to clear his
name; no opportunity to bid a friend good bye; no time to formulate a
prayer to God.

"About this way of dealing with criminals there are three horrible
features: First, innocent men are often slain and forced to sleep
eternally in dishonored graves. Secondly, when men who are innocent
are thus slain the real culprits are left behind to repeat their
deeds and thus continue to bring reproach upon the race to which
they belong. Thirdly, illegal execution always begets sympathy in
the hearts of our people for a criminal, however dastardly may be his
crime. Thus the execution loses all of its moral force as a deterrent.
That wrath, that eloquence, which would all be used in abuse of the
criminal is divided between him and his lynchers. Thus the crime for
which the man suffers, is not dwelt upon with that unanimity to make
it sufficiently odious, and, as a consequence, lynching increases
crime. And, too, under the operation of the lynch-law the criminal
knows that any old tramp is just as liable as himself to be seized and
hanged.

"This accursed practice, instead of decreasing, grows in extent year
by year. Since the close of the civil war no less than sixty thousand
of our comrades, innocent of all crime, have been hurried to their
graves by angry mobs, and to-day their widows and orphans and their
own departed spirits cry out to you to avenge their wrongs.

"Woe unto that race, whom the tears of the widows, the cries of
starving orphans, the groans of the innocent dying, and the gaping
wounds of those unjustly slain, accuse before a righteous God!

POLITICS.

"'Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed!'

"These words were penned by the man whom the South has taught us to
revere as the greatest and noblest American statesman, whether those
who are now alive or those who are dead. We speak of Thomas Jefferson.
They have taught us that he was too wise to err and that his sayings
are truth incarnate. They are ready to anathematize any man in their
own ranks who will decry the self-evident truths which he uttered.

"The Bible which the white people gave us, teaches us that we are men.
The Declaration of Independence, which we behold them wearing over
their hearts, tells us that all men are created equal. If, as the
Bible says, we are men; if, as Jefferson says, all men are equal;
if, as he further states, governments derive all just powers from th