The Lexington dispatch. [volume] (Lexington, South Carolina) 1870-1917, 1896-06-17
Col. Knots Defence.
To the Editor of the Dispatch.

r y
lican. AS to its personal and abusive
language and its comparison of me
to Benedict Arnold, Judas Iscaliot,
and to other names famous in history
for treason, guilt and deception, I
care but little and ferl that those
questions will be better, and more
impartially settled by the discrimi-
mating public than by the editorial
columns of a paper whose every
utterance is too blinded by sectional
and partisan prejudice to be a
capable judge of any citizens inten-
tions IN any matter of public duty,
either to himself or to the rest Of his
fellow citizens.
When an editor criticises the pro.
ductiops in his own columns and has
to resort to the position of the Dis
patch in this matter it only shows
the paucity Of it's materials and the
helplessness of it's unfe rtunate po
sition. To start out to answer an
article, then impugn the writer's
honesty and finally end in an appeal
to fear and prejudice Of negro domi
nation puts him at once among the
back numbers that are out of date
and will not be read by the progress
sive thinkers except with commen
surate degree of commisseration.
For an intelligent man now who
knows that the registered negroes in
the State will not exceed 10000 to
hold up yet the scarecrow Of negro
domination of 10000 negroes over
10000 white voters, is bordering an
infatuation or political lunacy. There
is no such danger and the editor
himself has no confidence in any
such nonsense and only uses it be
cause of the weakness of the position
and to appeal to former prejudice.
The white Republicans desire it no
more than the most infuriated Dem.
ocrat, and the negrois fully satisfied
that such state is not for his good.
The Dispatch will have to look for
something else and prepare to
change it's song.
Its statement on being friend to
protection and the poor laborer and
work and unite it's efforts to uphold
a party whose life long work has
been for free trade with only an
economical revenue attached is
simply ridiculous and silly, and its
objection to Republicanism as being
centralising and still defend popu
listic platform which is more CEN
tralisiDg than any Republicanism has
ever been accused of being, makes
it's position still more meaningless
and straddling.
The "Black Republican party" as
you call it, was born in 1856 and
elected the President of the Unite q
States in 1860. There had been a
Republican party for years which
had resisted the carrying OF slavery
into the Territories. The Demo
cratic party had several times agreed
in Congress that it would make no
further fight to extend slavery into
any new State, and every time new
State applied for admission into the
Union the Democratic party would
break it's obligations and contend tor
the right to slavery to 60 into the
new State. The slave lords OF the
South could always control the
Democratic party and did every time
act in bad faith with its pledges in
this particular. Finally in 1856 the
present Republican party was formed,
whose aim and life was to allow
slavery where it then existed but to
sware that the rest OF the nation
should be kept for white settlers and
their children. The editor says 1t
was made of South haters. The
Southern Democracy was made also
of North haters, who hated just as
hard, and that the Democratic party
hated every Southern man who
favored the limitation Of slavery and
every man VIII, loved the American
flag, and wanted to preserve the
Union, and who opposed secession
was called O coward and traitor, and
was buffetted and lidiculed by the
slave lord dynesty,. Every Northern
man was Fable to be "tarred and
frathered" who dared to speak a
Northern sentiment.
The whole fight of the Democratic
party from 1882 to 1860 was to up
hold and protect and extend slavery.
In 1860 the Northern Democracy
deserted the Southern and ran
Douglass for President, when the
slave lord Democracy seeded and
tried to break the Union. The re-
suit we all fearfully know. If the
Democratic party had made its aim
and gained Southern independence,
it would have been q sad day for
the great majority Of the white peo-
pie as we can all now see. All pro.
gress would have stopped, slavery
would have been the sole investment
and large part OF our Southern
people would have, before this, been
slaves themselves, or seek a home
elsewhere.
The condition of large majority
of those men who have rendered
history glorious with the gallantry OF
their valor would have been ruined.
Thus it was that the spirit of BLACK
Republicanism' was too strong for
the blindness of our leadership and
thus has providence ruled for the
good of our repu' lie. 1t was this
Black Republicauism that prevented
the Democratic party in 1868 from
running the future of our Southland.
Men are now waking up to what the
Democratic marty has done and what