The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-07-30

attention of a greater people and gov ernmens than Napoleon knew Is fixed upon us. and the liberties and happi- ness of more highly civilized state than his dreams ever saw are entrust- ed to our charge.
 After ceding to us our possessions Of the West Napoleon stated that he had given to England a maritime rival which sooner or later would humble her. pride. He builded more wisely than he Enew~ While we are great in maritime achievements, 1t is in the science of civil government that the country whose boundaries he extended has made It's most marked progress. That essentially military genius would prob ably stand tEansfixed in wonder and amazement if he could behold, now the ripened product of our peaceful labors O. the Nineteenth Century, if he could look upon us as the rising sun of the new century baptizes the magnificent and colossal structures we have erected with its kisses and warns our hearts and enlivens our hopes with it's em- braces
 Bu; our history records a grieyous erro:. Our fathers made one mistake which has proven perpetual handicap to our sunny southland and placed it in almost hopeless discord with the other sections of the Union. It was contrary to the principles of freedom and liberty embedded deep in the American heart that slavery should ex- ist in our midst. The negro. the slave, was not indigenous to our country nor kindred to our blood. His presence whether as slave or as freeman, be- came an element of discord. His en- slavement for time was the only treatment for his existence here. We adopted it. In fact, brought him here that he might become slave. But in doing so we committed a national sin. The God Of the Universe did not coun- sel 1t. It was our sinful love of power and gain that dictated it. We might have known that the retributive hand of the Almighty would rest heavily up- on us and our children. Our crime may not go unpunished. I, for one. be- lieve that national good to the negro has been and will be yet further wrought out as it's result. I do not know nor do I seek to learn the final extent of character of that good. He who does all things well will bring it out in His own good time and way. But we are remitted to our own &C., counting. What shall 1t be? These veterans whose faces I see can answer that question from their experience. We began the accounting when the blood of our fathers first received the taint of aristocratic indoIence, and they began to shun wholesome effort and to rely upon the labor of the slave and feel too proud themselves to work. It was continued in the bickerings which preceded and let to the war be- tween the. States. That war was part of it. Our reconstruction was part of 1t. The shamefully corrupted suffrage of recent years Is part of it. Our pros trated and devastated South, our un- equal opportunities in the race of pro- gress and the graves of our dead he- roes are all parts of the painful &C., counting we have thus far given for the sin committed. Yet, with all our sins, We of the South were more sinned against by our brethren of the North than shining. They were our partners in the original sin; but they took ad- vantage of the climatic conditions which brought the negro to the South to wash their hands of him, and then turned upon us to persecute and de- stroy Us for the very crime they had helped us commit They did not be- come the worst of known oppressors, for they left life in a small remnant of us and allotted to us conditions un- der which 1t was possible for us to prosper. But I challenge all history, for an instance of more radical wrong than was their enfranchisement of the freed slave with its accompanying re- construction measures. Nothing short oi the most intense hatred could have led to it. It was as If the victor should stoop above his prostrate foe and inject into his veins virulent poison that would corrode and stagnate his blood and infest him with corrupting sores all the day of his life. l do not re- member the bitterest of the experiences nor the gloomiest of the days that fol- lowed as the older delegates here do, but the spirit of my father, who gave first his fortune and then his life to the Lost Cause, lives in me. and swells my bosom almost to bursting when l re- member our wrongs. l am son of the South and love its veal and deprecate its woes. This Convention is called that We may in a peaceful and lawful way correct the evil as far as possible, and presents to us for settlement for many years to come the relative polit- ical status of the white man and the negro in Alabama. A more difficult task was probably never given to a body of men. We stand here hedged about on the one hand by the Fifteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitu- ClOns OIl tue OlHe- Uy piCO0CS IO ONA people, to our fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters and our children, which bind our consciences as firmly as the decrees of fate and which are as sacred and dear to us as liberty or fife. If we construe the Fifteenth Amend ment as 1t seems the minority of the Committee would have us do, we al- most despair of relief, and the amend ment becomes, indeed, a direct and continuing menace to and blight upon our peace, happiness and prosperity, a cup of bitterness upon our lips, bit- ter and nauseous pill to our stomachs, an aching and deadly pain in our hearts: and a great bar-sinister upon our lives, reducing and degrading our proud spirits and placing us upon an artificial. enforced and unnatural polit- ical level and equality with the slave of all the ages past the negro.
 I agree with gentlemen who have pre- ceGed me, that the Fifteenth Amend ment contravenes the laws of nature, the lights and teachings of history and the rules and conditions of liberty it. self. Would any gentleman say that the proud eagle. the king of birds, would have accorded to him the full measure of liberty to which he is-enti-' tied if he was brought down from his giddy heights and made to sort with the snipe? Could it be contended that the lion was free when he enjoyed only the privilege and capacity of lccomo- tion which nature has given to the hedgehog? Can it be contended that we, the proudeSC and best example and