The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1904-03-06

Aycock, written for a leading Northern
magazine There is no man in the State
so well qualified to speak of how negroes
fare IN courts of Justice as the Governor.
Nobody will suggest that he would mis-
represent the true situation. He is ga
typical exponent Of Southern opinion and
here is what he says:
Indeed we are more than fair to him.
We have provided for the insane of the
negro race a hospital capable of caring
for every insane negro in the State, while
there are few hundred insane of the
white race for whom provision has not
been made. In our courts of justice
practice of more than twenty years at
the ban enables me to declare with en-
phasis that the negro can and does Sc
cure a fair trial. 1 have appeared for
hundreds of them in criminal indictments
and in civil suits and / have yet to find
a ground for complaint against our courts
for failure to act fairly toward the negro.
Indeed, in civil suits between whites and
negroes the juries incline to favor the
negro. If the case presents the slightest
element of oppression on the part of the
white man toward the negro, the verdict
Is almost certain to be in favor of the
negro. There is a sense among our white
people which causes them to look with
contempt upon the white man who seeks
to overreach the negro in business mat
ter.
We think Mr.. Frost errs il supposing
that there is more bitterness in the South
than in the North growing out of the
war. We do not believe there is as much
in either section as Mr.. Frosk thinks ex-
lists in the South. The mistake of Mr..
Frost is very natural, for you will hear
more talk about the war in the South
in week than you will hear in the
North in a month The reason is that in
the South the war was brought nearer to
every man, it touched every neighborhood,
it brought want and suffering into nearly
every home, and disaster and poverty
followed in its wake. In the North, the
war made larger markets and increased
in Northern States, the horrors of war were
not brought direct to the people ia their
homes, the results of war brought no
loss, no disaster, and little changed con-
ditions. Prosperity smiled on the North
from 1865 to 1870, while Reconstruction
blighted the South. The wounded North
ern soldiers pension provided all noces-
sary Comforts and medical attendance The
wounded Southern soldiers hal 20 work
Eard to get bread and neat. Perhaps
tba.c would be more excuse for bitterness
in the South than in the North. if it
EXISTED, not because of war or battle.
but because of Reconstruction that fol-
man met brave man in honorable warfare.
If Mr.. Frost will look a little deeper he
will find that whatever of bitterness he
sees in the South is due to the hell of
Reconstruction, conceived in the malevo-
lence of base partisans, and never under
stood or approved by the men who fought
in the Northern army. The bitterness"
that Engers-and there isn't much of it
noW--is due altogether TO the feeling of
resentment to the Reconstruction acts
which the Southern people believe were
passed and put into execution to humiliate
them in the hour of their defeat and pow
erty. Mr.. Frost has evidently not gone
deep enough to see this, but after he
has lived in the South longer he will diff
ferentiate between the War Between the
States, participated in on both sides by
patriotic men, which left no bitterness,
and the War of Reconstruction precipi-
tated by men who for political success
visited the deepest humiliation upon the
Southern people, after they had returned
to their homes and in good faith looked
to the protection of the old flag.
Mr.. Frost is mistaken in a political mat
ter. He says that the naturalized foreign
er IN the North generally votes the
article by President Roosevelt in the Cos
mopolitan Magazine, written shortly after
the election of 1895, he will see that Mr..
+; o2evelt gave statistics proving that
Mr.. Bryan received a large majority of
the native American vote and the Repub-
licans were dependent for their victory
upon the foreign vo;e."
NJ. Frost says he nevAr saw negro on
the jury in the North. At late term OF
Wake court a negro was on the jury in
one of the most important trials ever
held in the history of the State. Juries
in North Carolina do not decide against
a black man on account of the color or
his skin and we feel sure that Mr.. Frost
rrpa tits subject will accept the state
ment of the Governor, who speaks always
truthfully and whose fairness to the ne
gro is known of all men, rather than the
fippant remark of a mugwump journal.
Tho spirit that actuatas Mr. Frost is one
that is characteristic of broad minded and
honorable men of both sections. II is
pleasant to all North Carolinians to well