“The negro must be allowed to vote, and his vote must be counted, otherwise, so sure as there is a God in heaven, you will have another war, more cruel than the last, when the torch and dagger will take the place of the muskets of well-ordered battalions. Should the negro strike that blow, in seeming justice, there will be millions to assist them.”
And this is the greatest living soldier of the Union army. He covered the desolation he sowed in city and country through these States with the maxim that “cruelty in war, is mercy”—and no one lifted the cloak. But when he insults the men he conquered, and endangers the renewing growth of the country he wasted, with this unmanly threat, he puts a stain on his name the maxims of philosophy and fable from Socrates all the way cannot cover, and the glory of Marlborough, were it added to his own, could not efface.
No answer can be made in passion to these men. If the temper of the North is expressed in their words, the South can do nothing but rally her sons for their last defense and await in silence what the future may bring forth. This much should be said: The negro can never be established in dominion over the white race of the South. The sword of Grant and the bayonets of his army could not maintain them in the supremacy they had won from the helplessness of our people. No sword drawn by mortal man, no army martialed by mortal hand, can replace them in the supremacy from which they were cast down by our people, for the Lord God Almighty decreed otherwise when he created these races, and the flaming sword of his archangel will enforce his decree and work out his plan of unchangeable wisdom.
I do not believe the people of the North will be committed to a violent policy. I believe in the good faith and fair play of the American people. These noisy insects of the hour will perish with the heat that warmed them into life, and when their pestilent cries have ceased, the great clock of the Republic will strike the slow-moving and tranquil hours, and the watchmen from the streets will cry, “All’s well—all’s well!” I thank God that through the mists of passion that already cloud our northern horizon comes the clear, strong voice of President Harrison declaring that the South shall not suffer, but shall prosper, in his election. Happy will it be for us—happy for this country, and happy for his name and fame, if he has the courage to withstand the demagogues who clamor for our crucifixion, and the wisdom to establish a path in which voters of all parties and of all sections may walk together in peace and prosperity.
Should the President yield to the demands of the pestilent, the country will appeal from his decision. In Indiana and New York more than two million votes were cast. By less than 16,000 majority these States were given to Harrison, and his election thereby secured. A change of less than ten thousand in this enormous poll would restore the Democratic party to power. If President Harrison permits this unrighteous crusade on the peace of the South, and the prosperity of the people, this change and more will be made, and the Democratic party restored to power.
In her industrial growth the South is daily making new friends. Every dollar of Northern money invested in the South gives us a new friend in that section. Every settler among us raises up new witnesses to our fairness, sincerity and loyalty. We shall secure from the North more friendliness and sympathy, more champions and friends, through the influence of our industrial growth, than through political aspiration or achievement. Few men can comprehend—would that I had the time to dwell on this point to-day—how vast has been the development, how swift the growth, and how deep and enduring is laid the basis of even greater growth in the future. Companies of immigrants sent down from the sturdy settlers of the North will solve the Southern problem, and bring this section into full and harmonious relations with the North quicker than all the battalions that could be armed and martialed could do.
The tide of immigration is already springing this way. Let us encourage it. But let us see that these immigrants come in well-ordered procession, and not pell-mell. That they come as friends and neighbors—to mingle their blood with ours, to build their homes on our fields, to plant their Christian faith on these red hills, and not seeking to plant strange heresies of government and faith, but, honoring our constitution and reverencing our God, to confirm, and not estrange, the simple faith in which we have been reared, and which we should transmit unsullied to our children.
It may be that the last hope of saving the old-fashioned on this continent will be lodged in the South. Strange admixtures have brought strange results in the North. The anarchist and atheist walk abroad in the cities, and, defying government, deny God. Culture has refined for itself new and strange religions from the strong old creeds.
The old-time South is fading from observance, and the mellow church-bells that called the people to the temples of God are being tabooed and silenced. Let us, my countrymen, here to-day—yet a homogeneous and God-fearing people—let us highly resolve that we will carry untainted the straight and simple faith—that we will give ourselves to the saving of the old-fashioned, that we will wear in our hearts the prayers we learned at our mother’s knee, and seek no better faith than that which fortified her life through adversity, and led her serene and smiling through the valley of the shadow.
Let us keep sacred the Sabbath of God in its purity, and have no city so great, or village so small, that every Sunday morning shall not stream forth over towns and meadows the golden benediction of the bells, as they summon the people to the churches of their fathers, and ring out in praise of God and the power of His might. Though other people are led into the bitterness of unbelief, or into the stagnation of apathy and neglect—let us keep these two States in the current of the sweet old-fashioned, that the sweet rushing waters may lap their sides, and everywhere from their soil grow the tree, the leaf whereof shall not fade and the fruit whereof shall not die, but the fruit whereof shall be meat, and the leaf whereof shall be healing.