The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-11-02
WILL TT GO TO PIEcEsp

" say:
 At the moment the Republican Party all over the country seems oblivious of the attempt to make a travesty of the party at the South; but when the mem- bers of that party come to realize it, and find. if they do find, that there is a dis position to sanction 1t at the North, then It cannot survive any such denial of its traditions and its original purposes. The Southern Republicans may be pushing the movement to its legitimate conclu- sion. as The Post says, without the smallest reference to outside opinion, or to any consideration of expediency. The legitimate conclusion, if it is persisted in, in the end will be a condition where there will be no Republican Party at all.
 The intimation in the above extract, that the traditions and original purposes of the Republican Party were to secure and exploit negro suffrage is probably going too far. The original purpose of the old aboiitionist organization upon which the present Republican Party was | founded was to free the negroes. We doubt if the most extreme Radical among them would have looked with any favor on a project for universal suffrage among the colored people. They might have looked on that as the ultimate out come of freedom, but we do not believe that wholesale enfranchisement of the race would have received favorable con- sideration from those who founded what was in the ante-war days known as the Black Republican Party.
 Unlimited negro suffrage was one of the results of the bitter feelings en- gendered by the war. It was partly in- tended as a punishment on the rebels for their four years of resistance to the encroachments of the enemies of their in stitutions, and partly as a means of per petuating the rule of their party. To put the ballot into the hands of the ig- norant blacks and require them to vote the Republican ticket was looked on by its originators as a means by which they could vent their hatred and malice against the Southerners and also as a sure means of keeping the party in power forever.
 That this dual object was not a per- manent success was not the fault of those who conceived 1t. It failed because Nature herself revolted at the infamy of the design. No human laws could pre- ve 1t the white people of the South from obtaining control of their own affairs, for human laws cannot alter the decrees of nature, and in this case nature point ed with unerring certainty to the Cau- casians as the logical ruling class in the South. They shook off the humlia- tion placed on them by their enemies and crushed the hope entertained by the Republicans that they would fortify themselves for all future time by, giving the negro the power to outvote the white man.
 But there is an intima ton in the edi- toFial of The Standard which is more significant and far-reaching. It is more than an intimation, for it is a predic- ton. It says in pretty plain English to the Republicans of the North: If you acquiesce in the apparent determination of your Southern brethren to dissociate themselves from the colored voters and to form themselves into an exclusively white organization, then the Republican Party of the Union will go to pieces, for 1t exists on the idea of the equality of the races and when that idea is aban- doned there will be an end to the par ty."
 This we conceive to be an extreme view, but not without foundation. There are many and vital differences between the Republican and Democratic parties, and the former has plenty of reasons for ex- istlng, aside from any question of colored voters or radical rights. At the same time it is reasonable to suppose that Southern Republicans who spurn the me- gro will not receive any aid or encour- agement from the thousands of their brethren in the North who affect to be- heve that all men are equal. If North ern Republicans refuse to sympathize with the "lilywhite" movc ment, and re- fuse to recognize those who are respon- sible for 1t, then the latter must aban- don their scheme or form an organlza- ton of their own. If they adopt the lat ter plan throughout the South the Re- publican Party will cease to exist as a National organization. but that does not necessarily mean that 1t will go to pieces It certainly was not National organ ization forty years or more ago, but it became such, and 1t may live through the present experiment and remain powerful political factor.
 AS we view it. it makes no difference in Alabama whether the whites or the mixers shall succeed. or whether the en- tire party falls to pieces. We expect to see the State controlled by Democrats, whatever form the opposition may as- sume, but we have all the time con tended. and still contend, that a respect able white opposition party in Alabama will be good thing. It matters not by what name it may be called, we favor two parties which will divide on prin- ciple and not on race or color
 The way to get honest majorities is to go to the polls and put in honest votes No Democrat should favor majority gotten in any other way. and none should fail to assist in that way.
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