The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1901-10-19
IT Is FULL OF WEEDS.

Roosevelt and writes very interestingly
about the attempt the new President is
making to cleanse the Republican party
in the South so that it will not be
stencil in the nostrils of the whole Re-
public. He sums up the whole matter
in these sensible words:
lone thing is certain, and that is that
President Roosevelt is going to give his
best endeavors to the reform of Repub-
lcan politics at the South. 1t is big
field, and full of weeds. Let him pillow
deep and plant early
He trusts that the new President will
enforce civil service reform as he has
preached it, and get the best of the pol
iticians who employ "spoils'' to entrench
themselves in office. The letter has
much in it that is bright and snappy
and shows discrimination. We quote
while there have been some excellent
men and unselfish patriots among the
Republicans of the South, especially in
the border States, there is no denying
that on the whole the Southern wing of
the G. o. p. has been mighty poor ex-
cuse The Texas statesman who be-
sought somebody to tell him, What are
we here for but for the offices?" only
paraphased the Tammany statesman
who asked, What is the constitution
between friends?" The Hon. Web. Elan
nagan and the Hon. Tim Campbell spoke
for a class, and their name is legion.
For nearly forty years the Republican
party Of the South only existed to the
end that it's leaders-many of them very
bad mcknight apportion among their
followers offices in the Federal civil
service. 1t was feudalism without
chivalry. The favorite selected to hold
postoffice, or watch a still house, had
his chieftian for whom he fetched and
carried, and that chief had his chief, and
SO 1t was that the men who owned the
South and were representative of its
virtue, it's intelligence and it's manhood,
as we'll as Of it's property, united, be-
came solid, and would not look the way
the Republican party was That was
exactly what the great majority of the
Southern Republican leaders desired.
They had two sources of income-one Of
fetal spoil, cashed by Federal disburs-
ing officers, and other political spoil,
marketed at Republican national con-
ventions Vide Algers vote at Chicago
in 1888. They did not want, and would
not have, any long division business
about it,
1.-THE Hon. Samuel Mccall, of Massa-
chusetts, is one of the ablest members
Of the National House of Representa-
tives. He is a brilliant scholar and an
accomplished author. In his Life of
Thaddeus Stevens he states it as his
belief that had Abraham Lincoln lived
lie would have opposed the harsh recon-
struction measures of Stevens, Butler,
Wade and others of the pronounced
radicals There is no doubt Of it. Lin
coin would have restored, not recon
structed. He had more admiration and
affection for Alexander II. Stephens than
he ever had for any other American
statesman, except Henry Clay, and he
would have called to his councils the
leaders of the South, civil and military
the men who had the confidence of the
Southern white people. Horace Greeley,
as early as 1865, hoped to see Jeff Davis,
Toombs, Hunter, Wigfall and other
Southern leaders back in their places in
the United States Senate. John w. For
ney expressed the same sentiment a
while later, and tells how great was his
disappointment when he missed John c.
Breckenridge on his return from exile
in order that he might capture him with
Kindness and strengthen him with en-
enlargement. There was history for it.
In the Forty five" the rebel Highland
ers penetrated England as far as Pres
ton and almost drove out the House of
brunswick and brought in again the
House of Stuart.
In little while-less than six years
tho first Pitt, the Great Commoner, in
corporated those same rebel Highlanders
into the British army, and they planted
victory for English arms in the four
quarters CT the globe and those same
.Hlghland organizations are to this day
part of the flower of the British army.
Had Lincoln's policy prevailed, the very
flower of the Republican party would
have been at the South. AS it was. the
Republican canker is there
Mr. Lincoln died at the best time for
his reputation. If he had lived. his
heart would have prompted him to car
ry out the wise plans that Johnson tried
10 carry out, plans which Lincoln had
thought out. But the same influences
that thwarted Johnson would have pre-
vented Lincoln's carrying out a pacific
policy.