SAD NEWS FOR IRENE
Two years have passed since Irene promised, on the veranda of the
Newell residence, to tell Gilbert Twitchell if her hand was pledged to
the man in the Philippines from whom she had received a letter. Other
and sadder news had come since that time. The young officer (Kennesaw
Malvern) was dead. He was accidentally shot during a target practice on
a U. S. vessel cruising in the Philippines, where by the way peace and
independence have long prevailed. Irene was now in black for him. She
saw Gilbert Twitchell not quite so often as before, but her mourning
robes made it unnecessary that she should answer the question he
propounded to her on the veranda.
At the first opportunity, however, Gilbert told her that he loved her,
but that he would not ask her hand in marriage till such a time as
she thought proper. Her reply was that her whole soul was a complete
wreck. She felt as if the world had no further charm, and that death
would be welcome if she knew she would be with _him_.
But time works many changes, even in such a constant and abiding force
as a true woman’s love. God made them sincere, it may be said, but few
there are that stand the test of time, and the assaults of a persistent
man’s devotion. Many would freeze their hearts if they could, but the
manly temperature is too high in most cases and they melt sooner or
later under its radiations. Sometimes in her despair, in her dilemma,
in her war between the heart force and the will, she resolves to marry
her beseecher “to be rid of him,” too considerate of his feelings to
say “no,” and too true to former pledges to say “yes.” What tunes
indeed may “mere man” play on such heart-strings!
All this was not the case with Irene exactly, but it was true in some
particulars, for Irene was a _woman_, and the only important truth to
Gilbert was that the year 2007 saw them husband and wife and that the
love that once went to the Philippines was bestowed on the man she
helped rescue from his trip in an air ship.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The white supremacy people accomplished this by employing them as
teachers. If they continued to talk too much, they lost their jobs.
[2] “Errors” like the following, for instance: “A special dispatch
from Charleston, S. C., to the Atlanta Journal, reads: ‘While dying in
Colleton county, former Section Foreman Jones, of the Atlantic Coast
Line Road, has confessed being the murderer of his wife at Ravenel,
S. C., fourteen miles from Charleston, in May, 1902, for which crime
three Negroes were lynched. The crime which was charged to the Negroes
was one of the most brutal ever committed in this State, and after the
capture of the Negroes quick work was made of them by the mob.’
“Comment is certainly superfluous. What must be the feelings of those
who participated in the lynching.” (_Raleigh, N. C., Morning Post._)
[3] The following were the views of Mr. Noah W. Cooper, a Nashville
lawyer, on one of Mr. Graves’ addresses:
“John Temple Graves’ address in Chicago contains more errors and
inconsistencies about the so-called Negro problem than any recent
utterance on the subject.
“He says that God has established the ‘metes and bounds’ of the Negro’s
habitation, but he never pointed out a single mete nor a single bound.
He says, ‘Let us put the Negro kindly and humanely out of the way;’ but
his vision again faded and he never told us where to put the darkey.
“If Mr. Graves’ inspiration had not been as short as a clam’s ear and
he had gone on and given us the particular spot on the globe to which
we should ‘kindly and humanely’ kick the darkey ‘out of the way,’ then
we might have asked, who will take the darkey’s place in the South? Who
will plow and hoe and pick out 12,000,000 bales of cotton? Who will
sing in the rice fields? Who will raise the sugar cane? Who will make
our ’lasses and syrup? Who will box and dip our turpentine? Who will
cut and saw the logs, and on his body bear away the planks from our
thousands of sawmills? Who will get down into the mud and swamps and
build railroads for rich contractors? Who will work out their lives in
our phosphate mines and factories, and in iron and coal mines? Who will
be roustabouts on our rivers and on our wharves to be conscripted when
too hot for whites to work? Who will fill the darkey’s place in the
Southern home?
“Oh, I suppose Mr. Graves would say, we will get Dutch and Poles, and
Hungarians, Swedes or other foreigners; or we will ourselves do all the
work of the Negro. To me this is neither possible nor desirable.
“The South don’t want to kick the Negro out, as I understand
it. The separation of the Negro from us now--his exile, _nolens
volens_--would be a greater calamity to us than his emancipation or his
enfranchisement ever has been. We need him and he needs us.
“Mr. Graves says that God never did intend that ‘opposite and
antagonistic races should live together.’
“That seems to me to be as wild as to say that God intended all dogs to
stay on one island; all sheep on another; all lions on another; or to
say that all corn should grow in America and all wheat in Russia.
“Mr. Graves cites no ‘thus saith the Lord’ to back up his new
revelation that antagonistic races must live separated.
“What God is it whose mind Mr. Graves is thus revealing? Surely it
can’t be the God of the Bible--for He allowed the Jews to live 400
years among the Egyptians; then over 500 years in and out of captivity
among the Canaanites; then in captivity nearly 100 years in Babylon;
then under the Romans; then sold by the Romans; and from then to now
the Jews--the most separate and exclusive of peoples--God’s chosen
people of the Old Covenant--they have lived anywhere, among all
people. Surely Mr. Graves is not revealing the mind of the God to whom
the original thirteen colonies bowed down in prayer; the God of the
Declaration of Independence and the God of George Washington and Thomas
Jefferson. For how many different races were planted in this new world?
English, Dutch, Swedes, Quakers, Puritans, Catholics, French Huguenots,
the poor, the rich--more antagonism than you can find between ‘Buckra’
and the ‘nigger.’ Yet all these antagonisms, such as they were, did not
prevent our forefathers from uniting in one country, under one flag,
in the common desire for political freedom, moral intelligence and
individual nobility of character.
“Under Mr. Graves’ God every colony would have become a petty nation,
with a Chinese wall around it. Mr. Graves’ inconsistencies reached a
climax when he said in one breath, ‘I appeal for the imperial destiny
of our mighty race,’ and then in the next breath says, ‘let us put the
Negro out.’ Is it any more imperial to boss the Filipino abroad than it
is to boss the Negro at home?
“The God of the Bible commands peace among races and nations, not war;
friendship, not antagonism and hatred. Did not Paul, a Jew, become a
messenger to the Gentiles? Did he not write the greater part of the New
Testament of Christianity while living in Gentile and pagan Rome? Did
not Christ set example to the world when He, a Jew, at Jacob’s well,
preached His most beautiful sermon to a poor Samaritan woman? Winding
up that great sermon by telling the woman and the world that not the
place of his abode and worship, but the good character of man--‘in
spirit and in truth’--was the only true worship. And that is the only
exclusive place whose metes and bounds God has set for any man to live,
‘in spirit and in truth.’
“How idle to talk of shutting off each race, as it were, into pens like
pigs to fatten them. This penning process will neither fatten their
bodies, enlighten their minds nor ennoble their souls. Can Mr. Graves
tell us how much good the great Chinese wall has done for man? If he
can, he can tell us how much good will come to us by putting the darkey
out, and locking the door. Mr. Graves’ idea would reverse all the
maxims of Christianity. It would be much better for Mr. Graves’ idea
of the separation of antagonisms to be applied to different classes
of occupations, of persons that are antagonistic. For instance, the
dram-seller is antagonistic to all homes and boys and girls; therefore,
put all dram-sellers and dram-shops on one island, and all the homes
and boys and girls on another island, far, far away! Now there is your
idea, Mr. Graves! Then, again, all horse thieves, bank breakers, train
robbers, forgers, counterfeiters are antagonistic to honest men; so
here, we will put them all in the District of Columbia and all the
honest men in Ohio, and build a high wall between. All the bad boys we
would put in a pen; and all us good boys, we will go to the park and
have a picnic and laugh at the nincompoop bad boys whose destiny we
have penned up! Ah, Mr. Graves could no more teach us this error than
could he reverse the decree of Christ to let the wheat and tares grow
together until harvest. The seclusion or isolation of an individual
or a race is not the road that God has blazed out for the highest
attainments. The Levite of the great parable drew his robes close about
him and ‘passed by on the other side’--like Mr. Graves would have us
do the Negro, except that instead of passing him by we would ‘put him
behind us’--a mere difference of words. But the good Samaritan got down
and nursed the dirty, wounded bleeding Jew; sacrificed his time and
money to heal his wounds. Now that Levite must be Mr. Graves’ ideal
Southerner! He says the Negro is an unwilling, blameless, unwholesome,
unwelcome element. So was the robbed and bleeding Jew to the Levite;
but did that excuse the Levite’s wrong? Ought the Levite to have put
the groaning man ‘out of the way’ of his ‘imperial destiny’ by kicking
him out of the road?
“Nay, verily. By the time that Mr. Graves gets all of the antagonistic
races and all the antagonistic occupations and people of the world
cornered off and fenced up in their God-prescribed ‘metes and bounds,’
and fences them each up, with stakes and riders to hold them in--by
that time I am sure he will envy the job of Sysiphus. But there is a
grain of sober truth in one thing Mr. Graves says--that the Negro is
blameless.”
[4] NEGRO TORN FROM JAIL BY AN OHIO MOB.
SHOT DEAD ON THE GROUND, THEN HANGED FROM TELEGRAPH POLE--YELLS OF
LAUGHTER--FOR HALF AN HOUR THE SWINGING CORPSE SERVES AS A TARGET
FOR THE MOB WHICH POURS LEAD INTO IT, SHRIEKING WITH DELIGHT.
(_By the Associated Press._)
Springfield, Ohio, March 7, 1904.--Richard Dixon, a Negro, was shot
to death here to-night by a mob for the killing of Policeman Charles
Collis, who died to-day from wounds received at the hands of Dixon on
Sunday.
Collis had gone to Dixon’s room on the Negro’s request. Dixon said
his mistress had his clothes in her possession. Collis accompanied
Dixon to the room, and in a short time the man and woman engaged in a
quarrel, which resulted in Dixon shooting the woman, who is variously
known as Anna or Mamie Corbin, in the left breast just over the heart.
She fell unconscious at the first shot and Collis jumped towards the
Negro to prevent his escape from the room. Dixon then fired four balls
into Collis, the last of which penetrated his abdomen. Dixon went
immediately to police headquarters and gave himself up. He was taken to
jail.
As soon as Collis’ death became known talk of lynching the Negro was
heard and to-night a crowd began to gather about the jail.
The mob forced an entrance to the jail by breaking in the east doors
with a railroad iron.
At 10:30 the mob melted rapidly and it was the general opinion that no
more attempts would be made to force an entrance. Small groups of men,
however, could be seen in the shadows of the court house, two adjacent
livery stables and several dwelling houses. At 10:45 o’clock the police
were satisfied that there was nothing more to fear and they with other
officials and newspaper men passed freely in and out of the jail.
Shortly before 11 o’clock a diversion was made by a small crowd moving
from the east doors around to the south entrance. The police followed
and a bluff was made at jostling them off the steps leading up to the
south entrance.
The crowd at this point kept growing, while yells of “hold the police,”
“smash the doors,” “lynch the nigger” were made, interspersed with
revolver shots.
All this time the party with the heavy railroad iron was beating at
the east door, which shortly yielded to the battering ram, as did the
inner lattice iron doors. The mob then surged through the east door,
overpowered the sheriff, turnkey and handful of deputies and began the
assault on the iron turnstile leading to the cells. The police from the
south door were called inside to keep the mob from the cells and in
five minutes the south door had shared the fate of the east one.
In an incredibly short time the jail was filled with a mob of 250 men
with all the entrances and yard gates blocked by fully 2,500 men, thus
making it impossible for the militia to have prevented access to the
Negro, had it been on the scene.
The heavy iron partition leading to the cells resisted the mob
effectually until cold chisels and sledge hammers arrived, which
were only two or three minutes late in arriving. The padlock to the
turnstile was broken and the mob soon filled the corridors leading to
the cells.
Seeing that further resistance was useless and to avoid the killing of
innocent prisoners the authorities consented to the demand of the mob
for the right man. He was dragged from his cell to the jail door and
thence down the stone steps to a court in the jail yard.
Fearing an attempt on the part of the police to rescue him, the leaders
formed a hollow square. Some one knocked the Negro to the ground and
those near to him fell back four or five feet. Nine shots were fired
into his prostrate body, and satisfied that he was dead, a dozen
men grabbed the lifeless body, and with a triumphant cheer the mob
surged into Columbia street and marched to Fountain Avenue, one of the
principal streets of the town. From here they marched south to the
intersection of Main street, and a rope was tied around Dixon’s neck.
Two men climbed the pole and threw the rope over the topmost crosstie
and drew the body about eighteen feet above the street. They then
descended and their work was greeted with a cheer.
The fusillade then began and for thirty minutes the body was kept
swaying back and forth, from the force of the rain of bullets which
was poured into it. Frequently the arms would fly up convulsively
when a muscle was struck, and the mob went fairly wild with delight.
Throughout it all perfect order was maintained and everyone seemed in
the best of humor, joking with his nearest neighbor while re-loading
his revolver.
A NEGRO HONORED.
COLUMBUS, GEORGIA, ERECTS A MONUMENT TO A HEROIC LABORER.
(_By the Associated Press._)
Macon, Ga., March 9, 1902.--A Columbus, Ga., dispatch to the Telegraph
says a marble monument has been erected by the city to the memory of
Bragg Smith, the Negro laborer who lost his life last September in a
heroic but fruitless effort to rescue City Engineer Robert L. Johnson
from a street excavation. On one side is an inscription setting forth
the fact, while on the other side is chiseled,
“Honor and shame from no condition rise;
Act well thy part, there all the honor lies.”
[5] BURNING OF NEGROES.
Birmingham, Ala., Special.--The Age-Herald recently published the
following letter from Booker T. Washington:
“Within the last fortnight three members of my race have been burned at
the stake; of these one was a woman. Not one of the three was charged
with any crime even remotely connected with the abuse of a white woman.
In every case murder was the sole accusation. All of these burnings
took place in broad daylight, and two of them occurred on Sunday
afternoon in sight of a Christian church.
“In the midst of the nation’s prosperous life, few, I fear, take time
to consider whither these brutal and inhuman practices are leading us.
The custom of burning human beings has become so common as scarcely to
attract interest or unusual attention. I have always been among those
who condemned in the strongest terms crimes of whatever character
committed by members of my race, and I condemn them now with equal
severity, but I maintain that the only protection to our civilization
is a fair and calm trial of all people charged with crime, and in their
legal punishment, if proved guilty. There is no excuse to depart from
legal methods. The laws are, as a rule, made by the white people, and
their execution is by the hands of the white people so that there is
little probability of any guilty colored man escaping. These burnings
without trial are in the deepest sense unjust to my race, but it is
not this injustice alone which stirs my heart. These barbarous scenes,
followed as they are by the publication of the shocking details,
are more disgraceful and degrading to the people who influence the
punishment than to those who receive it.
“If the law is disregarded when a negro is concerned, will it not soon
also be disregarded in the case of the white man? And besides the rule
of the mob destroys the friendly relations which should exist between
the races and injures and interferes with the material prosperity of
the communities concerned.
“Worst of all, these outrages take place in communities where there
are Christian churches; in the midst of people who have their Sunday
schools, their Christian Endeavor Societies and Young Men’s Christian
Associations; collections are taken up to send missionaries to Africa
and China and the rest of the so-called heathen world.
“Is it not possible for pulpit and press to speak out against these
burnings in a manner that will arouse a sentiment that shall compel
the mob to cease insulting our courts, our governors and our legal
authority, to cease bringing shame and ridicule upon our Christian
civilization.
“BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.
“Tuskegee, Ala.”
[6] Tourgée relates this incident in “A Fool’s Errand.”
[7] The grandfather clause in the North Carolina constitution, as
recently amended, gives illiterate whites the right to vote if their
grandfathers voted _prior to_ 1867. The negroes were enfranchised in
1867 and their grandfathers therefore could not have voted prior to
that time. So, while all negroes must be able to read and write the
constitution, in order to vote, the illiterate white man may do so
because his “grand-daddy” voted prior to 1867.
[8] As Mr. A. V. Dockery, who is a competent authority, so tersely said
in the New York Age, June 23, 1904, the Negro has been practically the
only natural Republican in the South. That a considerable number of
soldiers were furnished by the South to the Union army during the Civil
War is not contested, and proves little as to political conditions
then and for several decades later. It is well known that the mountain
section of North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia sent many
soldiers to the Northern army; it may not be so well known that Madison
county, North Carolina, the home of Judge Pritchard, contributed more
soldiers to the Union cause, in proportion to population, than any
other county in the whole United States.
It was not asserted that all those soldiers were then, or afterwards
became, Republicans. Before the emancipation, there were some
Republicans in this sparsely settled section, it is true, but
aggressive Republicanism in the South _got its impetus and had its
birth_ in the actual emancipation, not necessarily the enfranchisement,
of the Negro.
Yet when this remnant of white Republicans could no longer protect
the Negro in his right to vote, and successive Congresses supinely
consented to his disfranchisement, the South’s contribution to Congress
consisted of less than half a dozen Republican congressmen, and these
only from the aforesaid mountain district.
The Negro, being held up as a terrible hobgoblin to political white
folks, it was necessary to destroy his citizenship; which was
accomplished by wily and cruel means. About one and a half million
citizens were disfranchised and yet we have a paradox. This vast mass
of manhood is represented in Congress--in what way? By arbitrarily
nullifying the constitution of the Nation. It was the boast in 1861
that one Southern man could whip ten Yankees. May not this same class
of Southern politicians now proudly and truly boast that one Southern
vote is equal to ten Yankee votes?
Have the ten million American Negroes any more direct representation in
Congress than the ten million Filipinos?
In 1896 there was only one party in the South and its primaries elected
the congressmen. Seven congressional districts in South Carolina cast
a total of less than 40,000 votes for the seven congressmen elected to
the Fifty-seventh Congress.
For the same Congress, Minnesota cast a total of 276,000 votes for
seven congressmen, an average of 39,428 votes each; whereas the average
in South Carolina was less than 6,000 votes per congressman. In
other words, one South Carolina congressman is equal to seven of the
Minnesota article.
If every “lily white” Democrat in the old fighting South during the
last decade of the twentieth century (the “lily white” age) had
received an office, no benefit for the so-called Negro party would have
been attained, and the South would have remained as solid as ever. The
men there who amassed fortunes as a result of the Republican policy
of protection, remained Democrats, notwithstanding the elimination of
the Negro as a political factor. The “lily white” party had no other
principle except greed for office. It was a delicious sham and the
people knew it, white and blacks alike. It was distinctly proven that
as long, and no longer, as there was any Federal office in the South to
be filled there was a Democrat or a “lily white” handy and anxious to
fill it and willing to keep his mouth shut only during the occupation.
It is not surprising, therefore, that President Roosevelt early in his
administration gave the “lily-white” party to understand that it was
_persona non grata_ at the White House. As a true patriot and an honest
man he could not have done less.
[9] A. A. Gunby, Esq., a member of the Louisiana bar, in a recently
published address on Negro education, read before the Southern
Educational Association, which met in Atlanta, 1892, took diametrically
opposite ground to those who oppose higher education because it will
lead to the amalgamation of the races. Mr. Gunby said: “The idea
that white supremacy will be endangered by Negro education does not
deserve an answer. The claim that their enlightenment will lead to
social equality and amalgamation is equally untenable. The more
intelligent the Negro becomes the better he understands the true
relations and divergences of the races, the less he is inclined to
social intermingling with the whites. Education will really emphasize
and widen the social gulf between the whites and blacks to the
great advantage of the State, for it is a heterogeneous, and not a
homogeneous, people that make a republic strong and progressive.”
[10]
DOES THE NEGRO GET JUSTICE IN OUR COURTS?
(_Charlotte, N. C., News._)
The Charlotte Observer makes the sweeping statement regarding the
Negro: “He is not ill-treated nor improperly discriminated against
except in the courts, and for the injustice done him there, there seems
to be no remedy.”
A CLOSE CONTEST.
(_Charlotte, N. C., Observer._)
We always feel sorry for a North Carolina jury which gets hold of a
case in which a black man is the plaintiff and the Southern Railway
Company the defendant. A jury in Rowan superior court last week had
such a case and must have been greatly perplexed about which party
to the suit to decide against. After due deliberation, however, it
decided--how do you suppose--Why, against the railroad. But the problem
was one which called for fasting and prayer.
* * * * * *
Transcriber’s note:
Obvious printer errors corrected silently.
Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.