Daily Republican., 1885-09-19
lynched dbyNegroes
Al HANGED BY MEN OFHAs
OWN RACE.
HUNG FROM A WHITE OAK

BALTIMORE, Sept. 1S-Dsngling from
. tall white oak tree over Cat Rocks
near EllicOtt city, Howard County
fifteen miles from this city, this morn
ing was found the dead body of N. .cholal
Snowden, a mulatto. who recently com
mitted an outrageous assault upon 9
little colored girl named Alvera Fisher
About 2 o'clock this morning ZEN colored
men, masked. drove up to- tle jail with
a wagon. They knocked n the doc,
of John T. Ray, the jsiler, Ind wher
he raised q window and abked whal
they wanted he was told that they had
q prisoner to deliver. When he opened
the door and saw the masked men he
realized that he had been fooled.
We have no prisoner TO deliver, u
said the leader, " but we want you T.
deliver up Snowdep."
~ have no right to surrender the
prisoner" answered the jailer "hs
will get his just deserts /"
=" That's all stuff" shouted the head
yigilante we've heard of that talk
before. We've come here for Nick
Snowden, and we're going to get him il
we have to tear the house down."
DAUGHTERS S PLEA.
The jailer was about to resist the mob
when his 17.yesr-eld daughter pleaded
with him not to risk his life, bus to
give over the keys. He gave them
some keys, but they would not fit the
cell door. The lynchers got an axe, and
IA stalwart negro soon burst the old lock
on the cell door. Snowder faced the
crowd and asked what they wanted.
" Well soon show you," replied the
leader, as he adjusted rope about the
prisoners neck. The jailer stood by and
watched them drag the prisoner out.
Once or twice he was about to offer re-.
sistance, but his daughter prevailed up
upon him to keep quiet. He would
have been no match for the ten big,
powerful negroes, and three of them
carried guns. The jailer had no help
to resist the attack. A young colored
man who witnessed the lynching states
that when the lynohers took Snowden
beneath the tree and were preparing to
hang him he manifested no concern
whatever.
He neither begged for mercy nor
professed any SORROW for his crime.
made no answer. After q rope was
thrown over a stout limb Snowden was
hauled up and lowered three times
until life was extinct. A Coroner's Jury
gave verdict of death by strangula-
tion, caused by parties unknown. This
was the fourth lynching In Maryland
within q year, and none of the lynchers
have been arrested.
WHY THEY DIDIr.
The lynching Of Snowden has a Gu,
rious significance. 1t has always been
in Maryland, as in other Southern
hn L.. kr% Al.
negro assailant of female chastity
Judge or jury, notwithstanding That by
statue the punishment for such crime
is death. The excuse of the lynchers
always is that, although the crimina
might be condemned to death, his vic
tim must previously undergo the ordeal
of telling in open court the story of the
indignity to which she had been sub.
mitted. To save her this shame
the lynchers do their swift and des.
perate work.
The colored people have keenly felt
the reproach to which their race has
been subjected because OF the crimes
of few of its brutal and debased mem
bers.
1t has happened more than once that
oolored men would have taken the lead
in lynching parties, and, in an affair
of the kind az Rockville, Montgomery
County, two years ago, it was with the
utmost effort that the white men pre-.
vent the oolored vigilantes from
burning alive a desperate who was
taken from the jail to be swung from
the most convenient tree. Now, in the
Ellicott City tragedy, the colored men
Of the neighborhood have taken the exc
cution of summary justice out of the
hands of the whites, with the idea that
they will thus most effectually restrain
the vic ious rutfiaus OF their race.