The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1899-06-04
NO USE TRYING TO ENLIGhTEN TIE
NORTHERN PEOPLE.
About the Negroes Condition. Cur Best Men
Have Talked 10 The Boston People,
Yet their Papers Continue to
Abuse the South.

eral Gordon and Colquitt and Henry
Grady, and they were well received, and
we thought our Georgia missionaries had
converted them, but in little while they
had n relapse. Governor Northen thinks
he has converted all but the editors, but
nv observation is that editors control
the animus of the people, and If they
are against us their readers Will be. L
notice that some of their editors are
easy on our governor but none of them
have apologized. They have got to re-
pent and apologize before we will be
satisfied with their conversion. This
thing of going up to the altar and shak-
ing hands is played out. They liked to
have shook Henry Grady's arm off, but
i'm a few months they took it all back
and went to abusing us again about
the negro. 1t is very discouragins to
a missionary to have to keep ON convert
ing the same heather. l notice that one
Of their papers lets us down sorter easy
on Sam Hose, but wants to know what
about the lynching of Lige Strickland.
That's all right. Give us something
hard Lige was a preacher i'll Merl-
wather county, and his father-in-law.
Aaron Watson. says he was the mean
est niger in the county, that he beat his
wife up scandalously and cut and gashed
her with q butcher knife and the mem
bers of his own church took him out one
night and gave him a hundred lashes,
and told him to leave the county. Then
he settled down in Coweta and turned
politician and made himself generally 4
disturber of public peace and good order.
and finally capped the climax by de-
nouncng the white people and defending
Sam Hose. The general opinion is that
Lige got off pretty well, for they didn't
burn him.
The Boston Transcript says we are "a
generation behind the times. in fact sew
eral New England generations behind
it," How is that? Why it hasn't been
200 years since New England was burn
ing innocent harmless women for being
witches. 1t hasn't been fifty years since
Boston merchants We're shipping rum to
Africa to buy negroes to sell again to
Slave countries. Long after Massachu-
sets set her slaves free her merchants
carried on the slave trade. Joseph Story,
the great ilrist charged the grand jury
in Boston and said: THE slave trade is
still carried on among us with imp,acable
feroeity. Avarice has grown more subtle
in it's evasions of the law It's appetite
is quickened rather than suspended. Our
citizens are steeped up to their very
mouths in this inauity.'
w. w. Story, his gifted son, says:
THE Boston newspapers denounced, my
father. and said that a judge who would
deliver such Il charge ought to be hurled
from the bench" and he says further,
that "the fortunes of many men OF
prominence were invested in this infa-
NOUS business. When slavery disappear
ed in New England the African slave
trade took on new life, and was winked
at. A man might have position in So
ciety and be considered a gentleman and
a. Christian, while his ships were
freighted with human cargo and his
commerce was in the blood and pain of
his fellow creatures. Many of the iarg-
est fortunes in Boston We're the blood
money of the slave trade and came from
the sale Of the wretched cargoes of ne
groes that survived the horrors of their
transportation across the seas"
Yes, we are behind that sort of bust
ness several generations.
But, I've sworn off. The history Of
Massachusetts fatigues my Indignation.
Here are our negroes who would he hap
Ply and contented if the northern press
would quit stirring up discomfort and
telling them lies. If old Mother Julia
Ward Howe. who is now in her eighty
first year and ought to have an old wo-
mans sense, was to drop down here III
Gainesville. she would see some young
n. ln,AxN lat
while waiting for freight. and she would
hear the merry laugh of score Of ne
gro draymen who stood around. She
would hear the sound of the colored
school bell. She would pass and repass
negro women with a basket of clothes on
their heads and smile on their fcaes
She would see negro girls, r!cl in clean
garments, nursing white children and
watching them with tender care. If
there was funeral on hand she would
see happy gathering of women and
girls. daughters of Zion, following the
hearse, and if there was a railroad eX-
cursion ON hand the depot would be
crowded with both sexes and all sorts
and sizes. Then we would escort her
carefully to the baseball ground and iet
her see the young bucks play and hear
them shout and give the negro yell for
victory. But she is too old to be cured.
| remember when she published an abol-
ton paper in 1917. But, pshaw. it
wouldn't do any good. SO l will swear
off. Somebody said that if Il woman
was fool at forty she would be fool
until she died. And somebody else said
convince woman against her will and
she will be of the same opinion still.
And the parable says, IF they will not
believe Moses and the prophets, neither
would they believe tho one should rise
from the dead" And so | will swear
off for good and let those Boston
pharisees die in their conceit. The
Massachusetts State Board of Charities
says in their annual report, And now
we find that there is hardly country
in the civilized world where atrocious
and fragrant crime is common as in
Massachusetts" Well. that settles it.
Georgia has but two white women in her
prisons, while Massachusetts has 134.
In 1890 Georgia had 214 white convicts,
while Massachusetts had 4.412, and Mr.
Stetson says that lin one year there were
$4,000 arrests in the State. and that di-
vorces increase there twice as fast as
the population, and not more than
eight families in ten have preserved the