The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1900-05-01
EVERY WHITE MAN CAN VOTE.

The tricksters and liars in their
game of deception not only play false.
but they shift their ground, and start
new pleas and make new declarations.
Their main card, as has been men
toned again and again, is to befool the
ignorant white man. If they can scare
him into the belief that his right TO
vote is in danger, n if the amendment
passes he will be in the same precise
condition Of the $4,000 negroes who will
be deprived of their vote, they hope to
win him over to the negro party, and
induce him to conspire with them
against his own race and the welfare
of the state at large. The game is
played boldly and the lie is repeated
with a most painful iteration.
Now it is absurd to say that the
democrats desire and design to lessen
the number of white voters. 1t would
be a sample of political suicide. 1t
would be to increase the power of their
enemies while lessening their own
strength. No one not a fool can for a
moment suppose that the able men who
framed and adopted the amendment
are enemies of their own race and
hostile to the interests of their own
party. 1t would be the baldest, bareSt
foolishest act of political hara-kiri if the
whites went to work to turn down as
voters 10, 900 or 20, 900 white illiterates,
and in that way lessen their own
strength while increasing the strength
of the black radical gang whom the
old democracy have been fighting with
all of their might since the negroes
We're made voters by the northern re-
publicans.
1t is a too laundering lie to befool
any man not a plant fool. What is the
strength of the black radical party?
What is it's makeup. About 5000
whites and 1851 900 or 13O, 900 black con
stitute its strength. In the days of
darkness and wholesale pillage and out-
rage-1S69-the white radicals proba-
bly, numbered about 20, 900, and the ne
groes 100, 900. That is to say, four
fifths of the strength of the black rad
ical gang were ignorant negroes, with
a few exceptions here and there. This
gang held all North Carolina under
leash, n the reign of ruin and terror
went on with violence and destruction.
The history of those black, doleful,
desperate times has not yet been writ
ten. 1t ought to be written that this
generation and other generations to
come might understand the wreck, the
S~poliation. the wholesale corruption
the ~debaucheries, the crimes commit
ted, the outrages upon personal liberty
and the wild saturnalia of immortality
and knavery and usurpation. 1t was
indeed an awful time, and when the
end came to the rule of the scoundrels
North Carolina was PROSTATE, a huge
debt of we'll nigh $50, 600, 900 had been
contracted, and the credit of the state
was so completely destroyed that, as
the great Vance said, it could not buy
one mint julep on Wall Street. This
is all true and not fancy. A man would
have to command much leisure and
space to undertake to portray the con-
ditions in the black days when the
mob reigned in corruption and the old
state was cruelty narrowed.
The remembrance of those who lived
through reconstruction times is vivid
and imperishable. They know how
vain were the efforts to induce the ne
gro voters to no longer run with the
reckless scheming white leaders, but
to help the best whites to give the
state a sound, safe, honest, conserva-
tive, economic government. 1t was like
pleading with the dead. They appear
ed to be Indifferent to all that was said
Dr. one for them. They never aban-
doned their white leaders however
much the state suffered and the tax
payers were bled. The more the whites
gave them in the way of educational
and personal favors the more Indifferent
they seemed. The passing of years
brought not change in purpos or action
on their part. Building asylums, edu-
eating the children, giving employment
often too by discriminating against the
white laborers, die not allure them in