We aspire to a higher part in the Republic than can be played by men of closed minds or of unthinking habits or by organized ignorance. We aspire again to a share in the constructive work of the government in these stirring days of great tasks at home and growing influence abroad.
I am leaving party politics severely alone, but I am speaking to a national and patriotic theme. A Republican Administration or a Democratic Administration is a passing incident in our national history. Parties themselves shift and wane. And any party's supremacy is of little moment in comparison with the isolation of a large part of the Union from its proper political influence.
The manhood and the energy and the ambition of Southern men now find effective political expression through neither party. The South, therefore, neither contributes to the Nation's political thought and influence nor receives stimulation from the Nation's thought and influence. Its real patriotism counts for nothing--is smothered dumb under party systems that have become crimes against the character and the intelligence of the people. The South gives nothing and receives nothing from the increasing national political achievement of every decade. Politically it is yet a province; and we are tired of this barren seclusion. Men who prefer complaint to achievement may regard this as treason: let them make the most of it. We prefer a higher station in the Union than New Hampshire and Vermont and Pennsylvania and Arkansas hold.
From the first our commonwealth conspicuously stood for something greater than any party, something that antedates all our parties, that spirit of independence in political judgment and action which brought the old thirteen states into being and made the Republic possible. And that spirit is not dead yet.
If it cannot regain its old-time influence through one party, it will regain it through another.
We are the descendants of men who fashioned parties in their beginning; and, if need be, we can refashion them. For the aim of government is not to preserve parties but to give range to free individual action in a democracy. And it is in this spirit of national aspiration that we welcome our distinguished guest of honor--a man now placed above parties, and too just to regard the Republic by sections, our best equipped citizen for the highest office in the world.
To the President-elect: May his administration mark the return of Southern character and sincerity to its old-time part in the constructive work of government and the end forever of political isolation from the achievements and the glory of the Union!