The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1901-10-25
A NEW REPUBLICAN, POLICY.

If any Republican President can bring
the South into full moral fellowship
with the North in the unity of COM
mon country, President Roosevelt is the
man. Though he is not the first Repub-
lican executive to have Southern blood
Lincoln and Johnson having been born
south of Mason and Dixon's line, he is
the first to gain the confidence of
Southerners and thus open the way to
the era of complete reconciliation. The
Presidents mother was a Georgian of
the old school. One of his uncles was
an Admiral in the Confederate Navy
and another fired the last gun on the
Alabama in the fight with the Kear-
sarge. AS an author the President has
borne testimony to the courage, con-
stancy and manly temper of the South
ern soldier; and as the national exec
utive he is entrusting to Southern white
men of the best class the honors and
responsibilities which have hitherto
been conferred upon negroes and car
pet-baggers who are Republicans for
revenue only.
Twenty years ago it was plain that
the negro experiment was failure
from either Republican or a national
standpoint. The good name of the Re
publican party had been blackened by
negro incompetence and carpet-bag dis
honesty in public place; and the ad-
vantages hoped for from negro rule,
namely, a preponderance of republican
Congressman and of Republican votes
in the Electoral College, came to moth
ing. Naturally and inevitably the white
man took control. He seized the ma
chinery of elections and the Congress-
men were made Democratic, while the
white Democrats got the benefit, in the
strength which the South could bring
into the Electoral College, of an inert,
inundated and voteless negro popula-
ton. So in the end negro suffrage be-
came a bludgeon to be used against the
very party that conferred it.
The damage done to the nation was
manifold. Race hatreds and the politics
of the Civil War were perpetuated
The practice of intimidation, which was
the only guarantee of political peace in
the South, implied such state of out
lawry that immigrants kept away from
that section despite the fact of its being
one of the fairest and most fertile parts
VI lllG OiilOLI. lOSo $50 III lliC Gocu III
was and is yet slow. Products do not
greatly increase, cities do not rapidly
grow. The shadow of impending trou-
BILE hoYers over the land. But for the
institution of negro suffrage the South
today might be scarcely behind the
West in thrift and industry
Tt Is impossible, of course, to rescind
the suffrage amendments to the Con-
stitution but the South is doing some
thing, with tacit Republican approval
to limit the privilege of the ignorant
ballot and the President is beginning
to summon the white man, Democratic
though he may be, to the front in Fed
eral affairs. Between these two in
fuences may arise the evangel of re-
stored Union. Let it be understood that
the South is no longer in danger from a
field hand oligarchy nor compelled to
use shot guns to prevent misrule; let it
be known that the sovereign men shall
have the sovereign places; let the car
pet-bagger be tabooed; let all these re-
forms bear the seal or carry the APP
proval of the Republican party and the
Southern States will progress in every
way and carry Republication ahead
with the same momentum. There would
have been no Solid South In 1884 and
1892 if President Hayes had done what
Roosevelt is doing now; there viii be
none in the future if the Republican
party declares that, if color is to rule
any part of the Union, that color shall
be white. 1t is a platform upon which
stands the vast majority of American
citizens.