nd showing the utmost freedom
of political action. And these states contribute much to our political
life.

By the same token we rush in where Texas and Virginia fear to tread, and
we shall welcome the impending and inevitable breaking of the Solid
South (perhaps we shall lead it), not for the sake of the Democratic
party nor for the sake of the Republican party (although it would help
each party equally), but for the sake of open-mindedness and of freedom
of political action, so that all men there may walk by thought and not
by formulas, and act by convictions and not by traditions. Where-ever
one party by long power breeds intolerance, the other falls into
contempt. And what constructive influence have the Southern States in
our larger political life? From some of them, where parties have fallen
low, we have seen men go to one national convention as a mere unthinking
personal following of a candidate even then clad in garments of twofold
defeat; and to the conventions of the other party we have sometimes seen
office-holding shepherds with their crooks drive their mottled flocks to
market. We are tired of this political inefficiency, this long
isolation, and these continued scandals; and we are tired of the
conditions that produce them. If parties are to be instruments of
civilized government, the conditions that produce such scandals must
cease. We must have in the South a Democratic party of tolerance and a
Republican party of character; and neither party must be ranged on lines
of race.

We aspire to a higher part in the Republic than can be played by men of
closed minds or of unthinking habits or by organized ignorance. We
aspire again to a share in the constructive work of the government in
these stirring days of great tasks at home and growing influence abroad.

I am leaving party politics severely alone, but I am speaking to a
national and patriotic theme. A Republican Administration or a
Democratic Administration is a passing incident in our national history.
Parties themselves shift and wane. And any party's supremacy is of
little moment in comparison with the isolation of a large part of the
Union from its proper political influence.

The manhood and the energy and the ambition of Southern men now find
effective political expression through neither party. The South,
therefore, neither contributes to the Nation's political thought and
influence nor receives stimulation from the Nation's thought and
influe