Onslow-Newhanover County NcArchives News.....THE LIFE AND THE SERVICE OF DAN. RUSSELL October 30, 1896 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/nc/ncfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Bill Gibson bgibson@uncfsu.edu June 21, 2006, 12:15 pm The News And Observer, Raleigh, NC October 30, 1896 THE LIFE AND THE SERVICE OF DAN. RUSSELL Wilmington, N. C., Oct. 29. (From a special staff correspondent) And now what of Russell? Daniel L. Russell is as bad as his face. For one to speak of him more strongly would seem brutal. But one has only to hear what those who know him best say of him here and to read the records of the man to ascertain that his face is no misfit. Perhaps, then, for those who have seen that face, this were enough. What sculptor-touch lies in the fingers of the heart. How those fingers toil night and day in life-stress and in dream fashioning after their own tendency the outward semblance of a man. How the heart-hand deftly plays along the cheek and chin of noble men leaving the captivating curve of courage! How that quality of calmness softens the chamber of the eye in which blends that unutterable mingling which go to make up decision and self-control! How with almost invisible threads of feeling that play like spirit-lines about the lips, some strange tracery wires that story which all the world may read: “I love my fellow-man.” And how upon a face fashioned by a heart at war the lines get hard, and harder and twist themselves until the personality of the man gets to have a kind of a barbed-wire fence around it! And how in some faces harmful thought swells and bedevils the eye until the cold and cruel white of an ox side-glance supplants the tenderer tints of kind regard. And with what harmony is attuned the fat, cold frog, croaking chuckle, that chuckle of big and short and thick and grinding teeth which undertones a spirit greedy for giving pain. How nature angrily reddens and puffs the jowls and ropily creases the back-neck, and whips bleak, winter flaws about the corners of the long hard upper lip of men who are hated and who hate. Does such a face belong to the Republican candidate for the next governorship of North Carolina? No, I have said that his face is as bad as the man, and so I shall not attempt to describe the face of Daniel L. Russell. But during a short stay in this city, I have had some opportunity of finding out in what esteem Daniel L. Russell is held by those among whom he has spent his life. These people are good people, are kind, pursuing the ways of peace and home and welcome, and yet Daniel L. Russell stands hated of them. Is it because he is a Republican? Can’t a man be a Republican in North Carolina, and yet be loved of men? Let the man, Oliver H. Dockery, stand for an answer. No, there is something else. Can these brave, gentle people be all wrong? Daniel L. Russell had the hand of all open to him when he stepped out into life, but that hand was dropped almost at the start, and since then, it has been raised against his people. I make no reckless charge here: this be but the unfolding of the story told by his people. HIS CAREER IN WAR. With birth and wealth and brains and culture, in the sixties, he started forth—started forth to battle. For the bell of war had sounded. And he had a company fitted out to order, and he was the man who was to lead it to “victory or death.” But let his comrade tell of the hero. Mr. D. McCallum writes June 10th, 1896, from Westville, Mississippi, as follows: “D.L. Russell was first Lieutenant in Capt. Taylor’s company during the late Confederate war, and when the 30th North Carolina regiment was organized, Capt. Taylor being elected major, Lieutenant Russell was promoted to the captaincy of his company. Capt. Russell’s company as well the ‘Scotch Greys’ (of which I was a member) were stationed at Fort Caswell during the greater part of the war. At that time, Russell was known and recognized as vicious, violent and vindictive. ‘Can the leopard change his spots or the Ethiopian his skin?’ It is said not. When he got into that difficulty with an enrolling officer in Wilmington which cost him his commission, hurrying to Smithville to secure an appointment by the county authorities to keep out of the service is a matter of history. When it was known that Capt. Russell was to be officer of the day, not one of the force wished he was off. There lives to-day in Robeson county as honored a citizen as the State possesses, who could a ‘tale unfold’ if he would. Arouse the manhood of every old Confederate veteran to vote the straight Democratic ticket.” A BLOW IN THE BACK But let the people get closer to this part of Russell’s career. Following disobedience of orders he found himself at odds with Col. Wm. M. Swann, who was then the enrolling officer at Wilmington. Col. Swann is dead but his brother, James G. Swann, lives and from him to me comes confirmation of the story of his trouble with Col. Swann. After sharp words, Col. Swann had turned about and was at his desk with his back to Russell. While his back was turned, Russell, without giving him a chance to defend himself struck him with a stick from the rear thus hoarding for the backs of his friends the blows that he might have been dealing in the face of his foes. Does he deny this? Then there are scores of good men and true in this city who will set him right in the story. It was turbulence from the start. Then came the struggle to get from President Jefferson Davis clemency. It turned out in later years, as will appear, to be clemency ill placed. Only through the eminent influence of Mr. Geo. Davis, of Wilmington, who was Attorney General in Mr. Davis’s cabinet, did the young man escape severe punishment, being permitted to resign and then he set to work to keeping out of the army going so far as to get elected to the legislature before he was twenty one in order to escape enrollment. Was he grateful? Hear him in his speech of 1866 as one of the old citizens who heard him tells me “abusing Mr. Jefferson Davis like a pickpocket.” His defection for the Confederate cause seems to have been well understood by one Union general at least. For when a noble and beautiful Southern woman came to Francis P. Blair at Maxton to ask protection against the Federal soldiers who were breaking up her furniture and stealing her jewels, General Blair replied: “No d—d rebel woman need ask me for protection.” Russell was in hearing distance when this remark was made: he too, was under guard; but there were a few confidential words and he went back free, while the mother with her children wept under the villianous insults that had been heaped upon her by General Blair. But I do not intend to be unfair: to the credit of Russell, there seemed to have been some spark left: for but for his “infloonce” the poor woman would have been subjected to greater indignity than that which she suffered. For he was allowed the privilege of escorting her back to her devastated home. He “stood in” with Blair, and Blair knew his friends. HIS “LOVE” FOR THE NEGRO. Raised on a plantation where there were more slaves probably than on any plantation in Brunswick county, he knew the negro well, his sufferings as a slave, and he should have known the sufferings of the slaves around him. He has spoken with venomous scorn of white men who sold negro babies. Did he ever see any negro babies sold from the plantation of his boyhood? Did he know of any of the slaves of his plantation fleeing from the cruel lash of the overseer? If not, his neighbor across the creek on the next plantation knew of them. An eye-witness tells me the story of how the slaves would come from the Russell plantation and beg to be harbored, and of how they were unmercifully scourged on their return. Where then was this heroic love for the negro which seems to have blossomed out so fruitfully after the negro became available toward his getting some political job. How his soul pours out the lava of its love now for the poor negro. How he suffers as a “martyr” because, forsooth, of his “broad sympathy for the human race” –specially the negro race. But the heroic within him seems never to have been discovered until the negroes were free with ballots in their hands. But it was different now. ADVOCATES SOCIAL EQUALITY. The negro had a vote and Russell had a twenty dollar law license, and he was made a Judge of the Superior Court all for love of the negro. Hear him when on the bench he gave way to his feelings in the opera house decision. He had been on the bench since 1868 (he was then 24), and the decision was in 1873, in October of 8173. At that time, certain negroes having determined to sit with the white people in the opera house in this city, procured tickets by some means and attempted to gain admission by force. The negroes were arrested and legal proceedings instituted against them by the lessee of the opera house. Judge Russell heard the case and gave his opinion in writing. In that opinion he declared that the negroes had committed a breach of the peace, subversive of all public order and safety, and that, too, even if they had undisputed right to admission to that portion of the opera house to which they attempted to go, for the reason that no one is allowed to enforce a mere civil right by a resort to violence, and, therefore, in every possible view of the case, they were guilty of a violation of the law. OPERA HOUSE DECISION. But here, notwithstanding the above, is the decision. Said Judge Russell: “Enough appeared in the examination of these cases to show that in truth there was a controversy between these parties as to the right of the defendants, who are men of color, to accommodations and privileges in this theatre equal to those enjoyed by other persons. Assuming that the house is a place of entertainment for the general public, that it is licensed by the laws of the Sate, and that there is nothing in its objects or character which relieves it from those legal rules which apply to the government of all institutions in which the public has an interest, and which are established, or permitted, for the public good—AS TO ALL OF WHICH THERE WAS NO EVIDENCE, AND HENCE I EXPRESS NO OPINION—ASSUMING that this is the fact, I apprehend that the right of these defendants to precisely the same accommodations and the same treatment as other persons will not be questioned. The pretension that any person or class may be prevented from resorting to a public place whose doors are open to all but them, and denied to them only on account of color, or race will not be tolerated by any court honestly and sincerely desirous of upholding the Constitution and the laws according to their true intent and meaning. It may be that the manager of the theatre has the right to separate different classes of persons whose close association is not agreeable to each other, always remembering that he must not discriminate against any, but that the accommodations given, the comfort, THE STYLE, convenience and all considerations for which the parties pay their money shall be the same as to all, or so nearly so as to furnish no substantial cause of complaint by any. this opens a wide field of argument into which I have time to enter.” But he had time to enter into a construction of the Civil Rights Act, uncalled for and gratuitous, and as to which he assumes everything, admitting there was no evidence on the point covered by him and therefore speaking from the very overflow of his venom. It was during these days that he was secretly renominated for the judgeship. He stood against Judge McKoy, but the people were spared. Here was a hero indeed, a hero after the fact, apart from the companionship of souls that were heroic in the sense of those of Garrison, and Curtin, Whittier and Phillips. Here was one trying to get plush seats and “style” in the opera houses for negroes. Had he ever soothed the bleeding back of a slave with balm? Had he ever felt a warm tear nestle about his cheek for the slave-mother who was wrenched on the block from the man of her brood and of her bosom? Where were his balm and tears then? Had he never seen these things? His neighbors had heard the stories of scourge and knout from the slaves of the plantation of his youth and childhood. Oh, no: it was in October getting on toward election for another term on the bench, and he perforce, must go out of his way now to tell how opera-house seats for negroes should be upholstered, and the “style” in which they should be entertained. His vaseline came only with votes not with the agony of the cry of the voteless slave. I want to show that this “love” of this man for the negro was a mock- love, and I shall attempt the showing. A GREENBACK CONGRESSMAN. Flung out now into the withering shimmer of his people’s scorn let’s follow the journey of the man’s soul. I shall not dwell at all on his stand for Congress when he was elected as a green-backer. It matters not that he is now villifying free silver, as on a parity with free riot, and pouring out filthy epithets throughout the State now about the hatred of the white people to the negro. Of course, he was a green-backer, when he thought an office was in sight. He was the member from North Carolina of the Congressional Campaign Committee in 1879 of the Greenback party. And now he goes talking of gold. Is he answering his arguments of other days? But take him when he had been abandoned utterly and in a spirit of bitterness refused the nomination for Supreme court judgeship in 1888. J. C. L. Harris, of Raleigh, was then chairman of the Republican State committee, and it was in his letter to Harris declining the nomination from which I quote: “These Southern men,” he writes, “with national sentiments (he had ‘national’sentiments, now after he had been kicked out of the army, and the slaves had been set free, but not before) are geographically misplaced. Pearce and Buchanan were Northern men with Southern principles. Their condition was pitiful. Ours is worse. We are Southern men with Northern principles. But they and their comrades who, living in the North, stood for the South, well earned the mead of praise which belongs to those who sacrifice themselves for the sake of their convictions. So we who speak for national sovereignty and human rights on Southern soil and brave (Bravo Soldier Dan!) the obloquy which results, may at least claim the respect which is due to candor, courage and sincerity. NEGROES LARGELY SAVAGES. “Fourth. While I should say much on the line above indicated, I would also be compelled to tell the truth on our own party in the South (that is if he went North to speak.) For instance, I would rise to remark that while as a rule the South does not treat its colored people with the liberality and justice they receive in the North, there is yet defence for the deep and dire determination of the Southern white man to never submit to negro rule. The negroes of the South are largely savages. We, with Northern aid and sanction kidnapped them, enslaved them, and by most monstrous wrong degraded them so that they are no more fit to govern than are their brethren in African swamps or so many Mongolians dumped down in pagan Asia.” Having thus delivered himself touching the “savages” that he thought should have so much “style” in opera-houses (but that was years before when he was out for a job), he turns his tongue loose upon his own color. The tumultuous hell that must have been tossing in the hot crater of the man’s heart! BEFOULS HIS OWN NEST. “I have been invited,” he says in the same letter, “to speak in some of the Northern States during this campaign (1888). Should I do so, it would embarrass the ticket were I on it, for I should tell the North that neither this nor any other Southern State will go Republican, but that the South is solid—solid for State sovereignty; solid for a strict construction of the Federal Constitution; solid for striking down the Constitution as Washington and Hamilton and Adams made it and as Marshall and Story construed it, and for putting in its place a Constitution according to Calhoun and Jeff Davis; solid for writing it in the future and permanent history of this country that in the civil war the South fought for the Constitution and the North against it; solid for nullifying the Constitution by holding representation in Congress and the electoral college against its express mandates; solid for destroying Northern industries and development, but for which the South would have obtained the victory in 1865 instead of in 1884; solid for maintaining ignorance among the masses white and black, so that the cultivated few may govern the servile many.” That is Daniel L. Russell’s indictment, drawn by his own hand and hart against the people of whom he would now be Governor. But in a letter to a friend written by Russell June 18, 1896, he says as to the language quoted above as to the negroes: “As to bemeaning the negroes, all of that is false and baseless. As to the ‘savage’ letter, IT WAS AN EXPRESSION CONTAINING A TRUTH WHICH NO INTELLIGENT PERSON WILL DENY, and was accompanied with expressions of friendship for that race. They have simply taken a part of its context and used it for purposes of deception.” In answer to this, the extracts given above are given in full, and not parts of sentences. As to the context, Russell said later that he did not believe the negroes of North Carolina would ever rule the whites; he was applying his his language to South Carolina, Mississippi and other States. He may say all this—let him have justice—but I as one, do not believe that such a quibble is the truth. A COLORED ALDERMAN’S OPINION. In order to get at the interpretation put by the Wilmington negroes upon his language in the above letter, I called to see J. O. Nixon, a prominent negro, and, by the bye, one of Wilmington’s alderman. Nixon is intelligent and earnest, a good talker and educated. I found him in his neat little home and had quite a talk with him. “I do not hesitate to say,” said Nixon, “that Russell is a very bitter enemy to negro citizenship. In 1888 he was nominated by the Republican party for one of the Judges, which nomination he declined, and in doing so, he wrote a letter which was published to the world from which I quote to you the following: ‘The negroes of the South are largely savages, and are no more fit to rule than are their brethren in African swamps, or so many Mongolians dumped down in pagan Asia. “He used the word ‘rule’ in the sentence,” continued Nixon, “but that is not what he meant. What he meant was that the negroes of the South are not fit to vote, and so on. But if we admit that he meant what the word implies, we say in effect that he was too ignorant to understand the matter he had taken in hand, but he is not—he is an educated man, and, therefore, knew the meaning of his words.” “I confess that I am at a loss to find upon what principle of equity any man living can believe that he should be elected Governor of North Carolina, because in every way you turn the matter in your mind, he is not entitled to an election. He was nominated in 1888, and he did like the children of Ephraim whose history is handed down to us in everlasting contempt showing them to have been cowards. The bible says of them, ‘that they were harnessed and, carrying bows, turned themselves back in the day of battle.’ So it was with this candidate, he turned back in the day of battle. He has declared against every Republican State ticket for a number of years, saying that the State would go Democratic, without efforts on his part to prevent it. He is, therefore, a coward, and flees before the enemy. I say in all candor that he is not entitled to the Republican nomination. Last year, he went to Washington and declared against Fusionists, telling a reporter that they would lose the State by 40,000 majority. He is not, therefore, entitled to a nomination at their hands. (Continued on 3rd page.) LIFE OF DAN RUSSELL (Continued from 2nd page.) “Why did he write letters to the Republican papers of the North last year, telling them that this is an opportune time in which to disfranchise the negro? It was because he knew that the Republican party had carried the requisite number of States, which enabled it to propose an amendment to the Federal Constitution eliminating the negro vote, and he wanted the party to do that. This is hard, but it is the cold fact as to those letters. The question is, are the negroes ready for that? “THEN TOO HE IS BY NATURE VINDICTIVE AND INTOLERANT. I WISH I HAD THE VOICE OF AN ARCHANGEL, I WOULD SHAKE THE VERY GROUND UPON WHICH EVERY NEGRO STANDS THROUGHOUT THE LENGTH AND BREADTH OF NORTH CAROLINA, SAYING TO HIM ‘PAUSE BEFORE YOU LEAP, OR YOU WILL BE DASHED TO PIECES UPON THE ROCK OF DISFRANCHISMENT.’” A COLORED EDITOR’S ESTIMATE. There is another negro who edits the Wilmington Sentinel who tells the following story: “I went around to see him (before his nomination.) After getting me in his house, he had this to say: I wan nothing more to do with any such damned cattle as you. You are a damned traitor. You go to hell. You are too damned independent a negro for me.’ These are the words which were spoken by Judge Daniel L. Russell in his own house to me. If a man does not respect his own house, he is a poor speciment for Governor, and if he has no more Christianity in him than to be cursing out men for no reason in the world, then he is not fit to be Governor anyhow. The negro race has not an enemy greater than this man. He is spiteful, revengeful, prejudiced and minus of every quality which a Governor should possess.” Then the editor of the Sentinel told of how he had indicted a poor, old crippled colored man for larceny for no greater crime than “milking the Judge’s cows.” “It was during this trial,” said the editor, “ that he used these words ’all negroes are natural born thieves. They will steal six days in the week and go to church on Sunday and shout and pray it off,” and now such a character wants to be elected Governor at he hands of the very people whom he has cursed and abused on so many occasions.” These opinions are noted in order to show that the people of all classes and conditions should pause long before casting a ballot for a man who is thus hated most by those who know him best, by both white and colored. CALLED NEGROES THIEVES. During his serpentine “canvass” around the State during which, he has left a trail of slime, he has, of course, denied all these saying against the negroes, about the “savages” and the “thieves,” but his denials don’t go up against the facts. Just to get at the perfect truth, I took occasion to find out the real facts as to his calling negroes thieves, etc., and I will give the true story. About six or eight years ago Russell had three negroes, Edmund Green and two others, tried for alleged stealing of his own cattle. It, of course, depends upon whose oxen were gored. He himself assisted in the prosecution before the late Judge Shipp, had an all white jury, and the negroes were sent to the penitentiary. They were defended by Messrs. Marsden Bellamy and John D. Bellamy, of this city. Mr. John Bellamy was kind enough to dictate to me what Russell did say about the negroes on that occasion. The exact words were taken down by him at the time, and here is what he said verbatim: “GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY, YOU KNOW IT IS THE NATURE OF THE NEGRO TO STEAL; THEY WILL STEAL ALL THE WEEK AND SHOUT IT OFF ON SUNDAY. They have no distinctions in society among them. If one is sent to the penitentiary, as soon as he gets out, he comes back, and is received by them with open arms and treated like a martyr or an uncrowned hero. And these night orgies that they have are nothing but the reverberations of pagan Africa. If one of them steals or commits any diabolical crime, they do not condemn it, but treat him as though he were persecuted.” “Then,” said Mr. Bellamy, turning around and looking at me, “Judge Russell noticed that I was taking notes, on which he remarked, and added: ‘I don’t know that they ought to be blamed for that; for they are just trying to get back some of that labor out of which we have robbed them for 200 years.’” So much to get history straight as to this, as well as to show how in one breath, this man gives forth brimstone for the blacks, and then contemptible denunciation of the whites who were involved in an institution from which he was a greater beneficiary, perhaps, than nay other young man in his county of Brunswick. RUSSELL TOOK TO HIS HEELS. But this was not the only tilt he had with Mr. Bellamy in court. This gentleman tells of how Russell tried to strike him once in court with a stick and a general row ensued, wherein Russell fell down under a crowd and crawling out on his belly, fled from the court-room and down the street, even leaving his hat in the court-room. This incident is produced here to show the brawling nature of the man as well as to recall the courage which characterized him when he struck Col. Swann in the back with a stick at the time he was bounced from the army. Can a man govern a State who can’t govern himself? HIS VILLIANY IN SAMPSON. But there is another chapter showing the courage of this man whom Jefferson Davis pardoned, showing his vicious tyranny at the same time. The people of Sampson remember it. They remember when he dragged up a dozen or more of their reputable citizens on a charge of Ku Kluxism. Everyone, be it said, was proved innocent and acquitted, but that cuts no ice. The people were enraged. He issued bench-warrants for them from Clinton after he had gotten to Warsaw. On the ride to Warsaw from Clinton in the buggy, it was bright moonlight, and he was accompanied by the late Major Duncan J. DeVane, a very courageous man. The major told with amusement afterwards of the almost pitiable fright of Russell on that night-trip. At one point on the road a hog came out of the bushes, and Russell shook with terror: “Great God! he exclaimed, “I thought that was one of those fellows.” How such a man has this long put up this bluff in the face of brave men is the wonder. How they have tolerated such a windy nuisance is the wonder. It is only a few months ago when he drew a pistol on Rice in his office. The Legislature had put it in the hands of certain men to collect back- taxes in Wilmington. Of course, Russell was one. He was not hanging about Raleigh for fun. Fred Rice as one of the city officers thought it was his prerogative to keep the book containing the names, and refused to give it up to Russell. But the book finally landed “somehow” in Russell’s office. Rice went there to get it, and the pistol was drawn as above stated, and Rice was ordered out of the office. Russell was taken into custody, but submitted and was let off by Judge Starbuck with costs. He would then have made very proper padding for a cell. And here is the candidate for Governor, such a man would better be put in the mad-house than in the Executive Mansion. He has snorted around the State, lacking the manhood to meet Cy. Watson in the open field. Afraid of a fuss, forsooth? Does his record look like one that avoids fusses? WHERE WAS CY WATSON? Where was Cy. Watson when Russell was striking Swann in the back with a stick? Let his six wounds answer. Where has Cy Watson been since his wounds healed? He has been healing the wounds of war. How much is Cy Watson loved by his people young and old, black and white? As much as Dan Russell is hated by those who know him best. Were not such loving favor rather to be chosen than silver and gold? Referring to that portion of Russell’s letter in which he described himself as “geographicall misplaced,” I asked a witty newspaper editor in Wilmington why had he not geographically placed himself by getting out of this country and into a country where his “national sentiments” would have room to move around. The newspaper men sparkingly man replied: “He takes so much pleasure in pain that he just stays here as a punishment to us.” That sums him up quite neatly. HOW HE WAS NOMINATED. In his letter to a friend, written last June and referred to above, he said: “I am receiving a large number of letters from patriotic men who were supporters of other candidates fro the nomination—men who are not in politics from venal motives and who do not try to break up their party when they fail to get their choice in nominations.” This, as will be readily seen, was “a swipe” at Dockery. Would he dare meet Dockery on the stump and answer the charge openly made by Dockery that he bought his own nomination and swindled Dockery out of it. Will he dare deny it to Dockery? But enough of this nauseous subject: the good people of Wilmington stand so much in dread of the possibility of having Russell as Governor, that they hailed as the breath of morning the glad tidings of the rapid change of sentiment that but recently had come from all parts of the State through the News and Observer. They read, too, with words that Maj. Guthrie would like to have heard his patriotic message to the people. And well may such words bring joy to this noble fold who put honor first and who love that peace in which live smiling homes and heroic men. Now and then they can catch harsh echoes of a day that they thought was dead. They can hear above the crackle of the hearthstone and the laughter of children, and the home greetings of the wives of their hearts, some hyena howl of Russellism creeping across the night close to the door and close to the nursery, when he characterizes our school histories as “the apotheosis of treason.” They can feel the tongue of the fiend close on the brow of home licking like a red flame of hell when editorial utterances such as these from the Raleigh Standard of 1868 come like picket-line threatenings of a new danger: “But wherever else you work, don’t forget to work among the women. * * * Go after the women then. * * * And don’t hesitate to throw your arms around their necks now and THEN WHEN THEIR HUSBANDS ARE NOT AROUND, AND GIVE THEM A GOOD ---. They all like it. * * * OUR EXPERIENCE WITH FEMALE REBS IS THAT WITH ALL THEIR SINS THEY HAVE A VAST AMOUNT OF HUMAN NATURE, and only wait to have it appreciated to be the most loving creatures imaginable. Scallawags and carpetbaggers, don’t fail, therefore, on your canvass through the State to look after the women.” OLD ECHOES COME BACK. They hear the voices of Wm. L. Saunders away back in 1876 coming from the gray smoke of battle like a bugle-shaft of light: “The Rads oppose all this; they oppose the amendments; they oppose economy; they want to get into power and do like they did when they spent $981,000 in two years. That is just four times as much as is necessary.” They feel again the blistering scream of Russell’s “savages” in the brutality of Boutwell of 1874 when he said: “In the public school where children of all classes and conditions are brought together, this doctrine of human equality can be taught, and it is the chief means of securing the perpetuity of Republican institutions. And inasmuch as we have in this country four million colored people, I assume that it is a public duty that they and the white people of the country, with whom they are to be associated in political and public affairs, shall be assimilated and made one in the fundamental idea of human equality. Therefore, were it possible to establish district schools, I am against it as a matter of public policy.” Closer home, the words of Settle’s famous campaign of 1876, as he uttered then to the people of Jonesboro come back: “You fiends of hell, you hell-hounds, you infernal fiends of hell!” They read again the famous Radical Raleigh resolution, passed September 21st, 1876: “Resolved, That any negro who would vote the Democratic ticket should be hunted and killed.” These and kindred murmurs as of the outer-skirt of a yelping mid-night prairie-raid of gaunt, yellow-eyed coyotes, come across the years. They feel the cheeks grow crimson and pale by burns at the frightful possibility even of the scourge again of Republicanism, which, if they will stop a moment to say it is as deadly as yellow-fever foully breathed from the lips of bilge-water, they will the next moment bethink them the more shiveringly for their young to say of this pestilence: AND THE FIEND, RUSSELL IS THE BLACK VOMIT OF IT ALL! W. E. CHRISTIAN. [end of article] Additional Comments: The article included 4 large political cartoons lampooning Dan Russell and filled a page and a half, starting on page 2, and going to the top of the third column on page 3. Bellamy, John Dillard (1854-1942) — also known as John D. Bellamy — of Wilmington, New Hanover County, N.C. Born in Wilmington, New Hanover County, N.C., March 24, 1854. Democrat. Delegate to Democratic National Convention from North Carolina, 1892, 1908, 1920; member of North Carolina state senate, 1900- 02; U.S. Representative from North Carolina 6th District, 1899-1903. Died in Wilmington, New Hanover County, N.C., September 25, 1942. Interment at Oakdale Cemetery, Wilmington, N.C. Watson, Cyrus B. — of North Carolina. Served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War; candidate for Governor of North Carolina, 1896. Interment at Salem Cemetery, Winston-Salem, N.C. The above information regarding John D. Bellamy and Cyrus B. Watson came from the “The Political Graveyard” web site (http://politicalgraveyard.com/index.html). Daniel Lindsay Russell, Jr. was the grandson of Thomas Russell and David Ward Sanders, both of Onslow County, North Carolina. He was born in 1845 and his mother, Caroline Elizabeth, died a few months after his birth. His father, remarried about 1847 to Olivia Grist. As a child, he was sent to live with his grandfather, D. W. Sanders, at his plantation, Palo Alto, in Onslow County. D. W. Sanders died in August of 1860. Dan, Jr. was attending the University of North Carolina at the outbreak of the Civil War. After the War, and shortly after becoming a judge, he married his “1st cousin once removed”, Sarah Amanda “Manda” Sanders, the daughter of Isaac Newton Sanders, Jr. of Onslow County. D. W. Sanders was the oldest child of Isaac Newton Sanders, Sr. of Onslow County, and I. N. Sanders, Jr. was his youngest son. Although elected to the Governorship in 1896, his political base quickly fell apart, and his term of service was basically ineffective. Prior to the next election, there was an failed assassination plot. He was governor at the time of the Wilmington Riot of 1898. He died in 1908 in Wilmington, NC and was buried at Hickory Hill Cemetery in Onslow County. His obituary appeared in the News and Observer, but was creatively placed as to slight the man. 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