LOCKE CRAIG.

The applause that was heard early in the evening was nothing compared to the great wave of enthusiasm that swept over the audience when Hon. Locke Craig was introduced. Mr. Craig was presented by J. H. Brooks, who said that Mr. Craig's eloquence was famous from Cherokee to Currituck; that it was reported that when he spoke in the far east, even the shells on the seashore rattled.

Mr. Craig's speech was filled with eloquence, with humor and irrefutable argument. He said that the audience that he faced was one that only one party in the country could produce. "I want to thank you Democrats for the nomination," he said. "I represent the party which contains a large part of the manhood and nearly all the womanhood of the country; not all, though, because there are some women who are Republicans because their husbands are.

"When we went to Raleigh we had a great many things to do and a great many things to undo. A bill was even introduced to repeal all laws passed by the legislature of 1897. We had to rescue many of the counties of eastern North Carolina from the disgrace and humiliation of negro rules. We proposed an act which would make a written law of what had already been an unwritten law. The whole meaning and purpose of the amendment is that the Anglo-Saxon shall rule the state of North Carolina.

"Wilmington was the crater of a volcano that was slumbering in every section of North Carolina.

"The legislature received a peremptory demand for a measure that would guarantee law and order and after careful deliberation the legislature proposed the constitutional amendment as the best and wisest solution, to be submitted to the people. The amendment really originated with the white people of the state. In August when the 200,000 white men of North Carolina shall speak in their sovereignty this amendment will become a law, J. C. Pritchard and Colonel Lusk and Greenlee notwithstanding."

Referring to the misrepresentations of the Republicans, he said: "Why, I was told a few days ago that a Republican revenue official was telling it that in order for a man to vote he would have to be able to read and write in three separate languages. If it were required to read and write correctly in one language it would disfranchise some of these great constitutional lawyers, who are making themselves heard now."

Mr. Craig touchingly referred to the faith displayed him by Fate Burnett, who declared he knew the statement that the amendment would disfranchise illiterate white men was a lie, because he knew that Craig would look out for him. Mr. Craig said: "I swear that that faith will never be betrayed. I have come to tell you that whoever you are, whether you reside here or in the fastnesses of the everlasting mountains, your representative has remembered you and that whether a Democrat or Republican you will be a member of the great brotherhood—the white race.

"They say the amendment is unconstitutional. Who says it is unconstitutional? I say there is not a lawyer of ability in North Carolna who is not holding office who thinks it is not constitutional. No supreme court is ever going to declare this amendment unconstitutional.

"I lay down this proposition—that the negro has no right to vote, either by inheritance, or the proper exercise of it. He got the right by force of arms, when white men were disfranchised, and he voted to make himself a voter."

Mr. Craig's recital of the story of the hunchback of Notre Dame was very beautiful, and, applying it to conditions here, he said there was no place in North Carolina in 1897 sacred from the influence of the negro, not even the asylum for the blind. "They sent Jim Young there and carved his name on the corner-stone. The Democratic party did take a chisel and dig out his name, and this constitutional amendment will dig out negro rule forever in North Carolina.

"A man came here some months ago, a man named Norton, a man with a white skin and the environments of a gentleman, and he has uttered the vilest slander ever put forth by an editor in this state against the white people. He is treading on dangerous ground, and it is well he did not do it in the heat of the campaign." . . .