The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1916-12-13
CERTAIN NORTHERN ERRORS.

The endeavors of Northern news
papers to put an end to lynching IN
the Southland in the North-are
welcomed by that part of the South
ern population that always has set it
self against mob violence but these
endeavors of our friends would be
more effective if they would denude
their minds of two errors that they
necessarily repeat.
One is that opposition to mob out
breaks is new in the South. The
Northern press insists upon discover
ing among us at brief intervals a
fresh dawn of civilization. Beginning
with 1877, so soon as the North gave
the South the slightest opportunity
to put its household in order, such
men as the late F. W. Dawson, edl-
tor of the Charleston News and Cou-
rier, the late N. G. Gonzales, cor
respondent under Mr.. Dawson's di-
rection, and subsequently one of the
founders of this newspaper, together
with practically every conspicuous
South Carolinian leader of that time,
earnestly set to work to put down
lynchings. In every other Southern
State were men of the same stamp
and the files Of the Southern news
papers prove it.
The other error, and it is one ex-
tremely irritating, is the Northern
habit of attributing the lynchings to
the "poor whites" There is in the
South no peculiar and sharply defin-
ed class of "poor whites" There are
poor men, thousands of them, but
they are not distinct and separate
class in this part of the country even
to the degree that the poor are a sep
arate class in New York city. Among
the white people there is less dis
tinction of caste in the South than
elsewhere in the United States, for
the obvious reason that there is less
of difference in race and origin to
base it upon. In particular locali-
ties classes may be widely separated
but, generally, the man who is poor
in the South is much nearer to the
man of wealth than in the North.
That there is subordinate race here
makes of every white man in the
South an aristocrat in a sense very
real, even if it does not fulfill the
common definition Of that term.
Moreover, the mobs that lynch are
seldom confined to poor men. They
may seldom include men of educa-
ton and cultivation but when the
mob numbers hundreds a proportion
of its members by no means neglible
are likely to be property owners and
persons of q certain influence.
Nor should Northern men imagine
that even the. educated, cultivated
people Of the South are free or los
ing any part Of what they choose to
call "race prejudice" The enlight-
ened Southern man is willing and
eager that the negro be accorded
equal and exact justice under the law
but he is unbending in his insistence
that the social separation Of the
races shall be not only observed but
emphasized. Consequently, when g
negro manifests disposition to "tote
a chip on his shoulder" it becomes
exceedingly difficult even for men Of
the best type to defend him against
rufians. The State is not undertake
ing here to argue pros and cons; it
is describing a condition. Right or
wrong, the fact is that the well-to-do
negro is required to maintain de-
meanor of politeness and restraint
towards a white man that is not
,punctiliously demanded by white men
from one another and when the ne
gro is indiscreet enough to trans
gress, the mere fact that the severity
and harshness that is sometimes met
ed out to him is inexcusable does not
always make it preventable by those
persons whose wish is that no appeal
from the orderly processes Of law
shall be taken. That there are and
always have been men in the South
who make no compromise with law
lessness creates no sequitur that
they can in a day or in generation
bring to pass a social condition that
is wholly desirable and desired by