The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-06-30

tui the mistakes that had been mace,
 North and South, Party spirit had
 blinded us in both sections.
 Reconstruction.
 l Another mistake folIowed--a cruel mistake. This was negro suffrage. There was a large conservative ele- ment that opposed the movement, but amid the passions and prejudices that had grown out of the war, the voice of conservatism was impotent. and I partizanship prevailed. The very suc- cesses of our institutions in the past | played their part. If the negro needed the ballot-box as 1t was insisted he
 did. for self-protection. why should not he have 1t? Every previous extension of suffrage had succeeded. The freed | man was ignorant, 1t was admitted. The only way to teach him how to
 use the ballot, it was argued. was tu put him in possession of it. It would have been just as wise to argue that the way to teach a child how to run
 a steam engine was to put his hand on the throttlevalve and him in charge of 1 a passenger train! The ballot was
 given the negro. and need not picture the result The life of this genera tion of whites in the South has been one continuous struggle for the pre-
 
 As an outcome of reconstruction, We | in the South, where the ballot was ci:ce sacred, have for a generation justified l frauds at the ballot box, on the plea of necessity. Now in every Southern State we are coming to revolt at the | evil consequences that must inevitably result from a continuation of such practices. Fraud, once it gets foot 1 ing among a people, stalks through the l land like pestilence in the night. | There Is only an imaginary line te- | tween counting out the negro because | his vote is cast for the wrong candi- | date, and counting out the white man when his vote is obnoxious Expert | ence is teaching us everywhere the | baleful results of fraudulent elections. Let public opinion be aroused! Let | us see our situation as 1t is, and let all | educated men proclaim aloud that ex- | cept upon the basis of honest elections, | the natural outcome of republican gov | ernment is discontent, unrest, instabili- | ty, and finally, revolutions ending irl | anarchy or bloodehed. Look at Mexi- | co, at the five Central American States. at Colombia, Chilli, Bolivia, Ecuador, | Peru, the Argentine Republic Uruguay and Paraguay. All these have been
 nominally republics for say three quarters of a century, with constitu- tions fashioned after ours. Nature has been bountiful to them all. but none of them has prospered, except Mexico under Diaz. who for twenty years past has been a benevolent des- pot rather than a Republican President. Enterprise has been paralyzed. because property has never had. in these coun- tries, the protection of law. The his- tory of them all has been the same robbery by government officials. riots and revolutions so often repeated that no student of history could carry them in mind. Chilli has been somewhat exceptional. She has enjoyed some years of good government and has had better credit. because her better classes
 ruled: yet Chiu had dictatorship, and has had insurrection after insurrection. Her Balmaceda revolution in 1890 came
 near involving war with the United
 States. Nobody fin these countries
 respects the ballot box, because it does
 not speak the will of the people. NThe
 masses are uneducated, care nothing
 for elections. and are fitted only to fight the battles of such adventurers as shall
 promise them plunder; while the edu- cated,. unstable political conditions af-
 fording them so little opportunity for
 success in business, find in revolutions the fairest prospect of fortune. The American people, loving as we do law
 and order, If exposed to such govern
 ments as have blighted the happiness
 of Central and South America, would demand and set up monarchy; for
 us. despotism would be preferable to anarchy.
 Let Us not commit the mistake of supposing that the difference between ourselves and the people of these Gen.
 tral and South American republics Is
 so great that we cannot study their
 history with advantage. The surgeon
 of today learns lessons in human ara
 tony even from the vivisection of
 animals. Why then should we not
 profit by the failures of our fellow
 men? Those failures have covered
 more than half a contjnent-all of them
 coming from one and the same cause the want of fair elections, and resulting
 revolutions. A convention is now in
 session in this Capitol which has before
 it the difficult task. imperativaly de-
 manded by the exigencies of the State of ordaining on new lines a basis of
 suffrage. God grant that the wise
 men of that body may have the cour- age of their convictions, and that they
 may, in a spirit of conservatism and of
 justice to both white and black, settle this question on feupdations that shall endure for generations to come.
 Impeachment of Andrew Johnson. have pointed to our civil war and | our dreadful reconstruction experi- ences. The third crisis of the last half century was a companion piece of re- | construction and was still more pain | fully similar to those revolutionary movements which have so consistently cursed our neighbor republics. It was the impeachment of President Johnson, | in 1868. The President stood in the | way of the will of the dominant party. | That party, relying upon the army to
 sustain it. sought by the power of
 brute numbers in Congress. to turn out
 of office President elected by the r'eo- pie, that it might substitute one who | would do it's bidding. There were | seven brave Senators who broke away from party ties and saved the country from a South American revolution.
 Had but one of these Senators failed, the revolution would have been accom-
 plished,
 The Hayes-Tilden Conflict.
 The other crisis was the contested
 Presidential election of 1876. Was 1t to
 be Hayes or Tilden? For months ex-
 citement was intense in every city and
 hamlet. We were on the verge of, not
 a Civil War between sections. as was
 that from 1861 to 1865, but of genuine
 Civil War, where neighbor would dye his hands in neighbours blood all
 over the land. The question was set teld by a compromise and it Is proba-
 ble that the memory of the great war between the States the sounds of