The Brandon news. (Brandon, Miss.) 1892-1961, 1907-04-18

mans vote IN the South shall not count
more than a white mans vote in the
North!'
''Then imagine the Senator from Mis-
sissippi jumping to his feet and address
ing the Senate and saying: Mr.. Presi-
dent, | call halt upon this discussion,
these resolutions and these bills. | did
not come here with the expectation of
havings these things discussed or pro-
posed, or any legislation like them en-
acted. / came here to repeal the Fiji
teenth Amendment. / told you before
hand that that was just exactly the
point | wanted you to go to and pre-
cisely the point where l wanted you to
stop. | started this game. / have a
right to fix the rules. / told you be-
forehand what they were and now you
are violating them. If you are going
to act that way, I am going to stop.
have not called you in for any other
purpose than to do what l told you /
wanted you to do, to-wit, to repeal the
Fifteenth Amendment
'Now is this merely humorous-is it
fancy picture? Is it a misrepresen-
tation of the precise meaning of the SEN
tence from the Governor which | have
just quoted literally? Doesn't he show
degree of confidence in the puerility
of others that smacks of the innocence
of childhood?
Il repeat, that it is not the negro's
vote that constitutes the problem in the
South-because he has none. 1t is the
physical presence of the negro himself
in numbers sufficient to menace the
white mans civilization. I repeat, that
| can imagine nothing more detrimen-
tai to the present great prosperity, or
perilous to the ancient civilization of
the South, than to make this delicate
race questionable question of the re-
lationshir that should exist between
the races in the South-the football of
Northern politicians in the Senate and
in the House. | repeat that it will be
dangerous for many years to come, and
until public sentiment in the United
States, outside of the South, has under
gone very great change.
'Just precisely what every intelI-
gent negro in the United States wants
done, and is trying to have done, is what
Governor Vardaman proposes to do, to-
wit: to make national issue once more
OF the negro question. Negroes have
everything to gain and nothing to lose
by that course. We white people of the
South have everything to lose and moth
ing to gain by it. That it will become
football cannot be question in the
mind of any intelligent man who has
watched senatorial performances in the
last few weeks, anent the Brownsville
affair. Here eighteen or twenty uni
formed villains shoot up a defenseless
town, committing murder, beginning the
shooting from the galleries of the bar
racks where the balance of the battal-
ion and the commissioned officers
are lodged, so that all of them must
have known it, and then all the balance
of the battalion enter into a conspiracy
of perjury and silence, each single negro,
when asked under oath what he knew
about what had happened, replying that
he knows nothing. The President of the
United States being confronted with this
conspiracy of silence and perjury de-
clares that men who are capable of it
are unfit to wear the uniform of the
United States-some being murderers
and the rest perjured accessories after
the fact-and discharges them.
eff it had been white battalion
there would not have been heard one
word of discussion in the Senate of the
United States, but they are negroes and
many negro delegates in national Re-
publican convention are to be had and
many negro votes in doubtful States
like Connecticut, New Jersey and In
diana, and so forth, are to be had by
catering to the black men of the coun-
try. Consequently the most astute, the
ablest and the most INSCRIPTIONS coterie
of Northern Senators proceed to quarrel
with their own President, so great is
their prejudice in favor of the negro and
| against white Southern people-a preju-
| dice growing out of their ignorance of
negro character They have made a
football of it, playing politics at the
| expense of their own President.
Some one might reply: Yes, But
| if the Fifteenth Amendment were re-
pealed, they would not do that The
reply to that is that Ohio, Indiana, Con-
necticut, all of these Northern States,
can today disfranchise the negro in pre-
cisely the same way that Mississippi,
Alabama and South Carolina have done,
if they chose to do it, but that they do
not choose. If the Fifteenth Amend
ment were repealed, the negroes would
still vote in those States by law on their
statute books, which they would not
change
'The Governor says that my talking
about Federal ownership of railroads
| necessitates common coaches for the two
races is invoking "a social equality bug
aboo' and convicts me of 'demagoguery
The Governor can live for four years
upon the negro as a political asset, but
if anybody else so much as says mig
ger once he calls him 'demagogue'
He seems to resent it, as a species of
trespassing upon his game preserves.
what said was absolutely true and
was said by me because it was true,
and would not have been said for the
mere purpose of cultivating popularity
or getting an office. Precisely what I
said was true and remains true, and
the Governor does not really attempt to
argue against it, to-wit: that if the
railroads become the property of the
Federal government, owned in fee simple
by it and operated by it, state F13reg-
ulating the conduct or characte { the
trains would ipso facto fall, VA a
state cannot regulate, control -s.x& nit
the use of Federal property, -IfN
sThe Governor says, But wxeT is to
prevent SouSIcss, WneH IJ passes an
Act to buy and own am o3erate the
railroads, from putting pvsion in
the Act providing for Sc tie coaches
for the two races?' Thi sstill more
schild-like and bland ths my friends
other proposition. Whak to prevent
Congress from providi separate
coaches for the two races Nothing
absolutely nothing except Congress
itself, the lack of will url the part of
at least two-thirds of Com ress in each
House to do it. Every safe in the
North could have separate Abaches now