Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1898-11-18
RESPONSIBILITY FOR RACE RIOTS

RESPONSIBILITY FOR RACE RIOTS.
The case of the South Carolina negro
postmaster who was driven from office
by Infatuated whites is to be made a
test case under the federal statutes and
the attempt will be made to return
Tolbert to his Office and to protect him
in the discharge of it's duties.
This is the word from Washington.
If the administration carries out this
plan it will do it only at the expense
and eventually order will be maintain
ed only at the point of the bayonet and
surely we have had enough of that sort
Of thing in the affairs of the South.
Meanwhile we are told that Mr.. Nc
Kinley is greatly disturbed over the
situation. Well he may be, for it is
all Mr.. McKinley's or his advisers
fault. To gain a partisan end he APP
pointed in these instances negro federal
officials over the whites of that section,
which, of course, was like throwing a
lighted torch into powder mill.
Does Mr.. Mckinley think the white
people of the South are made of differ
ernt stuff from that composing the
white people of the North? Does he
think they should stand without muir
muir what no white community in the
North would stand?
This is altogether race, not polit-
ical problem, although the whites of
the South, who would otherwise divide
up on political issues as do their breth-
rem of the North, are now compelled by
this condition, forced upon them by
INSCRIPTIONS partisan politicians of
the North, to align themselves with one
political party to combat it.
Hard as this race problem of the
South has been to solve the white peO-
pie of that section would solve it-had
practically solved tin the only way
in which it could be solved if the ma
tional government would only have left
them alone-if it would only have kept
hands off and not been forever tryingto
enforce impossible conditions upon the
South in the shape of negro DONNA
ton that would never be tolerated by
the white people of the North.
1t is all we'll enough for the President
to mouth oily platitudes concerning the
equality of the white man and the
black man under the statutes, but first
let him try that equality on the North
before he begins to choke it down the
throat of the South. Let him demon
strate that Boston would accept a negro
United States marshal, or New York
negro postmaster, or Philadelphia a
negro collector of the port, or Pitts
burg negro revenue officials before he
makes similar appointments over the
white people of the South, who are of
the same flesh and blood, thinking the
same thoughts and actuated by the
same impulses as their brethren of the
North.
Until Mr.. Mckinley demonstrates
that the North would not revolt
against negro domination he has no
right to force it upon the South at the
behest of a set of selfish politicians
who never begin their charity at home
What President Grant with the army
at his back could not do, what that SOL
der statesman and patriot gave up as
a bad and fruitless task certainly the
puny, Weakened man now in the
White House can never accomplish
And if let alone by the selfish poll
ticians of his party probably President
Mckinley would never attempt to &C
complish it.
Negro domination the South will
never submit to, and, we repeat, until
the administration at Washington can
demonstrate that the North would
stand it, it has no right to try to force
it upon the Seth. And the mean par
tisan effort to do so is responsible for
nine-tenths of the race feeling that ex-
lists In that section. This problem is
affection enough for the South without
having the situation aggravated and
inflamed by irresponsible petty parti-
san influence from Washington. The
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