Keowee Courier

THE SOUTH HAS RIGHT TO PLEA

The South Will Meet the Issue.

[By J. Whitney Beals, Jr., of Boston.]

No nobler sentiment was ever more clearly expressed than the editorial in the New Orleans Times-Democrat of October 24, 1901 "The South will Meet the Issue" and those who read this article will see that an error of judgment has been committed by our President. From the Northern press comments upon the affair of Booker T. Washington being a guest of President Roosevelt within his family circle, one would think that the South had no rights and that the social and business influences were of little or no consequence to this nation.

Aside from what the Northern press tells us, what does the individual, who has never come into contact with the Southern negro, know of the matter? Nothing, and so it is that the people of the North are living in ignorance of a subject which may, in the near future, stir the nation to bloodshed. If one will think of the awful possibilities and the evil consequences which would follow by placing the negro socially on an equal with us, they will agree with me.

What is more sacred than one's family table, and where a breach is committed whereby a negro enters the social circle, it is leading the black race to other social advances, and one would expect to see the races on equal footing at their homes or at the opera; but it would not rest there. The children of the two colors would mingle together at social gatherings, and then the possibility of intermarriage would follow.

This act of our President is the first step towards making the black man our social equal, and while it is too late to mend the harm that has been done, Mr. Roosevelt has lost the respect of over five millions of people, representing the most cultured and high bred of our citizens and the true aristocracy of this country.

THE SOUTH WILL MEET THE ISSUE.

In recognizing Booker T. Washington, the negro principal of a negro school at Tuskegee, Ala., as his social equal, the President of the United States is violating precedents which, for "the peace, prosperity and honor of the country," have been religiously observed by each Chief Magistrate of the nation from the first administration of George Washington, of Virginia, to the second administration of William McKinley, of Ohio. There can be no doubt among Americans of the Southern States that in thus attempting to destroy ideals of racial integrity, held up for more than a century by his predecessors in office, Mr. Roosevelt has not only demonstrated that he lacks both that good taste which is "the conscience of the mind" and that conscience which is "the good taste of the soul," but has also precipitated upon both races of all sections in the United States a political issue that was thought to be dead and a social problem that was believed to be solved.

It becomes clearer with each passing hour that Mr. Roosevelt has deliberately sought to present to public attention the question of racial social equality, and to present it in such a manner that lines of sectionalism, once traced in blood but happily effaced by patriots both at the North and at the South would be sharply redrawn within the limits of our one common country.

It is idle for any one to attempt to extenuate the conduct of the President in this incident. It is absurd for friends of his to state that he did not reflect upon its consequences. It is ridiculous for apologists of his to plead in Mr. Roosevelt's behalf the school boy's excuse: "I didn't mean to." It is preposterous to say that the President's intentions were kindly, and that if he erred his was an error of misdirected benevolence.

The President has forced the people reluctantly to conclude that he desires to make this racial social equality question a burning issue; and there can be no doubt that the Republican press at the North rejoices that Mr. Roosevelt has formed that determination.

The South will meet the issue. In the concrete pressure of this emergency the Southern people will have the courage, the constancy and the capacity to resist what is clearly a premeditated assault upon the social structure of the Southern States. It is impossible to disguise the fact that the admission of racial social equality in the South would mean, in time, the miscegenation and the amalgamation of the races; the deterioration of both whites and blacks; the substitution of West Indian or Latin-American standards of civilization for the distinctly American standard; and, finally, the practical extinction of that nobler sentiment of purity, of valor and of honor which is the life-spark of a people as well as of an individual.

It is clearly within the limits of restrained statement to say that the Southern people deplore this incident and would do all in their power, consistent with a sense of right, that the coming crisis might happily pass away. But Republican newspapers at the North, which, like the Philadelphia Press, for instance, imagine that the South can be intimidated by any such contemptible threat as "there is a stubborn man in the White House," should promptly realize that they are dealing with a people whose temper and disposition they little understand. It is as true that high-minded men are not awed by bravado as it is that high-minded men never resort to it. Americans of the Southern States are the last people on earth to be deterred in their purpose by the veiled threat of a partisan press. Home, and the defense of home, have no terrors for the Southern people. Long ago they learned the philosophy of the Chinese proverb: "Thank God the worst has come"—taught it as they were in the days of reconstruction.

It is time that the people of the South realized how hopeless it is to win the sympathy of certain circles at the North. To Republican fanatics the rightful heirs to that band of charlatans who plundered the South in her poverty, oppressed her in her weakness and mocked at her in her calamity—the contributions of the Southern people to the prosperity of the nation are without significance. It means nothing to them that for thirty-five years the South has fought the "most heroic battle in human history; it means nothing that the South has supported itself, paid promptly its share of the national debt incurred by its coercion; contributed enormously each year to the payment of Federal pensions; developed system of education for both races, giving one-third of the educational fund to the negro schools; opening up highways throughout the land; wisely discharging the obligations of citizenship, city, State and national, and devoting itself with intelligent loyalty to the interests of the whole country. To fanatics at the North who, blinded by partisan rage, have never kept a pledge or obeyed a law, the South is but a land to be despoiled, and the Southern people but a people to be persecuted. In the judgments of such men right and justice and truth weigh but as dust in the balance. 'Tis indeed pitiful that the President has fallen under the spell of these evil counselors.