Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1893-05-04
Editor Gonzales Answers.
rThe State. of Sunday.l

To the editor of The State as a man
this day is the proudest of his life; as a
citizen it is the most humiliating.
The resolutions adopted by mass
meeting at Denmark are printed else
where. They relate to the editorial
course of this paper in regard to the
brutal murder OF an innocent, manacled
and confding negro near that town seve-
raj days ago. In so far as they villify
and denounce \. G. Gonzales, editor Of
The state, for what he has said in con-
demnation of that shameful act and the
shameful course of the law officer who
contributed to it by his surrender Of a
helpless prisoner to mob past discrim.
ination between the innocent and the
guilty, we are proud Of it. 1t is, and will
ever be, while this paper is under its
present editorial management, the pur-
pose of The State to be obnoxious to the
criminal classes; to the coward and the
murderer, whether he sit high in the seat
of the brave and just who have gone
before or whether he slink in the dark to
butcher in ribald triumph poor, COW
ering fellow-mortal, betrayed into his
brutal hands. In SO far as they.show in
the front Of brazen day their contempt
of the commandment Of the God they
profess to adore; in so far as they spurn
every sentiment of that chivalrous man
hood, once the pride of South Carroll
mans; in so far as they add TO crime
which has aroused the indignation of the
entire South the vilest of vile slanders
against the journalist who has dared tell
the truth about it, we are pitiful, very
pitiful, for South Carolina.
Whether B. R. Tillman directly insti-
gated tue meeting which was held in
store at Denrark yesterday, in which 500
men are reporoct. to nave participated,
or whether it was arranged by his friends
for political effect, we do not know and
we do not care. 1t is sufficient that a
meeting was held, whether small or
large, and wrote added infamy against
their own names and across the map OF
their section.
Tie effort to prove John Peterson to
have been the guilty man after his COM
plete exoneration by the young lady who
was assaulted and by her little brother
would be farcical if it did not prove that
beneath the skin Of the murderers there
remain nerves which tingle under the
lash of public scorn.
The statement that The State or its
editor has, by word or suggestion, sought
to ''excite negro men to attack and rape
white women when unprotected" and
that this paper has sought to ''array the
negro race against the white race" is 80
UNANIMOUSLY false, so utterly without
shadow of excuse, that it furnishes the
most complete justification possible for
every word which we have printed as to
the brutality and cowardice of the deed
for which these Denmark murderers
stand abhorred of men. Those who make
such charges show their eagerness to
murder not only life. but character, and
prove themselves to be in intent moral as
well as material assassins.
Gov. Tillman, of course, is commended
for delivering the poor wretch who went
to him for protection into the hands of
these men, and the editor of The State is
declared to be as deserving of murder as
John Peterson. These resolutions quite
befit their source.