The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-02-29
RY n ". McIvER.

f,rnt..;Ths staternent was inadvertent- ly omitted from the report or the pro- ceedings of the 1872 convention, that Gen- era1 J. W. A. Sanford was nominated for Attorney General; having been re-nomi- mated. He was also nominated and elected in 1874. as shown by proceedings below.)
 The Democratic convention of 1874 was fhe great fight for white supremacy, or rather the beginning where the founda- ton was laid, for the great victory of that year. The Democrats returned to power, in possession of their own, and as Alexander White predicted in the Repub- again, they would keep 1t forever" and they will and that party has governed Alabama wisely and well from that day to this.
 It was not surprising that the white people were aroused and had determined to shake off the burdens heaped upon them by reconstruction; the disfranchise- ment of many of our best and most in- telligent and wealthiest citizens and in- dignities and insults heaped upon us by Federal soldiers and bayonets at the polls, in the halls of legislation and everywhere menacing and threatening the freedom of the citizen and entrammelling and obstructing his free action in an alleged Republican form of government, were the incentives that spurred them on to victory.
 of the most intelligent, representative men in all the State and the proceedings will show how decided and determined they were to wrench the government again from the corrupt and vicious and to restore it once more to the control of its own citizens. By and under the provisions of the law they proposed to act, but to be again free and disenthrall- ed they had pledged each other their sacred honor in unity and concert of ac- tion.
 The fight this year was for the supre- macy of the white race in Alabama: the Republicans tried hard to keep down the issue; knowing that it's precipitation meant for them, as 1t was plain, from the beginning, that the white men of Alabama had the honor and the intelli- sence. and that they were going to rule the State. It was the greatest and most interesting convention ever held in the State. the very first men in the State composed it's membership; while the Re- publican convention was made up of negroes, carpetbaggers and scallawags, the very worst element of our citizen- ship at that time. and the comparison of the two bodies will prove most odious to all those who remember the true con- ditions at that time.
 The Race Issue.
 The race issue in this canvass was brought about by the utter prostration of every material and social interest in the once prosperous and intelligent States of South Carolina, Louisiana and Missis- sippi and in localities in this and other Southern States, where the highest and most honorable offices of State were prostituted to the base purpose of money getting and venal ambition; the fair name and credit of state that "once stood like a rock" withered and faded away in proportion to the swelling coffers of the ignorant and venal who then held those high places; the Legislative halls of our State filled by those who gravely went through the ceremony of enacting laws which they were unable to read when printed, and whose votes and in- huencas were as much articles of traffic as "the mean whislSey which brings to them a brief forgetfulness of their degredation and infamy:'' the once spotless ernine is dragged in the mire of petty party squabbling, and the ''un- worthy wearers thereof measure their judgment by the effect which will be produced on them and their friends poll tical prospects, offices of trust and great responsibility were conferred upon men who stood indicted for embedding the public funds entrusted to their care, and of perjury committed to prevent the