Title: The South and the National Government
Author: Taft, William H., 1857-1930
Language: English
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The South and
the National Government


By
The Honorable William Howard Taft
President-elect of the United States


An Address
Delivered at the Dinner of the North Carolina Society
of New York, at the Hotel Astor, December 7, 1908



%Introduction%


The speech of the President-Elect at the recent annual banquet of the
North Carolina Society, New York, found a warm response in the hearts of
the Northern people, who have not failed to sympathize deeply with their
Southern fellow citizens during their long years of affliction.

The orator expresses our feelings with rare felicity, and so keenly did
his sentiments touch our hearts, it was resolved to publish his address
and send it to our fellow citizens of the South as the messenger of
peace and perfect reunion from their Northern countrymen.

Our Southern friends will note that no phase of the present unfortunate
situation is neglected by Mr. Taft; all are dealt with in a clear and
masterly manner. The North, as well as the South is enlightened as to
their respective duties toward bringing about the desirable return of
the South to its normal condition politically, so that American citizens
in all sections of our common country will again belong to both of the
great political parties, thus proving to the world that both parties
command the allegiance of good citizens in all parts of the country who
are desirous only for what they believe to be best for the good of the
nation as a whole.

The future President of our common country, North, South, East, and
West, who appeals to us, is a man of large heart, warm sympathies, and
cool brain, of sound judgment and lofty purpose, who has at heart as one
of the greatest possible triumphs of his administration the restoration
of normal political conditions in the South. Under his wise and
sympathetic leadership the writer is sanguine of success--certain of it
if the influential people of all sections give him the support he so
richly deserves in this truly patriotic mission.

ANDREW CARNEGIE.



%The Solid South%

ADDRESS BY MR. WALTER H. PAGE

IN INTRODUCING THE HONORABLE WILLIAM H. TAFT


At the Dinner of the North Carolina Society of
New York, at the Hotel Astor. December 7, 1908


Here, if nowhere else, we leave political parties and preferences alone.
But here, as everywhere else, we are patriotic men; and we North
Carolinians have as our background a community that from the first
showed a singularly independent temper. A freedom of opinion is our
heritage. We once drove a Colonial Governor who disputed our freedom of
political action to the safer shelter of the Colony of New York; and
throughout our history we have shown a sort of passion for independent
action, in spite of occasional eclipses; and that same temper shows
itself now. We are, in fact, never sure that we are right till half our
neighbors have proved that we are wrong.

We are, therefore, and have long been, much distressed by the political
solidity of the states of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire and
Pennsylvania; and we wish that it were broken--not for the sake of the
Democratic party nor for the sake of the Republican party (for the
breach would benefit each alike) but for the sake of greater freedom of
political action by our unfortunate fellow citizens who dwell there.
Where one party has too long and secure power it becomes intolerant and
the other party falls into contempt. Thus these states have become
stagnant or corrupt. For the sake of free political action we wish that
their political solidity might be broken, so that the whole conscience
and character of their people might find full political expression. What
constructive influence have they, or have they in recent years had, in
the nation's thought and political progress?

For the same reasons we have taken an especial pleasure in the recent
breaking up of Ohio, Minnesota, and Indiana--where on the same day
presidential electors of one party and governors of the other party were
chosen; for this breaking asunder of party dominance makes both parties
tolerant and careful, helping them both and showing the utmost freedom
of political action. And these states contribute much to our political
life.

By the same token we rush in where Texas and Virginia fear to tread, and
we shall welcome the impending and inevitable breaking of the Solid
South (perhaps we shall lead it), not for the sake of the Democratic
party nor for the sake of the Republican party (although it would help
each party equally), but for the sake of open-mindedness and of freedom
of political action, so that all men there may walk by thought and not
by formulas, and act by convictions and not by traditions. Where-ever
one party by long power breeds intolerance, the other falls into
contempt. And what constructive influence have the Southern States in
our larger political life? From some of them, where parties have fallen
low, we have seen men go to one national convention as a mere unthinking
personal following of a candidate even then clad in garments of twofold
defeat; and to the conventions of the other party we have sometimes seen
office-holding shepherds with their crooks drive their mottled flocks to
market. We are tired of this political inefficiency, this long
isolation, and these continued scandals; and we are tired of the
conditions that produce them. If parties are to be instruments of
civilized government, the conditions that produce such scandals must
cease. We must have in the South a Democratic party of tolerance and a
Republican party of character; and neither party must be ranged on lines
of race.

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!_



%The South and the National
Government%

ADDRESS BY
THE HONORABLE WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT

PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES

North Carolina presents an admirable type of the present conditions in
the South. It offers, therefore, a suitable subject for the discussion
planned for this evening, and I count it a privilege to be present to
hear it. One, in any degree responsible for the government and welfare
of the whole country at this time in her history, must take an especial
interest in the trend of public opinion and the conditions, material and
political, of the South.

The laws of the United States have equal operation from the Canadian
border to the Gulf of Mexico. Congress has representatives from every
part of the country, including the South, whose votes are recorded upon
national legislation. Railroads do not break bulk between North and
South. Interstate commerce goes on unvexed between the one and the
other. The Post-office department distributes its mail with impartiality
on each side of Mason's and Dixon's Line. Prosperity in the North is
accompanied by prosperity in the South, and a halt in the one means a
halt in the other. Northern people meet Southern people, and find them
friendly and charming and full of graceful and grateful companionship.

What is it that sets the South apart and takes from the Southern people
the responsibilities which the members of a republic ought to share in
respect to the conduct of the National Government? Why is it that what
is done at Washington seems to be the work of the North and the West,
and not of the South? Should this state of affairs continue? These are
the questions that force themselves on those of us concerned with the
Government and who are most anxious to have a solid, united country, of
whose will the course of the Government shall be an intelligent
interpretation and expression.

We can answer these questions as the historian would, and we can explain
the situation as it is; but I don't think we can justify or excuse a
continuance of it. Looking back into the past, of course, the
explanation of the difference between the South and the other two
sections was in the institution of slavery. It is of no purpose to point
out that early in the history of the country the North was as
responsible for bringing slaves here as the South. We are not concerned
with whose fault it was that there was such an institution as slavery.
Nor are we concerned with the probability that, had the Northerners been
interested in slaves, they would have viewed the institution exactly as
the Southerners viewed it and would have fought to defend it because as
sacred as the institution of private property itself. It is sufficient
to say, as I think we all now realize, that the institution of slavery
was a bad thing and that it is a good thing to have got rid of it. It
doesn't help in the slightest degree in the present day to stir up the
embers of the controversy of the past by attempting to fix blame on one
part of the country or the other, in respect to an institution which has
gone, and happily gone, on the one hand, or in respect to the
consequences of that institution which we still have with us, on the
other. These consequences we are to recognize as a condition and a fact,
and a problem for solution rather than as an occasion for crimination or
recrimination.

Over the question of the extension of slavery the Civil War came, and
that contest developed a heroism on both sides, in the people from the
North and the people from the South, that evokes the admiration of all
Americans for American courage, self-sacrifice, and patriotism. But when
slavery was abolished by the war the excision of the cancer left a wound
that must necessarily be a long time in healing. Nearly 5,000,000 slaves
were freed; but 5 per cent. of them could read or write; a much smaller
percentage were skilled laborers. They were but as children in meeting
the stern responsibilities of life as free men. As such they had to be
absorbed into and adjusted to our civilization. It was a radical change,
full of discouragement and obstacles. Their rights were declared by the
war Amendments, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth. The one
established their freedom; the second their citizenship and their rights
to pursue happiness and hold property; and the third their right not to
be discriminated against in their political privileges on account of
their color or previous condition of servitude.

I am not going to rehearse the painful history of reconstruction, or
what followed it. I come at once to the present condition of things,
stated from a constitutional and political standpoint. And that is this:
That in all the Southern States it is possible, by election laws
prescribing proper qualifications for the suffrage, which square with
the Fifteenth Amendment and which shall be equally administered as
between the black and white races, to prevent entirely the possibility
of a domination of Southern state, county, or municipal governments by
an ignorant electorate, white or black. It is further true that the
sooner such laws, when adopted, are applied with exact equality and
justice to the two races, the better for the moral tone of state and
community concerned. Negroes should be given an opportunity equally with
whites, by education and thrift, to meet the requirements of eligibility
which the State Legislatures in their wisdom shall lay down in order to
secure the safe exercise of the electoral franchise. The Negro should
ask nothing other than an equal chance to qualify himself for the
franchise, and when that is granted by law, and not denied by executive
discrimination, he has nothing to complain of.

The proposal to repeal the Fifteenth Amendment is utterly impracticable
and should be relegated to the limbo of forgotten issues. It is very
certain that any party founded on the proposition would utterly fail in
a national canvass. What we are considering is something practical,
something that means attainable progress. It seems to me to follow,
therefore, that there is, or ought to be, a common ground upon which we
can all stand in respect to the race question in the South, and its
political bearing, that takes away any justification for maintaining the
continued solidity of the South to prevent the so-called Negro
domination. The fear that in some way or other a social equality between
the races shall be enforced by law or brought about by political
measures really has no foundation except in the imagination of those who
fear such a result. The Federal Government has nothing to do with social
equality. The war amendments do not declare in favor of social equality.
All that the law or Constitution attempt to secure is equality of
opportunity before the law and in the pursuit of happiness, and in the
enjoyment of life, liberty, and property. Social equality is something
that grows out of voluntary concessions by the individuals forming
society.

With the elimination of the race question, can we say that there are
removed all the reasons why the people of the South are reluctant to
give up their political solidarity and divide themselves on party lines
in accordance with their economic and political views? No. There are
other reasons, perhaps only reasons of sentiment, but with the Southern
people, who are a high-strung, sensitive, and outspoken people,
considerations of sentiment are frequently quite as strong as those of
some political or economic character. In the first place it is now
nearly forty years since the South acquired its political solidarity,
and the intensity of feeling by which it was maintained, and the
ostracism and social proscription imposed on those white Southerners who
did not sympathize with the necessity for such solidarity, could not but
make lasting impression and create a permanent bias that would naturally
outlast the reason for its original existence. The trials of the
reconstruction period, the heat of the political controversies with the
Republican party, all naturally, during the forty years, implanted so
deep a feeling in the Southern Democratic breast that a mere change of
the conditions under which this feeling was engendered could not at once
remove it. The Southern people are a homogeneous people; they preserve
their traditions; they are of the purest American stock; and the faith
of the father is handed down to the son, even after the cause of it has
ceased, almost as a sacred legacy.

Again, for a long time succeeding the war, the South continued poor. Its
development was much slower than that of the rest of the country.
Prosperity seemed to be Northern prosperity, not Southern. And, in such
a time, the trials of life of the present only accentuated the greater
trials of the past, and reminiscences of the dreadful sufferings and
privations of the war were present on every hand, and feelings that the
controversy had given rise to, remained with an intensity that hardly
seemed to be dimmed by passing time.

But times change, and men change with them in any community, however
fixed its thoughts or habits, and many circumstances have blessed us
with their influence in this matter.

The growth of the South since 1890 has been marvelous. The manufacturing
capital in 1880 was $250,000,000, in 1890, $650,000,000, in 1900,
$1,150,000,000 and in 1908, $2,100,000,000, while the value of the
manufactures increased from $450,000,000, in 1880 to $900,000,000 in
1890, to $1,450,000,000 in 1900, and to $2,600,000,000, in 1908. The
farm products in 1880 were $660,000,000, in 1890 were $770,000,000, in
1900, $1,270,000,000, in 1908 $2,220,000,000. The exports from the South
in 1880 were $260,000,000, in 1890 $306,000,000, in 1900, $484,000,000,
and in 1908, $648,000,000.

In this marvelous growth the manufactures of the South now exceed the
agricultural products, and thus a complete change has come over the
character of her industries. The South has become rich, and only the
surface of her wealth has been scratched. Her growth has exceeded that
of the rest of the country, and she is now in every way sharing in its
prosperity.

Again, the Democratic party has not preserved inviolate its traditional
doctrines as to state's rights and other issues, and has for the time
adopted new doctrines of possibly doubtful economic truth and wisdom.
Southern men, adhering to the party and the name, find themselves,
through the influence of tradition and the fear of a restoration of
conditions which are now impossible, supporting a platform and candidate
whose political and economic theories they distrust. Under these
conditions there was in the last campaign, and there is to-day
throughout the South, among many of its most intelligent citizens, an
impatience, a nervousness, and a restlessness in voting for one ticket
and rejoicing in the success of another.

Now, I am not one of those who are disposed to criticize or emphasize
the inconsistency of the position in which these gentlemen find
themselves. I believe it would be wiser if all who sympathize with one
party and its principles were to vote its ticket, but I can readily
understand the weight and inertia of the tradition and the social
considerations that make them hesitate. I believe that the movement away
from political solidity has started, and ought to be encouraged, and I
think one way to encourage it is to have the South understand that the
attitude of the North and the Republican party toward it is not one of
hostility or criticism or opposition, political or otherwise; that they
believe in the maintenance of the Fifteenth Amendment; but that, as
already explained, they do not deem that amendment to be inconsistent
with the South's obtaining and maintaining what it regards as its
political safety from domination of an ignorant electorate; that the
North yearns for closer association with the South; that its citizens
deprecate that reserve on the subject of politics which so long has
been maintained in the otherwise delightful social relations between
Southerners and Northerners as they are more and more frequently thrown
together.

In welcoming to a change of party affiliation many Southerners who have
been Democrats, we are brought face to face with a delicate situation
which we can only meet with frankness and justice. In our anxiety to
bring the Democratic Southerner into new political relations we should
have and can have no desire to pass by or ignore the comparatively few
white Southerners who from principle have consistently stood for our
views in the South when it cost them social ostracism and a loss of all
prestige. Nor can we sympathize with an effort to exclude from the
support of Republicanism in the South or to read out of the party those
colored voters who by their education and thrift have made themselves
eligible to exercise the electoral franchise.

We believe that the solution of the race question in the South is
largely a matter of industrial and thorough education. We believe that
the best friend that the Southern Negro can have is the Southern white
man, and that the growing interest which the Southern white man is
taking in the development of the Negro is one of the most encouraging
reasons for believing the problem is capable of solution. The hope of
the Southern Negro is in teaching him how to be a good farmer, how to be
a good mechanic; in teaching him how to make his home attractive and how
to live more comfortably and according to the rules of health and
morality.

Some Southerners who have given expression to their thoughts seem to
think that the only solution of the Negro question is his migration to
Africa, but to me such a proposition is utterly fatuous. The Negro is
essential to the South in order that it may have proper labor. An
attempt of Negroes to migrate from one state to another not many years
ago led to open violence at white instigation to prevent it. More than
this, the Negroes have now reached 9,000,000 in number. Their ancestors
were brought here against their will. They have no country but this.
They know no flag but ours. They wish to live under it, and are willing
to die for it. They are Americans. They are part of our people and are
entitled to our every effort to make them worthy of their
responsibilities as free men and as citizens.

The success of the experiments which have been made with them on a large
scale in giving them the benefit of thorough primary and industrial
education, justifies and requires the extension of this system as far as
possible to reach them all.

The proposition to increase the supply of labor in the South by
emigration from Europe, it seems to me, instead of being inimical to the
cause of the Negro, will aid him. As the industries of the South
continue to grow in the marvelous ratio already shown, the demand for
labor must increase. The presence of the Southern community of white
European labor from the southern part of Europe will have, I am hopeful,
the same effect that it has had upon Negro labor on the Isthmus of
Panama. It has introduced a spirit of emulation or competition, so that
to-day the tropical Negroes of the West Indies do much better work for
us in the canal construction since we brought over Spanish, Italian, and
Greek laborers.

Ultimately, of course, the burden of Negro education must fall on the
Southern people and on Southern property owners. Private charity and
munificence, except by way of furnishing an example and a model, can do
comparatively little in this direction. It may take some time to hasten
the movement for the most generous public appropriations for the
education of the Negro, but the truth that in the uplifting of the Negro
lies the welfare of the South is forcing itself on the far-sighted of
the Southern leaders. Primary and industrial education for the masses,
higher education for the leaders of the Negro race, for their
professional men, their clergymen, their physicians, their lawyers, and
their teachers, will make up a system under which their improvement,
which statistics show to have been most noteworthy in the last forty
years, will continue at the same rate.

On the whole, then, the best public opinion of the North and the best
public opinion of the South seem to be coming together in respect to all
the economic and political questions growing out of present race
conditions.

The attitude of the candidate and the platform of the Democratic Party
in the last election made this campaign a most favorable one to bring
home to the Southern people for serious consideration the query why they
should still adhere to political solidity in the South. It may be that
four years hence the candidate and platform of the Democratic Party will
more approve themselves to the South and to the intelligent men of the
South. Under these conditions there may seem to be a retrograde step,
and the South continue solid, but I venture to think that the movement
now begun will grow, slowly at first, but ultimately so as to extend
the practical political arena for the discussion of party issues into
all the Southern States.

The recent election has made it probable that I shall become more or
less responsible for the policy of the next Presidential Administration,
and I improve this opportunity to say that nothing would give me greater
pride, because nothing would give me more claim to the gratitude of my
fellow-citizens, than if I could so direct that policy in respect to the
Southern States as to convince its intelligent citizens of the desire of
the Administration to aid them in working out satisfactorily the serious
problems before them and of bringing them and their Northern
fellow-citizens closer and closer in sympathy and point of view. During
the last decade, in common with all lovers of our country, I have
watched with delight and thanksgiving the bond of union between the two
sections grow firmer. I pray that it may be given to me to strengthen
this movement, to obliterate all sectional lines, and leave nothing of
difference between the North and the South, save a friendly emulation
for the benefit of our common country.





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