
8. That We neither desire nor seek the in.
vssion Of the rights Of the white people by the