The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1898-09-13
THE POLITICAL HYENA EXPOSED.


We publish elsewhere in to-day's paper
a full and complete statement from
Hon. Chas. NJ. Cooke, former Secretary
of State, in answer to the false and
slanderous charges which DR.. Cyrus
Thompson made in a recent speech
which is being circulated by the Repub-
lican State Executive Committee as
campaign document.
We marvel at the moderation of Capt
Cooke. and admire his self re-
preston. In the face of charges
which, if true would reflect
upon his integrity, man less confident
of his hold upon public faith or less
philosophical in disposition would have
replied to DIR. Thompson's SANDERS with
a horse-whipping. 1t is well for Dr.
Thompson's personal safety that Capt
Coke is not alive. His impetuous tenn
for his hyena-like successor to accuse
him of misappropriating public funds.
Capt. Cooke has chosen a course that
is more to be approved, though if he had
personally chastised the present Secre-
tary of State no one would have blamed
him. 1t is better, however, that he pur-
sued the course of pointing out the
falsehoods, and, by proofs that cannot
be questioned, showing that his success
sor has printed what he knew was false
or what he ought to have known was
false. From the opening sentence to the
last, Capt Cookies reply is so plain, so
temperate, and so unanswerable as to
carry conviction of its truth to every
fair-minded man in the State. 1t is
simply complete, exposing one falsehood
after another in succession until the
whole structure of falsehoods which DIR.
Thompson has erected falls to pieces,
leaving the doctor in the position of a
dctractor and slanderer who has been
uncovered to the public gaze.
In his Scarlet Letter Hawthorne tells
of the lasting punishment visited upon
a woman who had taken false step.
We have passed away from the Purl-
tanical modes of punishment, but there
will never be n time when the people
will forget that in order to uphold
corrupt and disgraceful administration,
it was Cyrus Thompson who became the
slanderer Of an honorable public SER
want who exposed his falsehoods, and
dug down into the graves of the dead III
the vain desire to disgrace the honored
dead. We have had Slanderers before
IN public life in North Carolina. AS
long as they confined their SANDER to
the living. who could answer and de-
fend themselves, they could make
claim to decency, but when DIR. Thomp-
son traduces honorable and honest men
who sleep in honored graves, he be-
comes the Hyena of our political world,
and his place among men is like the
place of the hyena among animals.
Hon. Charles Mather Cooke is man
who enjoys the confidence of the people
of all parties in North Carolina. He is
a Christian gentlemen, patriot, and is
as honest as any man that lives. From
the day that he donned the Confederate
uniform in his boyhood until this houl
he has borne an unsullied name. II
Franklin county he numbers his friends
by the number of the inhabitants of the
county. Men differ with him i'll politics
religion or what not, but they respec
him as just and an honest man. How
did he gain that reputation, first at home
and then throughout the State? 1t wa
because he was an upright man, high
toned, public spirited and just In hi
party, in his church, in all gathering
he has been looked to as a leader ant
in the fifty years of his life, no maj
has questioned his integrity and honesty