The watchman and southron. [volume] (Sumter, S.C.) 1881-1930, 1906-07-25
An Echo From 80.

No higher compliment can be PAID
60 a man by a State than that which
Senator Tillman is enjoying at the
hands OF South Carolina. Although
there are thousands of his constit-
uents whom he has gratiously Offend
ed. although there are hundreds and
the sons OF other hundreds whom he
has personally and bitterly assailed,
he is permitted to receive a unanimous
denomination. His opponents, bury
ing their wrongs forgetting the days
when his teaching destroyed even free
speech for the time, and consenting to
the opinion, whether they told it or not
that he is honestly striving to achieve
good results for the whole State and
the whole country, have omitted to
set up candidate even as a protest.
to his continued elevation. Perhaps 1t
may be answered that they saw the
hopelessness Of a contest against MIN,
but even that may be true and the
further truth remains that a vigorous
candidate meeting him on the stump
would have much disturbed his COM
fort
Undoubtedly the opponents of Till
man fear him. A considerable num-
Der Of representative Carohnians who
have much at stake are quite willing
to suppress their not unnatural re-
sentiment when the alternative would
be to unleash a man whose skill in hr-
ing the popular heart to frenzy and
in stirring discord that may be muir
derous in its consequences-such
discord as bore such fruit in more
than one instance in the early nine
ties--is not to be matched perhaps in
the country. They endeavor to per-
zsuade themselves that Senator Till
mans impulses after all are for the
general good and they have schooled
themselves to overlook his asperities,
anSUlaTlIlGS,
and his coarse vituperativesiess.
Now what is their reward? He re-
joices in Columbia that the old fac
tiona1ism in dead. If the embers
shoulder, who would fan them to
living and consuming fame? Who
has assailed him? What reason, what
excuse under Heaven, has this man to
travel to and fro in South Carolina
and hurl maledictions? Surely it
cannot be that he is SO poor in ideas
that p1ivate wrongs and ancient griev-
ances are his single resort in this
time, when the faces of the people
are turned to the morning" of their
happiness and prosperity and they
are eager to accept him as a fellow
builder rather than a destroyer.
We, all of us, are quick to praise
his good deeds and to acknowledge
our pride in his success as a national
legislator. There is not a newspaper
in South Carolina, not one, that has
not gladly held up his hands in his
battling against enemies from with
out. Not a newspaper in South Caro-
lima has denied him its columns; he
has used them with a freedom that no
other public man in the State has
rivaled, and yet what spectacle have
we before u.s. This same accepted
leader, for the very lack Of other op-
position, turning in the insanity Of
rage to bite like a blinded serpent at
the friends to whom he is most be-
holden-preaching a crusade against
newspapers. True, it is one of no i'm
ccl tance, the foe he spends his
strength against is a creature bodied
forth from the exhalations Of his own
uncontrolled passions, and the time
has come when the people, however
they trust Tillman, are Indifferent to
his rawlings against the press. But
the spectacle grieves the judicious.
In another direction Senator Till
man may transgress too far. The
tragedy of Tillmanism was the defeat
of Wade Hampton. Even should his
tory record that Tillman was re-
former and a benefactor, that sacri-
fee is ever in the records to confront
him as needless as well as impious.
Cannot the Senator see the folly Of
allusion to it? Though he may not,
cannot understand, the affection in
which the immortal Hampton's name
is held by his friends and those friends
of the State who believe that his de-
feat IS an indelible stain, it seems
that the living Senator, having no
part. nor lot with them, might respect
the silence which they preserve about
an episode that wrote ''Ingrate' on
IL,