The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1898-11-12
THE RACE PROBLEM.

They have lively politics down in
South Carolina. The close of a local
campaign was marked with the Gus
tomary riot. A couple of administration
appointees are said to be at the bottom
of it. One of them was in the hospital
and the other on horseback leaving the
state at last accounts
1t seems that they originated plan
to arm the negroes and send them to
the polls loaded for bear and looking
for trouble. Hostilities began with a
fusillade from the colored mob, in
which several white men We're wounded
and one was killed. The whites armed
themselves at once and a race war
was on.
The chairman of the Republican
state committee, a federal official, I'M
dertook to arouse the negroes and was
shot and wounded. Five negroes were
killed outright and four others are be-
fieved to be dead.
The race question of the south is one
of the most difficult of any presented
to the people of this country for solu-
ton. It is made more difficult by the
demagogues who incite the negroes to
deeds of violence, and by leading mem
bers of the race who counsel resent
ment against the political treatment to
which they are subjected
There is no use in talking, the people
of the south, regardless of party affilia-
| tons, will not submit to negro domina-
ton in politics. and the best way for
the negro to secure peace and the anne
Iteration of his kind is through some
other channel than the ballot-box.
Every campaign brings a repetition
of the bloody election tragedy in some
southern state; and it is only peculiar
to the south because of the numbers
they are not as progressive as those in
other sections. They are the tools of
designing politicians on the one hand
and the victims of the opposition on
the other in all too many instances.
Waivers of the bloody shirt" who
were the chief speakers for the Repub-
lican party during the twenty years
following the civil war, have sought to
make it appear that the race question
is a party question. In the campaign of
1892 it was demonstrated that south
ern Republicans have the same feeling
in regard to the negro in politics that
others have. 1t generally depends on
whose OK is being gored.
The Texas Republicans barred ne
groes from their state convention in
that year. In Oklahoma there was a
riot in the Repupncan convention, in
which several colored delegates were
shot. In many county conventions the
! Republicans showed the same hostility
The secret of the whole business, the
foundation of this trouble was very
ably set forth by Hon. Daniel L. Rus
Sell, leading North Carolina Republi-
can, in an article published on the bun
of August, 1892, in the Republican or
/ gan of Raleigh. He said:
The substantial Republicans are pro-
/ foundry disguised at the intolerable OBJ
! truSivenesS of many of the negro pOliti-
clans, supported by the revenue crowds
and the unfortunate fact must be &C
! knowledged that the black people have
! chosen to follow corrupt and worthless
/ nercenaries of their race and ignore
! the counsels of white leaders, to whose
advice they have heretofore deferred
/ The actual leader of the party in the
state is a negro congressman whose
/ only qualification for leadership is the
color of his skin. In that negro district
/ in past years, when the negro majority
was five times what it is today, white
men of character and capacity were
/ elected to congress by negro voters
/ Now no white man ever thinks of ask
| ing for the nomination in that district,
none but a negro is thought of, and the
more incompetent and treacherous he
/ is, the more certain he is to get the
prize.
! If Tom Reed and Chauncey Depew
/ and Tourgee resided there neither could
! be nominated for congress unless he
| bought the nomination at good round
/ price for cash.
No one would more rejoice than I to
/ see the negro race treated with liber-
atty and justice but the attainment of
this end is remote. so long as the negro
indicates by his political conduct that
| he only wants power to enact in the
south the scenes which have demon
| strated his incapacity for self-govern-
ment in Hayti, Jamaica and San Do
mingo.