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Ga., would be lynched, or that Sam Hose would be mutilated
and burned, before the deeds were done; after these acts were
perpetrated, the sending of troops to the several localities would
have been only a shallow farce.

  Of one thing we are certain; when President McKinley was
Governor  McKinley, and there was no question as to his legal
right to use troops to protect a menaced prisoner, he used them;
and that in such a way that the law had its full and free course.
But that was in a State where the law officers notified him in
time of the danger, and  he had the opportunity to send troops
before the victim was lynched.  Again, the President is com-
plained of, because he did not refer, in his message, to the lynch-
ings in the South.  While this was, from my point of view, a
mistake, yet, we must not lose sight of the fact that doing is
more valuable than talking; and what Democratic platform ever
contained anything advising for the welfare of the colored Amer-
ican,  or  what  Democratic  President     ever  remembered
him  in  his messages?     At  the  very  moment  when  the
message was being read, the vicinity of Lake City,
S. C., was "bristling" with detectives who were gather-
ing evidence for the prosecution of the assassins of Baker and
his family; and at the prosecution of the same, at Charleston, the
evidence collected was cumulative; and had the trial taken place
anywhere except in the South, they would have been convicted.
If the President himself had been assassinated, nothing more
could have been done than to arrest the guilty parties and prose-
cute them in a court of law. This has been done, and is still in
process, in the case referred to. Others will follow, let us hope.
We must not forget that in the President's first utterance as
President, he condemned lynching and lawlessness; and, if we
may believe persons who profess to know, the course pursued by
the President, in remaining silent in his message, as to the
troubles in the South, was, to some extent, at least, due to the
advice of "colored bishops and other prominent colored men," of
whom this writer was not one.
  Again, the President is found fault with, because he has not




			

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Colored American Republican Text Book