The Lynch Spirit | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 1, 1901

The Lynch Spirit.

It is really a matter of surprise how rapidly the lynch spirit is growing in this country. In a recent speech delivered before the Marinette (Wis.) Chautauqua, the dispatches state that “an audience of four thousand people, all of the best social sets of northern Wisconsin, stood up and cheered when Senator Tillman openly advocated the lynching of negro ravishers.” He said: “Our Southern women will not go on the stand to testify to their shame, and the only way to end this awful crime which menaces the entire South is to string up the ‘niggers’ to the nearest tree.” At this “the women waved their handkerchiefs, and men cheered till the speaker was forced to stop speaking.” Senator Tillman began his speech by stating that “the North no longer believed that the negro was the equal of the white,” and, according to the dispatch, “his statement appeared to be verified by his audience.” He then said: “In Wisconsin you have five thousand black men. Why don’t you try the bleaching process and exterminate them by intermarrying? The idea is repugnant to you. In South Carolina we have seven hundred and fifty thousand blacks and five hundred and fifty thousand whites. The carpetbaggers, the ‘nigger,’ the Southern scalawags, and the scoundrels ruled us after the war until they had stolen everything that there was in the State. Then we went with our shotguns to the polls and took it away from them. All men are not created equal, and the ‘niggers’ are not fit to vote. Come what may, the white people of the South will govern their own country.” He then condemned Booker T. Washington’s scheme of educating the negro in the different trades, as carried out at Tuskegee, as “an attempt to place him on an equality with the white artisan, something that would intensify race hatred in the South,” and said that “among the four million slaves during the Civil War, there were more Christians than there are to-day among the nine million blacks in the South.” He then closed his speech with “an impassioned statement” to the effect that “in spite of the devil,” the white people of the South would “remain on top,” and that, if necessary, he and his brethren were “ready to take down their shotguns again.” Yet, strange to say, after this defense of the principles of slavery, he said: “I do not want to uphold slavery.” What else, pray, does such a speech as that uphold?