. . . Mr. Craig, speaking of the last legislature, said: "It will go into our history as an industrious, able and conscientious body of men. It rewrote the laws governing the state's institutions, the public schools, elections, railroads and other corporations." Mr. Craig, continuing said: "We are beginning the most eventful conflict of our history. It has been forced by the logical events and the determination of a conscientious and courageous people to purify and elevate our politics, to prevent by constitutional enactment the humiliation of our race, and perpetuate peace and good government in North Carolina. The amendment will be misrepresented. Every possible attempt will be made to deceive the pople. It will be fought with all the bitterness and malignity of the renegades who use the negro as a means of public plunder."

Mr. Craig showed how in 1876 the white men of North Carolina banded themselves together and, under the leadership of Senator Vance, wrested the state from the negroes and carpetbaggers, and that a white man's government had placed the most honorable men in control of all branches of the administration, bringing the treasury out of bankruptcy and restoring the fair name of the state to its one time proud position. The history of those administrations is well known. That era is referred to now as the brightest epoch in the history of North Carolina.

Mr. Craig, speaking of the benefits to accrue from the adoption of the amendment, said: "It means that the necessity of the fierce and bitter race struggles of the past will cease; that ruin and degradation will no longer threaten our state and her institutions. Though unwritten it is the established law of this land that white men shall make and administer the laws." Mr. Craig went on to say that the amendment would be adopted by the biggest majority that has been seen in North Carolina for many a day; that it will be adopted by the voters of the white men of all parties—white men who are Republicans, white men who are Populists, as well as white men who are Democrats. It was a great speech and greatly appreciated by the Democracy of old Flat Creek.