Speech #500121423

I hvc come to that age in life when passion has cooled and when judgment asserts its sway. at least to such an extent that I can look back to what has occurred even in this country as upon the other pages of history. 1 know what the people of the South have suffered. I have seen the knife put to them in the shape of extortion and wrong and robbery. and I say that the man who. understanding what they have gone through and what they have dome. does not sympathize with them today in working out the most terrible problem ever submitted to any portion of our race. will have no other argument directed by me to him. When our friends from the Pacific coast speak of the terrible evils of Chinese immigration. let them think of a people proud. prosperous. wealthy. who in the short period of four years saw everything they holi dear stricken down. and not a fbreign race. not the yellow curse from the Mongolian Empire. but their own slaves made their masters politically. and the power of those slaves pinned upon those States by the bayonets of the National Government. Yet under this curse. with all these disadvantages. with their industrial system destroyed. with their social fabric almost ruined. with their civilization at stake. owning nothing but their own manhood and the soil upon which they lived. they have done what Mr. Blaine has so eloquently depicted in the oration from which I have read. Sir. I shall continue to vote against Chinese immigration. I shall vote against it in the interest of my own people. In my judgment. when we quit the domain of treaty in 1882 and went into that of legislation. we settled forever in this country the question whether the Chinese should come here. and. much more. the questionwhether they should ever participate in our political affairs.