The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1900-12-20
WHY REMAIN SILENT.

The country will soon become used to
the batting Of the negroes and cease to
regard it as mere pastime followed by
Southern whites.
The latest performance in Indiana, as
we'll as that which is timed to take place
in the same vicinity at the earliest prac-
ticabe moment, will doubtless set some
folks to thinking. Of course there is
nothing particularly exceptional in these
latest performances, unless indeed it be
the tameness Of the death decreed to the
offending negro. When Colorado COM
munity conceives the fastening of a ne
gro to steel rail, and the building Of a
bonfire around his body an appropriate
form of death, it is something to be sur
prised at that, even down in Southern
Indiana, they can devise nothing more
striking in the way of nigger-bait.ng
function than the mere hanging of the
vicim to a tree.
There used to be few years ago
great many very warm friends and de-
tenders of the negro, men who would not
suffer the slightest infringement of his
civil rights without making the wellzin
ring on the floors Of congress and in the
editorial columns of the daily press. What
the race? Why are their voices silenced?
Is it nothing to those storming friends
of humanity that the man and brother
who at one time stood for q possible
bunch of votes in the electoral college or
in either or both houses of congress.
should now be likely at any moment to
be taken out and burned alive by mob
for an offense which brutalized white
humanity is daily charged with the COM
mission of?
As long as such crimes as those which
individual negroes have been the victims
to such an extent in recent times goes
unrebul<ed by the one-time friends of the
colored man, the country ought surely to
be saved the necessity of having to listen
to the catalogue OF the political crimes
committed against the race by the South
the country is assured, trying to de-
termine on the enforcement of the con-
stitutional provision which would limit
Southern representation in proportion a;
the negro is excluded from the ballot
box. Will it not surely be an enrolling
spectacle TO have the halls of congress
ring with Republican eloquence at the
alleged wrongs thus perpetrated on the
negro race, when never one of the Re-
publican brethren have word to say
against the lynch!ng bees which have
| become so common in communities
north, east and west. as well as south
| of Mason and Dixon?
Crimes such as these which are re,
| corded from the different sections of the
country are not only against the negro
but they are against American society
itself. They are deserving of, if pos
|, sibIe, far more unmeasured condemnation
at the hands of every human being than
are those which disgraced the South in
succession some months ago. There is
no such provocation. There is no inn
| pending danger to be thought of, to guard
against which men may conceive it neces-
| sary to resort to such inhumau cruelty.
No; the brutal murders of negro cr.m-
inals which have of late taken place in
Northern communities simply show the
society which is responsible for them to
be rotten at the core. and never really
to have touched the condition of Chris
tan civilization.