Birmingham state herald., 1896-05-12
THE UNHoI,Y ALLIANCE.

4I1G ON hO14 Al4IlANOG.
 Twist and turn as they may, the late
 leaders of the late peoples party cannot
 disguise the fact that they have attempt ed to betray their former followers and deliver them body and soul into the hands | of the republican party in Alabama. | Every movement of these same leaders l since 1892 has been in that direction, and
 every step has been artfully taken for the same purpose. They feared to boldly
 disclose their designs and announce to l those they proposed to lead astray that they were heading them directly for the republican camp and intended enlisting them in a body in the republican ranks. To have done so would have rendered impossible their scheme, for the great
 majority of the populists would have at once repudated their leadership and re-
 turned again to the democratic party
 These leaders coquetted and jolled with
 the republicans until they thought the
 old and natural hatred of the white vot- CTS in their ranks against the republican negro party had died out and it would be
 an easy matter to form complete and
 compact alliance between the woolly-
 headed, black-skinned republicans and the blue-eyed white-skinned populists of SOAASN~~NNN cloven foot until it could not longer be hidden, and now they still try to deceive the people into believing that the final amalgamation attempted at Montgomery was nothing more than an arrangement for temporary cooperation against "or- ganized democracy" and that in the fu ture such arrangements, or no arrange ments, as might be deemed most expedi- ha ma wi reference tO the present compact. The fact is the great majority of the populite voters of this state would never have alienated themselves from the regular democratic organization if they had suspected that the destination intended for them by their leaders was the republican party. But further deception is impossible. The rank and file of the populite party real ize now that if they continue in political opposition to the democratic party they must do so under the banner of the re- publican party and accept into full po- ltical fellowship the negro voters in the state, and must hereafter, as Mir. Shu- gart forciby put it, 'set up until o'clock at night to learn from negro convention who to vote for"
 It was never the intention nor the pur-
 
 democratic organization to affiliate with
 the republican party, composed almost entirely of the black hordes of the corn
 fields and cotton plantations of middle Alabama, and aid it to again reduce this
 fair state to the political conditions which
 prevailed in the days of reconstruction and until the carpetbaggers and scala
 wags were driven from power; but such he ba of hai
 ratification in August of the unnatural and unholy political alliance which their late leaders attempted at the Montgom- cry convention to fix upon them over the
 protest of the ablest and best men in the convention. To sanction and sustain the action of that convention in nominating for important state offices two lifelong re-
 publicans who refused to yield one jot or tittle of their fealty to the republican
 party and its principles would be not only l practical repudiation of the theories and principles of governmental policy for | which they have contended, but the n-
 dorsement and embracing of the most ob- | noxious doctrines of republica nism,
 which they have always abhorred and against which they have always contend 1 ed. The voters whom the leaders would deceive and mislead to their political de- l struction and damnation know this and
 they are already rebuking the treachery | which would ruin them. The revolt is
 spreading quietly but rapidly, and from
 every section of the state where, in re- | cent years, opposition to the democratic | party has been strongest come reports
 and evidences of this indignation of the | people at the treachery of their leaders. They scorn the political alliance that has | been attempted to be thrust upon them,
 and will not submit to it. They know
 now, as they might have known years | ago, that the only political safety for | white men in the south is in the demo- cratic party, and they are returning to | its ranks to stay
 l We welcome them.