4. In a paper read in 1901, Mr. A. H. Stone said of the Yazoo Mississippi Delta: “There is now no more feeling of fear on the white man’s part, whether for himself or his wife or his children, than in the days of slavery.” But he afterwards added: “Writing to-day, 1908, it would be necessary to modify this statement somewhat—certainly for some part of this territory.” “The American Race Problem,” p. 91. The footnotes to Mr. Stone’s paper point out one or two other instances of a deterioration of conditions. 5. Among the “Causes Assigned” for lynchings in the statistical statement prepared by the Chicago Tribune, “Race Prejudice” stands fourth on the list; and in the four years, 1900-1903, twenty-four cases are assigned to it. Among the other causes are “Unknown offences” (10), “Mistaken Identity” (5), and “No offence” (1). 6. “Making allowance for all exaggerations in attributing this crime to negroes, there still remain enough well-authenticated cases of brutal assault on women by black men in America to make every negro bow his head in shame.”—Atlanta University Publications, No. IX. (A negro monograph). 7. “No race ever behaved better than the negro behaved during the war. Not only were there no massacres and no outbreaks, but even the amount of defection was not large.... Many a master going off to the war entrusted his wife and children to the care of his servants with as much confidence as if they had been of his own blood. They acted rather like clansmen than like bondmen.... As Henry Grady once said, ‘A thousand torches would have disbanded the Southern army; but there was not one.’”—Thomas Nelson Page: “The Negro: The Southerner’s Problem,” p. 21. 8. One of the most sensible men in the South is certainly Mr. E. G. Murphy, who writes (“The Present South,” p. 177): “The mob, so far as it has a conscious philosophy, has attempted the justification of its course upon these grounds: It has insisted that its methods were necessary in order to prevent the crime; in order to avoid the procrastination of the courts; and in order to protect the victim of assault from the ordeal of presenting testimony at the trial of the offender. It has become increasingly obvious, however, that the practice of lynching ... is not a remedy. It does not prevent crime. Through the morbid interest which it arouses, and through the publicity which it creates, it inflames to the utmost the power of criminal suggestion and aggravates all the conditions of racial suspicion and antagonism. The so-called ‘remedy’ has always been followed by new outbreaks of the disease, the most
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