Upon this point an able Southern writer, Professor Edwin Mims of Trinity College, N. C., has said: "The independents in the South have to face the same state of affairs that the independents of the North did in the '80's--all the better traditions connected with one party, and most of the respectable people belonging to the same party. Just as George William Curtis and his followers were accused of being Democrats in disguise and of being traitors to the 'grand old party' that had saved the Union and freed the slaves, and deserters to a party of Copperheads, so the Southern independent is said to be a Republican in disguise, and is told of the awful crimes of the Reconstruction era. When all other arguments have failed, there is the inevitable appeal to the threatened domination of an inferior race which is not now even a remote possibility." As a result of this domination of a worn-out issue, political contests in the South have ordinarily concerned themselves not with stimulating public questions, but with the personal qualifications of the candidates. The South has not dared to face real problems lest the white party be split and the Negro voter somehow slip into influence. A campaign was fought last year in Mississippi. Of course the candidates all belonged to the white party; all therefore subscribed to identically the same platform--which had been prepared by the party leaders--so that the only issue was the personality of the candidates. Let me quote from the Mississippi correspondent of the New Orleans _Times-Democrat_, April 29, 1907: The only "issue" ... is the personality of the candidate himself. The voter may take the speeches of each candidate and analyse them from start to finish, and he will fail to find where there is any difference of opinion between the candidates on any of the live questions of the day which are likely to affect Mississippi. He must, therefore, turn from the speeches to the candidate himself for an "issue" and must take his choice of the several candidates as men, and decide which of them will do most good to the state and be the safest man to entrust with the helm. _Negro Holds Democratic Party Together_