Burdened with the record of his own instability, Bryan this year lost,
practically, everything excepting the South. True, he got Nevada (two
electoral votes,) and Colorado (five votes,) and Nebraska, (eight
votes,) but this state he carried by making a piteous, tearful personal
appeal,—and even then he got only a plurality, not a majority, and ran
far behind the Democratic State ticket; but the West has repudiated
him, just as the South and East have done.
It would not be worth while to dwell upon the humiliation of that
political serfdom which kept the South in the Bryan column.
The South voted for Bryan, _and is glad he wasn’t elected_. Everybody,
who knows anything, knows _that_. The fact ought to be able to
penetrate the conceit of Bryan himself.
But is the fact important? It _is_, for its first consequence will be
the elimination of Bryan, and its second will be the restoration of the
South to her historic position in the Republic. It is the beginning of
Southern self-assertion; the end of her political nullity.
Never again can Mr. Bryan hope to secure the support of the South.
His record makes it impossible for her delegates to acquiesce in his
nomination.
This being so, the Bryanites of other sections will recognize the folly
of nominating him—for without the Solid South no Democrat can hope to
win the Presidency.
When Bryan adopted that policy of Africanizing the Democratic party,
he drove nails into his political coffin. The facts were not aired by
the Southern papers during the campaign, but Bryan will hear from them
when he bobs up serenely and goes after a fourth nomination. Ever since
the Civil War, the Democratic party in the South has claimed to be the
white man’s party. Because it was feared that a division of the whites
into two parties would result in giving to the negroes the balance of
power, the Southern people have allowed the Democracy of other sections
to legislate against our interests, to ignore our industrial existence,
to rob our producers under forms of law, to foist upon us candidates
not of our choosing, and platforms which we detested.
The Democrats of other sections were permitted to treat us as though we
belonged to them, _because_ we feared to divide into two competitive
white parties,—feared Negro Domination.
For thirty years the South has been struggling to establish White
Supremacy, and to diminish the political importance of the negro.
Yet in this campaign of 1908 we heard Bryan’s lieutenant, Henry
Watterson, declare that _the time had come for the Negroes to divide
and thus increase their political importance_. The whole Bryanite
campaign was pitched to that key. “The time has come to increase the
political importance of the negro!”
In other words, the Bryanites deserted the Democratic position on the
negro question, and went over to the Thad Stevens-Sumner position, at
the very time that the Republicans, led by Roosevelt and Taft, were
coming over to the Southern view. We saw Bryan flirting with the negro
leaders, and seeking to make a Democratic asset out of the resentment
which they felt because of Roosevelt’s pro-Southern position on the
matter of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. We likewise saw Mr.
Bryan witness with seeming approval, the parade of negro clubs on whose
banners were displayed extracts from Foraker’s speeches denouncing
the President for his dismissal from the army of the black brutes who
on their way to Brownsville insolently declared “When we get there
all the women will look alike to us, white, black and Mexican”; and
who put a climax to a series of outrages and threats by shooting up
the town—killing one man at his own gate, bringing down the Chief of
police with a shattered arm, riddling hotel and private houses with
bullets; and terrorizing men, women and children.
Yes, we saw Bryan receiving negro delegations who came to confer with
him about the negro soldiers; we saw the colored delegations cordially
met and hospitably entertained; and we heard them say, that they were
perfectly satisfied with the assurances which Mr. Bryan had given
them. They circulated, by the hundred thousand, a letter, bearing
the names of the most prominent negroes of the land, in which the
statement occurs that _“We have been in communication with Mr. Bryan
for weeks and have received satisfactory assurances from him” as to_
PATRONAGE, RECOGNITION, AND THE AMENDMENTS.
Mr. Bryan must have been aware of the fact that this circular letter
was being used in his behalf. It is highly probable that his Campaign
Committee furnished the money which paid for the printing and the
mailing of it; and there is no doubt that the negro speakers who went
about asking for votes for Bryan, because of Brownsville and because of
the Southern Disfranchisement laws, were paid by the Bryanite Committee.
It would have been a calamity to the country had the desperate tactics
of the Bryanites met with success. The impression would have been made
that the negro vote elected him, and there is no telling how far that
would have influenced Mr. Bryan in his official dealings with the negro
leaders.
We must remember that he earnestly supported the candidacy of a negro
against a white man, in Nebraska. The negro got the office. It is said
that no such thing had occurred in Nebraska before.
He educated his daughter and one of his sons at the Social Equality
“University of Nebraska,” and another of his sons is a student there
now. To this Social Equality College, Mr. Bryan annually donates two
hundred and fifty dollars.
He has never uttered a word against the mixed schools of Nebraska
wherein the negro children are educated on terms of Social Equality
with the whites. He has never condemned the intermarriage of blacks and
whites. There is no law against it in Nebraska, and miscegenation is
common.
Born and reared in Illinois, Mr. Bryan holds the anti-Southern view
of the race question. By birth, education and environment, he got the
belief that Social Equality is right, and he practices what he believes
when he sends his children to be educated along with the negroes.
How can the South, knowing these things _as she now does_, ever support
Bryan again? To do so would be to reverse her position on that question
which to her is the most important of all. During the heat of the
campaign, Southern editors who knew of these things kept mum. It will
not be so when Bryan seeks the fourth nomination.
In the next national convention of the Democratic party, the South will
not be run over as the Bryanites ran over her at Denver.
If she demands the Vice-Presidency in 1912, it won’t go to the attorney
of the Brewers’ Combine of Indiana. If Lincoln’s name should again be
lugged into the Convention, it will again be honored, but when the
name of Robert E. Lee is mentioned it will not be hooted and hissed.
Democrats of the other sections may not be pleased by the attitude of
Southern delegations, but we venture the prediction that no Haskell
brass-bands will insult them by tauntingly playing, “_Marching thro’
Georgia_.”