The presence of eight millions of people in any section of this
country, constituting an aggrieved class, smarting under terrible
wrongs, denied the exercise of the commonest rights of humanity,
and regarded by the ruling class of that section as outside of the
government, outside of the law, outside of society, having nothing in
common with the people with whom they live, the sport of mob violence
and murder, is not only a disgrace and a scandal to that particular
section, but a menace to the peace and security of the whole country.
There is, as we all know, a perfect epidemic of mob law and persecution
now prevailing at the South, and the indications of a speedy end are
not hopeful. Great and terrible as have been its ravages in the past,
it now seems to be increasing, not only in the number of its victims,
but in its frantic rage and savage extravagance. Lawless vengeance is
beginning to be visited upon white men as well as black. Our newspapers
are daily disfigured by its ghastly horrors. It is no longer local but
national; no longer confined to the South but has invaded the North.
The contagion is spreading, extending and overleaping geographical
lines and state boundaries, and if permitted to go on, threatens to
destroy all respect for law and order, not only in the South but in all
parts of our common country, North as well as South. For certain it is,
that crime allowed to go unpunished, unresisted and unarrested, will
breed crime. When the poison of anarchy is once in the air, like the
pestilence that walketh in darkness, the winds of heaven will take it
up and favour its diffusion. Though it may strike down the weak to-day,
it will strike down the strong to-morrow.
Not a breeze comes to us from the late rebellious states that is not
tainted and freighted with Negro blood. In its thirst for blood and
its rage for vengeance, the mob has blindly, boldly and defiantly
supplanted sheriffs, constables and police. It has assumed all the
functions of civil authority. It laughs at legal processes, courts
and juries, and its red-handed murderers range abroad unchecked and
unchallenged by law or by public opinion. If the mob is in pursuit of
Negroes who happen to be accused of crime, innocent or guilty, prison
walls and iron bars afford no protection. Jail doors are battered down
in the presence of unresisting jailors, and the accused, awaiting trial
in the courts of law, are dragged out and hanged, shot, stabbed or
burned to death, as the blind and irresponsible mob may elect.
We claim to be a highly-civilized and Christian country. I will not
stop to deny this claim, yet I fearlessly affirm that there is nothing
in the history of savages to surpass the blood-chilling horrors and
fiendish excesses perpetrated against the coloured people of this
country, by the so-called enlightened and Christian people of the
South. It is commonly thought that only the lowest and most disgusting
birds and beasts, such as buzzards, vultures and hyenas, will gloat
over and prey upon dead bodies; but the Southern mob, in its rage,
feeds its vengeance by shooting, stabbing and burning their victims,
when they are dead.
Now, what is the special charge by which this ferocity is justified,
and by which mob law is excused and defended even by good men North and
South? It is a charge of recent origin; a charge never brought before;
a charge never heard of in the time of slavery or in any other time in
our history. It is a charge of assaults by Negroes upon white women.
This new charge, once fairly started on the wings of rumour, no matter
by whom or in what manner originated, whether well or ill-founded,
whether true or false, is certain to raise a mob and to subject the
accused to immediate torture and death. It is nothing that there may
be a mistake in his case as to identity. It is nothing that the
victim pleads “not guilty.” It is nothing that the accused is of fair
reputation and his accuser is of an abandoned character. It is nothing
that the majesty of the law is defied and insulted; no time is allowed
for defence or explanation; he is bound with cords, hurried off amid
the frantic yells and curses of the mob to the scaffold, and there,
under its ghastly shadow, he is tortured, till by pain or promises,
he is made to think that he can possibly gain time or save his life
by confession--confesses--and then, whether guilty or innocent, he is
shot, hanged, stabbed or burned to death amid the wild shouts of the
mob. When the will of the mob is accomplished, when its thirst for
blood has been quenched, when its victim is speechless, silent and
dead, his mobocratic accusers and murderers of course have the ear of
the world all to themselves, and the world, hearing only the testimony
of the mob, generally approves its verdict.
Such, then, is the state of Southern law and civilization at this
moment, in relation to the coloured citizens of that section of our
country. Though the picture is dark and terrible, I venture to affirm
that no man, North or South, can successfully deny its essential truth.