The South at Work: Observations from 1904

Tolerance Shown in North Carolina

Tolerance Shown in North Carolina The Meaning of the Trinity College Incident Several Hitherto Unrevealed Phases of the Affair—Its Happy Ending, in Contrast with a Famous Ante-Bellum Episode—Governor Aycock’s View of the New Era in His State—The Vast Difference Between Durham and Pinehurst [Special Correspondence of the Transcript] • Pinehurst. N.C. March 9. The part which public opinion plays in the rehabilitation of the South is hard to explain.To speak at all on such a subject is to incur the temptation to generalize loosely. But it is impossible to visit Trinity College, at Durham, and leave unpondered that particular aspect of the situation.The college buildings are in full view from the trains on the old North Carolina Railroad—now a division of the Southern—and I wish that every passenger who glances at them from the car window might consider, the next hundred miles, what this rejuvenated Methodist college stands for. Its history for some years past, and particularly in the last half year, is full of instruction concerning public opinion in North Carolina.The other day, in Published in Boston Evening Transcript, March 12, 1904. 30 Tolerance Shown in North Carolina Congress,its affairs were discussed in a heated debate,charged with misinformation .1 Last autumn there was scarcely a newspaper in the country that did not animadvert on Trinity College and academic freedom. Education is decidedly a live question in North Carolina. Governor Aycock told me yesterday at Raleigh that with his speeches on education he commands bigger audiences than he could command if he spoke on any other topic.2 That, however, is not precisely the reason why Trinity was more talked about and written about last autumn than anything else in the State. Now that the incident is closed, it is interesting to compare it with another incident, strikingly similar in all but the outcome, which happened in North Carolina fifty years ago. During the campaign of 1856 a certain Professor Hedrick of the University of North Carolina, which is at Chapel Hill, very near Durham, said, in reply to a question, that he favored Fremont for President. He did not actually vote for the Republican candidate, for no Republican electoral ticket was nominated in the State. His remark was, however, reported to the editor of the North Carolina Standard, of Raleigh, the principal organ of the Democratic party. A newspaper war was at once declared on the “Black Republican” in the university faculty. Professor Hedrick, in a signed communication to the Standard, denied that he had ever sought to propagate his views, but admitted that he wished to see the slaves set free, and made a very modest and straightforward statement of his position.The day his letter appeared,the students burned him in effigy. Two days later his colleagues met and repudiated his opinions. The executive committee of the board of trustees, hastily assembling, practically called for his resignation by resolving that there was little prospect of his ever being useful to the institution. Having obeyed their wishes,he went to Salisbury to attend an education convention,and was there attacked by a mob and ordered to leave, on pain of being tarred and feathered . He went into temporary exile at Washington. The Standard editorially declared that no man who was avowedly for John C. Fremont for President ought to be allowed to live in North Carolina. The historian of this incident is Professor John Spencer Bassett of Trinity .3 Last autumn, when in a signed magazine article he attacked the race prejudice, North and South, praised Booker Washington as the greatest man, save Lee, born in the South in a hundred years, and predicted that the Negro will some day “win his equality,” it looked for a time very much as if he were going to share Professor Hedrick’s fate.4 The procedure was the same. The principal Democratic organ published at the capital opened fire upon him. The press of the State, with very few Tolerance Shown in North Carolina 31 exceptions, set upon him with all manner of abuse, ridicule and vilification. Most of this matter I have read, and to one who both loves the South and believes in tolerance and candor the exhibition of the opposite qualities which these North Carolina newspapers made was to the last degree discouraging. When here and there a word was said on behalf...