The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1898-12-27
Replies to Minister Who Said
Gould Was In Torment.
PRAISES HELEN GOULD
Believes In q Short Shrift and a
Strong Rope.
Says She Has Been ReviIed by
Pulpit Blatherskite.


gresham FELTON,, was taken to task
recently by the Rev. DR.. ]. B. Haw-
thorne OF the First Baptist church Of
Nashville because of her call for a.
| thousand lynchings a week if necessary
| to protect southern Womanhood against
IaWless negroes. DR.. Hawthorne was
| quoted once as saying that Jay Gould
had gone to hell, and Mrs. FELTON,, in a
| reply to him made public here today,
taunts him with that unfortunate re-
| mark.
Or Hawthorne has not forgiven
me-" she says, ''for that notable dis
cussion of some years ago as to Jay
Gould's whereabouts. He has writhed
under the rebuke he then received.
''When I recall the ecclesiastical
venom he inflicted on the dead financier
from his pulpit in Atlanta and then
think of Miss Helen Gould, the noble
woman thanked by congress for great
deeds and unparalleled generosity, OF
this tender, devoted daughter who was
shedding filiaI tears over her fathers
corpse at the very time when DR.. HaW-
thorne was hurting epithets at him and
grilling his bones in eternal torment,
I am inclined to think I am honOred by
his abuse and fortunate in being spared
the odium of his good opinion
Mrs. FELTON, then makes some filings
at DR.. Hawthorne's business methods
and writes insinuatingly OF patent medi-
cine advertising.
But" Mrs FELTON, goes on, "a1low
me to reproduce one paragraph from
DR.. HaWthorne's pulpit remarks, that
may review his statement accurately:
What DIR. Hawthorne Said.
" When she explains Hang thou
sands of Them" he says, she represents
humanity verging toward the animal
and the fiend. She makes US think Of
a misanthrope to whose soul summer
has never come and spring has forever
faded. She writes like one whose rea-
son is dethroned by anger and revenge.
Junius, or Byron, is tame and maudlin
in comparison with the wrath which she
Eliminates against the adversaries of
mob law
THE statement here made that I
Illuminated any wrath or expressed OPP
position to those who deprecated mob
law" Mrs. FELTON, replies, II pronounce
to be SANDER. I defy its author to
show the page or line to substantiate
it. This vigorous tongue which defiled
the pulpit knew it to be false when ut
tered.
I'm August, 1897, I delivered an adj
dress to the State Agricultural society
on the needs of farmers. I expatiated
on the dangers of life in the country to
our daughters from the boldness of
negroes. the result of political encour-
agement. That week there had been
several lynchings in Georgia for crimes
against WOmanhOOd. declared that
these crimes would grow with every
election where white men eQuaI1Zed
themselves with an inferior race. A
crime unknown before and during the
war had become a daily occurrence,
and mob law had also become omnip-
otent In the face of such intolerable
outrages on helpless womanlzind.
ut was then that I said, If it takes
1ynching to protect woman's dearest
possession from drunken, ravening hu-
man beasts, then I say lynch a thou
sand a week, if it becomes necessary
Short Shrift and Strong Rope.
ST was cheered to the echo. spoke
the truth, for when all other remedies
fail, when churches fail to rouse their
members to the dangers, when courts
fail to convict the criminals, when the
authorities pardon, and when women
the public highways and in their homes,
then husbands and fathers will rise in
their wrath and rebuke the crime with
a short shrift and a strong rope.
That's Georgia law, and that assem-
bIage of farmers to whom I spoke said
amen.
ton, a negro girl was assaulted by q,
negro brute. Her colored grandmother
rescued her in agony and frantic strug-
giles. The father of that girl, himself
a. negro, pursued that assailant through
my fields with bloodhounds, and if the
county officers had not reached the
offender first he would have died right
there without Judge or jury. That's
the verdict of fatherhood, regard less of
color.
Refers to Tanners Guns.
st have given the warning; I have
deprecated mob law; I plead for man
hood and religion, and while doing
I am carried by name into a Nashville
pulpit by a sliek-haired, slick-tongued
Pecksniffian pulpit blatherskite, to be
reviled by the enemies of the southern
people because of this earnest defense
of my own race and sex, of the wives
and daughters of southern men in their
unprotected rural homes!
southern white women with the basest
of imputations, and the notorious Mrs.
Grannis of New York city was reported
as declaring ali the white women of
the south to be full of colored blood
was flooded with letters of the vilest
obscenity from the misled colored peo-
pie in the north and west. 1t was a
revelation. But one white man made
an indignant reply, and he said he was
the husband of a dark-skinned Phil
adeIphia negress.
Already in Illinois Governor Tanner
keeps his Calling guns in readiness,
and in President McKinIey's state a
negro was recently lynched, and in an
other section five men were Iynched for
stealing heifers.
ssIn Georgia we draw the line around
our daughters. Stop the crime and the
lynching will STOP"
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