The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1889-12-13

in despair, but amid cheap and sunny lands,
rich with agriculture. TO which neither season
nor soil has set a hmit-this system of
industries is mounting to a splendor that
shall dazzle and illumine the world That, sir
is the picture of my home-a land better and
fairer than have told you, aud yet but fit
setting in its material excellence for the loyal
and gentle quality OF its citizenship Against
that, sir, we have New England, recruiting the
republic from its sturdy loins, shaking from its
overcrowded hives new swArms of workers, and
touching this land all over with its energy and
its courage.
scANTILY POPULATED.
And yet, while in the Eldorado of which
have told you but Is per cent. of the lands are
cultivated, its mines scarcely touched, and its
population so scent that were it set equ-distant
the sound OF human voice could not be heard
from Virginia to Texas-while on the threshold
OF nearly every house in New England stands q
son, seeking with troubled eyes. some new land
in which TO carry his modest paurmony, the
strange fact remains that in Is o the south had
fewer northern born citizens than she had In
ISIO; fewer in 1870 than in 1850. Why Is this?
why Is 1t, sir, though the sectional line be now
but mist that a breath may dispel Fewer
men of the north have CROSSED it over TO the
south than when it was crimson with the best
blood of the republic, or even when slave
holder stood guard every inch of its way. There
can be but one answer. 1t is the very problem
we are now to consider. The key that opens
that problem will unlock to the world the fair
est half OF this republic, and free the halted
ling with its beauty.
WILL HEAL PAST ENMTTIEs.
Better than this, it will open the hearts of
brothers for thirty years estranged, and clasp
in lasting comradeship a million hands now
withheld in doubt. Nothing. sir, but this prob
lem and the suspicious it breeds hinders clear
understanding and perfect union. Nothing else
stands between us and such love bound
Georgia and Massachusetts at Valley Forge and
Yorktown, chastened by the sacrifices of Ma
nassas and Gettysburg, and illumned
with the coming of better work and a
nobler destiny than was ever wrought
with swori or sought at the cannon's mouth.
Ii this does not invite your patient hearing to-
night, hear one thing more My people, your
brothers in the south, brothers in blood, in
destiny, in all that is best in our past and
future, are so beset withIthis problem that their
very existence depends on its right solution.
Nor are they wholly to blame for its presence.
MASSACHUSETTS sLAvEsHIPs.
Slave ships of the republic sailed from your
defend the traffic, the institution, but l do
here declare that in its wise and humane admin
lstration in lifting the slave to nights of which
he had not dreamed in his savage home and
giving him happiness he has not yet found in
freedom, our fathers left their sons a saving
and excellent heritage. In the storm of
this institution was lost. thank God as heartily
as you do that human slavery is gone forever
from American SOIL but the freeman remains.
and with him problem without precedent or
parallel Note its appalling conditions. Two ut
terly disSimIlar races on the same soil with equal
political and civil rights, almost equal in num-
bers but terribly unequal in intelligence and
responsibility, each pl dyed against fusion, one
for century in servitude to the other and freed
at last by a desolating war-an experiment
sought by neither but approached by both with
doubt--these are the conditions. Under these,
adverse at every point we are required to carry
these two races in peace and honor to the end.
FATE OF OTHER ALIEN RACES.
Never, sir, has such a task been given to
mortal stewardship; never before in this re-
public has the white race divided on the rights
of an alien race. The redman was cut down as
weed, because he hindered the way of the
American citizen. The yellow man was shut
out of this republic because he is an alien and
inferior. The redman was the owner Of the
land, the yellow man highly civilized and
assimilabe but they hindered both sections
and are gone. But the black man, affecting
but one section, is clothed with every privilege
of government and pinned to the soil, and my
people commanded to make good at any
hazard, and at any cost, his full and
equal heirship of American privileges and pros
perity. 1t matters not that every other race
has been routed or excluded without rhyme or
reason. Wherever whites and blacks have
touched In any era or any cline there has been
irreconcilable violence 1t matters not that no
two races. however similar, have lived any
where at any time, on the same soil, with equal
rights in peace.
HARD TASK.
In spite of these things we are commanded to
which has not, perhaps, changed American
prejudice, to make certain here what has else
where been impossible between whites and
blacks, and to reverse under the very worst
conditions, the universal verdict of racial his
tory, and driven, sir. to this superhuman task
with an impatience that brooks no delay.
rigor that accepts no excuse and suspicion
that discourages frankness and sincerity
We do not shrink from this trial,
1t is so interviewer with our
industrial fabric that we cannot disentangle it
if we would-so bound up in our honorable obli-
CATION to the world that we would not, II we
could. Can we solve it? God who gave it into
our ha Ids, he alone can know.
But this the weakest and wisest of US do not
know. We cannot solve it with less than your
tolerant and patient sympathy. The resolute,
clearheaded, broad-minded men of the south
meu whose genius made glorious every page of
the first seventy years of American history
wear this problem in their hearts and brains, by
day and by night. They realize. as you cannot
what this problem means. what they owe to
this kindly and dependent race and the measure
of their debt to the world; and though their
feet are hindered iu its underground, and they
march numbered with its burdens, they have
lost neither the patience from which comes
clearness nor the faith from which comes cour-
age. Such is the temper OF my people
SOUTHERN COMMON SENSE.
But what of the problem itself, Mr.. President?
We need not go one step further, unless you
concede right here that the people l speak for
are as honest, as sensible and as just your
people, seeking as earnestly as you would IN
their place to rightly solve the problem that
touches them at every vital point. II you in
sist that they are rufians blindly striving with
bludgeon and shotgun to plunder and oppre
the race, then shall sacrifice my self-respect
and tax your patience in vain. But admit that
they are men of common sense and common
honesty; wisely modifying an environment
they cannot wholly disregard-guiding and
vicious and irresponsible Of either race
compensating error with frankness, and re-
trieving in patience what they lose in passion,
and conscious all the time that wrong means
ruin-admit this, and we may reach an under
standing tonight
HARRIsoN's MESSAGE.
The President of the United States, in his late
message to congress, discussing the plea that
the south should be left to solve this problem,
asks: Are they at work upon it?
What solution do they offer? When
will the black man cast free ballot?
When will he have the civil rights that are his?
| shall not here protest against the partisanship
that for the first time In our history, in a time
of peace has stamped with the great seal Of our
government stigma on the people Of a great
and loyal section though gratefully remem-
helm of state for the eight stormiest years Of
reconstruction, never found need for such
step: and though there Is no per-
sonal sacrifice would not make
to remove this cruel and unjust
imputation upon my people from the archives
of my country. But, sir backed by a record
on every page of which is progress, venture to
make an earnest and respectful answer to the
o,,astiona that are asked. IL is claimed that