But this line of argument can in no possible way be truthfully sustained.  The lynching of the six men in 1894, barbarous as it was, was in no way more barbarous than took nothing more than a passing notice.  It was only the other lynchings which preceded it, and of which the public fact that the attention of the civilized world has been called to lynching in America which made the people of Tennessee feel the absolute necessity for a prompt, vigorous and just arraignment of all the murderers connected with that crime.  Lynching is no longer “Our Problem,” it is the problem of the civilized world, and Tennessee could not afford to refuse the legal measures which Christianity demands shall be used for the punishment of crime.

MEMPHIS THEN AND NOW

Only two years prior to the massacre of the six men near Memphis, that same city took part in a massacre in every way as bloody and brutal as that of September last.  It was the murder of three young colored men and who were known to be among the most honorable, reliable, worthy and peaceable colored citizens of the community.  All of them were engaged in the mercantile business, being members of a corporation which conducted a large grocery store, and one of the three being a letter carrier in the employ of the government.  These three men were arrested for resisting an attack of a mob upon their store, in which melee none of the assailants, who had armed themselves for their devilish deeds by securing court processes, were killed or even seriously injured.  But these three men were put in jail, and on three or four nights after their incarceration a mob of less than a dozen men, by collusion with the civil authorities, entered the jail, took the three men from the custody of the law and shot them to death.  Memphis knew of this awful crime, knew then and knows today who the men were who committed it, and yet not the first step was ever taken to apprehend the guilty wretches who walk the streets today with the brand of murder upon their foreheads, but as safe from harm as the most upright citizen of that community.  Memphis would have been just as calm and complacent and self-satisfied over the murder of the six colored men in 1894 as it was over these three colored men in 1892, had it not recognized the fact that to escape the brand of barbarism it had not only to speak its denunciation but to act vigorously in vindication of its name.

AN ALABAMA HORROR IGNORED

A further instance of this absolute disregard of every principle of justice and the indifference to the barbarism of Lynch Law may be cited here, and is furnished by white residents in the city of Carrolton, Alabama.  Several cases of arson had been discovered, and in their search for the guilty parties, suspicion was found to rest upon three men and a woman.  The four suspects were Paul Hill, Paul Archer, William Archer, his brother, and a woman named Emma Fair.  The prisoners were apprehended, earnestly asserted their innocence, but went to jail without making any resistance.  They claimed that they could easily prove their innocence upon trial.