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violation or disregard of law, but, on the contrary, it may frequently happen, because he has ably and conscientiously done his duty under the law and according to the law he is sworn to uphold.

There can be but one purpose of thus broadening the method of calling Judges to account, and that is to take away from the judiciary that independence and that fearlessness so essential to the important place they are intended to fill in our form of government; to substitute dependence for independence; timidity for courage, with the inevitable result of the loss of that respect our Judges have always enjoyed.

It was to escape such possibilities that our judicial system was adopted, and our Judges were given the great powers they are authorized to exercise.

All the great statesmen of the formative stages of our republic, including not only the men who framed the Constitution, but those like Jefferson, Marshall and Webster, who put our Government into successful operation and developed its powers-the very men we revere most for their wise, unselfish, patriotic devotion to the great problem of American self-government, have recognized in the independence of our judiciary the very keystone of our national arch; and all have admonished us to jealously guard and preserve it.

To turn our backs upon what these men taught and upon our own experience, by adopting a method of calling Judges to account according to the unbridled whim of the requisite number of petitioners, would be to destroy that feature of our system that has made it most useful and inspired us with the greatest confidence that in the fiercest storms that may come it will prove our sheet anchor of safety. Let the Judge remain secure, therefore, in his great office from assault and molestation from any and every cause, except his own personal and official misconduct. And should he commit error in his rulings and decisions, it would be only to make a bad matter worse to appeal therefrom to the people themselves, sitting as a High Court of Review.

A court composed of the voters of the State, not acting under the obligations of an oath, and necessarily in large

part without many essential qualifications, would be a strange and unfit kind of tribunal to determine great constitutional questions, involving human rights, human liberty, human progress, and possibly, yes, surely, in time, involving the preservation also of our institutions.

Instead of seeking new and strange ways in which to get away from ancient landmarks, let us rather take renewed confidence in what our fathers gave us, and strive by improving, strengthening and fortifying, to go forward to an assured destiny, full of glory and honor for the Nation, and full of peace, happiness and prosperity for the State.

"THE BIRTH OF A NATION"

There have been many attempts to re-write and falsify the history of the Civil War and the reconstruction of the States that followed.

It has been charged that the moving picture show entitled "The Birth of a Nation" predicated upon and prompted by the writings of Mr. Thomas Dixon, is another effort of this character.

I have never seen it, and do not, therefore, have any personal knowledge on the subject.

It is claimed, however, that it undertakes to rescue the Ku Klux Klan from the unenviable place assigned them in history as midnight marauders and murderers (see page 284, Volume 1) by portraying them as patriotic citizens banded together for the protection of women and the doing of other things of praiseworthy character.

The pictures are said to be such striking works of art, and, to the uninformed, so entertaining that they unconsciously accept misrepresentations as facts of history.

Whatever the truth may be, the fact is undeniable that the Negro population have been deeply offended, and much bitterness of feeling on their part has been aroused.

It has been further charged by others who have witnessed the exhibition that it amounts to a reflection upon the memory and deeds of every soldier who wore the blue, and of every patriotic statesman who strove to restore the Union and make secure the fruits of the bloody struggle for its preservation. If all that has been charged be true, the exhibition and its purposes are not new, except in form.

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Speaking at Bellefontaine, July 27, 1907, I took occasion to answer an attack of this character that had just been made by Senator Tillman who was then making some speeches in Ohio. This seems an opportune time to reinforce the truth of history by reproducing what I then said about the adoption of

THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH AMENDMENTS.

My remarks on that point were as follows:

I want to speak briefly now in answer to some utterances of Senator Tillman. He has been making a speech in Ohio. It was on the "Race Problem." This is his favorite topic. He is at his best when he talks on that subject, but his best is also his worst.

He is one of the frankest and one of the ablest men the South has ever produced. Every one is fond of him as a man, but his views on this subject are so extreme that but few of his Democratic colleagues in the Senate, if any of them, fully agree with him.

In his latest speech he is quoted as saying:

"If after the war the North had not in its passion and sectional hatred gone far beyond the bounds of reason, decency and righteousness, there would today be no race problem.

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"We resent and resist the doctrine of equality under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.

"You have done wrong. The North has done wrong. It can remedy the feeling by repealing the Fifteenth Amendment and letting the States control the franchise."

All the way through his discussion is in the nature of a protest against social equality. His whole argument proceeds upon the idea that the purpose of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution was to force social equality upon the white people of the South with their Negro neighbors. Nothing could be more wide of the mark. Nobody had any such purpose. Everybody understood then as now that social equality can not be forced upon anybody. There is no social equality among white people except as they may choose. It is the same with black people. Even more true it is as between black and white people.

The purpose of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments was to provide political equality; to put all citizens of the United States, whether white or black, rich or poor, upon the same plane, so far as the political rights of citizenship were concerned.

I shall not stop to debate with Senator Tillman about the doctrine of secession, nor as to whether the people of the South had a right to believe that they were right in advocating that doctrine and in plunging the nation into war to uphold it.

What I want to answer is his charge that in hatred and passion the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution were forced

upon the South, and that in this way the North heedlessly precipitated upon the South the evils they suffered during the reconstruction period. These amendments, if not fully demanded by the war itself, were made necessary by the situation created by the seceding States immediately after the war.

Slavery had been abolished. The doctrine of secession was dead. Our contention was, therefore, established that no State had a right to secede and that the efforts the States had made in the name of secession were failures. The vindication of this claim brought with it, however, some troublesome questions. If the States had not been out of the Union it was not necessary to do anything to restore them to the Union. Acting upon this idea Andrew Johnson misled the seceding States to their great injury and prejudice. Under his direction provisional Legislatures were called and organized. The members of these Legislatures were naturally the leading men in each State, and all these, as a rule, had been in the Confederate army; and whether they had been in the army or not, they had all sympathized with the Confederate cause. They proceeded upon the theory that they were in the Union, and, being in the Union, had a right to send Senators and Members of Congress to represent them at Washington. Accordingly, within a few months after the close of actual hostilities, Alexander H. Stephens, the late Vice President of the Southern Confederacy, appeared at Washington, commissioned by the provisional Legislature of Georgia, to represent that State in the Senate of the United States. If he should be seated a precedent would thereby he established under which Members of the House and Senators from all the seceding States would resume their places in the Congress of the United States, with power to legislate for the whole country, and with power in combination with those who had sympathized with them from the North, to prevent any legislation that would give any guarantee against a resumption of hostilities if that should ever be possible, or against such proceedings as would enable them to nullify by the ballot all we had gained by the bullet.

It was a serious situation. There were many troublesome questions to deal with. One was as to the inviolability of the debt contracted to preserve the Union. Another was as to the repudiation of the debt contracted by the Southern Confederacy to destroy the Union. Another was as to the sacredness of pensions for Union soldiers. Another was as to a definition of citizenship of the United States. Another was as to the basis of representation in the Congress and Electoral College. Another was as to the proper protection of the slaves who had been freed, and as to the claims on account of their emancipation.

These were questions of vital character. A number of them could not be dealt with by mere statutory provisions. A change in the organic law was absolutely essential. After much consideration the Fourteenth Amendment was proposed. This was a very comprehensive document. It embodied the settlement of all these questions. No complaint of unfairness has ever been made as to the settlement it made of any of these questions, except that as to suffrage; and there was no just ground for any complaint as to that. Under all the circumstances it was most generous. This provision was, having direct reference to the

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