MR. CRAIG'S SPEECH.

This is a memorable day in North Carolina. It will be remembered not only on account of the presence of the distinguished gentlemen who have addressed you, this great and happy throng of people, but specially because it is the beginning of the movement among the people to rewrite the Constitution of North Carolina on a most significant question. This meeting is not a political one. We have met in no partisan spirit, but come as citizens of one common glorious old commonwealth, as heirs to one sacred priceless heritage, as members of the same great family of the human race.

We of the South are a peculiar people—peculiar not on account of race, for the blood of the puritan and the cavalier flow together in the veins of the American citizen, peculiar not on account of sectional prejudices, for the South is loyal to the Union. Every monument is erected to perpetuate the memory of the boys who died for Dixie is built in love and loyalty to the whole Union. When Lee surrendered at Appomattox we bade farewell forever to the lost cause and determined that the republic should have no more patriotic and devoted sons than those who live south of the Mason and Dixon line. We are a peculiar people because we have for solution greatest problem that ever taxed the wisdom and justice and patriotism of any section. It is the race problem. It has no precedent for solution in the history of the world. Two distinct races have never been existing on the same soil at the same time on terms of peace and equality. By reason of kinship and similarity they have become amalgamated and racial distinctions obliterated as was he case with the Saxons and Normans in England, or else there has existed between the two an interminable internicene struggle, or else one race has acknowledged the superiority of the other submitting itself to the laws and government of the stronger.

On this Southern soil we have two races nearly equal in number, and as unlike as it is possible for different branches of the human family to be. With us amalgamation is impossible. It would mean the degradation of of both races. The Almighty has erected an impassable barrier between the two. Centuries from today there will visit in the Southern States two people as different from each other as white from black, as the Caucasian is from the African.

The ancestors of these black people were caught in their native jungle and brought here without their consent. In accordance with the inevitable law the sins of our fathers are visited upon us and our children. Let it be understood that the Southern people have no black man. They will forever remember his loyalty and devotion as a slave. When the men of the South followed Lee and Jackson on the battle fields of Virginia their defenceless homes on the plantations of the South were left in charge of the slaves, whose liberties were staked on the event of the conflict. One hundred torches applied by the slaves to the homes of the South would have disbanded all of the armies of the Confederacy, but not one was lit. In faithful devotion the black man followed his master to the field of battle; when the smoke was cleared away he searched his body among the slain, mourned over his grave, and carried the sad news home to "missis". Then at last he raised up his black trembling hands that the shackles might be struck off and had the consolation to know that he never struck a dastardly blow for his freedom. Rascals may mislead him. The vile and unscrupulous may appeal to his prejudice arouse his passion, but the Southern people and the people of North Carolina are determined that justice shall be done to this weak and simple-minded people. But justice and maudlin sentimentality will control the action of the Southern people. If we approach the solution of this question in a spirit of human sympathy and broad statesmanship and are let alone by foolish and vicious intermeddlers, the problem will be solved to the best interests of all the people white and black.

Thirty years of experience has demonstrated that the negro cannot exercise the elective franchise. This great power was given to him in the great passion engendered by war. It was conferred upon him against the judgment of the wisdom of the world. The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is admitted by the wise and patriotic citizens of all sections to be a lamentable failure. Mr. Blaine, the greatest statemen of the Republican party since Abraham Lincoln, said that the Republican party never would have conferred this right upon the negro, and never intended to do so, except for the stubborn attitude of the people of the South. The negro was not prepared for the exercises of this right. He had never known anything except the life of willing servitude. By the power of the bayonet he became a ruler. He went from the cotton fields to the State capital and within twelve months from the time when he was a slave he was dictating laws for twelve commonwealths. Ruin and the country's disgrace was the necessary consequence. This great power in the hands of the negro was manipulated by the shrewd, unscrupulous, vile politicians who were willing to excite his passions against this old mates that they might plunder the State. After thirty years' experience the negro is as unfit to govern as he was in 1867. He has learned nothing. The new generation seem to be worse than the old.

The proposed amendment to the Constitution disfranchises the negro. It will rob him of his power in North Carolina. We are told by some of the opponents of the amendment that it will also disfranchise a large number of white people. It will not disfranchise a single white man unless that man swears that he is a negro, or the lineal descendent of the negro. This is not unjust to the negro. It would be unjust to the white man to take from him this great right that he has inherited from his remotest ancestors, and which he has always exercised wisely and well. The Barons who made King John sign the great charter of English liberty could neither read or write. Manhood is the test and the highest test of the right to vote. The lineal descendants of the men of 1776 and of 1865 pass that qualification, and you cannot take it from them, if you would. If in North Carolina there were ten negros to one white man they could not take it from them, for above the laws of man stand the laws of God, and not all the Federal bayonets, and not all the embattled armies of the world can make the black man the ruler of the white man. North Carolina belongs to white men. This great State, with her majestic mountains, her wide expanse of fertile fields, her exhaustless resources, is his. It was bought by the blood of his fathers, and he and his descendants will make and administer her laws. The Anglo-Saxon always was and always will be his own ruler. It is the race that came forth from the impenetrable forests of Germany to conquer, and civilize and rule the earth. They were unconquered by the legions of Caesar. It was this blood that coursed in the veins of Cromwell and the soldiers of the Covenant when they drove in headlong route the armies of the aliens. It was the blood that conquered Napoleon, that transformed the wilderness of the West into the greatest republic of all time.

This amendment is not in the interests of the Democratic party. The South is Democratic in spite of the negro vote. She was Democratic in the darkest day of her adversity and desolation. When the great class of ignorance was led by scallawags and protected by Federal bayonets. Her white people will always move in solid phalanx when threatened to ruin, destruction and humiliation by the rule of an ignorant and irresponsible people. We wish to remove from our State this great danger that has hovered over it ever since the war. We wish that peace may exist between the two races in contentment together. We desire that our politics will be elevated and purified; that the men of the South may consider the great economic and industrial problem upon which depends our future prosperity and happiness. This is the issue that may be settled and settled right, for it will be settled by the patriotism, by the courage of the men who love North Carolina.