404 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



May 15 



be crazed at the sight of blood. You have all 

 heard the story, perhaps, of a great peace- 

 meeting between two warlike tribes. They 

 had shaken hands, " buried the hatchet," and 

 then they had a big dinner. Two children 

 quarreled over a gaudily painted grasshopper. 

 Then the children's mother's quarreled, and 

 then the fathers quarreled. Then the neigh- 

 bors took sides. Pretty soon blood was shed, 

 and before the sun went down two great tribes, 

 the greater part of them, lay dead on the bat- 

 tle-field. They were crazed at the sight of 

 blood. The Great Spirit smiled on them in 

 the morning as they planned to bury the hatch- 

 et and to be brotherly; but, oh dear ! what an 

 end of good resolutions ! You all know, with- 

 out my telling you, of this craze that seems to 

 have a place, more or less, in almost every hu- 

 man heart. If a family is murdered, people 

 must drop their spring work and every thing 

 else, and go for miles to look over and listen 

 to the horrible details of the tragedy. It is 

 like the craze for gambling, the craze for 

 strong drink or other stimulants, the craze for 

 wealth or fame. In modern times, when there 

 are good laws to restrain this thirst for blood- 

 shed, people are inventing all sorts of excuses 

 to gratify them; and one of the latest excuses 

 for lynching is the corruption of our officers 

 of law, the slowness of legal proceedings, and 

 the uncertainty, after all, of any punishment 

 for the guilty ; therefore lynch law has begun 

 to be fashionable; and all at once it transpires 

 that a crowd can be collected in almost any 

 community who are so loyal to the cause of 

 righteousness that they will drop every thing 

 at any minute to rise up and punish transgres- 

 sors themselves. If some member of com- 

 munity gives evidence of being possessed of 

 the Devil, this element springs forward with 

 an alacrity it has never shown before in any 

 thing else, to punish the criminal and do away 

 with all such devilish work. The Bible tells 

 us the law is a terror to evil-doers. These peo- 

 ple have evidently got it into their heads that 

 a better way would be to teach mankind that 

 mob rule is a worse terror to evil-doers. I am 

 not defending criminals, mind you, nor am I 

 urging that we shall let such terrible outrages 

 go unpunished as have been committed of 

 late, especially by some of our colored people. 

 I am simply suggesting that the people who 

 hang these criminals, and burn them at the 

 stake, are not moved to this work just because 

 they love righteousness and hate iniquity. I 

 can not prove it by statistics ; but is it not 

 true that the crowd who spend their last dol- 

 lar to go to a bull -fight or to a prize-fight 

 would do a good deal more than that if there 

 were a chance of seeing a negro put to death 

 by mutilation and slowly burning him at the 

 stake ? 



On this last occasion (I suppose everybody 

 has heard about it) crowds to the extent of 

 several thousand went many miles to witness 

 the spectacle. I have not the paper now; but 

 if I remember correctly the railroad compa- 

 nies ran excursion trains on purpose to carry 

 people and bring them home again. Now, it 

 is the business of the railroad companies to 

 carry people wherever they want to go, as a 



rule; but I do hope that a national law will 

 soon be enacted forbidding railroad companies 

 to carry mobs, especially where said mob pro- 

 poses to defy law. There has been some fee- 

 ble attempt made by the courts to stop lynch- 

 ing. I piesume people console themselves by 

 thinking that this crime, which it is not even 

 pleasant to talk about in print, will soon be a 

 thing of the past when such terrible punish- 

 ment so speedily follows. In other words, 

 they seem to have a sort of fond hope that 

 Satan can, in these latter days, cast out Satan. 

 It does seem as if every colored man inthe 

 United States must know of the fate that 

 surely awaits him when he lets his low beastly 

 passions run away with him; but, sad to state, 

 the thing is not being stopped. Years ago 

 they used to put a man in prison for debt; and 

 in England they hanged for what we would 

 call very trivial offenses. Did it lessen crime ? 

 We are told it did not. Sometimes it seems as 

 if certain people were possessed with a craze 

 to commit crime. Please do not think I am 

 laying all the blame on our friends in the 

 South. It is not many years since there was 

 a foolish craze among the Puritans of New 

 England to stamp out witchcraft, and they 

 had public exhibitions of the drowning of 

 witches. Crowds came to see it, and I presume 

 many good people deluded themselves by 

 thinking that, in so doing, they were showing 

 to the world that they loved righteousness and 

 hated iniquity. I have been told that it was 

 my own ancestors who tortured the witches, 

 and that it was my own Congregational Church 

 that had a particular hand in it. If so, I shall 

 have to pray once more that God may help us 

 all to beware of the wiles of Satan. 



Dear friends, it is hardly likely that what I 

 am writing will be read by any one who had 

 any thing to do with that awful public spec- 

 tacle that has been pronounced a disgrace to 

 the present age, and a still blacker disgrace on 

 the annals of the history of our American re- 

 public. Just at a time when we were trying 

 to persuade the Filipinos that we love them, 

 and are conquering them only that we may- 

 give them the benefits of modern civiliza- 

 tion (?), our country has been guilty of this 

 fearful thing. How can we persuade them 

 that we are a nation of people who love even 

 our enemies, and would be just and fair to all 

 persons, regardless of sex or color ? If the 

 man who was tortured was the only r one who 

 was unquestionably guilty it would not be so 

 bad ; but we are told that a quiet, inoffensive, 

 law-abiding colored minister was put to death 

 without any good evidence that he was guilty 

 at all. The man, before he was burned at the 

 stake, simply declared that this minister paid 

 him twelve dollars if he would murder a man. 

 The criminal was evidently casting about for 

 something to say or do to help his prospects ; 

 and he simply said what many another man in 

 his position might have said. He declared he 

 was innocent of a part of the crime, and that 

 he was hired to do the other part. The color- 

 ed minister had some sort of trial. But the 

 crazy mob had sense enough left to decide 

 that it had no kind of evidence that would 

 warrant them in putting him to death ; and 



