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           Recorder Cheatham on the Situation.

What One of the Race's Most Powerful Leaders Says of Presi-
    dent McKinley's Administration--Negro Intelligence Upon
    the Side of Republicanism.--Ohio is All Right.

   At no time since the enfranchisement of the Negro has so
many conflicting problems confronted our people and called for
keener discrimination or calmer judgment.  It gives me infinite
pleasure to note the intelligent interest taken by my race in all
the questions now up for solution.  It points to a brighter era
and offers a remedy for many of the ills that now beset us.  The
more the Negro reads and studies, the better he becomes ac-
quainted with the history of the country and the attitude of
parties on the issue of human rights, the stronger a Republican
he becomes.  The so-called "blind faith" of other days is giving
away to the conviction that as a plain business proposition the
Republican party can more safely be trusted to conduct the af-
fairs of government, and that its continuance in power is the
surest method of sustaining and increasing the wave of pros-
perity now sweeping over the land.
   The Administration of President McKinley is a grand suc-
cess. He has led us successfully through a trying foreign war;
he has made the name of the United States respected and hon-
ored in every nook and cranny of the civilized world; his policy
of judicious expansion; as exemplified in the acquisition of the
Philippines and Porto Rico, and the protection of Cuba, is
placing our beloved nation beyond the period of provincialism
and is opening broader avenues for the investment of capital
and the promotion of Christian principles; he has given the
Negro splendid recognition in the domestic and diplomatic serv-
ice, and has afforded us an opportunity to prove anew our skill
and valor upon the field of battle; he has just given us two regi-
ments of picked men, and placed over them the gallant heroes
who won fame at Santiago.  In accord with military usage, the
colonel and regimental officers are tacticians of wide experience
and happen to be white, but I am satisfied that when the troops




			

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Colored American Republican Text Book