The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1890-02-13
me tha. in 1867 before the reconstruc.ioa

me thai in 1867, before the reconstruc.ie.
measures went into effect, Gen. Hampton
alone, of all Southern public men, so FIR
as I recall, publicly at Columbia urged
the white people to make every effort to
win the negro 10 their support by a COZ.
dial recognition of his new rights and a
friendly and sympathetic attitude towards
him as 3 voter. It was an act of states.
manship which ought to be we'll remem.
bered to his honor. But the negro has
no disposition or tendency to quit this
country, or even to any great extent to
change from one State to another. No
sky for him is 80 bright as the sky that
bent over his childhood; no land 80
fertile as that he has always titled, no
white men, after all, so honorable and
friendly as those with whom he was born
and reared. He will not leave the South
voluntarily, and no one proposes to COM
pei him 10 20. do not believe the
passage of Senator Buffers bill would
effect the removal of an appreciable frac
tion of the negro race In any State. They
are here to stay.
LIMITATIONS OF FEDERAL POWER.
Let me say another word on this point.
This Government does not exist to save
the negro from the struggle for his rights.
Your rights and mine, in the last conf
mon resort, are not secured to us by the
Government of the United States. They
are secured to US by our State Govern
ments and State laws, but, more than all,
by ourselves, by our intelligence, our
education, our self-reliance,. trained and
compacted in the long, stern school of
experience. The negro's rights will
never be secured in any other way.
What can be done, let me ask, that has
not been done? Concede for the mi'-
ment that Federal election law can be-
passed and enforced. And what good
will this do the negro? It will help,
perhaps, to keep the Republican party
in power, but how, ask and repeat, will
it help the negro? Is it thought that
with Congress overwhelmingly Repub
lican, with all the powers of the Govern.
ment again in Republican hands, new
laws or new agencies can be devised,
under our constitutional Limitations,
which will protect the negro in the rights
which concern him most?
We touch here upon the true point Of
all this endless talk of negro rights and
their protection. I say it is not expected,
it is not imagined, by any sensible lawyer
or public man, that any law can be
devised TO reach such results, 1t canno
be done
What we can do, what we ought to do
lis, with profound sympathy for both
races, with words of cheer aud respect
for both races, to watch, as patriotic
Americans, the progress and issue of the
grand discipline of both races now going
| forward at the South. In that spirit l
watch it. In that spirit I speak tonight
Both races have done better thus far than
any man would have had warrant for
expecting twenty years ago. They will
20 forward, if let alone, to work out that
harmony and peace, that mutual respect
for each others rights, which all true
men long to see.
IF some one regrets that this is all that
can be done for the negro, answer
frankly, 1 do 1ot. I am profoundly
| thankful. that Mother your common,
every. day civil rights and privileges, nor
mine, nor the. negro's at the South,
depend on the Federal Government. /
am profoundly glad they depend solely
on the State Governments, on ourselves.
The deep base and substructure of our
Federal fabric itself lies in the power and
rights of the States. 1 would not, as |
value both nation and States, remove
one restriction from the Federal power
or:edd one line to its charter ofrights.
I stand, stand now and forever ,ton the
barriers erected by the Fathers to restrain
the nation and to defend the States. No
| negro's, no white mans, rig ght to vote is
worth the sacrifice of one title of the
Just equilibrium of our constitutional
| system.
A PLEA FOR GOOD FELLOWSHIP.
But, as + have said, and as I permit
myself torepeat, there is no cause of
alarm, except to party politicians, except
to your Hoars and Lodges, to your Ingall-
ses and Chambers. The negro Of the
South is doing we'll. The white man of
the South is doing we'll. Close your eara
to these siren voices which sing the woes
of the South. Thero is great and con.
stantneed ofgood feeling, good fellowship
between North and South, between
Massachusetts and South Carolina there
is always an open and wide field for
private munifcence to aid in the great
work by religious and educational inhu-
! ences, but there is need towards tho
negro especially for much of what Burke,
in an immortal phrase, called ga wise
aud 0alutary neglect" in the political
sense.
Mr.. President and gentlemen, have
spoken with perfect freedom as became
me, and, as ] supposed, became this club
and this occasion. We must abandon
old ideas which are unsuited to present
conditions and problems.