North Carolina's last General Assembly of the nineteenth century will materially affect her welfare during the twentieth century. The Legislature will go into our history as an industrious, economical, able and conscientious body of men. It had a greater task to perform than any of its predecessors. It re-wrote the laws governing the State's institutions, the public schools, elections, railroads and other corporations. Its work is the platform of the Democratic party of 1900.

The distinguishing act of the Legislature, and by far the most important, is the submission to the people of the suffrage amendment to the constitution. The amendment means the elimination of the negro element from the politics of North Carolina. It is the constitutional decree that the Anglo-Saxon shall govern this State. On this platform the Democracy stands.

The Republicans have challenged this amendment as unwise and unjust. The issue has been joined. For thirty years it has been dodged, evaded and beclouded. Now it is stripped of all complication, simple, clear-cut. It is the crucial test between the Southern Republicanism and Southern Democracy. Southern Republicanism now means that a hundred thousand illiterate negroes, inspired by no patriotic emotions, who have never learned the price of the privilege they enjoy, nor the cost of the institutions under which they live, are as much entitled to a voice in the government of this State as a hundred thousand yeomen who have made North Carolina what it is, who realize that this land was purchased and consecrated by the blood of a heroic ancestry, and that our institutions are the sacred legacy of the wisdom and sacrifice of our fathers. Republicanism means negro supremacy in the east, and a constant menace of negro supremacy in the State. Democracy means white supremacy in every portion of North Carolina. On this issue the two parties have grappled for the death struggle. We are beginning the most eventful conflict of our history. The issue was inevitable. It has been forced by the logical events of the determination of a conscientious and courageous people to purify and elevate our politics, to prevent by constitutional enactment the humiliation of our race and perpetuate peace and good government in North Carolina.

The amendment will be misrepresented. Every possible attempt will be made to deceive the people. It will be fought with all the bitterness and malignity and rancor of the renegades who use the negro as a means of public plunder. But it will be defended and sustained with a zeal, an enthusiasm, an heroic determination that will fire the hearts of the patriot sons and daughters of the Old North State from the mountains to the sea.

THE ISSUE.

The Constitution of the State ought to the the declaration of fundamental principles of recognized rights and just government. The Republicans allege that the amendment is unjust because its effect will be to disfranchise all illiterate negroes and no white man, however illiterate he may be, whose ancestor could vote prior to 1867. We contend that this is just and measures up to the prescribed standard.

Education is some evidence of good citizenship and the right of suffrage. The acquisition of property may be some evidence. But the true and highest test of the right to exercise this power is manhood—manhood in the full meaning of that word—the capacity to know the right "and knowing dare maintain." This is the basis of all law and all government. The men whom this amendment will disfranchise do not possess this requisite of the right to vote; the men whom it protects do possess it.

The great power of suffrage was suddenly conferred upon the ignorant and emotional black man. His immediate ancestors were untamed savages in Africa, and he had known nothing but a life of willing servitude. He was least fitted of all the races of mankind to participate in the government of a highly civilized society. And yet being a majority in many sections he found himself unexpectedly possessed of the power to make laws and to govern. He was unprepared for it. He could not use it intelligently. It became a curse to him and to the State. An experience of thirty years has taught them nothing in this respect. All men now realize the folly of the fifteenth amendment of the Constitution of the United States.

NEGRO DOMINATION RUINOUS.

The political ascendancy of the class who control the negro vote in the South has always, without a single exception, been characterized by scandal, corruption, peculation and the State's disgrace. The negro is a kind, docile creature, but he is controlled by his passions and follows the leadership of those who will arouse and appeal to his lowest prejudices. He is a vicious partisan in politics. He looks upon one who quits the party rank as a renegade and a deserter to be ostracised and persecuted. He will know no party distinction except color, and recognizes no controlling principles except the passion of race against race. To make this numerical strength the basis of his political power is ruinous to the State. This power should be taken from him until he can learn to exercise it in the realization of the responsibilities of citizenship.

THE FITNESS OF THE WHITE MAN.

The men whose suffrages are protected by this amendment are the descendants of twenty centuries of self-governing ancestors. Says Menzel, the German historian: "While sages of the East were teaching wisdom beneath the palms; while the merchants of Tyre and Carthage, were weighing their heavy anchors and spreading their purple sails for far seas; while the Greek was making the earth fair by his art, and the Roman founding his colossal empire of force, the Teuton sat yet a child, naked among the forest beasts, and yet unharmed, and in his sport he lorded it over them, for the child was of a royal race and destined to win glory for all time to come." The Anglo-Saxons of North Carolina are the heirs of the qualities that have ruled the earth. Though sometimes unlettered, they are not unworthy to exercise the privilege descended from their ancestors. Many of them are men whose veteran faces have burnt in battlesmoke, whose bodies bear the scars made by steel that bristled on fields of war. It was my privilege to see one of these old men, with white beard and head, sitting in the hall of the House of Representatives at Raleigh while the amendment was under consideration. He understood that it required an educational qualification to vote without any exception. He could neither read nor write. With tears in his eyes de declared that he would be one who would willingly surrender this right that he might help to save his State. Such are the men whose lives have saved and sanctified humanity. Such are the men who work in field and factory as in the Great Task Master's eye. Such are the men who have laid world-wide foundation of the empire of the Anglo-Saxon man. They are the men who were remembered by the servants of the people who wrote this amendment. Not one will ever be disfranchised by the great party of the common people.

THE BENEFITS TO ACCRUE.

The adoption of this amendment means a purer political life in North Carolina. It means that the necessity of the fierce and bitter race struggles of the past will cease; that ruin and degredation will no longer threaten our State and her institutions. Though unwritten it is the established law of this land that white men shall make and administer the laws. Its humane justice has been demonstrated by the bitter experiences of the past. Not to write it in the Constitution would be to shrink from responsibility, to invite calamity, to encourage disrespect for law, and demoralization of the manhood of our State, to transmit to posterity the settlement of the race question in a more aggravated form. Who in North Carolina does not believe in white supremacy? Then how shall it be established, if not by constitutional amendment? That it will be is as inevitable as the decree of Him who built the pillars of the world.

The Democratic party of North Carolina is descended from the loins of the men of King's Mountain and Guilford Court House. The right of her patriot sons is the unconquerable spirit of the men who sleep in the battle-scarred bosom of old Virginia. The men of '65 and their "lineal descendants" are worthy of the ancestors of '76, and they will preserve from the hand of the despoiler the institutions of the fathers and the State of their inheritance. There are some honest men who will oppose this amendment. Let them oppose. The hosts of the people have heard the clarion call to duty. The enlightened conscience of North Carolina will sustain it and write it into the organic law of the State.