The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1912-11-13
TAFT TO DAUGHTERS.
The President Addresses Convention
of Southern Women.

Washington, Nov. ia greater
opportunity to give the south a feel
ing of ownership" in the government
will be given the Woodrow Wilson adj
nlinistration than was accorded the
present Republican regime, President
Taft told the United Daughters of the
Confederacy at the opening session
of their annual convention here.
The president declared that cir
cumstances have made it more diff
cult for a Republican administration
than for a Democratic one to give our
southern brothers and sisters the feel
ing of close relationship and owner
ship in the government of the United
States
Activity of southerners in official
life consequent to Democratic control
of the government, he said, would
give the south feeling of partner
ship in the conduct of the country's
affairs that would do much toward
eliminating sectional feeling.
President Taft said the occasion
that brought the daughters together
was mot the mourning at the bier of
a lost cause" but that they met to
celebrate the heroism, courage and
sacrifice of the men of the south. He
declared north and south alike should
rejoice in the common heritage of
courage" left by the war, and that
while the greater horrors of the war
which visited the south made it more
difficult for the feeling of hostility to
die out there than in the north, the
sectional line was fast disappearing.
For years after the war" the presi-
dent said, the Republican party,
which had carried the nation through
the war to its successful conclusion,
was in control of the administration
of the government, and it was impos-
Sible for the southerner to escape the
feeling that he was linked in his al
legiance to an alien nation and one
with whose destiny he found it diff
cult to identify him self. Time, how
ever, cures much and after a while
there came a Democratic administra-
ton of four years, and then another
one of four years. SOutherners We're
called to federal office; they came to
have increasing influence in the halls
of congress and in the senate, and the
responsibility of the government
brought a sense of closer relationship
to it and to all the people for whom
the government was carried on.
Il speak for my immediate Repub-
Hcan predecessors in office when I
say that they all labored to bring the
sure I can say that, so far as in me
has lain, I left nothing undone to re-
duce the sectional feeling and to make
the divisions of this, our country, geo.
graphically void.
while I rejoice in the steps that
have been able to take to heal the
wounds of sectionalism and to convey
to the southern people so far as I
could my earnest desire to make this
country one, I can not deny that my
worthy and distinguished successor
has a greater opportunity and 1 doubt
not he will use it for the benefit of
the nation at large.
1T fell to my official lot, with uni
versal= popular approval, to issue the
order which made it possible to erect
in the national cemetery at Arlington
the beautiful monument to the heroic
dead of the south-that you founded
today. The event in itself speaks
volumes as to the oblivion of section
aliSm.''