Judge Adams Either a Fool or a Falsifier, May 10, 1900

"Judge Adams Either a Fool or A Falsifier" from the Chatham Record, as published in the Watauga Democrat May 10, 1900

The main feature of this black and tan convention (in Chatham county) was the speech of ex-Judge Spencer B. Adams, and it seems almost incredible that a man who had ever been elected a judge even by fusionists could have so far degraded himself by making a speech so full of falsehoods and misrepresentations. Among other false statements by him was the deliberate assertion that the Democratic party in North Carolina would not allow a white man, who did not own land, to vote for Senators until after the war, and that the Republican party gave them the right.

Judge Adams either did or did not know this statement to be false. If he did not know it to be false, then he ought never to make another speech, for any man so ignorant as that should never attempt to teach other people. And if he did know it to be false, he ought to be too ashamed to show his face again in public.

The fact is (as every intelligent man knows), that the Democratic party was the advocate of "free suffrage" and in 1854 carried this state on that issue, electing David S. Reid Governor over his Whig opponent, Gov. Charles Manly.