The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-04-18

be just In reference to reconstruction. He knows, and every candid historian to nngh tSe fresdman re e not % immediateiy % snd not without reluctance. but as meas ure of self protection, after the south ern states. acting under the liberal re- son, had adopted constitutions that would remand the negroes to condi- tton of peonage only one remove rom the slavery from which they had been emancipated.
 | This Is not a fair statement of the facts and causes. The South was Dem- | ocratic, 1t is true, but The Herald's | reasons are not fair. There were no more loyal Southerners than were the old whigs of the earlier days. They were true to their section and It's in- stitutions and as firm believers In the institution of slavery as the Democrats were Unfortunately for that party and its usefulness. the abolition mania overwhelmed 1t in the North, absorbing its best material and destroying 1t as a party. Abolition swallowed 1t up and the great whig Party which had given so many true and able statesmen to the country went down forever. The South was Democratic because of the unyielding devotion of the Dem ocrats to the Constitution and to con- stitutionaI government. When radical ism enveloped the North. when slave holder was not safe with his property outside his own section, when the high er-law preachings and teachings of the aggressive aboiitionists dominated and controlled all other political feelings, the Democrats of the South stool sol idly by the Constitution, and their brethren of the North. with few excep- tions, were with them. The South de- tended slavery because slavery was constitutional. and it was solid because its existence depended on It's solidarity in It's own defence.
 l It must require liberal amount of what Is usually known as gall to in- duce The Herald to offer any defence
 of the North's action in connection with reconstruction. When it declares that suffrage was given to the negroes "as
 a measure of self protection" it doesn't go quite far enough. It should have | said "as a measure of self-protection to the Republican Party" for that was what it meant. The leaders of that party saw that the real Southerners could not be depended on to vote the Radical ticket, and they had good req son to doubt the support of Northern Democrats for their destructive meas ures. Knowing this it was perfectly
 natural for them to put the ballot in
 the hands of constituency that they
 knew they could control as absolutely at
 the polls as the shareholders could con-
 trol them in the old days. The chance of
 adding several hundred thousand vot-
 CTS to the Republican Party, bound to
 vote that ticket without question, go-
 ing to the polls with as little idea of
 elf-assertion as a flock of sheep--all
 this was an oportunity not to be re-
 sisted by Republican leaders, and they did not try to resist it. To disfran- chise hundreds of thousands of intel ligent white men and to enfranchise
 other hundreds of thousands of thor oughly ignorant negroes, both objects accomplished by methods which were
 simply infamous. was the kind of self
 protection" the North was interested In.
 That their schemes were largely suc- cessful Is shown by the number of
 Southern States which gave Republican
 majorities during the reconstruction era. With the negroes lining up sol idly. supported by their white allies, most of whom were foreigners as re-
 garded the South. and with the real
 South politically and electorially man.
 acIed, 1t Is no wonder that the Repub licans controlled the ballot. It was "a measure of self-protection" that saved that party from annihilation. Forum
 ately for the South, for the country and for good government, such condi-
 tions could not endure, and when the Southern people came into their own again they made the south Democratic because that meant constitutional gov ernment and nothing else did. The Herald would do itself more credit if it would rub its glasses and see things as they are and were.