The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-06-15
PATTERSON
 TO NEGROES South Only Place For
 Blacks. SOLUTION OF RACE PROBLEM Brotherhood of Man and Christianity Are the Keynotes. He says eve Began wrons"-Negroes Were Not Equal to Using Free
 dom Coming to Them
 50 Suddenly.
SOLUTION OF RACE PROBLEM

Louisville, Ky, June 14.--Hon. Hem ry Watterson tonight addressed the negroes of the Eckstein Norton In stitution at their commencement ex- ercises. Mir. Watterson, whose health has been splendid since his trip to Egypt, was in fine voice. He was giy- en an ovation by an audience which completely filled the Masonic Theatre The keynotes of Mir. Watterson's ad- dress were the brotherhood of man and the Christian religion as chief factors toward the solution of the race prob lem.
 T want nothing for myself or for my children" he said, which am not ready to give to you and your chill dren."
 He began by a brief sketch of the origin of the conflict of races, declar- inG that both sections of the Union were. In the beginning. responsible for slavery, which existed North and South The African was brought here in Northern ships. When the North found slave labor unprofitable it sold it's slaves to the South, which mistakenly thought it profitable, not failing to put the money 1t got for it's slaves in it's pockets. It was slave holding Vir- ginfa that, ceding empire to the Fed eraI Government stipulated that hu- man slavery should never step foot thereon. At last when slavery had precipitated the South into a ruinous war, it was discovered that slave la bor had been no more profitable in the South than in the North.
 Then he continued.
 Negroes Behaved Themselves.
 During a century of contention among the whites about the blacks starting with the suppression of the A 1a to Q a the proclamation of emancipation. it was the black people not the white peopIe. who behaved themselves like Christian men and women. and, if Ga- brfel should suddenly blow his horn and the world should come to an end this blessed instant. many white man might be found holding up black man to plead his case before the re- cording angeE'
 MT. Watterson gave some personal experiences as follows;
 T passed many of my boyhood days upon a plantation in Tennessee where slavery existed in it's complete, but also under it's better aspects and conditions From the earliest dawnings of intell- gence, whicHhI can remember, the sys- tenn seemed to me monstrous. If slav- cry is not wrong, said Lincoln, nothing is wrong. So l thought, and so J think Thousands of men fought anc fell on the, Confederate side in. the wal of secession, who believed the same thing, as did Washington and Jener- son, and the gentlemen of Virginia whc made the first American revolution.
 When the second American revolu- tion came to pass, liberatingN as by a single stroke of the sword, nearly four million slaves from bondage, my senrl- ment of freedom was Il excess of my sense of the magnitude and complexi- A tad e r. uation. The three last amendments to the Constitution I declared to be the actual and final treaty of peace be- tween the North and the South. It was my opinion based on feeling, not on Knowledge or judgment, that, given perfected citizenship. the newly liber- ated slave would be able to work out of reconstruction that ensued I de- voted my energies toward the habita- ton of the black man of the South and essential to the modification of the white man of the North and South There are black men still living in Kentucky, who cannot fail to recall the contest we had with the elements of disorder masquerading as the Ku Klux Klan long after the disbandment of that dread organization of the States South of us, the struggle for the admission of negro testimony to the courts of law-in point of fact the stubborn fight for the expurgation of the old black laws from the statute books of the commonwealth, narrow ing itself down even to the right of the negro to ride upon the street cars"
 Sympathy for Negroes
 Mir. Watterson expressed great sym pathy for the struggle of the black people of the South. On this point he said:
 T must tell you. after forty years of experience and observation and re- hection, that I think we began wrong.