toward you all.
After this step in the National Committee, the next important chapter was to
overcome the prejudice existing with President and the influences almost uni-
versally exerted upon him, a man of peculiar religious prejudices and particularly open
to the appeals of the more intolerant Churches, and induce him to follow out the per-
mission of the law and the demands of justice and issue amnesty to all your people. This
was not dealing with one man, as may appear on the surface. If it had been, and that man
of the tenacious and obstinate character of this President, even that would have been a
great struggle. But we had to go back of him, and reach all the more intolerant Churches,
all the church papers, and lay a mollifying hand upon them and their prejudices, and take
upon our lips the words of Christian peace and gospel and appeal to them that, even
granting all they said against your people, there was everything in the teaching of the
Christian religion, when you had turned away from all things to which they objected, had
conformed to the law, and had as a Church under the revelation of the higher power to
which you conformed put away all these things, they should take you by the hand even
according to their own teaching and make you welcome with them and to equal rights in the
republic. We had to see and bring influence to bear on all the church papers; we had
to see the bishops and controlling men in all the strong Churches, especially the Catholic
and the Methodist. The Catholic, it is only just to say, was more inclined to the new
rule of fair play to you, while the Methodist Church was most tenaciously against it.
was sent by the National Committee during the campaign of 1892 to renew the talk I had
already had at several times with the President in appealing to him to issue the of amnesty. He said that amnesity meant so much that for him to issue it was to
make an end of all the contest, that if it were done at all it should be an amnesity
complete and final and reaching all people who had come under the offense of the law,
and that to do this during a campaign, when he was a candidate for reelection, would be
considered by the prejudiced people among the Churches as an act influenced more by his
needs and ambition as a candidate than by his sense of justice and duty as a President.
He said that he feared all the church papers would oppose the act and condemn the pro-
toward you all.
After this step in the National Committee, the next important chapter was to
overcome the prejudice existing with President and the influences almost universally exerted upon him, a man of peculiar religious prejudices and particularly open
to the appeals of the more intolerant Churches, and induce him to follow out the permission of the law and the demands of justice and issue amnesty to all your people. This
was not dealing with one man, as may appear on the surface. If it had been, and that man
of the tenacious and obstinate character of this President, even that would have been a
great struggle. But we had to go back of him, and reach all the more intolerant Churches,
all the church papers, and lay a mollifying hand upon them and their prejudices, and take
upon our lips the words of Christian peace and gospel and appeal to them that, even
granting all they said against your people, there was everything in the teaching of the
Christian religion, when you had turned away from all things to which they objected, had
conformed to the law, and had as a Church under the revelation of the higher power to
which you conformed put away all these things, they should take you by the hand even
according to their own teaching and make you welcome with them and to equal rights in the
republic. We had to see and bring influence to bear on all the church papers; we had
to see the bishops and controlling men in all the strong Churches, especially the Catholic
and the Methodist. The Catholic, it is only just to say, was more inclined to the new
rule of fair play to you, while the Methodist Church was most tenaciously against it.
was sent by the National Committee during the campaign of 1892 to renew the talk I had
already had at several times with the President in appealing to him to issue the proclamation of amnesty. He said that amnesty meant so much that for him to issue it was to
make an end of all the contest, that if it were done at all it should be an amnesty
complete and final and reaching all people who had come under the offense of the law,
and that to do this during a campaign, when he was a candidate for reelection, would be
considered by the prejudiced people among the Churches as an act influenced more by his
needs and ambition as a candidate than by his sense of justice and duty as a President.
He said that he feared all the church papers would oppose the act and condemn the pro-
