Today we are looking at "Negro" papers and their reactions to the lynchings. We are starting with The Topeka Plaindealer (Topeka, Kansas) dated April 28, 1899:
IT IS HELL!
There Is No Other Designation to Be Placed to the Credit of Barbarous Georgia.
DIRT OF DAREDEVILS!
The Barbarians of That Sinkhole of Iniquity, Georgia, Have Surpassed All Previous Efforts at Savagery.
PESTILENCE AND PLAGUE,
Such as the Bubonic Abhorrence, Should Be Visited Upon These Imps of Hell and Their Sympathizers.
Special Despatch [sic] to The Globe-Democrat.
NEWMAN [SIC], Ga., April 23.—A few ashes and some disgusting pieces of bone and flesh in the pockets of hundreds of morbid people, are all that is left of Sam. Hose, the Negro who last Wednesday a week ago murdered Alfred Cranford, four miles from Palmetto, and criminally assaulted his wife.
The above is the opening paragraph in the telegraphic reports from the South. Sometime ago we raised the question as to the probable number of degrees the Southern whites are removed from abject barbarism. The crime for which Sam Hose was burned at the stake is very graphically summarized by The Atlanta Constitution, as follows:
An unassuming industrious and hard-working farmer, after his day's toll, sat at his evening meal. Around him sat his wife and children, happy in the presence of the man who was fulfilling to him every duty imposed by nature. At peace with the world, serving God and loyal to humanity they looked forward to the coming day.
Noiselessly the murderer, with uplifted ax, advanced from the rear and sank it into the brain of the unsuspecting victim. Tearing the child from the mother's breast, he flung it into the pool of blood oozing from its father's wound.
Then began the culmination which has dethroned the reason of the people of Western Georgia during the past week. As critics will howl about the lynchings, The Constitution will be pardoned for stating the plain facts.
A very intelligent Negro deplores the awful crime of Sam Hose and would insist that the full penalty of the law be given him. Such a crime merits the severest condemnation, and the question of color should in no sense be regarded as a mitigating circumstance.
But the telegraphic reports graphically portray two hideous pictures; the above is one; here is the other: after committing his awful crime, Sam. Hose fled. He was captured by two farmers and delivered to the sheriff. A mob of 3,000 men, from three counties, dragged the victim with shouts and yells before the mother of the ravished woman who identified him; he was then taken to an open space two miles in the country and chained to a pine tree, divested of all clothing, except a gauze undershirt which was liberally saturated with kerosene oil.
It is this that must end forever mobbing and lynchings; the lynchings and mobbing, parading as they do the most degrading and brutal passions of a people, engender a disregard for human life that will not stop to consider the color of the victim. The mobbing of Sam. hose was as much a crime as the murder of Crawford and the rape of his wife. In neither case should the culprit escape the fullest extent of the law.
Then one of the members of the posse sprang forward and with a deft swing lopped off the Negro's right ear. Not a moan or the twitching of a muscle escaped the victim. Then another vicious slash brought off the other ear, and not a symptom of pain from Hose.
A match was struck, and tossed blazing, on the Negro's oil-soaked shirt sleeve. A tiny flame ran up the Negro's arm, scorching the flesh, and causing him to grasp quickly at the blaze. This gave the mob a cue, and immediately the fingers of the Negro at the second joint, were hacked off with pocket knives. Through this torture Hose passed like a stoic, never groaning or b[e]traying the slightest sign of pain. When the shirt had been burned from his trunk, badly singing the breast of the Negro, a blazing match was applied to the wood. The ankles w[e]re burned away, and the flames greedily started up the leg, at the s[a]metime enwrapping the whole of the body. All this time Hose did not murmur. As the fire struck his wounds, however, and he was tormented beyond endurance; he wrenched fiercely with his mutilated hands and arms, at the same time almost dislocat[i]ng his neck. Under such violent strain the detaining rope and wire gave away, and the Negro, gasping and twitching, fell out of the fire on the ground.
BODY KICKED BACK.
The vast crowd let him r[e]main out of the r[a]nge of the blaze for a few moments. Then one of the party walked coolly up to the reclining figure, and, cursing, kicked the smoldering form back on the pile. As this act of brutality was proceeding Hose opened his lips and feebly said, "This is my last hour." These were the last words he uttered. As his body was cast again into the flames, the mob appeared to tire of the revolting spectacle, and began to wind the chain tight around the tree and the blazing logs. When the body had been secured, the spluttering white-hot timber was piled up high on it, and sickening odor of burning flesh came from the pile.
The people moved b[a]ck, and as not a groan or murmur came from the blaze, the mob began to disperse, having as its destination the residence of Isaac Strickland, near Palmetto, the Negro preacher who, Hose asserted, gave him a$20 Confederate bill to murder Cranford, because the latter was supposed to have something to do with the shooting of the Negroes in the Palmetto warehouse.
Twenty minutes later a special train from Atlanta, bearing 2,400 people, reached Newman [sic], and the field was covered with morbid curiosity seekers. A few countrymen were still standing around the fire. The crowd made a dash for it, and, wrenching the logs right and left, extricated the charred remains of the mob's victim. Portions of the heart and liver were divided up through the crowd. The backbone and ribs went the same way, and the trees were levelled to the ground and split into kindling wood for souvenirs.
The last act int he drama of blood was the cruel, brutal hanging of Isaac Strickland, the preacher, supposed to be an accomplice of Hose. The mob promised Major Watson, Strickland's employer, that he would be delivered to the sheriff; he affirmed the innocence of Strickland and demanded his release. In return for this, Major Watson was ordered to leave the state or suffer the consequences of remaining and defending "niggers."
As a result of this awful crime, the white journalists of the South are advocating various methods of protecting the white women in sparsely settled districts. Ex-Governor North, editor of T
he Atlanta Constitution, is advancing the idea of transforming the cabin of the "poor white trash" into miniature arsenals, and that the white women of the South should be trained in the use of firearms, thereby enabling them to protect themselves against the brutal assaults of "black beasts."
The Negro believes in the protection of female virtue; the mute testimony of over five million mulattoes condemns the chivalrous Southerner, who has
compelled Negro women to submit to his bestial desires. White women never have Negro children! If we must protect the one, we ought by the same parity of reasoning protect the other. A very prominent white gentleman, discussing the recent action of the Georgia mob says: "The brutal action of the Georgia mob cannot be excused; the wretch, Hose, if guilty, would have received his just deserts before a court where all the machinery is in the hands of white men. This would at least have legalized the murder. And, again, the brutal, inhuman conduct of the mob is a very poor example to the ignorant Negroes who are supposed to draw inspiration for nobler lives from their environment. I do not believe this action will materially affect the collection for foreign missions in our churches next Sunday." This is a choice bit of irony pregnant with truth.
The spirit of mob violence in the South creates a disregard for law and human life, and it fills the hearts of those who participate with immoral impulses that eventually overthrow the race. The white men of the South have made the Negro what he is; for over two centuries they have debased Negro manhood and womanhood; they bought and sold their own children and debauched their own daughters by Negro women! Is there any wonder that the Negro, in the face of such awful examples, is anything else than a rapist and a brute? The depravity of Southern white men has made him so.Yet, never do we hear of the highly respectable white ladies of the South being assaulted; their protector is their dignity of womanhood; they have no need of Winchesters and pistols; but the "Magdalenes" must be surrounded by country police.
The Governor of Georgia is absolutely unfit to preside over the destinies of a dog kennel, much less to guide and direct a gang of incestuous social outlaws whose conception of law renders respectable the ignorant staggering of the South Sea Islanders. The creators and moulders of public sentiment of Georgia manifest a woeful ignorance of the past history of the people of their state or designingly shift the burden of their crimes upon the shoulders of Negroes whose manhood they helped to destroy.
Ex Governor Atkinson's repentance is rather late to bear good fruit; during his administration as many Negroes were lynched and burned as ever and not a word of protest came from his lips. We have no faith in a man who demands justice in one voice and in another suggests the creation of a police system which would justify the murder of every Negro in Georgia.
We desire to know that Ex-Governor Atkinson has sworn to complaints against the lynchers. This will be a proof of his sincerity; he is a reputable citizen and his statement should have weight in any court.
The Topeka Plaindealer dedicated the May 5, 1899 edition to the lynching of Sam Hose. On the front and second page, the paper included what was being written in, mainly, black papers about the lynching:
EDITORS WRITE.
They Employ Strong Language Anent [sic]
the Recent Burning of Sam.
Hose Down in Georgia.
How About the Beam?
From The Iowa State Bystander.
The government and American Christians can talk about the inhuman treatment of Cuba by Spain, the horrors of the Russian serfs and peasants, the cannibals, head-hunters of Simona, and the shocking butchery of Americans; but what think you about the United States suffering her own citizens to be hung, butchered and the bodies burned, the crisping parts of the charred bodies cut into pieces and sold as souvenirs?
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More Brutal Than Hose.
From The Indianapolis Freeman.
As the white journals of the North unanimously agree, the mob was far more brutal than Hose, whose ignorance perhaps goaded him on to deeds of violence to an extent that his ignorance did not permit him to understand. The mob whose members pride themselves upon their proud Anglo-Saxon blood could have found it possible to have allowed the law to have taken its course, which, in the end, would have meant certain death.
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One Thing Needed.
From The American Citizen.
The only thing needed to have placed this Georgia mob on a plane with the lowest order of savages was to have eaten their victim's flesh as they cut it off with their knives. Perhaps this will come next, for mob punishment is growing more and more diabolical in spite of the efforts made to check it. Such atrocities shame the nation and the race. No wonder that the civilization of the Old World meets with derision our boasts of refinement and established order.
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Nineteenth Century Barbarians
From The Indianapolis Recorder.
What a picture for the close of the nineteenth century—a period that has marked such a rapid progress in the onward march to civilization! One-thousand men of a superior race dancing in fiendish glee around the body of a fellow-being roasted to a stake, scrambling like mad for bits of a charred remains to exhibit as relics of the ghastly scene, and the horrible mutilation of the body prior to the burning! What a record for a country that is engaged in a foreign war in the name of humanity!
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The National Question.
From The Denver Statesman.
But a lynching is not a question of individual responsibility. It might have been so once, but it is no longer so in America. It is the whole nation's concern. It is a malady permeating the air which the mothers of the nation breathe and its spirits is distilled into the natures of coming generations. No matter whether we laugh or moan, condemn or excuse, rage or reason, pity or play, a harvest of abomination must rise up out of the lawlessness and barbarism which this nation is sowing, and soon or late, God's justice will prevail, and lynching reap its own pestilential reward.
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Miserable Excuse.
From The Indianapolis World.
No one will suspect The World of condoning crime, by whomsoever committed. It favors the punishment of all criminals, regardless of race, color or station in life. But this question does not enter at all into the discussion of this Georgia case. If the victim was guilty of murder and rape, or either, as the mob alleges, let the fact be duly ascertained by fair investigation, and let the sentence of the law be carried out in its utmost severity. The miserable excuse always offered by mobs in extenuation of their atrocities, that the courts don't do their duty and let criminals escape, will not hold in this case at all. Everybody knows that the man was certain of speedy conviction and death at the hands of the Georgia court.
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Absolutely True.
From The Dallas Express.
Elsewhere in this issue of The Express we print two news items, under the respective captions: "Trouble at Palmetto," and "Race Trouble in South Carolina." The despatches were sent over the South in all the big white dailies. We print them that our readers might see what useless stuff great white newspapers carry to the world. We don't believe that anybody believes anything contained in despatches whatever. The Negro is not built that way. He is used to Southern outrage and he knows that insurrection and murdering white people by wholesale, are not the way to stop it. There are no Negroes in the South who think along the line of these despatches, and the white newspapers should know better than to print the trash.
The Negro wants to see the colored criminals, as other law-breakers, brought to justice. He knows that his security is in the enforcement of the law, and so knowing, he is waiting upon white men to enforce it. Let the officers of the law hunt down criminals, black and white,and when they shall have been placed in prison cells, let the mob disorganize and await the mandates of the court, and a better state of feeling will begin to exist, and wild, sensational stories of Negro uprising will cease.
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An Absurd Idea.
From The Christian Recorder.
The idea of using the hobby of assault upon woman in connection with the mob reign of savagery in Georgia is a subterfuge that will not work with sober, sensible people. However else Sam. Hose may stand condemned, and self-condemned as a murderer, there was no evidence to fasten the fearful crime of outraging his victim's wife upon him. When he admitted his guilt of murder to the howling mob that sought his life he knew there was no hope left him. He, therefore, had nothing to gain by denying the charge of assault even if he had been guilty. Governor Atkinson contended for the innocence of the alleged murderer rapist, only to be pushed aside by the mob and his life threatened with a revolver. The ex-governor was brave in his declaration that he knew the men who led the mob and that he will testify against them. Let him prove his manliness by keeping his word after the air had been calmed. It is only through men of his type that any hope is to be indulged for the South.
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Let Us Have the Law.
From The St. Joseph Mirror.
While companies of Negro soldiers are being formed to start for the Philippine islands to do battle in defense of the stars and stripes, within the shadow of that emblem, "The United States flag," from which they rightly expect protection, other Negro men, women and children are being mercilessly shot down, lynched or burned at the stake. Now we do not desire to appear in the light of justifying crime or lawlessness on the part of our race, but in the name of the God of high Heaven, try every man by the law of the land and if he deserves death, give it to him; if innocent, turn him loose; that is all we ask—is it too much?
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Ask the Lord.
From The Baptist College Journal.
How this government can spend millions of dollars and sacrifice thousands of the lives of its most loyal citizens in chasing the Filipinos about the forests, and then rest at ease of peace and conscience when the lives of its own loyal citizens are being wafted away upon flames of fire, bowie knives and shotguns, is a mystery that cannot be intelligently solved when applied to a Christian nation.
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Certainly.
From The Washington Colored American.
Perhaps some member of the Georgia mob that burned Sam. Hose might be induced to accept an assignment to carry civilization and Christianity to the heathenish Filipinos.
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That's No Josh!
From The Larned Chronoscope (white).
The North Carolina Legislature has amended the militia laws of the state so as to shut out colored men. Yet it was the bravery of the colored troops that made San Juan a victory instead of a disastrous defeat.
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Falling Away.
From The Western Enterprise.
The white people of Georgia are getting as far from civilization as possible. Their heathen actions at Newman [sic], not long ago, excel at the atrocious crimes ever committed by those cannibals against the Negro race.
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Africa's Cannibals Respectable.
From The Omaha Progress.
Africa's interior may have her savages and cannibals, but none of them can play even second fiddle to the American cannibals in the South, nor compete with them, either in point of ferocity or barbarous cruelty—they will kill their victims before cooking.
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No Excuses.
From The McPherson Republican (white).
The Old Negro question is breaking out in the South in bad shape. Some states are trying to eliminate the colored vote entirely. In Georgia and Arkansas terrible lynchings have occurred.In some cases there was awful provocation, but these were followed up by a general raid on the colored people. This has neither palliation nor excuse.
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The Georgia Massacre.
From The Baltimore Republican-Guide.
The effect the horrible crime perpetrated recently in Georgia will have on the minds of civilized nations will be to destroy respect for a nation which claims to be the leading one in advancement along all lines of modern civilization. The mutilation of a live man and then burning him at a stake, distributing pieces of his flesh and bones at a competitive price to a crowd of murderers, will tell forever to the disgrace of the state of Georgia. Such crimes go far beyond the realm of so-called rowdyism. It was a horrible scene. it was a horrible massacre. The Apaches, the most savage tribe of Indians, would not be guilty of such an atrocity; it shows the brutality of the Southern white man's instinct. Hose was guilty of a brutal murder, and in the course of law, would have been justly killed; the effect thus produced would have done more to improve civil conditions. Lynchers are murderers, and the stain will follow on the lives of their children's children.
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Negroes Have a Right to Protest.
From The Huron Herald (white).
The recent lynchings in Georgia have worked the people of the South into a frenzy. The Negroes feel that whatever the deeds committed may have been, the victims were entitled to a fair trial. The white people, on the other hand, are aroused to white heat in anger, and clamor for the summary execution of all Negro rapists by mob law. The excitement is running high and even the conservative citizens fear a race war. It is certain that the great majority of Negroes in the South are law-abiding citizens, upon whom foul criminals of their own color have brought a shadow. They have a right to protest, and the courts and power of the law should sustain them. The white people naturally feel bitter against the criminals who threaten the honor and the safety of their wives and daughters, but it is doubtful if mob law will help matters. One thing is certain. The decent Negroes in the South, and they are in the vast majority, should lend every assistance in their power to hunt down the guilty ones, and bring them to the speedy execution of justice. It should be known throughout the South that the ravisher of womanhood, black or white, can not expect anything else than the full penalty of the law, from the Negro as well as the white citizens.
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Burned at the Stake.
From The New York Age.
We live in a Christian country and are governed by an elaborate and intricate mechanism of law, which Blackstone has defined to be "a rule of civil conduct, prescribed by the highest power in the state, permitting what is right and prohibiting what is wrong." We make loud proclamation to the world of our civic power and moral virtue, and we do it with such ostentation as to amount to offensiveness. If the outside world could be imposed upon by our loud mouthings we would be rated everywhere as a nation of saints instead of hypocrites, liars and murderers, such as we are.
Palmetto, Ga., is a small hamlet, and yet it has produced enough crime and savagery in the past forty days to damn the whole republic in the full estimation of Christian mankind.
The eight black men slaughtered there a few weeks ago for alleged incendiarism shocked the nation, but that vile crime, which Governor Candler excused, has been outdone by the mob in the mutilation and burning of one Samuel Hose, by 2,500 mad and brutal white men for the alleged crime of murder and assault.
Talk about savagery! What shall we style this revolting crime against law and decency? Of course Governor Candler excused the lynchers and sought to throw the blame upon the black victim! But ex-Governor W. Y. Atkinson, who lives at Newnan, is built of other stuff. He drove to the scene and standing in his carriage pleaded to the mob to let the law take its course. Judge Freeman also did so. But their words were unheeded.
What does the civilized world think of the savage white men of Georgia? How long will the civilized world suppress its wrath and indignation at the constant exhibitions of brutality and savagery on the part of Southern white men? Black men all over this country are beginning to question the power or willingness of the state or federal authorities to protect them in their just rights under the constitution.
The situation is a critical one, and calls for wise deliberation on our part before deciding upon a course of advice or action.
There is no reason on earth why Governor Candler should not stop talking and send state troops to the scene of anarchy to protect the helpless black victims from the savagery of white brutes, and we think the country will hold him responsible for not doing so.
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Barbarism in Georgia.
From The Omaha Enterprise.
Of all the hellish outrages perpetrated upon the Negro of the South, the recent burning and lynching at Newman [sic] and Palmetto, Georgia, stand unparalleled in the annals of crime. Other instances of the burning of human beings by senseless and blood-thirsty mobs of lawless white men, such as occurred in Texas some years ago, were merciful as compared with these of Georgia.
The former were merciful in that the victims were put to death speedily. In the latter instance the inhuman treatment accorded the condemned wretches before applying the torch, was so revolting in its nature that even brutes must have sickened at the sight.
We do not pretend to palliate the crimes of which Holt and Strickland were accused. If they were guilty they should have been punished with such punishment as civilized people mete out. The law of this land always deals summarily with Negro offenders and there has never yet been a case recorded where it was necessary to resort to lynch law to bring a Negro to justice.
Admitting the guilt of Holt and Strickland, these crimes are nothing as compared with the brutality and barbarism inflicted upon them by the barbarians who put them to death. The consequences of the fiendish act of these Georgia outlaws will not alone attach to that state but to the whole country. And yet the federal government, through its attorney general, declares itself powerless to act in the situation. If the federal authorities cannot act, then, indeed, is the safety of the Southern Negro hopeless and the world may at any time expect to be shocked and horrified by frequent repetitions of the bloody deeds of white ruffians in the South.
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Southern Chivalry.
From The Mail and Breeze (white).
The burning and torturing of a Negro murderer in Georgia recently and the hanging of another Negro against whom there was such flimsy evidence that it would not have been seriously considered by any respectable jury, was a crime as horrible as the crime with which the Negro, Sam. Holt, was charged.
If Holt was guilty of murdering a man and then ravishing the man's wife while her husband lay weltering in his blood before her eyes, then the Negro was a fiend who deserved to die, but the manner of his killing was as fiendish as his crime. The killing of the Negro preacher, Strickland, by the mob was without the shadow of justification. All the evidence there was against Strickland was the statement of the Negro ravisher and murderer that Strickland had offered him $12 to kill Chanford [sic]. On this statement, made by the murderer when he was in the hands of a howling mob ready to tear him to pieces, and at a time when in his terror he would be likely to say anything that might throw the blame for the crime he had committed onto another man, the unfortunate Strickland was beaten and brutally hanged while he was protesting his innocence. For the purpose of making him confess, the mob twice strung Strickland up to a limb, but as soon as he was let down and was able to speak, he reiterated his assertion that he was innocent. Then the mob, composed, we suppose, of Southern chivalry, concluded that they couldn't get anything out of the — nigger and hung him anyway.
The act of the mob is defended and excused by the leading Democratic paper of Georgia and an interview with the Democratic governor of the state is given in The Atlanta Constitution, in which no criticism worth speaking of is made in regard to the mob, who hung one man without evidence of guilt and burned another at the stake and then carried his charred bones away as souvenirs of the entertainment. The Georgia governor, as we say, seems to have little fault to find with the mob, but he is severe in his criticism of Negroes who complain because members of their race are taken up on suspicion and burned at the stake.
Conditions in Georgia and all the other Southern states are tough on the colored race and the worst of it is that just now we don't see that the colored race have any particular recourse on their oppressors. The South is dominated by the children of men who held the black race in bondage for centuries. They are thoroughly imbued with the determination that law or no law, they will hold the black race in virtual bondage still. The make the Negro work for next to nothing. They forbid him to ride in cars with whites or eat in the same dining rooms, no matter how well educated, clean and refined the Negro may be. They deprive him of his political and civil rights. They hang him and burn him on suspicion, not so much as a punishment for the crimes he may be charged with as because he is a nigger and they want other niggers to keep their places.
The conditions are tough for the Negro in the South and there is mighty little prospect for their getting better.
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Gushing.
From The Washington Bee.
The gushing Southern governors who are struggling to explain the horrible cannibalism displayed in the Southern states seem to have no compunctions in their attempts to mislead Northern people as to the real cause of the lawlessness and bloodthirstiness perpetrated against the blacks. It is stated by them that politics is at the bottom of it all. Such a statement, coming from a governor of a state, shows how thoroughly and completely the South is dominated by the spirit of hate, audacity and anarchy. In Georgia, where the recent horrible atrocities were committed, the masses of colored people are practically disenfranchised. They hold few if any political offices of importance worth mentioning and manifest no interest in politics. The election returns show that thousands of colored voters do not even go to the polls. The system of espionage has been so severe and widespread that colored people have thought it unprofitable to pay attention to politics. It is because of the absence of politics among colored people in Georgia that the whites have become emboldened to commit so many deeds of lawlessness and crime. The fact is that in the South where the colored people are allowed to vote, there are no alleged outrages such as we hear of from states where political rights are denied. The fact is that the poor whites are brutes and totally unfitted for citizenship and hence they satisfy their brutal tendencies by maltreating the colored people. The little game of associating outrage with every other crime committed by colored people is entirely too transparent to successfully hoodwink the good people of the North. The Northern people are conservative, but they are not fools and will be neither parties to nor sympathizers with murderers and moral lepers.
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Inhuman Wretches.
From The Colorado Springs Sun.
The inhuman, bloody and cowardly crimes committed in the South by Southern white men surpass in atrocity and cruelty the most dastardly acts of cannibals and uncivilized men of any clime. The perpetrators have proven by their acts that they are utterly devoid of every human instinct—no honor, no justice, no sense of right and fairness, insensible to shame, disgrace and remorse. The teaching of morality and religion is a mere jest to them. Race hatred and prejudice saturate their homes, schools and churches, control their actions and the source of their darkest and deepest satanic aspirations. The flimsy excuse for these diabolical crimes (where they imagine that such an excuse is necessary) is that they must protect their women. A man or a community is thrice a liar, a coward and a bully, who will commit such crimes, and then seek shelter behind a woman's skirts. This is a clever ruse to avoid the effects of a powerful and outraged public sentiment. We know little or nothing of the condition of the Negro in the South; We know not whether he is intelligent or ignorant. We do know that he exists there in great numbers, and we know, further, that if we were similarly p;laced,crime should follow crime, depraved cunning should be answered with depraved cunning. If they killed, we should burn; if they tortured, we would devise some instrument of the weak to answer them. We would fight, and fight and die, and in dying give evidence of our manhood and retain the respect of posterity.
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What Must It Think?
From The Omaha World-Herald (white).
What must the world think of us who claim to be carrying the light of Christian civilization to the Phillipines while at the same time we burn men at the stake and carry fingers and toes and ears in our pockets as souvenirs of our brutality? What have we to do with the frost on our neighbor's tiles when the rubbish is piled mountain high before our own door?
The Newman [sic] horror is notice to us that it is high time to put a plug in the national switchboard and send the currents of destiny throbbing through our own body politic; it is notice to us to civilize ourselves before claiming the right to shoot civilization into those who live 7,000 miles from our shores.
There can be no possible excuse for the brutal lynching of Hose. Sentiment and pathos may be wrong and harped upon, but no excuses can be found for the horrible tortures of the brute who murdered an inoffensive man and outraged the wife in the blood of her murdered husband. The law had provided a punishment for crimes such as his, and it is not for men wrought to bloodthirsty frenzy to take the law into their own hands. Hose deserved death a thousand times over for his awful crime, but this even is no excuse for his lynching.
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A Disgrace to the South.
From The Huntsville Journal.
Sunday at mob at Newman, [sic] Ga., took one Sam. Hose, colored, who was charged with rape and murder, and after cutting off his ears and fingers, poured oil on him and burned alive. The despatches say that the mad crown fought for pieces of his flesh, some paying 10 cents for a piece of his half cooked liver. It is said that Hose confessed to the killing and said that a preacher named Lije Strickland paid him $12 to commit the deed. So Strickland was taken to the woods Sunday night, and after being terribly mutilated, hanged to a tree. If it is true that Hose committed the crime charged to him he deserved death, but not by a mob, nor should the white citizens of Georgia who claim to be civilized, have been allowed to vent their hatred in such a savage way, but the worst of it is that the governor tries to palliate the offense by saying that politics is the cause. We have no apology to offer for those who commit crime, whether they be white or black, but we condemn in the strongest manner that we know how, the mobbing of a man for any cause. What are our laws if they can't handle such cases? The Georgians have gone farther than the Texans did some years ago. We advise our people to keep cool and live pure lives and as sure as there is a God, He will hold these vile murderers to account. "Vengeance is mine and I will repay, saith the Lord."
Continuing with The Topeka Plaindealer (Topeka, Kansas) dated May 19, 1899 we read the reactions of Southern papers to their original article about the lynching:
THE OTHER SIDE
Of the Late Georgia Unpleasantness Is "Explained" by One Man and Several Jackasses.
A Letter from a New Yorker.
To The Plaindealer, Topeka, Kansas.
Marietta, Ga., April 30.—Gentlemen: I read your text, "It Is Hell!" etc., etc., on which I have to offer: The citizen or the community who or which would not in manner fully as cruel, as severe, avenge like offense is or would be unworthy to be classified "civilized" or unworthy the name of a citizen of the United States, nor would it matter if the offender were black or white, if the same outrage were perpetrated in Maine or in Texas, in Kansas or in "Barbarous Georgia" (your designation). Observe fact of his offenses: He, Sam. Holt [sic], crept barefooted behind his employer and benefactor, Mr. Cranford, with axe in hand, brained his victim seated at supper table, surrounded by wife and four children, eldest less than seven years of age, youngest an infant at breast, little more than six months of age, and, with the instincts of his brutish nature, struck the child of three to four years, knocking it across the room; with uplifted axe he approached the defenseless woman, Mrs. Cranford, snatched the suckling infant from her breast, and threw it as if it were a bundle of rags across the room, there stripping her person of every thread of wearing apparel, holding her thus a prisoner three hours, during which time he twice more repeated the crime of rape, inflicting upon her some other nameless indignities for his sole amusement and delectation! besides lacerating the person by vicious bites thereof!
To make the crime all more horrible, the brute, Sam. Hose, was poisoned with — in its most aggravated form, for which loathsome disease Mr. Cranford was having him treated by competent and reputable physicians!
Once again, I say, no punishment, no torture could be inflicted to atone for the enormity of Hose's offense, nor would the person or people who would not deal with equal severity on such offenders be entitled to be called citizens of a civilized community!
I am a native of the state of New York, but would wreak similar offenses on whomsoever or wheresoever such might be perpetrated.
Emphatically yours,
WELLS B. WHITMORE,
Box 42, Marietta, Ga.
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An Indorsment. [sic]
The Clinch County News, from, Homerville, Ga., comes with the following indorsement of THE PLAINDEALER: "THE PLAINDEALER, published at Topeka, Kansas, has found its way to our sanctum and we find it unworthy of entering a decent man's door. By right's, in our opinion, it should be excluded from the mail. Such publications and such men as its editors will undoubtedly bring about more lynching than otherwise would be. The Negro is an inferior race and always will be, and when a white man tries to put him upon a parity with the whites, this man is lower than the Negro."
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A Bouquet.
The editor of the Rome, (Ga.) Commercial Argus flings this bouquet at our feet, or head: "THE PLAINDEALER, a Negro paper published at Topeka, Kansas, is red-hot on the Sam. Holt [sic] lynching. If the black rascal who edits this sheet were to venture down this way, he might be treated to a dose himself."
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A Cowardly White Editor.
The editor of a white exchange at Lambert (Ga.) returns our paper with the following very complimentary remarks: "If the editor will come to Georgia, and will let the people know who he is, he will not write any such articles again! See! The editor is a d— s— of a b—".
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An Invitation.
The Colquit (Ga.) Courier sends us the following warm invitation which we decline for the reason that the Kansas climate is very agreeable:
"We have received a copy of THE PLAINDEALER, printed at Topeka, Kansas, in which the editor has a great deal to say about the lynching of Sam. Hose, and condemns the people of Georgia in a very vigorous way. The editor, we suppose, is a Negro, because we do not believe any living white man could crowd as many bare-faced lies into the same space as THE PLAINDEALER man has. We are certain Ananias could not hold a light for the Kansas editor to lie by.
"We will say this much for THE PLAINDEALER man, be he white skinned or be he black skinned, if he will come to Georgia and commit the same crime Sam. Hose did, we will guarantee he will receive the same reward Hose did, and will say this further, if he will bring a copy of his filthy, lying sheet with him and read and indorse it, we will guarantee him at least 200 stripes with a buggy trace well put on by willing hands and as a premium he will get a new suit of tar and feathers with probably a match stuck to it. So we advise said editor to go North or East when he wants an outing, never come to Georgia.
"We have scanned the columns of said paper closely but find not one word spoken about the lynching of a Negro by Negroes in his own state for simply killing a woman of his own color. Why is it that it is so fiendish in Georgia to kill a brute who would steal silently into a man's house, kill the husband and assault the wife, while it is not considered worth mentioning that a mob of Kansas Negroes did overpower the sheriff, let themselves into the jail and kill a man who had only been guilty of taking the life of a woman his own color?
"Stay away from Georgia is our advice."
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Nuts to Crack.
Many schemes have been discussed to solve the Negro question by colonizing them in Africa and elsewhere, but perhaps the most sensible would be to equally distribute them over the United States, provided a cordon of troops be sent along with them should they happen to seek work in Illinois or to settle in many counties North and West where they will not permit a Negro to live. The papers North go into a fever of excitement over recent happenings in the South, but they are dumb as oysters over the manner in which the Alabama and Mississippi Negroes were murdered under order of the governor of Illinois for no other reason than they sought honest labor in the mines of that state; how Negroes were lynched in Chicago during the great fire for pilfering; how they were lynched in the streets of New York at the outbreak of the Civil War for no other reason than they were in part the innocent cause of that war, and numerous lynchings in the North and West for the crimes of murder and theft. "Consistency, thou art a jewel" never enters the mind of the Pharisees in the North.
[The Marion (Ga.) Patriot gives the above nuts to the white papers of the North to crack. Here's your chance, boys!]
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An Idea of Hell.
Col. Ingersoll's theories of hell may be realized should he go South and hear what comforting words The People's Advocate of Carrollton, Ga., has to say:
"The American infidel, Bob Ingersoll, has fired off his bazoo in regard to the burning of Sam. Holt [sic] at Newnan. Bob is talking through a large but invisible hat when he refers tot he Southern people as savages. Robert, suppose you come South for your health? The 'savages' here in the South could make a luscious meal of your old infidel carcass, and we will guarantee that there will not be enough left to send to your 'Yankee disciples.'"
REASON FOR IT.
During the past few days, since the burning of Sam. Hose, we have been in receipt of a large number of Southern newspapers, and, also, letters containing bitter reflections on the management of this paper, promising us "a warm time" should we venture to accept the very cordial invitations to enjoy Southern hospitality.
I have chosen to end with an article not from a "Negro" paper, but I felt it was well placed in this post than another. The article comes to us from Buffalo Evening News (Buffalo, N. Y.) dated June 12, 1899:
The Other Side of the Negro Question
Editor Evening News:
I am so glad to learn from last night's NEWS that the case of Sam Hose is being investigated. I have worked among the colored people of the Black Belt for the last two years, and the story of Sam Hose as first published seemed very improbable to me, knowing the colored people as well as I do. The story as told in the NEWS of yesterday seems more like the truth, as many of the white people of the South think no more of shooting a "nigger" than a man in the North does of shooting a dog, and I have always felt a gross injustice was perpetrated in the case of Sam Hose and the colored ministers. It is time the people of the North took this business in hand. We have more important work in the "Black Belt" than in the Phillipines.
One important feature of the negro question I have never known spoken of by the papers is the question of the white men of the South and the colored girls. As far as my observations go, the men of the South look upon the colored girls as their prey, and the fathers and brothers are unable to protect them.
The colored people of the South live in constant fear of being shot by the white men, and if a colored man does a wrong they are likely to shoot not only the man who committed the wrong, but any other men who may have been seen in the company of any near relative, so none of them feel safe, and the average negro of the black belt feels it would be very unsafe for him to come North, where there are so many white men. As one man expressed it: "So many white men North I'd be a dead nigger, sure."
The colored people of the South, as I know them, make peaceable, good citizens, and although treated with great injustice in most cases, they submit, but they know right from wrong and have kind hearts and love of home and family the same as white men, and may not the treatment the colored girls received from the white men throw some light on the negro question? I think the white women of the South would be safer if they helped protect the colored girls from the white men.
This is from a worker among the colored people.
L. B.
Buffalo, Jan. [sic] 9, 1899.
I hope you found this post interesting and not too long. I have chosen to write "Negro" for the papers because that is what they were called at the time. I also plan one more post about this lynching. It will cover what a private detective learned afterwards.
As always, we hope we leave you with something to ponder.
