The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-07-13

tomb the garlands still are fresh where hundreds pilgrimage each day to mingle their tears in a common grief. He lived and died leading a war-riven world to an abiding peace at the foot of the cross. Greater love hath no man. Hallowed be his name.
 Contemplate the difference then and now. We were brothers all. Every southern man and woman thanks God for the shiplOad after shipload which an indulgent Providence permitted the United States to send of rations and raiment, and the millions of dollars to friend and foe alike-France, Belgium, Germany and Russia. While up to to- day not one fathing, meatskin, crust of bread or wrapping of the finger has been given to the southern whites. Hav- ing come up out of great tribulation and from under the burdens of the car pet-b -bagger, the renegade and the black, we are not unmindful of the noble men of those dark days-the men who fol- lowed the imperial Forrest in their ideals of white supremacy, as a pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night. We are brave in our petition today, for we know that the Forests and their spirits still live by the hun dreds of thousands. In that day they kept our homes sacred from the boot of the black and our women untouched by them in the face of federal bayonets. But of this:
 "There are wounds too deep for Gilead balm to heal.
 And faiths so white 1 would not touch them with unholy hands,"
 He
 May God give me strength to sound the call of honor for our great southern leaders.
 And I do it, in that ask all those of Anglo-Saxon blood, Americans every where, to give us back in their names and in their honor the constitution of our fathers, unsullied and unstained by the black blot of negro suffrage, to give us back the constitution as Lincoln found it and as Lincoln would have left it and in one grand and glorious revival of the faiths and principles of our father-yes, to the "Old Time Re ligion," that was good for Paul and Silas and is good enough for us-in glorious homecoming where we will know no more paternalism except that of our own firesides, where honor and
  the schools and in the churches.
 And we want the constitution back today and not tomorrow.
 God grant that I may have kindled tonight here in Memphis, on the dying embers of the Confederacy, a revolution of thought and action that shall do these things and give us back the con stitution of our fathers; that these men before us tonight, these men of gray, may know it and see it before they leave.
 We realize that they have all over stayed their allotted time, their three score years and ten, and that they are as but dust in the hands of the AL mighty, waiting to be waited across the river. We want them, as they pass over and rest under the shade of the trees with Jackson and those immortals who have gone on before, to tell them of the south's vindication and of white supremacy in America.
 Then and not until then will the best people of America be welded together for the common uphuilding of mankind and the glory of God; then and not until then may we, with clean record and a ~clear conscience, look God and the men of all nations squarely in the face then and not until then will sectional and party lines fade as melting ice be- fore a summers sun; then and not until then shall the words of Ben Hill of Georgia be fulfilled:
 We are here; we are in the house of our fathers, our brothers and our companions, and we are at home to stay. thank God" H