The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1893-03-09
THE FUTURE NATION.
1T IS TO BE STRONG IN LAW, TRUTH
/ AND RIGHTEOUSNESS.


Central Government, Uniform Divorce
Laws and General Education-ProIude Q
on Southern Lynohings.
NEW YORK, March 5.-The Rev.
Thomas Dixon, Jr., preceded the SER
mon in Association hall today by review
ing briefly the subject .of lynching, in
which he strongly appealed to the Chris
tian leaders of the south to form great
law and order league He said:
The taking Of life by law or without
law is contrary to the teachings of Chris
tianity The old Mosaic law of revenge,
IAN eye for an eye a tooth for tooth,
q life for life, was specifically set aside
by Jesus Christ, and in its stead the
higher law Of love proclaimed. The SEN
timent against the death penalty is daily
growing in power. Two Of the great
medical schools of New York state have
pronounced against it, and a committee
from the State Medical society of New
York, of which DR.. jacob was chair
man, recently reported against it, and
the report in this conservative body only
failed of adoption by five votes.
In the meantime, while public senti.
ment expressed or unexpressed, is
against capital punishment, murder is
unchecked The punishment for muir
der should be swift and summary, and
1t should be life imprisonment mot
death. To the majority of men the
swift and terrible penalty of life i'm
prisonment would be a more powerful
deterrent of murder than the bare pos
sibility Of one conviction out of seventy
for death, which is the proportion now
held in the administration Of law.
To kill man by law is communal
survival Of barbarism and is no more
justified by reference to Moses than
Mormonism is justified by a reference to
Abraham. But to kill man in the fury
Of mob is a lapse to tho original brute
ont of which man grew. II is a total
abrogation Of the first principle of hu-
manity. Man is no longer man. He
ceases to articulate language, and his
voice becomes the snarl of tiger, the
scream of an eagle, the howl of a wolf and
the hiss of snake. do not deny that
there is much of this brute inheritance
yet left in US all But it is cur first duty
10 subdue and cruelty it. In the name
Of God and Of humanity, appeal to the
Christian manhood of tie south to rise
and stay the avenging hand of the brutal
mob. The south has as profound respect
for law as any other section of the ma
ton; but, brethren of the south, you
have poor way Of showing it. To say
that the south lynches negroes because
they are black is an infamous slander
But the slander does not excuse the hor-
rible brutality Of the fact that white and
black are alike killed without a trial
and sometimes with suspicion only as
evidence.
But amid all the sentimental mush re-
Gently dished up in the north about ne
gro lynchings it is refreshing to read the
following words of wisdom from the ne
gro Bishop Tanner:
while it is true that within the past
eight years 72s negroes have been thus
barbarously treated, 37s whites met the
same fate. Our first ray of light, then,
Is that it is not a question entirely of
race, for the criminal class of both races
are treated alike, though not in thesame
proportion. An additional ray of light
Is seen, and it is a good, broad one, too
in the fact that it is only men of disrep-
utable characters who suffer, or char
acters supposed to be disreputable. The
southern mob in its fury does not assail
the good men Of their race, but the sup
posed bad.
In its blind and satanic fury the
southern mob passes not only by the
colored teacher, but by the schoolhouse
in which he teaches; It not only passes
by the colored preacher, but the church
In which he breaches; it passes by the
colored hall, whether Masonic or Odd
Fellow; it passes by the goodly home
stead of the well to do colored citizens
passes by all these and only makes for a
miserable wretch who is supposed to be
guilty of rape, of murder, of robbery and
Of kindred crimes. With the discern
ment to which attention has already
been called, the negro-especially those
Of the educated, wen to do and religious
class-sees this, and while he recognizes
the enormity of the crime of lynching in
common with others he does not feel
called upon to take it to himself any
more than do the whites when a white
man is lynched. Why should he? 1t is
true the per cent of his class made to
suffer is much larger than among the
whites, but SO is the per cent of poverty
and wretchedness in general"
And the bishop might have added,
so is the necessary percentage of crime
because Of poverty and ignorance great
en- for such is the fact as shown by the
census tables of crime by color.
| repeat what | have said, and can
prove any day in the year, that the most
lawless community in America today is
New York city. 1t is the garden spot
Of desperate criminals 1t is their town.
They rule it. Murder is the stepping
stone 10 public Office here, and coterie
Of men who have been tried for their
lives and cheated both the gallows and
the peniteniary are our supreme dicta-
tors Yet the south is held up TO the
scorn and ridicule of the world as the
fostering soil in which barbarism breeds
and lives
Is it not time, then, for the Christian
manhood of the south 10 unite in a deter
mined effort to remove the cause of this
disgrace: The time has come for the
leaders Of Christian thought in the south
to form an invincible law and order
league for the suppression of mob vio-
lence, the reform OF criminal procedure
and the swift enforcement of law.