State

Col. W L. Saunders A truly «listing u islitMl IVortli Carolinian about whom alt«»g4kthcr loo little is known so far as ni«>st of our p«kople are еопееги«ч1. He was great in both War anil Peace. IF someone were to accost Mr. Av¬ erage North Carolinian with the sadden query: "Who was Colonel William L. Saunders?” 1 very much fear that the question would go unan¬ swered or, at best, would receive a rather vague reply. Alas for the transient quality of human effort; alas for the ephemeral fame of the fleeting moment! The t Hums might have said of fame as pleasure, it's “like the borealis race lat Hit ere you can point its place.” et Colonel Saunders was once a mighty man in our capital city of Ra¬ leigh ; he did a mighty work for his state ; his memory should not 1m- allowed to fade from the recollection of ( Carolinians. Was Bom in Raleigh The Colonel was a native of Ra¬ leigh. horn 1835. He was educated at the I'niversitv where he was gradu¬ ated in 1854. He studied law, was ad¬ mitted to the Bar and for a time prac¬ ticed his profession at Salisbury. Г ir¬ on the outbreak of the Civil War he became a Lieutenant in the Rowan Guards; later he ruined a company in the 4 till» North Carolina, and was pro¬ moted through the different grades, be¬ coming Colonel in 1864. lie was wounded in the battle of Fredericks¬ burg; and again and dcs|K-ratcly dur¬ ing the battles in the Wilderness- wounds from which ho never fully re¬ covered. In 1871, amid the turmoil and eon- fusion of reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan rose to power again, and while Eam who the officers of the isible Empire were, it was com- ily assumed that Colonel Saunders was its state leader — Grand Dragon. Congress passed severe and stringent ws directed against the order; the oral courts swung into activity th over fourteen hundred people in- led at one term of the court at Ra¬ il ; Congress appointed a commit- lo investigate ulleged acts on the of Klan members. At the instance is committee, the Colonel was ur- and taken to Washington forex- oatiou. While there he was the ©red guest of that hero of the Cape By K. €. LAWRENCE Fear, Col. Alfred M. Waddell of Wil¬ mington, then a member of the House, Colonel Saunders was brought be¬ fore the Congressional Committee of Investigation and plied with ques¬ tions. If the old hero knew anything (which he probably did) he stoutly refused to reveal it, answering all questions propounded by the Commit¬ tee with these! formula, “I decline to answer." He hud better luck than many subsequent witnesses have had before Congressional Committees, for he got away with it. Although the Col¬ onel was bullied, threatened and hu¬ miliated, there was no effort to hold him in contempt of the Senate, and have him locked up Until lie should an¬ swer. From this, as a lawyer. I deduce one conclusion : The Colonel must have been the head of the Klan; and the questions must have been such as would have incriminated him had they been answered ; and therefore lie was within his constitutional rights in de¬ clining to answer. I can see no other ground upon which lie could have escaped charges of contempt, (spe¬ cially with public feeling as iullnined as it was. Vet there was evidently no proof against him, as upon his return home h<* was not molested by the Fed¬ eral court, although its deputy mar¬ shals Were combing the country serv¬ ing hundreds of warrants. Moved to Wilmington Following the close of the Klan in¬ vestigation. the Colonel went to Wil¬ mington where he became associated with bis lifelong friend and brother- in-law Major Л. A. Englohard as edi¬ tor of the Wilmington Journal. This association lasted until 1876 when lie 'vent to Raleigh and became associated with Peter M. Hale in the publication of the Raleigh Ohserrer. one of the two papers which later became merged in¬ to the present .Xcws and Observer. This requires a backward glance along the trail. Peter M. Hale was of the fam¬ ily which established the Fayetteville Observer in 1807 — one of the oldest papers in the state. К. .1. Hale, his father, edited this paper for forty years (1825-1865) and under his fear¬ less leadership the Observer became one of the most influential pa|M-rs in the state. The paper was Whig in poli¬ ties, and furnished an outstanding ex¬ ample of an eastern uewspa|N>r which favored the construction of the east- west railroad system, which later 1ю- eame the North Carolina and Western North Carolina Railroad. Eastern pa¬ pers as n rule bitterly opposed this pol¬ icy, to such an extent that when the hill to charter the railroad came on for a vote there was a tie in the Senate, broken in favor of the charter by Speaker Calvin Graves of Caswell. Peter M. Hale succeeded his father in the editorship of the Observer. The downfall and breakup of the Whig party forced the Observer to ally itself with the Democratic party. Tin ll Clinic the Civil War and the plant of the Observer was destroyed by Sherman's hummers. Peter M. Hale was out of a job. Newspaper Work in Raleigh In 1876 Colonel Saunders moved to Raleigh, as did Peter M. Hale, and tin- two men founded the Raleigh Observer which was to play such an important part during its brief career in ( 'aroliua journalism. These two men were mas¬ ters of the ink well and the mucilage pot ; and soon the Observer took a com¬ manding lead among the papers of tin- state. Joseph P. Caldwell, quite a competent authority, declared that un¬ der Hale and Saunders tin- Ohserrer was by all odds the ablest paper in tin- stale. Other able authorities. I >r. Theo¬ dore B. Kingsbury of the Wilmington Star, and Josephus Daniels of thc.S'/u/c Chronicle, voiced similar sentiments. James Ryder Randall, author of “Maryland. My Maryland.” declared that the Observer was one of the ablest papers published south of Baltimore. But it takes dollars to operate a pa¬ per. and the Observer fell on evil financial days and went into receiver¬ ship. Major Englchard, the Colonel's brother-in-law. had become Secretary of State, and upon his death in 1870, ( Continued on page seventeen) a