Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1903-04-16
AWAITS NORTH'S LOVE
VERDICT OF WAR.
SAYS HENRY WATIERSON
Distinguished Southerner Makes Not
able Speech at Banquet of Hamil-
ton Club-Negro Problem Under
Discussion-Other Speakers on
Themes of War.

| Chicago, April 10.-At the HamiI-
! ton club banquet last evening Col
Henry Watterson, in responding to
the toast. Peace Between the Sections
referred to the dual responsibility OF
the north and south for African slav.
cry and the war of secession" and TIC
/ the negro question: which he said is
"a racial problem to be solved by the
! the process of evolution, not by politi
cal agitation
! Il appeal to you as republicans" he
said, and through you, I appeal to
/ the republicans of the United States
to have done with the conceit that, I'M
less you stand by the black man, that
unless you continue him as an issue
in partisan politics, injustice will be
I done him. In the lettering of his
condition, and in the acquisition Of
property with nothing, he has made
wondrOus progress the last five and
, thirty years; and, relatively greater
! progress at the south than in the
north He could not have done this
without the sympathy and cooperation
of the southern whites. He has made
little progress in the arts of self
government either north or south, be-
cause Of the agitation which has kept
him in a state Of perpetual excitement,
with no helpful public opinion to
moderate it, and has been made the
sport and prey Of political exigency,
always selfish, and with respect to him
more or less visionary and needless.
''The negro can never become in any
beneficient, or genuine sence, an in
tegraI and recognized part Of the body
polite except through the forces Of
evolution, which are undoubtedly at
work, but which in the nature of the
case must needs go exceedingly slow.
Where there is one negro fit for cit
izenship, there are millions Of negroes
wholly unfit. The dollhouse process
has been tried and it has failed. II,
invested with every right enjoyed by
the whites, the blacks, gaining in all
things else have brought corruption
into the suffrage and discredit upon
themselves, is it not kind Of mad
ness further to press artificial
methods, which, however Justihed
theoretically from educational look
outs in Michigan Iowa and Wisconsin,
fall helpless to the ground in their
practical application to the semi
barbarous toilers in the cotton fields
and corn lands Of Alabama, Georgia
and South Carolina?
81 appeal to you equally in what
conceive the true interest Of the
black people along with the white
people of the south; nay, and of the
north as well, for all our interests
are indessoluble, interchangeable, and
that can never be good or bad for one
section which is not good or bad for
the other section. Modern invention,
which has already annihilated time
and space is surely erasing sectional
lines. 1t ought not to leave so much
as a Renaissance of sectional strife.
If that dread spirit should come again,
it's evil winds will not blow between
the north and the south, but between
the east and the west; the horns OF
the dilemma presented by extremism
involving a new irrepressible conflict
between capital and labor. May that
day never come, but in case it does,
the conservatism of the north will