Very soon after the feast was ended, Elliott saw John Holmes and a party of men coming toward him.
To a casual reader of the human countenance, it would be evident at a first glance that Holmes was a man of no small worldly knowledge, and as he now appeared with his companions one could discern that this superiority was recognized by them and that he held a certain position of authority, in fact that he was a man accustomed to rule rather than be ruled.
As he approached Elliott, he addressed him with a pleased smile, saying: “I am glad to see you here, Mr. Harding. Maybe you can help us out of a difficulty.”
“In what way?” asked Elliott, surprised.
“My political opponent was to have been here and we were to briefly address the people this afternoon, but, so far, he has failed to put in an appearance. The toiling folk have come here to-day, even laying aside important work in some instances, to hear a ‘speaking,’ and unless they hear some sort of an address (they are not particular about the subject) it will be hard to bring them together again when we need them more.
“I, as a representative of the committee, request you to lend us a helping hand. It is generally desired that you be the orator upon this occasion.”
“What! address this gathering offhand and wholly unprepared? It would blight my prospects forever with them,” laughed Elliott.
“On the other hand, it would give you an opportunity for a wider acquaintance and perhaps elect you to the first office to which you may yet aspire. Come! I will take no excuse,” persisted Holmes, while his companions seconded his insistence.
After considerable pressing, Elliott was escorted to the platform, from which the musicians had moved. Without delay Holmes stepped to the front and in a loud, clear voice which hushed the crowd, said:
“Ladies and gentlemen, I have the honor of introducing Mr. Elliott Harding, who will speak in place of Mr. Feland, that gentleman, for some reason or other, having failed to put in an appearance.”
Amid a storm of cheers, Elliott arose, straightening his eloquent shoulders as he came forward. His blonde face was full of eager life when he began.
“Ladies and gentlemen: The unexpected compliment paid me by your committee has given me the pleasure of addressing you to-day. I accept the invitation the more gladly inasmuch as it gives me the opportunity of telling you that my heart, linked to the South by birth, has retained its old love in spite of absence and distance, and brings me back to my own place with a fonder and, if possible, a greater and nobler pride in this Southland of yours and mine. And, it is a land to be proud of. More magnificent a country God has never made. It has seen the fierce harrowing of war. Gazing through the past years my fancy sees the ruin that has confronted the home-coming soldier—ashes instead of homes, burnt stubble instead of fences, the slaves on whose labor he had long depended for the cultivation of his fertile fields, with their bonds cast off, meeting him as freemen. Without money, provisions or even the ordinary implements of husbandry, he at once began the toilsome task of repairing his fallen fortunes. Having converted his sword into a plowshare, his spear into a pruning hook, he lost no time, but manfully set to work to restore his lost estate, and bring a measure of comfort to the dear ones deprived of their former luxuries.
“So it is to the soldier of the ‘Lost Cause’ that all honor and praise must be given for the present prosperity of the land. And it becomes us as heirs of his sacrifice and of the fruits of his toil, to lend our every effort to the full garnering of the harvest.
“As the giant West has sprung up from the sap of the East, so must the South rise up by strength drawn from the soil of the North. What the South needs to-day more than any other one thing is an influx of intelligent laborers from the North. It needs its sturdy folk of industrious habit, economy and indomitable energy; it needs a more profitable system of agriculture. Accustomed as that people is to economy, to frugality and to forcing existence out of an unwilling soil, if only they could be induced to come here in sufficient numbers, the country would soon blossom into mellow prosperity. And, my friends, I want to see them coming—coming with their capital to aid us in developing the inexhaustible mineral resources of our mines, the timber of our forests, to build our mills and rear our infant manufactures to the full stature of lusty manhood. Our future with all its limitless possibilities—this future which is to warm the great breast of the business world toward us, this future which shall shower upon us the fullness of earth—is all with you.
“Therefore, with such a vista of promise opening before our gaze, ill would it become us to fail in our duty toward ourselves, toward our country and toward Him who giveth all. Thus it befits us to lend every effort to the furtherance of this, our future salvation. To those upon whose coming so much depends, every inducement must be offered. And be it remembered that capital seeks its home in sections wherein life and prosperity enjoy the greatest security under the law. This is a conclusion founded on the great law of caution, upon which intelligent capital is planted and reared. It becomes necessary, then, to ask ourselves seriously, ‘Are we making every effort to solidify peace and order by the protection of life and the supreme establishment of law?’
“I need not answer this question. Circumstances have done so for me. The electric wire is still hot from flashing to the furtherest corner of our Nation, in all its revolting details, news of the recent awful crime in our sister state.
“I am well aware that in touching upon this point I am wounding the sensibilities of a people who have been shadowed by personal injury and embittered by a natural race prejudice; but I feel that I can speak the more boldly because I touch the matter not as an alien whose sympathies are foreign and whose theories are theoretical chimeras, but as a southerner—one whose interest is the stronger because he is a southerner. My audience may refuse to grant the justice of my argument, but it must admit the truth of the situation I outline. Whichever way we turn the tremendous problem of the lynching evil stares us in the face. It baits us, it defies us, it shames us.
“Think of it! More than one thousand human lives forfeited to Judge Lynch form the South’s record for the past ten years. What a horrible record! It seems almost incredible that such lawlessness can exist in communities supposed to be civilized. Would to God it were but an evil dream and that I could to-day assure the world that this terrible condition is but the unfounded imagining of a nightmared mind.
“Lynching is a peculiarly revolting form of murder, and to tolerate it is to pave the way for anarchy and barbarism. It cannot be truthfully denied that one of the most potent factors militating against the progress of this country is this frequent resort to illegal execution, and before we can realize the full benefits of your natural inheritance, your laws—our laws—must be impartially enforced, property must be protected, and life sacredly guarded by rigid legal enforcement, backed by an elevated public conception of duty.
“It is no greater crime for one man to seize a brother man and take his life than it is for a lawless multitude to do the same act. The first, if there be any difference, is less criminal than the latter for it, at least often has the merit of individual courage and the plea for revenge on the ground of personal injury. But when a man is deprived of his liberty by incarceration in the jail and thus shorn of his power of self protection, it is the acme of dishonor and cowardice to wrest him from the grasp of the law and deprive him of his life upon evidence that possibly might not convict him before a jury.
“I do not wish to be understood as saying that brave and good men do not sometimes, under strong excitement, participate in this outrage against human rights and organized society, for it is a fact that such rebellions are not infrequently led by the most prominent citizens, and, from this very fact, it is the more to be deplored.
“My friends, have you never thought to what this practice may lead? Has the frequency of mob violence no alarming indications for you? Directed, as it more often is, against our negro population, instead of making better citizens of the depraved and deterring them from crime, it has a tendency to cultivate a race prejudice and stir up the worst of human passions. It is inculcating a disregard of law because it ignores that greatest principle of freedom—that every man is to be considered innocent until proven to be guilty by competent testimony.
“Judge Lynch is the enemy of law and strikes at the very foundation of order and civil government. His rule is causing large classes to feel that the law of the land affords them no protection. The courts furnish an adequate remedy for every wrong. One legal death on the scaffold has a more salutary effect than a score of mob executions. The former teaches a proper dread of offended law, leaves no unhealing wounds in the hearts of the living, stirs up no revengeful impulses, creates no feuds and causes no retaliatory murders. What a field of home mission stretches before us! We owe it to the South to remove this blot on our good name. Let us hasten the day when Judge Lynch shall be spoken of with a shudder, as a hideous memory.
“This pitiful people, our former slaves, if instructed by intelligent ministers and teachers, might be delivered from the cramped mind, freed from the brutalized spirit which causes these crimes among us. They are naturally a religious people and this principle, which seems to be strong within them, under the guidance of an earnest enlightened ministry, might prove to be the key to the race problem find open up a social and political reformation, unequalled in modern times.
“Already the negro race is doing much for its own advancement and good. To-day there are thirty-five thousand negro teachers in the elementary schools of the South. Six hundred ministers of the gospel have been educated in their own theological halls. They own and edit more than two hundred newspapers. They have equipped and maintain more than three hundred lawyers and four hundred doctors and have accumulated property which is estimated at more than two hundred and fifty millions. I note this fact with pleasure. It makes them better citizens by holding a stake in their community. Let us show our appreciation of what they have already done by helping them to do more.”