Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1901-12-27
10 MCDILL'S MUSINGS.
COURAGE AND COWARDICE

Judging from recent occurrences, the Ameri-
can people are enteilng upon period ofintQ|-
erance and persecution parallel to the period
preceding the civil war. Reformers travel
hard road, partly because of ignorance and
partly because of the cowardice of the well-in-
iormed.
4 The virtual suppression of reform papers by
charging unlawful postage, and their being cast
into waste baskets by postmasters instead OF
delivering to subscribers, the tyranny of courts,
and the general tone OF subsidized newspapers,
clearly show that the spirit of the old slaveocrat
of the ifties and sixties is in the saddle. lust
a change of riders.
I recall that the "slaveocrat' crowd was
both ruinous and active during the administra-
ions of Pierce and Buchanan. Tar and
tathers, an occasional murder, demolishing
printing presses, suppressing free speech and
free press in the South, and, as far as possible,
in the North, was about all the argument the
slaveocrats had that seemed effective during the
ten years that preceded the civil war. The
slaves who feared to "speak for the fallen and
the weak" were away in the majority, if ignor-
ant voters and bowling mobs were sny guide,
but as the sequel showed, the eternal truth bat
tered down the walls of ignorance and general
cussedness.
If God ordained, as the lickspittle preachers
of the South preached, that Hams descendants
were to be perpetual slaves to the brothers with
white skin, He failed 10 perceive that Lincoln
and Grant would be too strong for Him. In
other words, Lincoln and Grant overthrow
treason born of politicians and fostered by
mobs and falseboods of preachers; and with
treason, chattel slavery was driven back to its
place in the realms of Hades.
II NAV be the decree of God that the general
onslaught of a free press through mobs and
law breaking, anarchistic postmasters, WILL for
time, succeed, but the free men who dare to
be ssin the right two or three" will win out in
the long run, and it will be found that what
the wicked men taught was a decree, and the
Ignorant mob believed, was only device of old
Satan, used to enslave men, and render unhappy
the members of the human family, either white
or black.
The "two or three'' Stree men" have ex-
listed in all ages. In all cases the free men
who dare to defy brutal majorities and bowling
mobs stand for great truths. They are the John
the Baptists CRYING in the wilderness, make
His paths straight"
cause OF the fallen and weak is just as much the
messenger of God as John the Baptist in the
wilderness. They are just as surely to be mis-
understood, and prosecuted, as Jesus Dun
oeons pibbets, cruci6xons and burnings may
not be theirs, but The barbarity of modern civil
;zation will be none the less cruel, or its hate
be the less implacable.
The two forces of truth and falsehood, right
and wrong, have waged, and will wage, eternal
warfare until all men are placed upon the nat
ura ground of equal opportunities in the deve1-
opment of all that is God-like in man, either
morally, mentally or spiritually
What means the wal fare of to-day if it is not
the old conflict under new names and new
armies? Carlson Phillips, Lincoln and Sew
ard were of the two or three who dared to be
free and plead 'for the fallen and the weak. !"
half century ago, bowling mobs greeted the
utterances of these, the best men of their day
and generation. They were the apostles of the
new dispensation of no chattel slavery. To-day,
the warfare of the new reformers is against