The hateful Amendments, which struck so foul and cruel a blow at “our right to govern ourselves,” are now nothing more than monuments reared by political partisans to their own vindictive passions. The better element throughout the North would be glad to forget them. They have been distorted by the Federal Judiciary and have proven to be a curse to the whole country, in that they are the refuge of the corporations which plunder the people. Republican leaders look on, acquiescent, while state after state that seceded from the Union puts into practice the principle for which the South fought in the Civil War,—the right to regulate our own domestic concerns. A Republican President has made an Ex-Confederate soldier the official head of the military establishment of the United States; a Republican President has stood his ground against negro resentment upon the proposition that the South may disfranchise the negroes if she likes; a Republican President-elect manfully held the same position throughout a heated campaign in which niggerites and Bryanites assaulted both Taft and Roosevelt because of this pro-Southern attitude. “_We are fighting, not for slavery, but for the right to govern ourselves._” So said our President; so said our Statesmen; so said our soldiers; so said our civilians. And today we are vindicated. The insanest war in history, as one studies it, is seen to have been fought for a principle which both sides now admit to have been right, and which Mr. Lincoln repeatedly and most earnestly declared was right, before a shot was fired. [Illustration] Why Mr. Bryan Can Never Be President In 1896, it cost the Republicans six million dollars to defeat Bryan; in 1900, it cost them four millions; in 1908, they “beat him to a frazzle” with less than two millions. In 1896, every chance was in his favor; he was young, handsome, magnetic, eloquent, without a stain on his record. In the general enthusiasm aroused by his “crown-of-thorns, cross-of-gold” speech, people did not give heed to the craftiness and selfishness of the Bland delegate who used Bland’s name as a stalking horse to get the nomination for himself. For twenty years Richard P. Bland had labored for Bi-metallism. He had won the fight by sheer bulldog pluck. The Bland-Allison act of 1878 was a Bland triumph. The Sherman law of 1890 was a Bland victory, for Sherman himself said it must be passed to head off a free-coinage act. When the Congress of 1892 convened, the Bland forces had an overwhelming majority. Why then could we not make a law restoring the white metal to its constitutional place as the equal of gold? Because, in the contest for the Speakership, the Northern Congressmen _got control of the Committees as an exchange for the office of Speaker_.