MRS. PEATTIE ON LYNCHING
The Blot on the Name of Civilization and Why it is There.
Something Concerning the Young Negro Woman Who Is Agitating England Against America.
A Graphic Description of One of The Incidents, Which Cause the Lynching of Southern Negroes.
Mrs. Allie C. Willard, the sister-in-law of Miss Frances Willard writes from England to the World-Herald, in a perturbed state of mind concerning the agitation of Miss Ida B. Wells. Miss Wells is a colored woman, who, despairing of finding any redress in this country for such of her race as are lynched for their wrong-doing. Instead of being properly tried by law, has gone to England to arouse public sentiment there. Carried away by the subject, and by the bitterness which she naturally enough facts, she indulges in some severe reflections upon this country, and upon its most cherished heroes, particularly Lincoln. At least, so Mrs. Willard compising. She has also assailed or reproached Miss Willard for her lack of sympathy with the cause of the negro. And she has been guilty of ingratitude for the sacrifice made by abolitionist heroes and by soldiers of the civil war who gave all they had to give for the independent of the slave.
One would be in a much better position to criticize Miss Wells if one had heard her address. Mrs. Willard's accounts of her exaggerations and misrepresentations may be colored to an extent by her resentment at the reproach leveled at her beloved sister-in-law, and by the natural irritation of an American at having her country abused among foreigners.
But on the othe hand, is it not true that we hang, roll, burn and shoot negroes who break the law, and that when a negro commits an offense we are more inclined to lynch than to try him by law?
If so, why should, we resent having it told?
There is never any use in trying to conceal the truth, Truth is like water and flows through the tinest cracks. It will make itself visibke somehow.
If we lynch negroes and maintain that we have a right to lynch them, why should we object to having Miss Wells say so? Why should not England and the whole world know it?
And could anyone reasonably suppose that Miss Wells could talk upon this subject calmly, or that she would not represent us as monsters? It would not be in human nature to do otherwise.
To defend herself against the charge of Ingritufr she very naturally attacks our motives and the motives of the men who led us in the civil conflict. and she says very truly that Lincoln was not in favor of emancipation. that is true. He fought to preserve the federation of the states of the union, and it is with reinotance that he signed the emancipation papers, feeling that he was disturbing property, and that he was precipitating men into a problem hardly les distressing than slavery, Miss Wells says negroes are socially ostracised; that they have none of them been elected to high office since 1876; that even when they fought as soldiers in the civil war they were not treated as well as white soldiers. Miss Wells is mistaken about there having been no negro elected to congress or other high place since 1876- But as for the other facts, they are probably true. There is no denying the social ostracism of the negro. There is not a first-class hotel or a first-class theate in this country where they would be admitted to equal privileges with other guests. There is not a drawing room in this country-where they come commonly as the friends of the family although in church, or political, or educational work they may occasionally be associated with those of social position.
Mrs. Willard is very deeply moved becuase the men of the north have been pulled cowards, and because Lincoln has been assailed. But it is no arrangement of Lincoln in the uncompromising and immediate delivery of the slaves. Nor is there any occasion for northerners to fret because they are called cowards some of them are. A great many of them are moral cowards, and id race questions they are apt to be narrow, arrogant and un-Christian. Since they are so, why should not England know it? We have really no right to resent Miss Wells endeavers to get the English to protect the blacks, since it was but a little time ago that many of us were advoating an attack upon Russia by all Christendom, for the purpose of forcing her to respect the lives of her jews, her peasants and her convicts. If we have been as culpable, must we not face the mortification of being similiarly criticized? If we have a cancer in the national breast, denying his existence will not keep the poison from our blood.
