The Twin-City American., 1899-05-11

mercy fed to beasts7 Has the United
States no power TO protect citizen7 A
nation that cannot or will not protect
its citizens in time Of peace has no right
to ask its citizens to protect it in time Of
walk. G. Ingersoll in New York
Journal
For an Anglo Saxon in Georgia. with
all his opportunities. with his religion,
his civilization, his boast as member
OF a superior race, claiming his right to
rule and owing an example to interiors
--for this white man to make himself
beast, to dance in wild JOY about VIC
tim, whether punishment or persecu-
ton. to dip fingers in his blood, TO tor
ture him and gloat over his mutilated
body, is crime against law, against
civilization, against humanity, which
surpasses even the most horrible out
break OF some barbarous black mans
brutal passion. Il is not the death OF
the Negro that makes the picture SO
dark, nor its unlawfulness, nor even his
unmeasured suffering. His crime was
terrible, and certain, severe and swift
punishment was deserved. We are not
pitying him. 1t is the debasement of
the whole community by such an orgy
Of blood, such a reversion OF civilized
men and women to the delight in cru
city that marks savages, which seems
TO as the darkest and saddest feature OF
this dark affair.
Great as arc the wrongs Of the Gran
ford family, greater will be the wrongs
of Georgia and our whole country II
such deeds are tolerated. What do the
women OF Georgia think OF the chival-
rous men who went out to punish a
crime against one OF their number and
came back with cooked pieces of a
wretched Negro's heart and liver in
their pockets to announce, not that they
had done the justice OF God, but that
they had given themselves to wallowing
in blood and to passions behtting dew
lis? That is the question which this
burned and mutilated Negro's body
raises. II is not his fate, or even the
supremacy OF law, that is most at issue.
The most important thing is the charac-
ter of our civilization and the future OF
a race which sees the fit punishment OF
one crime only in giving itself over to
frenzy Of savagery. Such passions do
not belong alone to those who indulge
them. They will course for greater evils
in the veins OF the next generation.
Mankind cannot make itself the beast
with impunity, even to punish beast.
New York Tribune.
We undertook to make extracts from
Georgia and South Carolina papers de-
scribing particularly the mutilation and
burning OF the Negro Sam Hose or
Holt at Newman, in Georgia, last
Sunday, but when we had accumu-
lated them they were so horrible
that it would have been an outrage
on the sensibilities. the very decen-
cy OF civilized people, to print them.
The tortures inflicted on the Negro
before he was burned at the stake we're
never exceeded in savage ferocity by
Comanche Indians, and they were made
the more awful because OF the greater
intelligence of the torturers. AS the
savage work proceeded crowd OF two
thousand people. composed largely, as
we are told, "of all the farmers who had
received word that the burning was to
take place" watched its every detail with
absorbing interest and without sound
OF protest, but rather with unanimous
approval and many expressions OF de-
light (These people, it must be re-
membered, were not hoodlums OF a
great city, but were drawn from the
countryside, from adjacent villages and
farms, and were fairly representative OF
the whole rural population OF Georgia.
We need say nothing more.)-New
York Sun.
The preventive" theory OF the South
ern lyncher. which has been seriously
advanced as the cause OF preference by
the 'best people, for mob murder TO
punishment by law, will hardly survive,
on paper at least, the Palmetto incident,
or rather series OF incidents. Ii has been
argued seriously throughout the South
that a Negro was elatsd by a legal
hanging, or at least the prospect there
of; that the attention which the authori-
ties and the publir were obliged to pay
to him more than Offset the terrors Of
death, and thus encouraged imitation
OF his crime For this reason the swift,
sudden, unceremonious and savage ven
geance OF the mob was considered ne
cessity for deterrence.
Well, the murder OF Alfred Cranford
by the Negro Hose, the ravishing Of
his wife--ii it occurred, which IS more
than doubtiul--the burning and other
torture Of the Negro Hose and the dis
tribution OF his cooked flesh as sosye-
Mrs oil the occasion, the hanging OF the
Negro preacher Strickland without
proof OF his guilt. and probably also of
the Negro Sewell for expressing hope
that the victims OF the first Palmetto
lynching would be avenged-all are the
result oil that deterrent exploit when
| the mob went to the tobacco house and