The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-06-07

south. the silent south. at all events. that eschews partizan politics exceptin some sectional crisis, warns with fresh philanthropic zeal for the negroes well fare With social equality exploded as worse than fantastic and foolish, aye, positively unwise and wicked, the moral and religious reserves of the south will don the uniform and heroically fight for the black mans uplifting.
 Southern conservatism on the negro question can never be understood except in the light of its history. First of all. In the light of its religious history. Slavery was once preached as a divine institu- tion Abolitionism and atheism once meant the same thing. Stonewall Jack sons courage was born of the conviction that he was engaged In holy war All southerners are, at bottom, as religious as the Boers of Africa. This fact has been too often overlooked. It is meaning full.
 To-day southern people are the most literalistic and the most conservative body of Christians in the world. Gods providence, they concede, has overthrown slavery and they bow before His sover eign will to that extent
 Gods choice of the Angio-Saxon race as the elect of mankind they maintain with a deathless grasp. Anslo-Saxon, in
  means modern Israel.
 For two and a half centuries they learned the doctrine at their mothers knees and drank 1t in with their mothers milk. To this hour the doctrine beats in the blood.
 Absolute supremacy on the part of the white people they believe 1t to be duty they owe to God. Infidelity, in this sphere, Is the unpardonable sin No Pro GaA rarta auk for a moment hold his office if his par ishioners suspected of him most remote tendency toward anything that smacked of negro social equality.
 Newspapers have little, if anything to say on this aspect of the negro question, but it is paramount and universal. Dis loyalty to social separation between the. two races Is a crime against God, ac- cordlng to the rock-bottom convictions of the religious population, which is the controlling leaven of southern citizenship.
 The negro question Is fundamentally religious question Hence southern sen- sitiveness concerning 1t.
 "Furthermore, the south maintains that it Is the most American section of the republic. 1t invites a study of the cen- sus on the subject. It is proud of having the largest percentage of native Ameri- cans It claims the largest proportion of , lutionary stock.
 Along with this fact Is the most in- tense devotion to what the south regards the best traditions of our forefathers. Among these Is the dogma that Anglo Saxon Americans are the real Americans, and because such must rule for the good of all citizens of whatever extraction.
 Pure blood Is next .n importance to pure religion. Pure blood is sn article of true religion Pure blood is patriotism, and patriotism is an Indispensable con comitant of southern piety. Disloyalty. therefore to Anglo-Saxon untainted blood Is not only disobedienee to God but trea- son to ones country and an insuperable obstacle to the advancement of American principles and civilization.
 Precisely this the silent south believes. Let him deride 1t who dares, but no man nor set of men, no political party can affect. in the smallest degree, those in grained beliefs. Russia has an easier task in exterminating the Jews. Nor must we forget that the south feelingly remembers that saturnalia of reconstruction. The last southern man will die In no unheroic way before he will consent for moment to imagine pos sible the pandemonium of that period. Gone forever 1t is, he believes. but any scintilla of suggestion of its resuscita- ton throws him Into a frenzy and fires him with the passions of Nihilist Assured, as the south now Is, that good people at the north are willing to see the negro from her point of view, her people will do her utmost to treat him with old time southern galiantry, aiding him along all industrial, educa- tional moral and religious rights of pro- gross and according him all the rights to which his citizenship entities him.
 More 1t does not feel called on to say just now further than the assurance that the outlook for the negro, if left to work out his own destiny, was never so encour- aging as 1t is at this good hour.''