The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 18??-1935, 1906-05-04

Iof four months he has simply ignored
my denial and repeated the charge
without pretending to offer q sylla-
BILE of evidence. At last the force of
public sentiment compelled him to
take notice of my challenge. l had
said that if had gone over the State
using such infamous language as this
, it could not have escaped publication
in some newspaper, and l challenged
Gov. Taylor to find me so reported in
any newspaper at the time such
speech was made.
"This is the challenge which Gov.
Taylor accepted. am going to give
you now, my countrymen, the most
brazen, the most audacious, the most
6are-faced misstatement that ever
escaped the lips of man. | will not
take any newspaper report of Gov.
Taylor's recent speech at the Taber-
nacle, but will give you his exact
words as taken down by a shorthand
reporter at the time: 1t is the same
method the Senator used in 1892
against the farmers of Tennessee
While | was appealing to the farmers
the Senator was denouncing them as
viler than the vilest reptiles beneath
the mud-sills of hell. applause and
hisses). The Senator declares that
no reputable newspaper ever publish
ed that. | refer him to the COvingtOn
Leader, the Brownsville Graphic, and
the Dyersburg Gazette for my author
ity. If he will go hunt up their files
atathe time-he made his speech he will
findsth words / uttered in your pres
ence tonight applause and hisses).
In direct challenge to my challenge,
Gov. Taylor plainly declares that he
putes to me from the files of the news
papers named as contemporaneous re-
ports of speeches made by me in 1892.
LIZ THIS STATEMENT is THE
TRUTH, THEN WILL QUIT
THE RACE | openly and boldly
assert that no such language can be
found in the files of either one of
these papers for 1892, and I assert that
no more audacious effort to deceive the
public was ever perpetrated by any
man who sought office at it's hands
have examined the files of the Gov
ington Leader for 1892 and find a re-
port Of my speech at that place, but
it does not contain anything which in
the remotest degree resembles the
language which Gov Taylor imputes
to me. find that the, files of the
Dyersburg Gazette back of 1897 were
destroyed by fire, but | have an afi-
davit from the publisher in which he
declares that in his opinion no sucn
language ever appeared there. | did
not speak in Brownsville in 1892; there
could have been no such report and
there was none.
THE quotations, without date,
which the Governor prints in The
Americans report of his speech from
the papers named, but which in fact,
he did not read to his audience, made
their first appearance in this campaign.
and not one of them ever appeared as
q report made at the time of any
speech made by me in 1892 or in any
other year.
Did Not Abuse Farmers.
But there was a report of that Gov
inGton speech, written on the very day
il vas made by & gentleman who was
sitting with me on the platform. This
gentleman did not wait for fourteen
years to write vague recollections or
to fabricate what he did not remem-
Der. In o report to the Nashville
American, which appeared OctoberS,
1892, he said: The speech was not
abusive of the people of the third par
ty, but simply a whitening arraign-
ment of designing leaders, and SUI
berb demolition of the crazy falacics
that deluds them The author of that
report was Laps d. McCord, who had
been Gov. Taylor's Adjutant General.