Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/224

200 " I have a great respect for the President. He ought not to be lightly or unjustly criticised. But lovers of liberty must enter their earnest protest whenever high officials of the Government exercise powers or commit acts which tend to restrict the rights of the people or unduly interfere with the matters of State concern. " President Roosevelt is a man of fine attainments and of honest convictions. He is young in years, im- pulsive, ambitious ; is a partisan and believes in his party. In his anxiety for its success, he is liable to make mistakes, and, in my judgment, he has committed a most grievous error in forcing to the front an issue which must be deplored by all the conservative men of the country. Warns President of Results " In every country where the race issue has arisen it has always carried in its wake lamentable results and has been attended by evil consequences. I trust his earnestness and impetuosity may be restrained and that he may be prevailed upon to use wiser coun- sel in his treatment of the negro problem. '' From the day a cargo of Africans was landed and sold as slaves, until this hour the burden of the white men of this country has been greater than that borne by any people known to history. It was one of the causes which led to a most gigantic war, which drenched the country in blood, destroying fair homes and impoverishing a gallant people. " Immediately after the close of the war came the adoption of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amend- ments, which enfranchised the blacks for party pur- poses alone, and thus injected into the body politic a people unprepared and unfitted for self-government. erate the social equality or the political domination of the negro race. " The South has passed through scenes of turbu- lence and disorder and rape and riot. By amendments
 * The Anglo-Saxon has never, and will never, tol-