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Monday, September 28, 2015

A.V. Dockery's Letter to the Editor About Senator Butler, 1910


A Letter to the Editor of the Union Republican, September, 1910

Mr. Editor—It is the rottenest sort of folly for the News and Observer and other Democratic papers to attempt to deceive the people by asserting that Senator Butler is an element of weakness to the Republican party.

Everybody who knows anything about the political history of the State knows that Butler is a broadminded, sagacious statesman who sees into the future and guides popular will instead of supinely following temporary drifts of public opinion; and foe as well as friend credits him with equal if not superior political cunning to Senator Simmons.

What has he accomplished in the political arena? Sampson county was once a hard and fast Democratic county, now gives a steady Republican majority of 1,000. This does not weaken the Republican cause.

In 1894, Butler alone practically wrested the State from Democratic control, and turned it over to the Republicans. Was he a source of weakness then?

In 1898 section of the Democratic party made a desperate effort to take the party over to Butler. Josephus Daniels was on the committee of conference, and led the fight to throw the party at Butler’s feet! But for the earnest effort of Jarvis, Simmons, and the brave old Buck Kitchin, Butler might have been made the high muck-a-muck of the Danielites.

This was only 12 years ago that Butler was sufficiently great to be worshipped by Josephus Daniels!

What has now caused the change of attitude, wherein Daniels affects to belittle the influence of Butler?

Everybody knows that it never has been the policy of the News and Observer to throw rocks at sparrows. The great brain and adroit hand of Butler is more feared than any other Republican, and it is now attempted to discount such power through artful deception. That game cannot be worked, however, because the people have taken Senator Butler’s measure and they know what a big and successful man he is.

His one term in the U.S. Senate gained for him a nationwide reputation that no other Southerner ever attained in so short a time.

While not assuming a lead this year, he is willingly lending his ability towards wrenching North Carolina from the thralldom of a democratic official dynasty that has become officious in its tenacity of power.

This is a bad year for big bosses, and Josephus Daniels’ hour has struck when his whip-crack shall no longer make its smart felt.

The people are in unrest. They are more intelligent, are able to decide what they need, and are determined to assert their rights without question or direction.

The aristocratic oligarchy which controls this State is doomed; it must give place to younger folks, to men fresh from the fields, the offices, and the workshops.

Officialism can no longer signify the divine right to rule by inheritance nor a wholesale family connection with the pie-counter.

                                --A.V. Dockery

P.S. Butler is the father of the rural delivery system, having advocated it before E.W. Pou went to Congress.

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