The Guthrie daily leader. [volume] (Guthrie, Okla.) 1893-1996, 1901-10-21
pircAroRK TllLmAN COMING.
onsEyed Cromwell Of the Palmetto
state Booked.

I
] The fTst attraction in the Guthrie
lecture course will be Senator Till
man. who comes, Oct. 2s. Presbyter
ian church is the place season tick
cts, s2 school choldrens' tickets s1.OO;
single admission soc and 75c.
Tribute by Senator Hoar OF Mas
sachusetts; "He is an honest, manly
and able statesman"
When Tillman FIRST came into view
as public man the impression spread
abroad was that there was an unedu-
Gated, uncouth, brawiing Southern
farmer, vino aspired to rule his state.
This was one Of the earliest misinter-
pretations Of the man that were cir
c6lated over the land BENJAMIN r.
Tillman came Of one of the most in
telligent, and it might be said aristo
cratic. Of the old South Carolina
families, When he was boy before
the war he had for a governess and
tutor the sister Of Chester A. Arthur
who afterward became president OF
the United States. The Tillman
family lived in luxury until the war
swept away it's property in slaves and
left it nothing but deprecated land.
The present senator, on that account,
did not go to college. as nearly all the
rich Southern youth did before the
secession, nor did he study law. He
became farmer on the ancestral
estate, and there he stayed. literally
tiller of the soil, until the great
political uprising of the farmers of
the West and South took place in 1890.
Mr.. Tillman, however, during the
twenty-five years of his steady farm
life was an eager student OF books
and affairs. such as become the brother
of a prominent fourteen,year Eon-l
gressman, the cousin OF perhaps the
leading lawyer of the Alabama bar.
and a near relative Of other Tlllmans
who became respectively a professor
at West Point, district attorney in
Tennessee and a United States min
lister in the diplomatic service. The
South Carolinan collected In those
years one of the largest private
Libraries in the South, and all who
knew him appreciated his intellectual
accomplishments and his unusually
strong mental capacity.
In the heat and bitterness of the
campaign Of 1896 Henry watterson
said: "In Governor Altgeld behold
Robespierre; in Tilman. Danton."
The intended effect was alarmist to
the last degree, since Robespierres and
Danton were identified with the dark
est hours of the French revolution.
The comparison of Tillman with
Danton absurd as it was. did possess,
however, one merit. Danton was
natural leader OF men through sheer
strength Of mind and body. Tillman.
also, ig leader of men for the same
reason. His powers were first called |
into play in the remarkable contest he !
waged for supremacy in South Caro-
lima against the old aristocracy. It
was a political revolution which he |
led, and he was finally overwhelming |
ly successful against the combined |
forces of commerce, Che bar, The |
church and the press. Tillman con
Quoted four of the fiercest fights ever
known in the South--so fierce that
only a man of his perfect physical |
courage could have stood the ordeal |
-and the last two of them planted |
him in the state capital as governor
and opened his way to the United |
States senate He has served one
term as senator, and has recently !
been designated by his party as his
own successor.