The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1908-08-22

But in the south the negro toiIed
unpaid FugitIves sought liberty,
lighted by the North Star. The
great victory for human rights-the
greatest of all the years-was won
Liberty was national.
The flag for which our heroes
fought, for which they died, is the
symbol of all we are. of all we hope
to be-: 1t is the emblem of equal
rights It means that every citizen of
this republic must be protected; at
home, in every state-abToad in every
| land on every. sea II means that all
distinctions based on birth or blood
have persisted from our laws >
1t means that there shall be a legal
remedy for every wrong 1t
shields and canopies alike the loftiest
mansion and the lowiie5t hut. 1t rep
| reSents the sUffeTings of the past, the
glorleS yet 10 be; and, like the rain
DOW, II is the child of storm and sun.
But what of those who fell? There
is no language to express the debt We
owe, the love We bear, to all VINO died
for us Words are but barren sounds
We can but stand beside their graves
and in the hush and silence feel what
speech has never told. They fought.
man has kept record of events. the
heavens bent ABOVE and dOmed a land
without serf, servant or a slave ."
t-RobeTt G. IngersOll in an address
before the Grand Army of the Republic
in 1882
In these words a distinguished citi-
zen of IllinOis-less than twenty years
after the civil war, when the clash of
carpetbaggery and kukIuxism upon the
conquered soil of the south had just
finished writing the drama of Recon
sTuctiOn in blood and tears-described
the striking of the shackles from the
limbs of 100000 human beings bound
In chains And in this and other ora
tons the eloquent Col IngersolI paint
ed with a crimson brush the savagery
of slavery and borrowed of the stars
TO gid the picture of the gloTies of
civilization in the north that recOg-
n1zed the rights of every human being.
regardless of race. color or previous
condition of 5ervitude
How Col. IngerSOIl must turn in his
grave, if it he given to Him to read
the bloody paragraph of Illinois his
tory written during these last few
days by the white citizens of the state
he fondly termed the greatest and
best in the Union.
best state-a state lighted by the
North Star-a frenzied mob, led, it is
claimed, by q harIOt. and recruited
from the ranks of hOOdlumism, made a
single crime the occasion for a satur-
MALTA, wrecked buildings, burned city
blocks. de1ed civil authority, murder
ed cripples, drove women and children
into the fields to beg their bread by
the light of the flames of their Dill
LACED homes. Before the onslaught of
the horde of drunken maraudeTs could
be checked by the bayonets of 1000
soldiers the light of the North Star
fell upon a city obscured by smoke
and transformed into a military en-
campment-
The statement of a correspondent at
Springfield that the feeling against
the negroes is of years standing and
that the riot resulted from a racial an
tagOnism, and not from this one crime
committed by a negro, is entirely cred
IDLE. But the added information that
the black belt has been an eyesore
to the better class of whites will open
the eyes of southerners to the amaz-
ing degree of intolerance in the north.
where the negrO-enCOUrage by the
light of the North Star that beamed so
upon his daddy in the fifties
and SiXties-haS elected TO settle and
become a citizen.
There are, according to local est
mates, about 5000 negroes in Spring
field And the antagonists Of the ne
grOes allege that their number has
made their votes a factor in politics.
To quote a correspondent
They were getting too bold and |