The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1900-04-10
LESSONS OF MEMORY.

White men may be redited with
something Of tenacious memories. Men
who lived through the tremendous four
years war can eve forget the strain
and the anxiety and the bereavements
and the desolated homes and the gen
eral hell wrought by the northern
soldiers Old Sherman called it hell"
They a never forget the reconstruc-
ton days so bitter. so foul, so dark,
so dismal, so d~istressful, 80 full Of ruin
and ruth, of grating and disgust. They
believe now, as they believed thirty
five years ago, that native whites who
could take a part with the enemies in
those gruesome, vicious, corrupt times
We're an enemy to their race and to the
state.
The whites have memories that
treasure up the lurid, awful past, and
they have memories for the events Of
a later day. They recall with some
thing of anger and hatred the doings
Of the combine from 1895 up to now.
They know all about what has hap
pened how false the p~retence, how
deceptive the pleas, how vicious and
demoralizing and hurtful the acts Of
ther republicans. and the misguided and
wronged populists, who were sold u
bag and baggage to The enemy by the
false. deceitful leaders.
The beginning of republican control
in 1895, was the beginning of negro SUI
premacy in North Carolina, After two
years some of the more intelligent and
honest populists saw the betrayal and
withdrew. They had trusted and been
fooled, and to their horror realized
that the restoration of black radical
rule meant negro domination. The
white die however lac more than
81, 900 voters. In North Carolina with
it's 300. 900 electors they would be pow
erlesS, without the 100, 900 negroes. SO
h the negroes to the fore as the
rea strength of the enemies of the
white race. The white republicans
could not kick or live or have any po-
litical being whatever in North Carroll
IA with the negro voters eliminated.
49, ~ a Aooi IL. Il
some one wrote last year that when
the republicans were in power in
North Carolina hat the negro lis ubi-
quitous and irrepressible, both in the
policy and in the ann of admins
tering' the government. The expert
ence of these two years Of republican
control in North Carolina has conclu-
sively demonstrated the fact that if
you put four negroes to one white man
in control of the state, and forty ne
groes to one white nan in control of
a county. that the negro will not only
claim the ~ascendency, which his nu-
merical strength gives. but will domi-
nate with all the insolence n brutal
ity with which ignorance must fortify
itself when it undertakes to control and
dominate intelligence"
1t is a very simple, credulous fellow
indeed who expects the FOUR years
QS95-9s) to be obliterated from the
minds of the white electors of 1900. The
misgovernment, the vile corruptions,
the blatant demagogy, the most foul
conduct, the thorough incompetency,
the upstart politicians, the minnows
playing in the political waters in
North Carolina where once the whales
.disported themselves-these things are
fresh and the stencil Of the folly and
vice and corruption is still bitter in
the nostrils of all decent, self-respect-
ing people. Said the same writer quoted
from above:
IF there is a man in the state who
thinks that our white people are going
back to negro rule within two years
after they have thrown it off, he is in
deed the fellow that the foOl-killer is
hunting for, and if he does not find
him and dispatch him the world will
be all the worse for his failure.
1T was twenty-three years after our
first experience before we forgot, and
again Bonded the neck to the ignoble
yoke of negro rule. Our last expert
ence was wen more bitter and the
yoke more CALLING than the first, and
the last a remembrance of our hu-
initiation will have to fade from the
minds of the white men and women
of this generation before that party
car hope if it remains under negro
control to again rule North AFRO
lima"