Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/225

Rh to State Constitutions and by legislation, the whites have secured control, for the time being, of their own local governments, and the colored race is no longer a political factor in any State south of the Potomac. " For more than thirty years this question has aroused sectional feeling and divided parties. It has threatened the peace of the States, put in jeopardy homes, and paralyzed industrial efforts. All thought- ful men realize that this canker upon the body of politic must be eliminated and the supremacy of white government assured. " In 1896 William McKinley was elected President of the United States. During his service in Con- gress he had favored the most drastic legislation pro- posed by his party in their efforts to enforce the Con- stitutional provisions. As President of the United States he realized the responsibilities of his exalted position. " He began his term when the country was emerg- ing from the throes of a great commercial panic. All the business interests of the North were depressed — the wheels of industry scarcely revolving. The South was struggling with its negro problem; its fields but half cultivated; its manufactures at the lowest ebb; its mines and forests undeveloped. " These conditions were principally due to the great pall that hung over that section and made develop- ment and progress impossible. Mr. McKinley's Attitude " While President McKinley kept his party obliga- tions as fully as any man, he ceased making partisan war upon the people of the South. That people re- moved, at least temporarily, the incubus that depressed them. "The action of the States was sustained by the courts and confidence was restored. The old and young men of the South took on new life. " Development and progress resulted both North and South, until the stream of prosperity and enter-