The Washburn leader. [volume] (Washburn, McLean County, N.D.) 1890-1986, 1893-09-30
OFFICIAL PAPER OF MCLEAN co.

South cry out against the injustice with
which they are censured for the same Of
tense. But there is usually a difference.
It happens, by some singular process
which the Southerner has never explained,
that the victim of the mob in that section
is nearly always a negro; and once In a
while there comes a tragedy which shows
that in most of these cases the lynching
bee is not the outburst of an impassioned
desire for justice, but the deliberate ex-
preston of a cold-blooded race hatred
which waits Only a poor apology to spring
upon the black man and strike him dead.
The murder of three men at New Orleans
is a case in point that it must not escape
the'Pnblic notice.
Here were three negroes put to death
brutally, who we're guilty of no crime and
accused of none. Worse than that, thoy
we're murdered by white men because of q
stubborn ard devoted heroism which, had
black one, would have called upon South
ern ohivalry to honor and glorify it. The
facts of this lynching strip the last tatters
from the pretense that the South fnds
strict and summary justice necessary to
hold a rude people in check, and exposes
in all its deformity the diabolical malag-
nifty which they hunt the helpless negro to
his death. A hideous crime had been
committed by a black man. For some
reason he shot to death the judge who
was trying him for some light ohense, al
though this man had befriended him.
Then he escaped n sought refuge in the
swamps. To raise a mob and hunt him
down was not objectionable, nor should
any n have thought of the circumstance
a second time if he had been caught and
riddled with bullets. But they did not
catch him. They caught instead three of
his brothers, all of them not only innocent
but accused of no crime except their re-
lationship to the murderer. 1t vas only
supposed that they had taken food to him
while hiding, and for this they were ar
rested. The posses who had failed to
catch their man then went to the Jail, took
these three innocent men out and MUIR
dered them and contented themselves after
much wrangling, with whipping and driv-
ing out of the parish two sisters of their
victims instead of shooting them down
also to make the massacre complete.
All this happened almost within the city
of New Orleans, and a line or two in the
dispatches happens to tell US, as a mere
chance, that while the men we're hunting
for their negro they kicked to death an
other one, who was in no way connected
with either the crime or the criminal, be-
cause he did not happen to know the
whereabouts of the object of their search.
It is a frightful outrage, worthy of some
savage tribe in interior Africa. No COM
munity in which such things can happen
without a popular uprising and the pun
ishment of the guilty to the limit of the
law can claim to be within the pale of civ
ilization. Yet we shall be surprised if
this event is ever mentioned again; be-
cause the killed we're negroes, and it mat
ters little what the pretext is in that SEQ
ton as long as it is a negro put out of the
way. In the whole annels of race crime
in the South. and at the time when politi
cal passions we're burning most fercely,
we remember no occurrence as atrocious
as this last disgrace to the name and fame
of Louisiana.