The Democratic advocate., 1907-06-21
Watterson Praises Negro.

LOUISVILLE, June 15.-Henry Wat.
terson last night addressed the negroes of
the Eckstein Norton Institution at their
commencement exercises in Masonic Thea
tire. The keynote of Mr.. Watterson s address
was the brotherhood of man and the
Christian religion as chief factors toward
the solution of the race problem.
He began by brief sketch of the origin
of the conflict of races, declaring that both
sections of the Union were in the beg inning
responsible for slavery, which existed North
and South The African was brought
here in Northern ships. When the North
found slave labor Improbable it sold its
slaves to the South, which mistakenly
thought it profitable. At last, when
slavery had precipitated the South into
ruinous war it was discovered that slave
labor had been no more profitable In the
South than the North Then he con-
tinued
"During century of contention among
the whites about the blacks the black peo-
ple not the white people, behaved them
selves like Christian men and women, and
if Gabriel 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 recording angel.
81 passed many of my boyhood days on
plantation in Tennessee, where slavery
existed in its complete, but also under its
better conditions. IF slavery is not
wrong, said Lincoln, nothing is wrong
So [ thought and so | think. Thousands
of men fought and fell on the Confederate
side in the war of sections who believed the
same thing.
''L must tell you, after 40 years of ex-
perence and observation and reflection, that
| think we began wrong. We put the cart
before the horse. These millions of poor
black people, with some centuries OF abject
slavery and many ages of barbaric might
behind them, were not equal to using the
freedom that came to them so suddenly,
and especially the ballot, with prudence or
intelligence. I don't blame them in the
least. On the contrary, sometimes won
der at their self-restraint. Since the war,
according to their lights, they have tried
to be good citizens. l glory in every step
of progress they have made, and my heart
goes out to the black man wherever | see
him honestly struggling to raise his child
rem to condition better than his own.
"We may not escape our manifest des-
tiny. Neither of us can get rid of the
other. Schemes to that end, however in
genious, are wholly visionary.
II stand here tonight to declare that
the world has never witnessed such pro-
gress from darkness to light as that which
we see in those districts of the South where
the negro has had decent opportunity
for self development. Let the negro go
to any New England community and try
to get employment Barred on every
hand; plenty of sentiment, but no work.
There are regions north and west where
the negro is told to move on. He is what
the President described the other day as
IAN undesirable citizen. Turn southwark; ;
plenty both of work and wages for all who
bring tranquil minds and willing hands.
Nowhere on the habitable globe has the
liberated slave Jared so well; nowhere has
he so fair an outlook as in the Southern
States of North America.