The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-09-17
Some Significant Facts As to The Black Belt and Other Counties Car ried by the Opposition

They also keep in the pack ground tiltI
 the Opera House ticket received 13,5i4 votes in those same counties and further
 seek to deceive by representing the total vote 1 received in the several counties as my majority in them. They also iS- nore in figuring on the returns from the black belt in order to estimate the white vote cast throughout the state, the fact that the Opera House ticket carried five of the black belt counties, Chambsrsk Choctaw, Lee, Macon and Picllens by pheA nomenal majorties, and that counties iikeN Elmore Madison, Limestone, Lawrence Henry and Tallapoosa,. in two of which only was there small preponderance of white votes, and in the other the negroes constituted one-third of the vote, gavo
 unusual majorities against the regular ticket They conveniently blink at the significant fact that Chambers, Henry, Tallapoosa Tuscaloosa, Lawrence, Fay ette Pickens, Crenshaw. Randolph, Mar- shall and Cherokee, all of which voted for my opponent, each boiled. according to the returns. more votes than they had voters if none of them were absent from
 the polls on account of sickness or other causes. Tn the last named F counties alone there were 25.S53 negro voters. Not All Saints on One Side, or SiP-
 ners on the Other f The former governor. who was born anlS raised in Barbour county and was onceA a prominent part of whatever system was maintained there, in order to excite preju- dice in his favor against the black be,t | in other parts of the state in his next | campaign, singles out the black belt as a | locality where "a saturnalia of fictitious l and facttitious votes prevailed, and | writes in effect. though not in words, that | the people of the black belt were the | worst people on earth, and the people or the rest of the state the best on earth. | regarding the conduct of elections H> knows, as well as every other intelligent man, that whatever may have been ths l earlier methods in the black belt, or the Justification for them under the circum- l stances there existing in the 7O's that its practices had been adopted in many ~ the other counties of the state whenever the negro vote was called in to umpre' disputes between the whites, and that the poison had spread all over the state | long before the election of 1892, and was
 the reason for the adoption of our present constitution. H sF He knew also that the leaders of tha opposition in 1892, whose exploded cry he now revives, were mainly from the olacr belt, and that many of them had ,ftan boasted of their dealings with advarsa | votes In the count as title to political preierment, and that in the temper with which they waged that campaign >hey were not likely to fail to avail themseivcx Of their old skill. Yet he poses all these '
 men as saints and denounces thosexWno opposed them as pubicans and sitin+rs What warrant is there in reason or ,,.a
 known facts for any man to assert thar the elections were fair in the five black belt and the large number of other conn
 ties carried by the Opera House ticket in
 the state election in 1892 but that in tha
 black belt counties and other counties o,r-
 side. of it, which voted for the regular
 nominee the elections were unfair and fraudulent? One does not have to possess deep insight into human nature to know
 that the opposition leaders, in the passions they had aroused and the desperate stal<e. for which they played in 1892, handled thA. returns to suit their own interests whcn- ever opportunity offered: abundant proor | Of which Is found in the list of counties heretofore cited, which these leaders con.
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