Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1904-09-07
BURNING OF sEesoEs IN GEORGIA.
What will be the Result Upon the White
People OF the South.

he loiio"ipS, "hioh aPpcoiSu
originally as an editorial in the New
York Journal, has been sent to US by
subscriber with the request that we
publish. This article was referred
to editorially last week, hence no
comments by US are necessary
The newspapers rsport--with com
ments of varying inacuracy and un-
fairness-the burning of two negroes
in Georgia. Many in the North,
filed with sense of their own vir-
tue, and comfortably free from any
negro problem, denouuce as beasts
and unnatural wild men their fellow
citizens in Southern States. Others
in the South apologize too sweep
ingly for those Implicated in the
burning, exculpating them too
readily.
The matter is serious-serious in
the North as in the South. For this
every intelligent man must know
what man in the South will do a
man in the North will do under
similar provocation. We have not
one breed of Americans in the North
and another in the South. The same
human nature controls us all
Victor Hugo said he never heard
of a crime but he realized that he
might have been capable of comm nit
ting it at some moment in his life.
The self-righteous men of the n North
should look carefully into their own
temperamcnts before condemning the
Southerners in too superior fashion.
Can anything be said to excuse the
burning alive of those two negro
criminals at Statesboro No. But,
while we may not excuse it, we must
investigate the reasons for it dispas-
slonately.
We must remember that the men
IN the crowd surrounding the burn
ing negroes were average mcn-any
crowd anywhere in the United States
would duplicate them. We must
realize that there are still within us
horrible possibilities of brutal
cruelty. We know that only disuse
and long freedom from violence
through many generations will wipe
out this innate brutality. We must
see TO it that the brutal savage deep
down within us is not called to the
surface. We must not Judge too
haughtily those men in the South
that struggle to suppress the causes
behind the hideous lynohings.
In the men of the South, the men
Of the North, the East and the West, |
there are all the possibilities OF the
most hideous cruelty. But we have
advar ccd at least to this point, that
only horrid crime, horrible provoca-
ton, can arouse within us the latent
brutality of the savage.
There VII be no burning alive Of
negroes tLG moment that the negro
ceases TO commit tic crimes that
madden and make wild beasts of the
lower types among whom they live.
Certainly an appeal should be made
TO the nObl sentiments of the
Southern mob-and that appeal is
made every day by the best and
strongest men in the South. The own
brother OF the murdered man, Hodges,
a clergyman, implored the mob to re-
frain from violence and ,et the law
take its course. flc acted nobly.
And thousands of splendid men in
the South, whose provocations and
difficulties we little understand, act
nobly in fighting the tendency to
lynch law.
But, to understand conditions
thcre, it is well to transport our
selves in imagination to the scene of
the crime, both before and after it
was committed.
Look at the family group-the ne
groes murdered by the mob con-
fessed that they had murdered and
burned all of that family-the father,
the virtuous mother hidcously NAL
treated, the little baby in arms and
the other TO little children