cient for law,
with all its forms, to be ruthlessly set aside and the doctrine of
lynch, swift and certain to be enforced.

"Case after case is chronicled by the press of Negroes hung by
infuriated mobs without trial to determine their guilt or innocence. The
farcical proceedings at law in their inefficiency of prosecution, the
selection and manipulation of jurors, and the character of public
sentiment have had painful illustration in several cases, and but
recently of Johnson, the colored man murdered in this, the capital
county of the State. The homicide of this man, a servant at a picnic, of
a Christian society of white people, and in their presence, without
provocation, was universally admitted. Notwithstanding, a jury of twelve
men, with almost indecent haste, finds the murderer not guilty. A
verdict fit to shock the sense of every friend of right and justice.
Robinson, a white man, for killing a colored man because his victim
asked for the return of money loaned, received but two years in the
penitentiary. Burril Lindsey, a colored farmer, who had homesteaded land
in Van Buren County and had commenced cultivation, was waited upon and
told he must leave; that they would have no "niggers" in the settlement.
They came back at midnight and broke down his door. One of the mob,
lying dead on the threshold was Burril Lindsey's response. The press of
our city--to their honor be it noted--said he did the proper thing.
Respectable men in the neighborhood who knew Lindsey said the same. But
yet, after being harrassed by threats and legal persecution for months,
a jury found him guilty of an assault with intent to kill, and six years
in the penitentiary at hard labor is the penalty for defending his home.

"Homicide has no local habitation; it is the accident of every
community, in every nation, and the justice and impartiality with which
the law is administered is the measure of their humanity and
civilization. But here we have the spectacle of the press, pulpit, and
rostrum of the State, with exceptions scarcely to be noted, either
entirely dumb or a mere passing allusion, more often in commendation
than censure. We are positive in our confidence that those, and only
those who expose and denounce and lay bare this conduct, and thereby
create a sentiment that will lessen this evil, are the only true friends
to the State's moral as well as its material progress. That the attempt
to deny and evade responsibility does not meet