The Lexington dispatch. [volume] (Lexington, South Carolina) 1870-1917, 1896-02-26
Tillman Defends Himself.
Challenges Reply to His Recent
Facts and Arguments.

Senator B. r. Tlllman has written
the following letter to the New York
World:
"My uniform rule has been to treat
criticisms with silence. I break that
rule now for purpose, and that is
to challenge those who have found so
much to condemn in my recent speech
in the Senate to a trial before the
Jury of their readers, in which I can
have at least show Of justice. The
New York Times editorially terms
me "a filthy baboon," the New York
Evening Post "a political Anarchist, "
The World has used the wore" "blather-
skite," the Philadelphia Record calls
me "the chieftain of Anarchists" and
the Globe of St. Paul says, this fel-
low brings to the Senate, the unsav
ory record he made in his State, a
character tattooed with dishonesty"
These are a few of the parlia
mentary and elegant phrases en-
ployed by the polite and refined edi-
tors of some of the leading news
papers as applied to myself. They
have not read my speech, they dare
not publish it in full, aud, basing
their criticisms upon few garbled
extracts in which I used strong Ian
guage to express my Indignation and
contempt, they ask the people of the
country to render a verdict against
me as a course, brutal, ignorant
black guard.
GAIL the words and phrases which
occur in the speech to which they
take exception do not exceed dozen.
They neither add to nor take from
the arguments and facts as presented.
Not single one of them is unpar-
liamentary, and frequently, in the
same Senate, language as violent, as
course as brutal has been uttered in
the past by dozen men whose names
are written high in our countrys his
tory.
"If my language was unparlia-
mentary and indecent, why did no
Senator call me to order? If the
charges were not true, why has no
Senator answered them? Is it un-
parliamentary to tell the truth? Are
we sunk to that low estate that false
hood and treachery and official dis
honesty cannot be mentioned with
out calling down an avalanche of
abuse and slander? What other
Senators have whispered among
themselves I have spoken aloud and
in plain words. What a majority of
the people of the country have
thought and felt I have uttered.
"This is the sum of my offending,
and the hirelipg editors and report
ers who now degrade the so called
freedom of the press to so despica-
BILE level may fatter themselves
that they create and control public
opinion, but the thousands OF let
ters that have poured in on me from
every quarter of the Union, mostly
from the North, and from men en-
gagged in every pursuit in life, have
given me assurances that the scales
are falling from the eyes of the peo'
pie, and that the truth, bravely told,
has a sweet and wholesome sound.
The American people as whole, the
great common people, love the truth,
and they love their country. They
dispise traitors and thieves and COW
ards. It is a large mass to move,
but the leven is at work and the issue
is Joined, and the result will be made
known on the day of election.
$50 far as I am individually con-
cerned, and so far as my speech is
concerned, I care nothing for the
abuse beaped on me, and thank my
critics for directing attention to my
utterances. When my facts and ar
guments have been disproved I will
apologize. Until then decency de
mands that men who abuse me for
speaking the truth should let their
readers see it and judge for them
selves, or reserve their epithets for
men of their own kind who dread
the truth and love cowardice.
''If their is no need of reform: re-
form will not come. II I represent
nothing but ignorance and anarchy,
why was I elected Governor of S u q
Carolina twice by such overwhelm-
ing majolities? For four years, as
executive, fought and abused by cor
poratiop and banl and their hirellng
newspapers, why did my State send
me to the Senate by vote OF III
out of a total of 100 in the General
Assembly? During these four yeas
the State advanced,in material growth
and increase of taxable values more
rapidly than any previous period in
its history. I spent s5OO,0OO in the
erection and equipment Of two OF the
largest colleges for the industrial
technical and normal training in the
South-one for each sex. And the
constitutional convention, with which
1 had great deal to do, fixed constl-
tutional taxes so as to double the free
school fund: the saloons have been
banished from the State, while three
fourths of the people, if not more,
are firm supporters OF the new
methods of handling the liquor
traffic. These facts, which are his
tory, cannot be sneezed at nor obht-
Grated. Anarchists don't write such
history.
II have never shrunk from the
lasbings of newspaper scribblers in in
the arena of State poll les and will
not do so in the broader field to
which my commission flon the peo-
pie has transf, red me. If it IS to be
the fate of this great republic to sink
to the level of Rome when the Prae