The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1903-08-30
LAME AND HALTING JUSTICE
NERVES THE LYNCHER'S ARM
Roosevet's Criminal BIunders In Thrusting Forward
the Southern Negro Has Intensified the
Antagonism Between the Races.

I
ders and outrage innocence, and upon
the barbarous, cruel devil, generally
clothed in black, with thick lips, fiat
nose, rhinocerous skin and Satanic heart,
who commits the most awful, hellish of
crimes upon a virtuous, defenceless white
woman. He deserves richly ito die the
DEATH L give above few words of ar
quotation but not guaranteeing its cor,
rectness, for it is from memory. The
Washington Post, Republican paper of
ability, said the other day with a proper
regard for conditions, and with due
sense of the ntness of punishment:
I'VE have said, and we repeat, that the
only way to check the horror of lynching
is to rehabilitate the machinery of justice
IN the respect of the people, Let it be
shown to the satisfaction of civilized
society that the hideous crime which is
.--e provocaton of the mob will be pun
ished by death, surely, swiftly, without
the maddemng uncertainties and delays
which now attend such cases, and lynch
ing Will soon be institution without a
sympathlZer or an apologist''
Correct l doubt not. No good citizen I'm
all Southland desires as an abstract
question a resort to lynching What a
good citizen Graves, urges and demands
is immediate punishment, sure and UNI
erring for the murderer and the brute
who assaults virtue and outrages humanity
in the person of good, true woman,
Nothing 81 ert of this will ever satisfy
the thinking citizen, or pacify the hungry
mob. | do not put much confidence in
Justice Brewer, of the United States
Supreme Court, for If my memory does
not fail me, he has rather poor character
in the past, somewhere about the time
when the able Samuel j. Tilden was elect
ed President of the United States, and
was robbed OF it by utterly abandoned,
rascally Republicans. He has written
lately about lynching, and has this. which
has been standing declaration in South
ern newspapers from the way-back:
"If the community felt that the criminal
would certainly receive the punishment
he deserved, and receive it soon, the
eagerness. for lynching would disappear"
The cause of crime removed fully will
end in the disappearance of the punish
ment by outraged communities. / am
fresh crimes and disturbances by the ne
groes. 1t has been stated again in South.
ern newspapers of ability, and ever since
the increase of crime began after Teddy
Roosevelts disgraceful conduct in the
Booker Washington affair, and his putting
negroes IN office in the South He does
not put them much in office in the Great
West or in the Great East He keeps his
sweet favors and smiles for Sambo and
Josh and the other kinky-heads in the
South. The able Charleston News and
Courier has this, and it is to the point
Let the white men clearly understand
where the responsibility lies, and the
character OF the outrage upon right and
decency: "The Greenville News traces all
of the present race troubles in the United
States directly to the act of President
Roosevelt in appointing negroes to office
in white communities. The administration
is responsible for much of the lawlessness
and rioting and but for that there might
have been peace and quiet today. When
the crash comes the fault must
be laid at the door of the
President. Had he never dined
with Booker Washington, and had he not
a
lynching record today would not have
been so shameful, and there would have
been less antagonism between the races
The view of the situation is largely the
view of the country. There has not been
so much antagonism between the races
in the last twenty-five years as there is
today, and it had its origin in the Presi-
dents open proclamation that the negro,
and particularly the negro in the South,
could count on him always for promotion,
and particularly where his promotion
would be dstasteful to the white peo-
pie" That man of violence, buster and
wind is the most dangerous, headstrong
and laundering of all the Presidents of
this country. 1t is curse to humanity
and to the country that such "a fellow
of the baser sort" should be at the helm
now.
North Cardinals best living novelist,
Thomas Dixon, Jr., is meeting with pro-
nounced success in his last book ''rhe
One Woman" 1t Is rapidly approaching
the 50,000-copy mark, says the New York
=, 10 ho,,l oI