Ottumwa semi-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1899-1903, 1902-12-16

same time his colleague, Mr.. Wilson,
won no small portion of glory by pre-
senting nuts to the opposition which
offered a most tantalizing resistance
to the process of cracking.
To the casual observer the high
school boys seemed to have had the
easier side Of the argument, making
it reflect all the more to the credit of
the winners for so successfully dispos-
ing of their opponents, notwithstand-
ing the younger debaters presented
some good arguments in defence of
their side of the question. They cited
the cruelties attendant upon slavery
and brought out the facts that for two
centuries and half the negro had
been denied the privilege of reading or
owning bible or of receiving the ben
efits of education. They asked if it
was not inhuman to burn the negro
at the stake, as is now done, and pic
tured the wrong of the prejudice that
now exists against the negro race.
They asked also what offence the black
man had ever perpetrated upon his
white oppressor, and after showing
that there was no such offence they
asked in turn what offence the Indian
had committed against the same
whites. if he had not burned and de-
stroyed in the early pioneer days with
a ruthlessness born of savagery.
Several other seemingly good arg1.
ments We're presented but only seem
ingly" for the convincing answers of
their opponents were Overwhelming
in their responsiveness. Mr. Wilson
denied that slavery was cruel and in
human. With the Encyclopedia Brit
tanica to back him. he declared the
popular idea of slavery being inhuman
was erroneous, that after a close scru.
tiny of the facts slavery was spec.
les of kindness. He commended that
the records showed that an inconsid
cradle number of negroes had been
burned at the stake and that it was
the white man who burned the Indi
an in the early days instead of the re
verse as was supposed to have been
the case. He entered into a most con
vincing discussion of the negro's men
tai short comings and proved by ar
individual instance that the whole
negro race was contradiction to the
Darwin theory of the evolution of man
in short totally incapable of becoming
educated, and later in his second
speech he proved to the utmost salts
faction of everyone in the house that
slavery was blessing for the negro
in that it was instrumental in raising
him from the ruts of ignorance and
savagery into the glorious heights OF
the intellectual life, that where before
slavery the negro was only a savage
he became through the beautiful ele
waiting influence of slavery, the equa
of any of the children of civilization
Mr.. Dinwiddie in his rebuttal proved
conclusively that the cruel Spaniard
Cortez, was the murderer of more In
dams in his brief sojourn in Mexico
than there were negroes ever per
mitted to bask in the luxuries of sla
very.
On all sides the high school boys
were swamped, so that when the
judges, Bruce Minear the assistant
secretary of the Y. M. C. A., Mr.. Din.
widdie's father-in-law and another
man, farmer living in the neighbor.
hood, came to give their decision it
was two to one against the high school
boys. A return debate is being planned
to take place at the local high schoo,
in the near future.