The Seattle Republican. [volume] (Seattle, Wash.) 1???-1915, 1900-05-11
BEEN TILLMAN'S BAzOO
Gets Loose and Says Things
Which Renders Him
Ludicrous.

Vi human cattle South Carolina and
other Southern states elect to the
United States senate, and for that
reason space is given to speech
made by Senator Ben Tillman at
Ann Arbor, Mich, law school, April
3Oth last, that you may read for your
self and be convinced. Such Ian
quage comes nearer convincing the
people of the North that it is the
likes of Tillman, that are more brute
than human, rather than the Ne
groes, he is trying to belittle. This
one-eyed old Orangoutang comes
nearer, perhaps, being the long lost
connecting Enk between ''man and
moneky" than any other species of
human cattle anywhere to be found
in the South The following is his
speech upon '"The Race Problem" as
reported:
This is not a race or Negro ques-
ton Of the South alone; it is not a
local or sectional question; it is a
national question, and this is the only
true way to look at it You in Mich
igan know practically nothing about
this question. You judge only by
books and what you hear politicians
say, who have axes to grind. The
last census gives Michigan 5000 col
ored and 100000 white voters, or
about l to 100. If there were to be
promiscuous intermarriage between
the races in Michigan it would not
affect the white race.
But it is different in the South.
In South Carolina the Negro out
numbers the white population in the
ratio Of 60 to 40. After the recon
struction policy had been adopted
the Negro ruled, or rather misruled,
our state for eight years. Three
fourths Of the legislature Of the state
were Negroes. Most Of them could
neither read nor write The result
Of this misrule was a state of affairs
which the white population could
not tolerate, and we determin-
ed to get rid of it. We could
not do it by voting, as they
outnumbered us, so we used the shot
gun and such other methods as we
found expedient. If the South was
left to settle this question, the solu-
ton would be easy and satisfactory to
the entire country, but you send
representatives from the North to
congress to regulate matters Of which
they know absolutely nothing"
He then went into the history Of
the struggle of the civil war, (which
the North calls the war Of the rebel
lion,' and which you can never make
me admit if [ were rent limb by limb
asunder," and said that the very men
who claim to have fought for the
freedom Of the Negro and to put the
ballot in his hands, are the men who
have recently disfranchised the
Puerto Ricans and are enslaving the
natives of the Philippines. He said
that he stood before the Republican
senators of the United States and de-
nounced them as "hypocrites;" that
he would have liked to use a term
sufficiently strong to express the
actual facts, but not finding the word
all he could do was to "his the word
'hypocrite' into their faces in as ven
omous and vindictive manner as I
was capable of doing"
He continued: 'FYou have heard
of the stufing of ballot boxes, and
the shotgun in South Carolina. Well,
there were $4,000 Negro voters to
$4,000 white voters. How many
times will 1872 go into 80? How can
you beat that majority in a fair vote?
1t can't be done. So we got together
and organized every white man from
Is years upward, got arms and car
ried the election, and repealed the
thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth
and carried the election
by force and fraud and took the state
away from the Negro. You wouldn't
have stood it one year in Michigan,
and we wouldn't have stood it if we
hadn't remembered Sherman's march
to the sea. The war freed the slave
and settled nothing else"
He alluded to the large majority
Of natives in Hawaii being governed
by the small minority of whites, also
to the present attitude Of the Repub-
lican party regarding the Philippines
and Puerto Ricans, and was vindic-
tive in the extreme at what he de-
nominated as the hypocricy of the
Republicans in their inconsistency.
There were a number of Negro
students in the audience, and turn
ing to them he said that their con-