-An Impassioned Address to the Delegates in Congress (Feburary 7, 1924)
Southerns, Northerns, Countrymen lend me your ears; I come to plead for Jim Crow, not to praise it. The evil that said policy does is oft spoken of; The good is forgotton by many; So let it be with Jim Crow. The noble Governer Sullivan has told you Jim Crow is evil: If it is so, it would be our duty to repeal it.
In Congress, under watch of Sullivan and the rest, for Congress is an honourable body; so are you all, all honourable men, I come to plead Jim Crow. It has kept peace & order in streets one dominated by Trial Riots, but Sullivan says it is evil, and Sullivan is an honourable man. A compromise between total equality and total discrimination it has kept the KKK from recovering as a signifigant force; does this element of Jim Crow seem evil? When the Southern People Groaned under the weight of Northern Military occupation did Jim Crow not satisfy them both? Evil should be less acceptable to the public. Yet Sullivan says it is evil and Sullivan is an Honourable man. All of the Older Delgates saw during the Little Anarchy that the Southern Republic of the Confederate States of America had the perfect oppurtunity to rise again, but Jim Crow mollified most of the people and even created some pro-union Southerners, was this evil?! But Sullivan says that the laws are evil and Sullivan is surely an Honourable Man. I speak not to disprove what Sullivan has said, However I am hear to speak what I know. Jim Crow was acceptable to all of you once, and not without cause. What cause then withholds you from seeing its benifits now? Judgement has been sacrificed to hopeless idealism and men have lost thier reason!
(At this time Stewart is stated to have paused and taken a small drink from the podium)
-Bear with me, My heart has been flung out with my words and I must wait until it returns to me. For many decades Jim Crow has kept peace on the streets of my beloved homeland, now Jim Crow is threatened and I fear that my homeland is with it. Noone seems to remember the conflict that destroyed my country anymore and the measures instituted to prevent the reccurance of that Tidal wave of destruction. Honourable delegates, If I were here to steer your minds to mutiny from your party lines I would do Sullivan and Jarvis wrong who as you all know, are honourable men. I happen to have a paper before me with the benifits of these disputed codes listed out. However I dare not read it for fear of disrupting your ideologies by informing you how much Jim Crow has benifited you. it would do a disservice to the effort of my counterparts to mention that Jim Crow did indeed establish an educational system for blacks where none one before. It would likewise be wrong of me to mention that by accomidating for limited discrimination Jim Crow has allowed both Agriculture and Industry to flourish with a supply of cheap labour that is certainly good for the country. For me to mention tha specific codes like poll taxes that discourage voting among the poor alllows for the votes of more educated and informed people like yourselves to be worth more, and thus paving the way for more efficient governance, would be a terrible disservice to our Partisan minds. Finally, to mention that the lower wages of African Soldiers helped enable us to field larger armies than our enemies in the Great War, and therfore triumph over jackbooted authoritarianism and barbarism whilst protecting our Beacon of Democracy, would be the greatest evil of all. Like I have said before I say this not to praise Jim Crow, but only to state what I know in my heart. That if one examines it through the eyes of calm reason, Jim Crow is better for our country than a lack of it.
Now I ask that you stay and please listen just a little while longer, and do me the honour of examining the arguements of Sullivan and his confidants. The progressives claim that the Republican party wishes for an America where Greedy Capitalists and Haughty Aristocrats reign unresricted over the cold and hungry masses doomed by misfortune or birth to serve them. And yet our current Republican President, Jarvis, refused to end his opposoition to the very Jim Crow laws that they claim will lead to this serfdom. The deregulation and institution of what Sullivan calls "Regressive", a flat tax, helped continue economic growth thaat filled the general coffers when the logic of the boom-bust cycle dictated otherwise, was this serfdom? I implore, no I beg, you all to examine these arguements made by Sullivan against Jim Crom and the Economics of the Republican Party and to determine whether or not these Hounourable Men are truly acting in the best intrests of our great Republic.
((BTW I would like this added to the speeches list))