The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1899-05-10


The press and the preachers have cx-
pressed their horror or their approval
and the world moves On--nOt Il stay
nor a stop nor Il jolt is felt either soci
ally, religiously financially. OF CONNER
cially. The fulminations Of the north
err .,rcss nor the apprchcnsons Of
edito-> nearer home amount to any
thing. History is just repeating it.
self. Every few years something like
this happens and the press and the
preachers explode in about the same
LANGUAGE until they get :ircd and then
subslIc and wait quietly for some
other narrowing thing to happen. We
remember we'll what the press said
about the burning Of the brute at Dal
las ;ow years ago and the same adj
jcct;ycs were used and the same ana
thcn.a> hurled upon our people The
lru,e who ravishcd a child of six
year, and then killed her and threw
her mutilatcd body in the bushes ac
tuai.y found friends among our enc
nic>. They said it was brutal to
burn him. We remember when the
negro assaulted little girl near Mad
son a, she was going home from school
alone and then cut her throat and
threw her body in gully and covered
it with brush When ycngcaHcc o;cv-
took him the northern press howlcd as
usual
1t i their busincs, to howl They
like it, and no doubt are glad this
THU has happened. 1t feeds their
appetite and nurses their wrath and
will last them Il week, perhaps longer.
In the language of Governor Oates, ]
would rise to point Of order and ask,
What are you going to do about it?'
Nothing, of course, nothing. Such
thin-s will happen sometimes every
where at long intervals, but they do
not affect a single item of civilization.
Who is afraid to move to Georgia or
Texas because of lynchings? Nobody,
save, perhaps, few bad men who
think Of coming because they are in
bad reputc at home Fitzgerald was
not afraid to come, nor afraid to stay,
and the northern people in that grow
ing city are celebrating their content
with picnics and other hilarities while
| write. The wicked fee where no
man is in danger of the lynchers. No
aw-abiding citizen has any fear for
himself or his household
1t takes terrible crime to arouse
whole community into such remedy,
and so l feel no personal alarm?
Reader do you?
The truth is that lynchings are not
as frequent in the south as ney have
been, but are getting quite common
over the line. We read that they
tried to lynch man in New York the
other day for stealing horse. Why
they have long since quit that in
Texas. Mr.. Inman is right or nearly
so. He says in his answer to the
symposium of opinions that there is
no just cause for alarm among the
country people-no greater cause than
there has been. That 95 per cent of
the people, both white and black, are
harmless and law abiding and we will
have to watch and punish the other
8 per cent just as we have been doing
for many years. The per cent Of
bad negroes is greater than he thinks.
The number in the chaingangs prove
this, but their crimes are generally
misdemeanors, larceny and burglary,
and education does not correct this.
Booker Washington says it does, but
observation and the statistics Of t.
prison commission prove the reverse.
We old men who owned slaves be-
fore the war are established in our
opinions that education does not les
sen crime, neither among whites nor
blacks. Mr.. Stetson, the chairman Of
the school commission Of Massachu-
sets, declared this in pamphlet sew
cral years ago, and proved that educa-
tion increased crime not little, but
to an alarming extent. I have great
respect for Booker Washington, and
believe that the kind of education he
is giving will lessen crime among the
pupils he is educating. Our slaves
were educated by fear of the lash or
the whipping post, and you can pick
them out to-day. 1t is their children.
born since the war, or their grand
children who are in the chaingang.
Why should there be i 900 negroes
in these State and county chaingangs
of Georgia when there are only 24O
white convicts? 1t will not do to say