Birmingham state herald., 1896-04-08

as a matter Of course they preferred the 1 He1nination of some other man. At that
 time Captain Johnston favored the prop osition to extend to those men who had always up to 1892 voted the democratic
 ticket an invitation under which they could honorably return to the party, but
 the state committee had not then come to
 see things in the same light that Captain
 Johnston and many of his friends saw
 them in. The Advertiser held to the po-
 sition that the way to build up the party
 was to scorn those men at the primary meetings and command them to come in and vote the democratic ticket in August,
 and it's policy prevailed and proved to be
 a miserable mistake. The men who were
 invited to remain out of the primary
 meetings scorned the Advertisers com
 mand to return and vote for the ticket in
 August. The result was we wound up
 in 1894 with our party ranks as badly
 shattered as they were when we got
 through in 1892.
 Seeing this, and coming to full reali-
 zation of the fact that the position taken
 by Captain Johnston was eminently the correct one, and that unless we expected
 to wind up the year 1896 with the white
 people still as badly divided in Alabama
 as they were in 1892, the state democratic
 executive committee, composed of num-
 Der of wise, conservative democrats, de- cided to abandon the Advertisers plan of reuniting the white people of Ala
 bama, which as stated above was to
 scorn them at the primaries and com 1 mand them to come in August, and adopt
 a plan likely not to prove such failure o e 10 Aduarficar'c n1 n "a
 This the committee did, and their action has been denominated the letting down
 of the bars. As absolutely startling as it may appear to a stranger to the situa-
 ton, the Advertiser began the very next
 day an unhely war upon the state com
 mtttee, and has from that day to this
 gone the full length of its ability in an effort to defeat the very object of the state committee, which was and is to re-
 habilitate the democratic party. Was
 there ever witnessed before such repre-
 hensible conduct on the part of news
 paper claiming to be democratic? h. stead of surrendering to the highest judgment of the highest party authority
 and enthusiastically acquiescing in it's rulings and going to work in an effort to bring about the ends for which the state committee was working, the Advertiser joined the populist leaders and has done everything in it's power to keep men from
 returning to the party with which they voted all their lives up to 1892. It has been more active and more diligent in its effort to keep the white people of the state divided than has been the Tribune Kolb's paper, and the Living Truth, Whitehead's paper Are we to believe for moment that such a newspaper as
 that is going to get the indorsement of the democrats of Alabama by the nomi- nation of its candidate for governor? If there are any who think the democrat ic party of this state is going to indorse the Advertisers war on the state com
 mittee and indorse its assaults on the
 democrats of Morgan county and indorse it's policy of rule the party or ruin it, they are doomed to disappointment. Mir Clarke had no chance to secure the | nomination when he entered the con | test, and, if he had had, the course of the | Advertiser, which Mr. Clarke indorses, would have destroyed him.