New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1872-05-15
THE COLUMBIA ARRAY.

A queer story comes to us from Southern
Kentucky. On the first Of this month"; five
well-dressed men, fully mounted, rode into
the little town of Columbia, in the middle of
the afternoon. Two of them took their posi-
tons at each end of the courthouse, where
they could command the whole square; the
remaining three dismounted, and going into
the bank where several gentlemen were
seated, informed them they were all pris-
oners; killed the cashier. and deliberately
proceeded to rifle the bank. The opera
ton occupied about half an hour,
during which alarm was given by the men
who escaped from the bank; but the whole
of the citizens were held at bay by the two
outlaws outside, who fired right and left,
keeping up hideous yelling and bowling all
the time. The people of the town appear to
have been paralyzed with terror, as much by
the noise as the murder. 1t was not until the
daring rufiians had secured and made OIL with
their plumber that they reused from their
torpOr and began an Intellectual pursuit.
"The words the Lowery Gang suficed," we
are fold. "to chill the blood in the bravest
"vens"
Now, if this story did not come from the
actors in it, it would be absolutely incredible
TO any one who knows the character and tenn
per of the Southern people. That Kentucky
village should be "paralyzed with terror" Is
about as probable as that Donnybrook Fair, at
the moment when Corkonian and landowner
Join shillelah with shillelah, should pause to
reason. The blow first and afterward the
word. was the rule in no State moro
than Kentucky before the war. What
ever else was lacking in tho South
ern character, bravery, headlong, reckless
hardihood was there in excess. Nor is there
any diminution of it now. A call to arms in
a cause which they deemed just would make
their fields bristle with arms tomorrow as
readily as though they were not already inn
poverished with years of war and planted
deep with dead. The panic in Columbia arose
from different cause than cowardice, and we
have called attention to it as one of the most
suggestive instances of that peculiar demorali-
cation which the Northumberland of q
portion of the Southern people has produced
among the whole. The effect is 10 be traced
in the border counties of Kentucky quite as
plainly as in the Rebel States.
So long as the best portion of population
are excluded from all share in its manage
ment; so long az the mass of intelligence and
strength is set aside as inert and effective, no
matter for what pretext, just so long will
there be the utter subversion of law, decency,
and order which breaks forth in Ku-Klux
Kans and Lowery gangs. The very men who
stand perplexed and dismayed before the ruff
fanly violence which they are powerless to
curb, ignorant how deep the abyss of lawless-
ness is beneath their feet, are the same men
who went most bravely into battle in defense
of what they deemed their rights. When tho
great hound was chained and muzzled, the
meanest beast, even the toady terrier, could
insult it with impunity. Whether to chain
the hound and unloose the poisonous toothed
ours is the wiser policy, is matter for debate.