The gold leaf. [volume] (Henderson, N.C.) 1881-1911, 1893-11-23
Christian manhood and piety.
Maj. Smith closes his very impress
eive article with thic.

SlFC dItlClc Will lIllS
This momentous question is before the
South. Seven millions of negroes are face
to lace with fifteen million whites. How
much longer can they live in harmony
1t is more vital question than silver or
gold or tariff, and the Southern Con
gressmen who fail to consider it are
| either blind or lacking craftsmanship.
1t is the great national question, that
will not down at our bidding.
No good and true man-true to
God, to himself, to his race, to his
country-can desire lawlessness OF
can feel happy over Furnishing with
death the brutes who ravin as wolves
and are ready to make helpless white
women their victims, sometimes even
unto death. Lawlessness increases
with the increase of crime. But lynch
ing is in itself wrong because it is
lawless. Bishop Haygood puts it
thus, wisely and we'll. He says :
"Lynching is crime against God
and man. Lynching breaks the law,
defes it, despises it, puts it to open
shame. Punishment by government
according to law, represents the judg-
ment of God punishment by lynch
ing is vengeance. Legal punishment
educates men into respect for law ;
lynching educates them into contempt
for law" He says 'lynching is
anarchy" and because it does more
to put down law than any criminal it
takes in hand" He says hundred
men banded have no more right to
kill man than one man has that
right. The object in banding is
simply "to avoid and overpower law. y
He thinks when men burn their
victims they are insane for the time.
Reason is dethroned. He says no
"sane and intelligent" being can
justify such monstrous and abnormal
things as burnings." But he turns to
the burnings and saws when men think
of these they think also of the ruined
women and the tortured dead-they
will "think also of white badly, four
years old, first outraged with de-
moniacal cruelty and then taken by
the heels and torn asunder in the mad
wantonness of gorilla ferosity. Indeed,
the instant comment of negro man
to whom I stated this case was, sHe
ought to have been burnt Men, no
matter where they live or high their
personal or social development, with
human hearts in them, will ASK
What if she had been my baby?" In
another place, referring to this same
Paris, (Texas), burning of the negro
beast, he says: "It was horrible to
torture the guilty wretch; the burning
was an act of insanity. But had the
dismembered form of his victim been
the dishonored body of my baby,
might have also gone into insanity
that might have ended never"
So there is great horror-a most
deep, dismal, &c black shadow in the
South" that is portentous Of great
coming evil and impending sorrow
and violence. No race on the earth
that ever lived-even in savagery-
ever tolerated the raping of women
No white race can ever tolerate 1t
Boston may sit in its wealth and cen
sure the South, but we all know thai
underneath the placid, self-contained
cultivated surface lies slumbering vol
canoes of passion. The past speak:
of what the Puritan..blood is capable O
The true men, the rejecting men, the
educated men, the good men in the
South deplore the condition and
| mourn over the crime that caused the
violent and cruel revenge.