Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1912-03-15
OSCAR UNDERWOOD
SON OF UNIONIST,
NEAR NDRTHERNER
He Barely Escaped Being a
Nofherner Republican and
ProtectioniSt, Says Writer in
MCCIure'S Magazine,

While the slogan, democrats for
southerner.% becomes more generally cir
culated by the Underwood campaigners
in Georgia, as their best and practically
their only bid for the states indorse-
ment of a man who could not win before
the nation were he nominated for pres
ident, there is quietly arising to meet 1t
a smiling skepticism of Mr.. Underwood's
qualification even as a southerner.
The campaign managers of Woodrow
Wilson have declared that if sectional
sentiment be the rule by which cam
didates are to have their measure taken.
then of all those i'm the field. Woodrow
Wilson has stronger claim upon Geor-
gia's loyalty than any other. Not only
is he a Georgian, they contend; his
wife was a Georgian, and her father was
a Georgian Mr.. Wilson's own father was
a Virginian, who passed most of his life
in Georgia as a pastor of churches.
And, on the other hand, they point to
a stronger article in the February issue
of McClure's Magazine, by Burton j.
Hendrick. upon oscar w. Underwood,
a New Leader from the New South"
That article, being one of a series upon
the several presidential candidates, is
friendly to Mr. Underwood. In fact the
author extols him for what he has done
and portrays his qualifications very flat
teringly
But it is deadly to the slogan Of
Mr.. Underwood's Georgia campaign
for it shows that Mr.. Underwood is a
Kentuckyian of a unionist family; that
his father was unionist sympsthizer
who moved his family away up into
Minnesota Immediately after the war,
and that young Underwood did not see
the south until he went to Birmingham
he 0f Ian in
that his wife's father was a unionist
sympathizer and a Republican, and was
known as "the Carnegie OF the south"
In short, quite innocently, the au-
thor betrays Mr.. Underwood while he
praises him.
Here are some extracts from the artt-
Gle:
A NARROW ESCAPE.
1T was indeed by the narrowest mar
gin that Underwood became a south
erner at all. He barely escaped being
northerner, a Republican, and a pro-
tectionist. All his ancestral tendencies
inclined i'm this direction. His grand
father and his father overwhelmingly
ians but Kentuckyians of decided I'M
ionist leanings. His grandfather. Jo-
seph Rogers Underwood, was an old
line Wing, colleague of Henry Clay
in the United States senate. and natur-
ally a protectionst.
"All during the war Underwood's
grandfather was a leader of the union
list forces in Kentucky, and he was
constantly consulted by Lincoln on
questions of policy in the border states.
Underwood's father, Eugene Underwood.
a prominent Kentucky lawyer. and one
of the promoters of the Louisville anu
Nashville railroad, was also a northern
sympath izer. In the fall of 1865 he
moved his family, of which the present
chairman of the ways and means COM
mittee was the youngest member. to
the frontier state Of Minnesota.
This change probably explains the
fact that now Mr.. Underwood speaks
with very slight traces of the southern
accent. When the family left Ken
lucky, in 1866. he was only three
years old; and he did not set foot on
southern soil again until he reached
his 3oth year.
Underwood had no early struggles.
His father was a prosperous lawyer and
educated all of his children at private
schools Far from suffering any early
Continued on page three, column 81