One would suspect that the civilization which defends itself against the barbarisms of Lynch Law by stating that it lynches human beings only when they are guilty of awful attacks upon women and children, would have been very careful to have given these four prisoners, who were simply charged with arson, a fair trial, to which they were entitled upon every principle of law and humanity.  Especially would this seem to be the case when if is considered that one of the prisoners charged was a woman, and if the nineteenth century has shown any advancement upon any lines of human action, it is preeminently shown in its reverence, respect and protection of its womanhood.  But the people of Alabama failed to have any regard for womanhood whatever.

The three men and the woman were put in jail to await trial.  A few days later it was rumored that they were to be subjects of Lynch Law, and, sure enough, at night a mob of lynchers went to the jail, not to avenge any awful crime against womanhood, but to kill four people who had been suspected of setting a house on fire.  They were caged in their cells, helpless and defenseless; they were at the mercy of civilized white Americans, who, armed with shotguns, were there to maintain the majesty of American law.  And most effectively was their duty done by these splendid representatives of Governor Fishback’s brave and honorable white southerners, who resent “outside interference.”  They lined themselves up in the most effective manner and poured volley after volley into the bodies of their helpless, pleading victims, who in their bolted prison cells could do nothing but suffer and die.  Then these lynchers went quietly away and the bodies of the woman and three men were taken out and buried with as little ceremony as men would bury hogs.

No one will say that the massacre near Memphis in 1894 was any worse than this bloody crime of Alabama in 1892.  The details of this shocking affair were given to the public by the press, but public sentiment was not moved to action in the least; it was only a matter of a day’s notice and then went to swell the list of murders which stand charged against the noble, Christian people of Alabama.

AMERICA AWAKENED

But there is now an awakened conscience throughout the land, and Lynch Law can not flourish in the future as it has in the past.  The close of the year 1894 witnessed an aroused interest, an assertative humane principle which must tend to the extirpation of that crime.  The awful butchery last mentioned failed to excite more than a passing comment In 1894, but far different is it today.  Gov.  Jones, of Alabama, in 1893 dared to speak out against the rule of the mob in no uncertain terms.  His address indicated a most helpful result of the present agitation.  In face of the many denials of the outrages on the one hand and apologies for lynchers on the other, Gov.  Jones admits the awful lawlessness charged and refuses to join in the infamous plea made to condone the crime.  No stronger nor more effective words have been said than those following from Gov.  Jones.