"We can do better than that," said another; "we can lick the d--
nigger-loving blood out of her."
Mrs. Gilmore, now upwards of fifty years old, was then seized and thrown
violently upon the floor. Her clothes were drawn up over her head, and the
cotton under garments covering her limbs were rudely torn off, exposing
her naked person to the demons in human form who surrounded her. The
switches were then applied with all the vigor of which the executioners
were capable. The old lady uttered a few heart-rending shrieks, but
speedily fainted, and continued unconscious during the remainder of the
infliction.
The punishment of the young woman, Mary Godfrey, was reserved to the last.
She was stripped of every thread of clothing, and was thus compelled to
experience the shame of indecent exposure, added to her other tortures.
During the process of scourging this young woman the vilest and most
obscene epithets were bandied about by the Klan, and she was subjected to
many other indignities.
She sank under the treatment at last, and lie upon the floor, her life
apparently extinct. Cold water was dashed over the faces and bodies of
these unfortunate women, who, by this means, were rallied sufficiently to
render them conscious enough to listen to the final edict of the Klan,
which was, "To cease indulging in and promulgating their heresies, from
that hour forward, and abandon the country, on pain of certain death!"
With this admonition the defenders of the white man's government left the
house.
Of a truth, "all cruelty springs from wickedness." But the weakness which
could prompt the brutality--exhibited in such cases as those above
recorded--is utterly inexcusable in any being wearing the shape of man.
The brutal whipping of these inoffensive women, and the murder of the
negro McLane, add one more to the many evidences of the degradation to
which the members of the Ku Klux Klan had reduced themselves, in their
endeavors to crush out freedom of thought and expression, and compel
adherence to their own peculiar tenets. Thank God, and the wisdom that now
guides and controls the destinies of the nation, these dark hours of the
Republic, fruitful with scenes like those described above, are passing
away. A gleam of light appears in the horizon, as a glad harbinger of the
dawn that shall usher in the day when
"All crimes shall cease, and ancient fraud shall fail;
Returning justice lift aloft her scale;
Peace o'er the world her olive wand extend,
And white robed innocence from heaven descend."