Henry W. Grady in his well-remembered speeches in New England and New York
pictured the Afro-American as incapable of self-government. Through him
and other leading men the cry of the South to the country has been "Hands
off! Leave us to solve our problem." To the Afro-American the South says,
"the white man must and will rule." There is little difference between the
Antebellum South and the New South.
Her white citizens are wedded to any method however revolting, any measure
however extreme, for the subjugation of the young manhood of the race.
They have cheated him out of his ballot, deprived him of civil rights or
redress therefor in the civil courts, robbed him of the fruits of his
labor, and are still murdering, burning and lynching him.
The result is a growing disregard of human life. Lynch law has spread its
insiduous influence till men in New York State, Pennsylvania and on the
free Western plains feel they can take the law in their own hands with
impunity, especially where an Afro-American is concerned. The South is
brutalized to a degree not realized by its own inhabitants, and the very
foundation of government, law and order, are imperilled.
Public sentiment has had a slight "reaction" though not sufficient to stop
the crusade of lawlessness and lynching. The spirit of christianity of the
great M.E. Church was aroused to the frequent and revolting crimes against
a weak people, enough to pass strong condemnatory resolutions at its
General Conference in Omaha last May. The spirit of justice of the grand
old party asserted itself sufficiently to secure a denunciation of the
wrongs, and a feeble declaration of the belief in human rights in the
Republican platform at Minneapolis, June 7. Some of the great dailies and
weeklies have swung into line declaring that lynch law must go. The
President of the United States issued a proclamation that it be not
tolerated in the territories over which he has jurisdiction. Governor
Northern and Chief Justice Bleckley of Georgia have proclaimed against it.
The citizens of Chattanooga, Tenn., have set a worthy example in that they
not only condemn lynch law, but her public men demanded a trial for Weems,
the accused rapist, and guarded him while the trial was in progress. The
trial only lasted ten minutes, and Weems chose to plead guilty and accept
twenty-one years sentence, than invite the certain death which awaited him
outside that cordon of police if he had told the truth and shown the
letters he had from the white woman in the case.
Col. A.S. Colyar, of Nashville, Tenn., is so overcome with the horrible
state of affairs that he addressed the following earnest letter to the
_Nashville American_.
Nothing since I have been a reading man has so impressed me with the
decay of manhood among the people of Tennessee as the dastardly
submission to the mob reign. We have reached the unprecedented low
level; the awful criminal depravity of substituting the mob for the
court and jury, of giving up the jail keys to the mob whenever they are
demanded. We do it in the largest cities and in the country towns; we do
it in midday; we do it after full, not to say formal, notice, and so
thoroughly and generally is it acquiesced in that the murderers have
discarded the formula of masks. They go into the town where everybody
knows them, sometimes under the gaze of the governor, in the presence of
the courts, in the presence of the sheriff and his deputies, in the
presence of the entire police force, take out the prisoner, take his
life, often with fiendish glee, and often with acts of cruelty and
barbarism which impress the reader with a degeneracy rapidly approaching
savage life. That the State is disgraced but faintly expresses the
humiliation which has settled upon the once proud people of Tennessee.
The State, in its majesty, through its organized life, for which the
people pay liberally, makes but one record, but one note, and that a
criminal falsehood, "was hung by persons to the jury unknown." The
murder at Shelbyville is only a verification of what every intelligent
man knew would come, because with a mob a rumor is as good as a proof.
These efforts brought forth apologies and a short halt, but the lynching
mania was raged again through the past three months with unabated fury.
The strong arm of the law must be brought to bear upon lynchers in severe
punishment, but this cannot and will not be done unless a healthy public
sentiment demands and sustains such action.
The men and women in the South who disapprove of lynching and remain
silent on the perpetration of such outrages, are particeps criminis,
accomplices, accessories before and after the fact, equally guilty with
the actual lawbreakers who would not persist if they did not know that
neither the law nor militia would be employed against them.