The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1905-03-19

tain critical aSSallantS in the North
upon his last novel. THE Clansman.
that is meeting with rapid
sale. He shows better humor
than such critics deserve. Mrs.
Harriet Beecher Stoves highly
biased novel, "Uncle Toms
Cabin published a half century ago,
and that was such a fire brand,
causing more harm to truth and facts
than a hundred such writer's could
counterfeit in a century of effort, is
still published, praised, read, rellshed
and devoured as a most precious
morsel of art and power and fidelity.
1t is all right for the old SANDER to be
published every few years, that helped
much to bring on the greatest, most
destructive war in modern times, and
it is all right with Yankee oodledom,
but when a man of Southern birth and
fine gifts essays to reproduce the other
side, and show up the deviltry and
meanness and scoundrelism of the
North after the war in its cruel and
devastating measures of reprisal and
cruelty, howl goes up from the one
sided, narrow little fellows who survey
the universe of God through gimblet
hole, and fiatter themselves with the
brave conceit that they have seen all
the wide expanse. and know it all
henceforth, then. it is that Blanch
Tray and Sweetheart yelp and howl
simultaneously, and make the North
ring out with the swift curses of their
lips that q Southern white man should
dare to tell the truth, unveil the past,
place the plain, right record of Re-
construction in the fierce light of day
that all may gaze and wonder.
Mr.. Dixon delivers well-directed
blows that splinter and postrate his
foes while vindicating easily and
manfully the disguised. rejected truth
of history. Referring to his portraiture
of Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania,
he cites q passage from q speech of
his in the United State Congress de-
livered March, 1867, nearly two years
after the declaration of peace:
1.-The laws of war authorize us to
take this property by our sovereign
power. You behold at your feet a
conquered foe, an atrocious enemy!
We have the right to impose confisca-
cation of all their property-to i'm
good common sense. To this issue /
devote the small remnant of my Iife."
Mr.. Dixon says:
mo biographer of Mr.. Stevens has
ever dared to print his speeches. Why?
This speech is the one supreme act of
his life-an act which lights with the
glare of immortal infamy his whole
character and career. I have not Carl
catured him. 1t was necessary to
soften, humanize, and idealize his
character to make it fit to print"
1 suppose his ideal portrait of Lin
coin is extravagantiy presented, and
will in nowise be recognized by the
readers of DR.. Minors 1.-The True Lin
coln.' The Boston Transcript-al-
ways extreme in its libelling of the
South-said of Mr.. Dixon:
HE reaches the acme of his Sec
tional passions when he exalts the Ku-
Klux Khan into an association of
Southern patriots, when he must know
can history, that its members were as
arrant ruffians, desperadoes and
scoundrels as went unhanged."
His reply to this scurrility from
Yankee bushwhacker is as follows:
did it ever occur to The Outlook
that L may be trying to reach Darkest
New England with few rays Of
Southern light? One of the best
preachers in Boston, q man of
the sweetest Christian character,
leader of Evangelical Christianity,
whose sermons The Transcript prints
on Mondays, was Ku-Klux Clans
man, and at this writing is still un-
changed and very popular in Boston.
Has The TRANSCRIPT moved to Salem?
MY father is a venerable minister
of Christ. He has built twenty
fiourishing Baptist churches in Pied
mont Carolina in a pastorate of sixty
years. He is one of these 'despera-
does" and is still unhanged."
Mr.. Dixon need make no apology
for turning on the light in 1905, upon
disgraceful and damning deeds in
1S65'70. They are never to be for
gotten. and up to now the devils
incarnate who plotted and destroyed
are heroes and models among the
South haters. The South took care
OF itself in the four years of desola-
ton. and it is able to take care OF
itself in these prosperous, piping times
of peace. Mr.. Dixon bravely and
rightly says with imposing directness
and vigor:
II am writing out of the fullness Of
life the story of my father and mother
and brethren. 1t is an authentic hui
man document. In these books l am
giving utterance to the deepest soul
convictions of 100000 Southern
people on this, the darkest problem
of our century. Can there be har-
mony until We understand each 9TH
er?
You cannot hush up the history
of mighty nation.- This is no dead
issue. The President of the United
States devoted his whole speech to
it on Lincoln's Birthday. We have
not settled the negro problem. We
have not dared to face it as yet"
Mr.. Dixon has done a work that
will commend him particularly to all
true Southern men and women. He
is not one of your time-servers and
truckers. He will never PROSTATE
himself before the unvarnished and
vitriolic enemies of his own people
He viii not play the part of a sneak
or mendicant or pacificator, or seek
success by travesting the noble men
and women of the Southland who
have no peers on the Continent.
cite the following:
Another critic is very angry be-
cause / do not write like Thomas Nell
son Page. How can I help it? Mr..
Page has never asked me to write his
books. 1 couldn't do it if 1 tried, and
wouldn't do it If 1 could.
Whether The Clansn1an' is litera-
ture or trash is a question about which
am losing no sleep. This generation
will not decide it and in the next I'll
be dead and it will not matter"
His book may not be highly artistic
or of The best construction. 1t may
be as as above stated a failure, but