ries 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 N