The weekly soliphone., 1915-08-20

nessee authorities were in league
with the devils of Island Thirty
seven?
Judge Driver
The Man
In Osceola and Mississippi county
Judge Driver is regarded as man
"a real man in all that the term
implies broadminded, fearless,
sincere, a man who will do to tie
to. His opinions are the opinions
of well-founded conviction. He
bases his ideas not upon impulse,
but upon reason and research and
broad understanding, and he is be-
loved by the vast majority of Mis-
sissippi countians. Wonderfully
direct in his statements, keen and
alert, there is a certain grace and
personality about the man which
carry with them the assumption
that he is right, and, believing
that he is right, the people of Mis-
sissippi county follow his lead in
many things. Judge Driver pre-
vented the lynching of Crum when
the fellow was first arrested. So
sincere was he in the thought that
deal with the prisoner that he kept
him out of reach of a mob when
mob violence was most probable,
and then, when it was believed pas
sion and prejudice had in large
measure subsidized he ordered a re-
turn of the cringing criminal and
had him placed in the Osceola jail
Judge Driver was right in his as
sumption that passion and the mob
fever had to some extent subsidized
Indeed, the people of OsceOla were
not thinking of Crum or any of his
gang when a dozen friends OF Sam
Mauldin came to the county jail
and shot him to death. So quiet
was the affair that not half a doz-
en- people knew what had happen
ed until the dozen had gone. Then,
when it was too late, Osceola real
lied what had happened, and her
people realized, too, that the story
would go forth, supported by the
Commercial Appeal, that an Osceola
mob had murdered Andy Crum.
Therefore, when the Memphis jour
nal arrived yesterday morning,
there was no surprise exhibited,
though intense indignation, when
contemplate paragraph was read,
in which the statement was made
that if the people of Osceola had
known the lynching would be pull
ed off on schedule time, they would
have attended the lynching rather
than the ball game. Quite natural
ly these people feel that they have
been outraged by such examples OF
littleness evidenced by newspa-
per which is supposed to serve them
with newsstand correct news. Then
comes Clyde Going, with his keen
facility for evasiveness and won
derful ability for technical con-
temptibility in a legal sense, with
an attempt to force Mississippi
county to give up her prisoners and
turn over to others who per-
haps have a personal interest in
their salvation the task of admin
istering justice. Is it, then, any
wonder that the spirit OF revenge
kept growing, and that, in the
case of the near relatives and
friends of Mauldin, it reached the
bursting point and manifested it
self in the lynching of Crum? All
that an honest judge conld do to
circumvent the very thing that did
happen was done by Judge Driver.
Curtis ]. Little, head of the Mis-
sissippi county national guard, mad
stood by Judge Driver with depu-
ties and the Jail had, as they be-
lieved, been kept sufficiently guard
ed. When Crum was lynched fear
that an additional spirit of re-
prisal might become manifest
prompted Judge Driver to ask that
contingent of the state guard be
permitted to watch the jail. This
was done. 1t is quite likely that
had the friends of Sheriff Mauldin
known how the Kentons and Dave
Hearne backed Crum in his vicious
ness, which facts were developed at
grand jury hearings, the twelve
men who put Crum out of his cow
ardly existence would have made
short work of these three. 1t is
told how Hearne, forced at the
point of a rifle to vacate one OF
the Crum shacks few minutes
after Maulden had been shot,
laughed heartily as the heroic sher-
if lay writing in deaths agonies.
CON ~ he wondered then that in