esented the W.C.T.U. If to
state facts is misrepresentation, then I plead guilty to the charge.

I said then and repeat now, that in all the ten terrible years of
shooting, hanging and burning of men, women and children in America, the
Women's Christian Temperance Union never suggested one plan or made one
move to prevent those awful crimes. If this statement is untrue the
records of that organization would disprove it before the ink is dry. It
is clearly an issue of fact and in all fairness this charge of
misrepresentation should either be substantiated or withdrawn.

It is not necessary, however, to make any representation concerning the
W.C.T.U. and the lynching question. The record of that organization speaks
for itself. During all the years prior to the agitation begun against
Lynch Law, in which years men, women and children were scourged, hanged,
shot and burned, the W.C.T.U. had no word, either of pity or protest; its
great heart, which concerns itself about humanity the world over, was,
toward our cause, pulseless as a stone. Let those who deny this speak by
the record. Not until after the first British campaign, in 1893, was even
a resolution passed by the body which is the self-constituted guardian for
"God, home and native land."

Nor need we go back to other years. The annual session of that
organization held in Cleveland in November, 1894, made a record which
confirms and emphasizes the silence charged against it. At that session,
earnest efforts were made to secure the adoption of a resolution of
protest against lynching. At that very time two men were being tried for
the murder of six colored men who were arrested on charge of barn burning,
chained together, and on pretense of being taken to jail, were driven into
the woods where they were ambushed and all six shot to death. The six
widows of the butchered men had just finished the most pathetic recital
ever heard in any court room, and the mute appeal of twenty-seven orphans
for justice touched the stoutest hearts. Only two weeks prior to the
session, Gov. Jones of Alabama, in his last message to the retiring state
legislature, cited the fact that in the two years just past, nine colored
men had been taken from the legal authorities by lynching mobs and
butchered in cold blood--and not one of these victims was even charged
with an assault upon womanhood.

It was thought that this great organization, in face of these facts, would
not hesitate to place