The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-07-28

the decisions or the court; notwith- standing the fact that slavery was as much the institution of the United Sta.es as any other Institution that ever existed before or since; notwith- standing the fact that emancipation was an incident of the war, and was not it's purpose; notwithstanding all these facts, I say to you that slavery is contrary to the law of nature, and has no place in that supreme intelli- eence that rules the world. Therefore, from the very beginning, slavery was doomed because it runs counter to these sunreme laws of nature that rule the universe. in spite of laws. in spite of the Constitution, and in spite of court decisions. Why, Mir. President, that little unicelluNar Oameba. in his linn tied sphere and environment. to the ex- tent of his inherent.capacity, is as much a sovereign as the majestic king of beasts possesses in the jungles of his native land. Hence it is, l say, that the institution of slavery was destroyed because of the fact that the civilization of the ages in that process of superor- ganic evolution which rules the eco- monies of the world in accordance with natural law, had doomed 1t, and there was nothing that we could have done then. or could do today. that could set it back, and that very same principle, the very same natural law, will, in spite O.. the Fifteenth Amendment in spite of prejudice, in spite of bias, in spite of hatred, in spite of prisons. in spite of bayonets. in spite of obstruction. will make the white man rule this country. And yet. MT. President, the negro has undergone a wonderful change. and he has been converted tx,t4 it-Ix .otx liaA1 people; from heathenism to Christian ity: from slavery to freedom; from property to voter. All of these through the influences and the work of the white man. What he is today, the difference between the negro in his na- tive home and in this country. has all been wrought by his environment, and ths association with the white man. None of 1t is due to his intrinsic Pe- tentiaIity. It is wholly due to his en- vironment. What he is as a potential factor is wholly acquired. In all these things the white race has been his benefactor. Now, MT. President, pre- sume, if we were to take theological view of this subject. We would say that the institution of slavery was ordained by the Almighty; that it was predestined part of the Divine system
 
 world problem. Discussing 1t from the standpoint of evolution. it is simply in keeping with this natural law that rules and governs. that the white man was enterprising, he was aggressive and ambitious. He desired the negro to till hit soil. to become the shade in the summer and the fire in the winter and hence it was that he stole him from his native land. The first ship that was ever made for that purpose was made at Marblehead, Mass, in 1630. It was the ingenuity of the white man; it was his enterprise, his ambition, his great desire for wealth; it was the spirit of conquest, of adventure and of achieve ment. Now that is the natural way to look at it. Consequently he brought these people whose intrinsic resistance was so weak that they could not de- fend themselves. whose acquired abil- ity was so small that they had no art of defense and hence had to come and submit for 250 years to slavery. Now that is the natural way to look at 1t. Then the same laws apply to his free dom. The negro as We find him in America owes every particle of civili- zation to contact with, to association with and to environments of the white race. Now, Mp. President, the great mistake was his sudden emancipation. I mean his enfranchisement. First his emancipation. that was a great mis- take. We-]can look back now and see. and doubt not that If our fathers, who were responsible for the manage ment of that great and glorious cause, could have seen into the future, that there would have been a different re- suit of the Hampton Roads Conference, but there was not and this emancipa- tion came suddenly. According to late writers, it is said, it was because pi es- ident Lincoln promised that he would emancipate the negroes if the Union armies were successful at Gettysburg, but the great mistake was his sudden emancipation. But that was not the greatest mistake. The greatest m s. ake was hist lenfranchisement. First, because it was unnatural and contrary to organic laws of the universe and tJ tht history of mankind. The F'if- teenth Amendment is a technical inhi- bition, it is put up as a little small, thin wood wall to let up and defy the law of the whole history of mankind, and when I swore to observe 1t observed it as technical obstruc- tion to nature and natural laws. It was conceived in hate and executed in malice and maintained by fierce. That is the only way you can account for it. No man if he is familiar with natural science or with the history of his country, that did not hate somebody that was not biased. would ever commit such crime as that It was i keeping with the spirit of the age at that time. Vengeance was in the air. The evil genius of man. kind was at the throttle. He had de- throned judgment and punctured the great sympathetic human heart, and had set in operation these engines of destruction. and that was the condi- tion. MT. President, that we had to deal with. few years after the war
 And have we dealt with it? I think we have. It is true we had to deal with many embarrassing situations: it is true we had to deal with Federal bay enets it is true we had to deal with Federal marshals; it is true before us were prisons, it is true before us was the gibbet or the gallows, it is true be- fore us was the annihilation of our property and perhaps death. But the intrinsic pOtentiality that inheres in the white man was equal to the occasion to fight it off and for twenty five years he has remained supreme and in control of the county, State and mu- nicipality. How did he do it? Poten- tiality that is supreme will always find a method to overcome the peten- tiality that is weak and insignificant. The very fact that three white men in beat can control the politics of 600 negroes is an illustration along that line. Do you suppose that three ne- groes could control the politics of 600 white men. Not at all and We are hera