1895
[Transcriber's Note: This pamphlet was first published in 1895 but wassubsequently reprinted. It's not apparent if the curiosities in spellingdate back to the original or were introduced later; they have beenretained as found, and the reader is left to decide. Please verify withanother source before quoting this material.]
HON. FREDERICK DOUGLASS'S LETTER
DEAR MISS WELLS:
Let me give you thanks for your faithful paper on the lynch abominationnow generally practiced against colored people in the South. There hasbeen no word equal to it in convincing power. I have spoken, but my wordis feeble in comparison. You give us what you know and testify from actualknowledge. You have dealt with the facts with cool, painstaking fidelity,and left those naked and uncontradicted facts to speak for themselves.
Brave woman! you have done your people and mine a service which canneither be weighed nor measured. If the American conscience were only halfalive, if the American church and clergy were only half Christianized, ifAmerican moral sensibility were not hardened by persistent infliction ofoutrage and crime against colored people, a scream of horror, shame, andindignation would rise to Heaven wherever your pamphlet shall be read.
But alas! even crime has power to reproduce itself and create conditionsfavorable to its own existence. It sometimes seems we are deserted byearth and Heaven—yet we must still think, speak and work, and trust inthe power of a merciful God for final deliverance.
Very truly and gratefully yours,
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
Cedar Hill, Anacostia, D.C.
CHAPTER 1
The Case Stated
CHAPTER 2
Lynch-Law Statistics
CHAPTER 3
Lynching Imbeciles
CHAPTER 4
Lynching of Innocent Men
CHAPTER 5
Lynched for Anything or Nothing
CHAPTER 6
History of Some Cases of Rape
CHAPTER 7
The Crusade Justified
CHAPTER 8
Miss Willard's Attitude
CHAPTER 9
Lynching Record for 1894
CHAPTER 10
The Remedy
The student of American sociology will find the year 1894 marked by apronounced awakening of the public conscience to a system of anarchy andoutlawry which had grown during a series of ten years to be so common,that scenes of unusual brutality failed to have any visible effect uponthe humane sentiments of the people of our land.
Beginning with the emancipation of the Negro, the inevitable result ofunbribled power exercised for two and a half centuries, by the white manover the Negro, began to show itself in acts of conscienceless outlawry.During the slave regime, the Southern white man owned the Negro body andsoul. It was to his interest to dwarf the soul and preserve the body.Vested with unlimited power over his slave, to subject him to any and allkinds of physical punishment, the white man was still restrained from suchpunishment as tended to injure the slave by abating his physical powersand thereby redu