The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-10-11
THE OMAHA MOB.

The forcing of the Jail at Omaha and the
lynching of negro prisoner is a more dis
graceful affair, if possible. than the New
Orleans massacre, because in New Orleans
the mob were incensed at the legal escape
of the accused through acquittal, while in
Omaha the negro prisoner was morally
certain of conviction on trial and Of pun
ishment. There was no palliating circum-
stance in this Omaha interference with
able lawlessness which could have been
prevented had the police been willing to
do their duty. A mob that a single de-
termined policeman with a revolver drove
away from the east side of the Jail could
have been repulsed if they had beeu prop
erly met with firearms. Such mob is al
ways ferocious and always cowardly.
A Maryland sheriff recently drove off a
mob of this sort by ordering his posse
within the Jail to open fire; the rioters
knew the sheriff to be a man who meant
what he said, and they retired. The police
who permit prisoner to be taken from
strong jail without resistance of course
and community whose municipal ma
chinery is so rotten that the officers of
the law make no resolute resistance to the
forcing of a Jail by mob is community
unfit for free government. Omaha, like
New Orleans, is probably a corrupt munic-
ipality differed by persons who probably
dosnot care who is lynched by the mob
III A. H. - So, H.
personal or political interests.
These recent crimes against law are the
natural fruit of the stupid conformation, if
not justification, of the New Orleans mas
sacre, which has poisoned public senti-
ment at the West, where it most needed
publication. Lynchings have increased
since the New Orleans crime. because of
the cowardly failure of the press of the
country to stigmatize the New Orleans
crime as it deserved. Ifthese inexcusable
lynchings continue to multiply, decent
and thoughtful people will sigh for the day
when We shall have less liberty, but more
| justice and respect for law, even if it is
military justice inflicted upon the mob by
| federal soldiers.
u
state so corrupt that a lottery company
| has controlled its legislature and politics
| for years and has suborned the press; 1t
| was worthy of a state so degraded that
| during the last ten years illiteracy among
both blacks and whites has alarmingly in
creased. The illiteracy among the whites
| increases more than twice as fast as it does
among the blacks, so that, while in 1870
| there was only one illiterate white voter in
eight, there is now one in every five.
There were last year only 5000 children
attending the public schools in the last
school year out of a school population of
SS9. 1869. leaving 254, 169 unprovided for.
| Even those who do attend get only two or
three months of schooling on an average
in year. The private and parochial
schools in the state give instructions to
about q, 900, so that more than two chill
dren out of three in New Orleans are grow
| ing up in ignorance. The school fund of the
state is only $577, 42o93. The city of New
| Orleans is city of refuge and recreation
for prizetighters and lawless folk of all
sorts; its politics are VIGOROUSLY corrupt
and lynching negroes has been a pastime
for thirty years in Louisiana. From such
state and such city the crime known as
the New Orleans massacre was not unex-
pected.
1t is the Southern habit to lynch or exile
or boycott any man or class of men who
are too weak and friendless to protect
themselves, and too poor to buy protection
of the officers of the law. Can anybody
tell today what end Of justice that
massacre has served? The mob slaught-
cred some guilty men probably, and it
unquestionably slaughtered other men
who had not been tried against whom the
evidence was confessedly weaker than in
the case Of those who had been put
on trial. These untried men were
murdered as barbarously as those
who had been acquitted or about
whose guilt the Jury disagreed. This
mob clearly did not execute justice. for
they murdered untried men, in whose cases
the evidence had not been heard, so the
New Orleans mob killed some men
y presumably innocent. and thus perpetrated