The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1899-06-16
GM At(essenger.
INTERMEDDLING NORTHERN NE,
GROES.

IN Lne SCUM is all right provided they
will actively engage in an effort to
stop the rapings. They state that since
eight l.nchings of negroes. In that
time it is believed that there have been
300 attempted rapes by negroes. so
tn Te have not been one-tenth Of the
villains hanged by Judge Lynch. The
negroes council does not appear TO be
very greatly moved at the vast amount
of awful and most Internal crimes, but
deeply stirred owe the cruelties of
lynching such devils incarnate, who
are really no better than the beasts of
the earth that roam and devour. 1t
is true they denounce the criminal as
sau1ts, but they cry out for the law to
be enforced as the only corrective.
They even say that the lynching OF
twenty-eight devils "has had no effect
in decreasing crime" How do they
know this? How can they say that If
no Iynchings had occurred that there
WOulu hOL bNCA " AoPO0 AAoS~Hd
of 300? Would not the twenty-eight
lu. tful devils have assaulted quite an
other hundred by this time, if the rope
and the bullet had not ended their viii
lainy? The negroes declare that there
sis not the slightest excuse or justif-
cation for a resort to mob violence
against colored criminals" This is a
view that will not hold in practical life.
That devil Hose was more than a beast.
No beast could possibly have ever been
SO cruel, SO hellish in deed. Sentiment
tally and delay could not prevail in
such a case. If the good woman had
been a negro's wife and the husband
murdered had been a worthy negro the
negroes themselves would have hanged
OF burned Hose. The machinery Of the
law in all countries has been found too
slow and too uncertain for the de-
of excitement and fear. In the north
as in the south men have armed and
hunted to death the villains who carried
on their deviltry in spite Of courts and
law. The Vigilance Committee in
California, the Vigilance Committee in
Vicksburg, and other similar commit
tees, have been formed to rid commun-
tiles of desperadoes and villains.
As to lynchings failing to stop crime
that is nothing new under the sun. In
the United States ever since the gov
eminent was formed there have been
criminal avs and courts at great cost
in active operation. In every state In
the union there is a steady increase OF
crime. Highly educated and very rich
Massachusetts has much more crime
than North Carolina has mong its
white population. The courts are
open, criminals are prosecuted and
punished and yet it may be said with
the utmost truth that they have no
effect in decreasing crime for crime
increases. So the negro plea as to
Iynchings o ending rapes has no
force really. The only way to put an
end to crimes is to exterminate all
criminals. The only a to cure for
ever the great crime of raping is to
kill all the brutes. They will seek to
nerpetrate their villainies so long as
white women and children are left ex-
posed to their cruel and damning pur-
poses.
In the north, if the same precise
conditions as to rapes and murders
prevailed among the negroes up there,
hanging would not only follow, but
the entire negro population would be
killed or expelled. In the south the
whites do not desire or seek to 1n1ure
in any way, but to help the law abid-
ing and deserving negroes, but they
are resolved to make short work OF
every black devil who outrages a
white woman or child, if it has to hang
or shoot fifty a month. The nat has
gone forth that outraging white women
must end or the lynchings will be Wig
.orously enforced.
If the negroes are wise and merciful
they will combine to stamp out the
cruel wrongs and outrages of the
meanest of their race. All the pow
wowing, all the resolving, all the ap-
pealing Of northern negroes from now
until the crack of doom can never stop
mob violence among southern whites
so long as black villains and brutes
enter the houses to violate females or
perpetrate their cruel outrages upon
the highways upon defenceless women
and children.
The southern homes must be sacred
and no brute, white or black, must
dare to enter them to murder, to rob.
or to embrace and leftover. The
great enemy of the negro is the swift
ready intermeddling on the part O