Southern Mercury. (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 19, No. 4, Ed. 1 Thursday, January 26, 1899 Page: 1 of 16
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Vol XIX No, 4,
LLAS, TEXAS, THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 1899,
$1 Per Annum#
AN UNRECONSTRUCTED REBEL.
Uw.,
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Below we reproduce a communica-
tion which has been offered us, In re-
ply to a recent article in the Mercury.
In accordance with the writer's express
request, we publish it as it was submit-
ted, with a little comment by our-
selves:
Mr. Editor: Will you please allow me
space in your columns to denounce in
as strong language as politeness, ele-
gance and the deepest conviction of
impregnable truth, we believe will per-
mit, to various positions assumed re-
cently as a Populist of the dyed-in-the-
wool middle-of-the-road" variety in
consecutive issue of your paper?
Your correspondent is a straight Pop-
ulist of the Omaha platform stamp,
"body, boots and breeches," and has
been so since 1892; that is, a populist
on economic, issues, embodying the
triune political divinity, money, land
and transportation, with the subjoined
planks of initiative referendum and
imperative mandates, but no farther,
if to be a Populist require me to em-
brace the crazy fanatical "fads" of
women's rights, women suffrage, "nig-
ger" freedom and "nigger" suffrage,
with all the other wild lunaticisms and
mental aborations that have emanated
like lost spirits from Abaddon, uncap-
ped and flooded the land, with evils
black as midnight or Erebus darkness,
pregnant with the most horrid despair,
pouring fourth in legions innumerable
as the locusts of Egypt, from that
Pandora's box, New England, that has
ever cursed this former fair heritage of
liberty ever since the days of Salem
witch-burning and the first foot of the
so-called "Pilgrim Fathers" pressed
the cheerless and inhospitable Rock of
Plymouth. But to be more specific and
pertinent, your correspondent will de-
tail the objectionable features appear-
ing in your paper, to which, if he in
the "late unpleasantness" to ravage
and fight against the south, struggling
for the only true liberty ever possible
to this land of Washington and Pat-
rick Henry, to-wit, Wharton Barker.
Can this writer ever support or even
countenance for a moment a man so
"heartless and demonish" as to or-
ganize and turn loose upon his fair
southland such black fiends by whom
a very near and very dear aunt was
prematurely frightened into eternity,
and in her death-throes the officers of
the "nigger" regiment stood around
unfeeling as rocks, cracking such bru-
tal and fiendish remarks as " the old
lady will soon kick the bucket?" Nev-
er, be lie called a populist, democrat,
republican; socialist, saint or devil!
Again, you join the cohorts of the
North in apotheosizing Abraham Lin-
coln as a great apostle of liberty, even
stigmatizing the glorious "Father of
his Country" by placing side by side in
the most polluting proximity, with his
imperishable memory,' this firebrand of
sedition, this trampler under his most
unhallowed feet of the sacred consti-
tution of our fathers, under which we
enjoyed a glorious liberty and pros-
pered as never any country did before
or since for well-nigh a century, and
to whom the "great Commoner" of
Georgia, Alexander Stephens, in his
"Constitutional History of the War be-
tween the States" says we are indebt-
ed for that most unrighteous and un-
justifiable war that was ever waged,
for he (Abraham Lincoln) could have
stopped it at any moment. Besides,
was he not with Wm. H. Seward, the
joint author of the doctrine of the "ir-
repressible conflict," as well as a
signer of that most incendiary Helper
Eook with thousands of his other con-
freres? Of a piece, Barker does like-
wise in his false Populism, eulogize
Lincoln and John Brown, the midnight
assassin, as well as does his Pythias
and Siamese Twins.
L. C. Bateman of Maine, appearing in
an editorial column of the most ful-
some eulogy of the Ossawatimie
bandit in Tom Watson's so-caled
southern paper, for which and just be-
fore, it deservedly and ignominiously
died, never, it Is hoped, to be resurrect-
ed with any more such vile stuff.
Under your article in January 12
number, "To Disfranchise the Masses,"
you seem to argue against disfranchis-
ing the negroes, as in Mississippi, etc.,
yet admit in the conclusion of that art-
icle the negroes flee from North Caro-
lina to Mississippi in preference to
Georgia and Alabama, thereby in-
stinctively displaying their own con-
sciousness of race inferiority and unfit-
ness for the right of the elective fran-
chise. Then why do you in letting such
effusions appear in your columns con-
tend for their retention to them of this
"jewel in a swine's snout?" In your
article of the same paper, "Old Parties
and Third Parties," there never was a
grosser slander thrown upon the mem-
ory of our southern anti-bellum pa-
triots than the language saying: "For
twenty years prior to the civil war the
leadership of the democratic party was
exclusively in the hands of the slave-
owners of the south, and that under the
guise of a strict constitutional party, it
was the greatest foe to human freedom
and liberty that ever ruled the des-
tinies of a free people. On the con-
trary, Indisputably, It was the last
bulwark and prop of genuine American
liberty and prosperity or renunciation
ever more of the unwarranted adjunct
of the negro question as cropping forth
sporadically and confluently ever
and anon in northern Populist journ-
als, as well as other unessential side
issues. I have ever been otherwise on
the htree main planks, a true Populist,
deeming nothing better was to be ex-
pected of them than to sing out the old
cant phrase; but if southen papers
are going to unite in the same refrain
to their most signal discredit in thus
aspersing degenerate scions that they
are the memory of their worthy sires
in casting such reflections upon "chat-
tel slavery, so-called, now usurped
by the vilest white slavery of earth,
your writer will wipe his hands of the
whole concern.
How can a southern man, with a
drop of southern blood in his veins,
or a spark of southern sentiment in-
spiring his thoughts, align himself ver-
bally by journalistic influence or party
affiliation with that red republican fac-
tion, as odious as that of Robespier-
re's of French revolutionary fame,
which denounced the constitution of
our fathers "as a league with death
and a covenant with hell?" The "how"
has passed my comprehension. My
Populism is that of ante-bellum de-
mocracy. The modern Dems are a
counterfeit and fraud. Reps are ditto.
Pops, like the tower of Pisa, leaning in
that direction.—J. R. Drake.
Replying to the above communication
the editor of the Mercury desires to say
in advance that he is a Southern man
to the manner born, as was his father
and his father's father to the fourth
generation. He will say further, that
in addition to being all Southern men,
they were all slave owners; that the
writer (who is the editor) is an ex-con-
federate soldier, who fought the Yan-
kees all through the war of the rebel-
lion, from the first sound to arms fol-
lowing the firing on Fort Sumpter, to
the surrender of Gen. R. E. Lee at
Appomatox courthouse in April, 1865;
that his training, instinct, education
and prejudices were all Southern; that
while time, which heals all deep
wounds of the heart, as well as of the
flesh, has tended 'to molify and to
soften the resentment he once felt for
the people of the North, he still loves
the Southland better than any other
country on earth, and expects to con-
tinue to love it best until he dies. It
is the brightest and sunniest country
on earth, and its people are the most
generous and hospitable, and this
writer is glad to be able to say that the
rancor displayed by our Alabama cor-
respondent is shared by few men in
the South, and especially not by the
"boys in gray," who faced death on
a hundred fields.
He will say further that he stood
within five feet of President Davis
when the latter was installed as presi-
ident of the Confederacy;that the bones
of his brother and uncle lie bleaching on
the battlefields of the South, as do
those of his grandsires on the field of
Monmouth, N. J., where they fought
with Washington to free the colonies
from the hateful rule of King George
and his minions; that he came back to
his home in Alabama, after the close of
the civil war, to find his all swept away
and the country, in common with the
rest of the South, one vast waste place,
made so by the ravages of a four-years
war, with its homes ravaged and tho
youth of the land resting peacefully
in their graves, made holy by the blood
that was shed In defense of the Lost
Cause, unconscious of the sufferings
and the hardships of those they had
left behind. He saw, during recon-
struction, his people made subject to
the rule of a servile and inferior
people who were supported by Federal
bayonets from the North, and in com-
mon with the rest of the people of the
South, resented the rule of the one and
chafed under the lash of the other.
So that if any one Southern man had a
reason to hate the North, this writer is
that man.
But what is the sense of fighting
against fate, mourning over something
that in the nature of things could nev-
er be, and which a majority of the peo-
ple of the South are now glad to know
is settled forever. This writer has
long ago recognized the Inevitable and
put the dark past behind him, its
strifes and its wrongs, to look to the
future to settle them, and he has never
once turned back. Nor will he ever do
so, preferring to let the past, which is
fast becoming but a memory, bury the
past in the endless roll of the years.
But our friend challenges some state-
ments made by the Mercury affecting
the historical standing of the Demo-
cratic party as a reform party.
He says that the Mercury's state-
ment that the democratic party was
for many years prior to the the civil
war the most consistent foe to human
freedom that ever ruled the destinies
of a free people, is false.
Much of the truth of this statement
depends solely on our prejudices and
the view we take of history. The
Mercury never makes charges that
cannot be supported by the record.
Consulting the history covering the
point at issue between the Mercury and
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Park, Milton. Southern Mercury. (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 19, No. 4, Ed. 1 Thursday, January 26, 1899, newspaper, January 26, 1899; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth185787/m1/1/: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .