The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-08-18
WILLIAMS BREAKS
 THE NEWS ID DAVIS Speech is Full of Brilliant Satir-
 icaI Thrusts HE CALLS IT HISTORICAL Is Brief Disqulsitlon on Blunders Made By Our Ancestors From View of Republicans Who Have Elm
 braced the Strenuous Life.
HE CALLS IT HISTORICAL

White Sulphur Springs. W. Va, August 1.-The address of Representative John
 Sharp Williams of Mississippi notifying senatnr Davis of his nomination for the
 vice presidency by the democratic con 1 vention required an hour to deliver MT. l Williams said:
 INT. Dayis-Sir: We have been appoint ed by a most notable convention as a committee to notify you of your nomina- ton by the democracy as their choice for
 vice-president of the United States. We
 desire to express the pleasure we feel
 in having been selected to perform this duty and our confidence in you, your faithfulness honesty and wisdom. The people see in you one of the best products of the best period of American institu-
 tions, period whose salient character istics were local self-goyernment, indi-
 viduality, equal opportunity and freedom, l freedom to work, freedom to buy and sell, freedom to compete in industrial life, resulting in self-dependence, freedom to develop as ones own master-and not
 merely as the well-traineo and we'll managed industrial servant of another. They see in you what Oliver Wendell Holmes said is rare thing, "A self-made man who is yet not proud of his maker"
 Heard of It Before.
 Just before leaving home I said that I was going to West Virginia, with some others, to notify you of your nomina- ton. One of my brothers little boys, standing by, said: Uncle John, he must be a mighty big goose if he hasn't heard of 1t already In a certain way the notification with which we are charged is perfunctory and unnecessary, and yet | it Is well to maintain by some uegree Of l formality that respectful observance which is due to great events. The nom- ination by gerat party to the great of | flee to which we call you, the vice-presi- dency. carrying with it the duty of pre- siding over the senate of the United States and the possibility of succession to the presidency is great event.
 ''As soon as l learned that l was, by resolution of the convention, to be the mouthpiece of the committee for the per- formance of this pleasant task, I began | to look about me to see how the duty had been performed by others. I found from recent performances of a similar char 1 acter in the republican camp that for 1 a notification speech a historical essay Is altogether the proper thing, absolutely necessary for the emergency. We shall 1 therefore entitle our notification address: 1 A bil Historical Disquisition upon Some 1 of the Blunders of our Ancestors as Viewed form the Standpoint of the Wis dom of Republican Statesmen, who have Embraceu the Strenuous Life.
 Discrimination.
 "The first of these consisted in dis crirninatiag against the red man-the im-
 age of God in Cherry-on account of his
 race and color and previous condition.
 Our ancestors said it was on account of
 the inherited race traits, tendencies and l,.oo afft II was but the outward sign. But that claim pretense or sincerity, we found to our astonishment, that the door of opportuni- l ty and hope in the way of officeholding and voting, had been closed to, lol the poor Indian. He was not invited in by The | select men in Connecticut, nor by the electors of the self-governing towns in Massachusetts, to help govern our ances- tors and the country which they had 1 committed to their charge, nor did our | ancestors promise to assimilate him. This 1 first violation in America of the divine right of manhood suffrage and of the | cherished fundamental dogma that all men of all races are equally capacitated l to govern themselves, and especially to | govern others has doubtless been the Had of all our woes Plainly It was what the Boston Transcript so eloquently | calls 'colorphobia. We could not account | lOT IL, except DefndpS upon a line or l thought suggested by a sentence In the l notification address of the permanent chairman of the Chicago convention In- | forming the president of his nomination l by the republican party to succeed him | self. Mr. Cannon said: By blood, by in- | heritance by education and by practice. we are a self-governing people, Are we l to believe that MT. Cannon meant to in- 1 timate, converse, that nobody was of 1 self-governing capacity unless by blood, l education or successful practice? If so, 1t is feared that he is getting back to our ancestors blunder and may incur the danger of receiving the approbation of some of those beknighted creatures | known as southern democrats We won l der if our ancestors in New England. l New York and Virginia had been stupid enough to have some notion of the con- verse of Mir. Cannon's utterance in their | heads, and if they had based their action ] on the fact that the noble red man had none of the blood of self f-governing races 1 in his veins, none of that subtle force of 'heredity' which accounts for so much | and which Is so hard to be accounted Tor itself, if they thought that he had not for any sufficient length of time been | educated for the task of governing white men, or had had no 'practice' in it. 1 except such as seemed to lead to the | conclusion that he was not capable of it. Were Our Ancestors Stupid?
 | '"The next great blunder in our early history consisted in their taking up arms l against King George and his forces when tho latter were actuated, as they | themselves confessed. only by the kind est designs of 'benevoIently assimilating
 to themselves our resources and our op- portunities. You. sir, who have a repub- | lican son-in-law and, therefore, possess
 culture by affinity at least, win hardly i believe that our ancestors were stupid 1 enough to fight against the principle which we so frankly recognize in the | Philippines, viz that 1t Is perfectly right self-evidently proper. for flag to cover and enblemize two entirely different sorts
 of government one for ourselves at home protecting individual, civil and po- litical liberty and pretending to furnish full and equal opportunities for industrial
 development. and another for other in the colonies s'-absolute and discretionary in its character and avowedly limiting
 industrial development there by the neces-
 sities of commercial exploitation for the | benefit of the home mercnant and the
 home manufacturer. We know now, of