The Evening dispatch. [volume] (Provo, City, Utah) 1891-1895, 1895-05-21

THE FLORIDA CASE.

The Deseret News of Monday had
Leading editorial upon the recent ter
ribl9 occurrence IN Florida in which a
beautiful young lady, on her way to
visit and spend the night with her girl
friend, was brutallY assaulted by three
repuIsive and abandoned negro men,
and kept several days and nights, and
after such defiIement as would shock
the eensibilitY of an alligator, was
brutally murdered and cruelty manned.
The general tenor Of the article is
kindly and even, sympathetic and
while more TRADE against lynch law,
1t does express sympathy with the par
ents of the girl and pity for her cruel
fate. This encourages us to recur to
the affair In the hope that with
clearer understanding of the situation
surrounding the two races In the ne
gro belt of the south, the News and
other papers in:this country, may make
more lenient judgment for the
lynchers.
One of the hard facts in the case is
this: Among the negro men of the
south there exists strong and an al
most uncomfortable desire to know
white woman carnally. One not ac-
quainted with the race and all of It's
surroundings can hardly understand
the strength of this desire, or the risks
ignorant negro men will take to graf
ify it. The ordinary courses of law
have been found totally inadequate
to the task of dealing with this most
troublesome state of things, Instances
OF this kind are of almost daily occur
renee, Every neighborhood in the
southern states has its own case, many
OF them. Alas! many of them. Only
q few years since, the beautiful and ac-
complished wife Of the bishop of the
Episcopal diocese of Georgia, DIR. Beck
with, was seized at dusk, while passing
cotton shed in the city of Macon, by
brutal negro, one Of the coarsest and
A4AOSb AOE1OCo III GIlO SIdIe.
dragged into the darkness and cruelty
outraged. She staggered from the in
human ordeal on to the streets, raw
ing maniac, and fingered ten years, or
until death pityingly sought her and
mercifully released her from her un
speakable misery. The daughters of
hsa Anf oP h.
often, aye, in almost innumerable in
stances, been subjected to this fearful
ordeal.While In almost every case some
fearful lynching like that N Florida
follows, yet the lesseping of the crime
since the war, is hardly observable.
Indeed the problem as to how best to
deal with it has exercised the best
brain and hearts of the south, but all
to no purpose. The negro rather
glories in the eclst attending a public
execution, and that eclat stands to him
more as reward than punishment.
At all events the legal execution has
totally failed as deterrent.
Fully apprecisting this failure and
its dire consequences to their helpless
loved ones, the men of the south have
turned to lynch law and haye en-
deaYored to surround its application
with such terrors as will deter. And
who can blame them2 Take the case
home. Apply the dreadful circum-
stance to your own fair pure young
daughter, to your own beloved wife,
and then ask yOuTse If what would be
your own course of action. There can
be but one reply: Swift, sure death,
surrounded by every circumstance cal.
culated to strike terror into the whole |
race. He would be but a sorry man
who would not feel like Sacrificing a
host of negroes, if by doing SO be could
prevent or help to protect other inno-
cents from fate SO awful, SO dire. 1t
is easy to condemn lynch law, and in
deed it is most dangerous principle |
to tamper with, but there are times,
dreadful times, such as the recent case
in Florida, when feslty to God, to ones
own fair child OF wife, demands that
death be dealt in its most repulsiye
form, and it is inaoequate to the just
of fiend of this nature or
order.
Let the News make an effort to grasp |
the idea here family sketched aud
then tell us if the outraged father,
brothers and relatives of the poor dead
victims of the brutal blackman's lusts,
could do else than torture and destroy.
If the laws here were more rigidly en-
forced, if the penalty were death,
there would be fewer of those dreadful
cases which SO shocGed the refined and
inhabitants of Salt Lake her
self the other day.