Clinch Valley news. [volume] (Jeffersonville, Va.) 18??-2019, 1915-09-03
GeOrgia's Shame.


" ioii lHC independently
The murder of Leo Frank by mob
disgraces Georgia and brings dis
credit on the whole country. There
is difference in murders. A secret
murder is bad, very bad, but not so
bad as public murder, deliberately
planned and engaged in by multi
tude of shameless participants. The
secret murderer knows he is doing
wrong. and by concealing his crime
paws hypocritical respect to the pub
lie conscience; but the mob-murderer
has lost the sense of right, rests in
the approval of his accomplices and
is proud of his crime. He is lost to
conscience as we'll as law, and the
public he represents is rotten with
anarchy.
Thus debased were the members of
the mob that plotted the murder of
Leo Frank. 1t was done with de-
liberation. 1t was the fruit of no
hasty, sudden passion; but was the
cool rlotting for weeks in many
homes and clubs and barrooms Of
hundreds of willing assassins. The
victim was a Jew charged with a
girls murder, convicted in the heat
of public passion on the paytry testi-
mony of negro who claimed to
have been an accomplice in the crime,
sentenced to be hanged, the sentence
committed to life Imprisonment by
the Governor, who did not believe him
guilty. Then his throat was slashed
by fellow-prisoner sentenced for
murder, but who thought the Jew too
vile to live. He had not yet recovered
from this attack on his life when an
organized lynching party in five auto
mobiles speeded to the states prison,
dragged Frank out by force, carried
him back hundred miles and hanged
him on 9 tree near the girls home.
The Governor who committed the SEN
tence and who had fled the State for
fear of his life says that everv one
of the mob deserves to be hanged. and
so say we-if law is not farce.
This is an unusual case; it had ex-
cited the whole country. 1t was no
ordinary lynching. 1t was done in
the sight and defiance fthe whole
country. Here accrues the special
shame of Georgia.
How can Georgia wipe cut the
stain? Only by finding out, as easily
as can be done, who were the chest
citizens" guilty of this dastardly
crime, and then sending them to pri-
son for long terms.
In this awful affair two things may
be observed with great concern; one,
the reversal of the moral sense, in
the general calling of good evil and
evil good; and the other the terror
izing of the officers of law and of
private speech. The lynchers fully pc
lieve they have done a solemn duty.
In trampling on the law they have
executed the law. And now they go
further and let it be known that it
would not be safe to attempt to dis
cover or punish them, for they are de-
termined men. Cobb County and all |
Georgia are afraid of them-where |
they are not approved. No jury is
likely to convict or even indict them. |
They think they are safe, and they |
are as bold, and yet as cowardly, as
desperate and as lawless as were the |
Ku Klux, whose methods they have
bettered. The Ku Klux bands fright
ened negroes; these best business men
of Cobb County safely terrorized sher-
ifs and courts and Governors, tho
the clues they leave behind them are
as thick as the pebbles in the Chat
tohoochee. They have committed a
monstrous crime; they believe they
have executed a great justice, and
they feel secure. Georgia law and
Georgia justice are. under their feet,
unavenged and apparently powerless. J