Brother Lipscomb: I cannot see what right you have to say that the beasts did not cry unto the Lord, when the Bible (Jonah 3: 8) says: "Let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from violence that is in their hands."

There is a book, "The Negro Not the Son of Man [Ham]," ⁽¹⁾ that claims that the beasts are negroes, and that the immoral mixture of the two races was the sin for which they were here condemned. You will say that Mr. Carrol, the author, is only speculating; but the assumption that the negroes are a separate creation and beasts is better sustained by the Bible than is the one saying, "Noah turned Ham black," as most preachers believe. It was a sin for the sons of God to marry the daughters of the wicked Canaanites, and how could a woman "lie down" to four-footed "beasts?" That sin was punished by death.

Because of their attacking Southern women, the two-footed black beasts are being killed-- saturated with oil and burned to death -- every week somewhere in the South; indeed, one often reads in the paper accounts of as many as three or four such horrible crimes. What but a beast could do such a thing? Being educated makes no difference; they know no law save their desire.

We do not read of such crimes being committed by white men anywhere. Except on very rare occasions, when a white man ruins a woman, be she white or black, it is done with her consent. He does not, like a wild beast, jump upon his prey from some concealed place. Brother Lipscomb, the negro man (and woman, too) is such a curse to the morality of the country that this subject ought to be carefully and prayerfully studied. God will surely curse us if something is not done. The negro women lend themselves only too willingly to the white man, and the negro men are a black terror to our women.

A WOMAN.

We have certainly fallen on evil times when our wives, sisters, and daughters live in dread of outrage by the negroes or others. The condition demands free and full consideration by men and women, but it is not wise, in any conditions that arise, to take counsel of our passions or bitter feelings; they will always mislead us.

It is not true that rape and violence in the gratification of the lusts are peculiar to the negro. All civilized nations have had to make laws to punish this crime; it has existed to a greater or less extent among all people. God made laws to punish it among his people. (Deut. 22: 23-27.) The same punishment was inflicted for rape and adultery. (Verse 22.) We infer from this that the sins were regarded heinous by God. From the woman's standpoint, seduction is worse than rape. It is better that the body should be defiled by force than that she should be the guilty partner in her defilement. Despite the laws of God punishing with death one guilty of rape, Amnon the son of King David, raped his half-sister, Tamar, for which he was slain by her brother Absalom. (2 Sam. 13: 11-21.) It seems to have been not an uncommon crime among the Jews in their earlier history. Such crimes seem to have prevailed among the now civilized people at a stage of low civilization. Among the barbarian nations it was classed among feats of heroism. Pictures are preserved as works of art, exhibiting lustful passions of that age, that are now calculated to excite the fleshly to such crimes. But the crime is peculiar to man. Beasts or brutes in a state of nature never gratify the lust on an unresponsive female; with them there must be responsiveness on the part of the female. The crime is human, and not brutal, and proves that the negro is a human, not a brute. Man, with his heart and intellect dominated and depraved by lust, is guilty of crimes that it is a slander to the brute to call "brutal." When all, men and women, are in the same stage of civilization, the crime does not seem so hideous as when, as with us, the white women are refined and the negro men rough barbarians; but in all ages God regarded the crime worthy of death.

But the inequality of the races excites to, the crime. The negro is naturally ambitious of social equality. He feels this sexual intercourse is the acme of this equality. His ambition excites his lust and he commits the crime. It is his way at once of gratifying his lust and elevating his race. Human ingenuity is exhausted on devising torture to deter from the crime. Under false religious ideas received from the whites, he dies protesting he is "going home to glory." He persuades himself he is a hero and martyr for his race and is so regarded by other negroes. The negroes are stoical and he bears the torture with what seems heroic composure, and he is regarded a martyr for his race. On the same principle that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church, his torture, instead of deterring from, excites to like crimes and sufferings by others of his race.

While the treatment given the negro criminal makes a hero and martyr of him in the eyes of himself and his race, it makes cruel cowards and demons of his tormentors. Cruelty is a sure mark of cowardice; all, negroes and whites, instinctively recognize this. For a thousand men to gloat over and torment a helpless victim, no matter how steeped in crime, makes them feel like cowards and depraves them. The negroes know and feel this as well as the whites.

This course of lawless cruelty cultivates the very spirit that leads the negro to commit rape. The lawless gratification of the passions is the moving cause in both cases. The gratification of the lust moves the negro; the gratification of vengeance and cruelty leads the whites to take lawless vengeance. It is the same spirit that led to the shooting of President McKinley. Mob law is anarchy. In both cases men gratify their passions in a lawless manner. The passions of the mob decide and inflict lawless punishment. The example of the whites setting aside law to gratify their feeling of vengeance licenses the negro to gratify his lust by violence as it does the man who feels society oppresses, to murder the leaders and rulers of the State. As to the book that maintains that the negro is a beast, it is a second rehash of a book published by Knott & Glyddon--I think the names--written to get some of the money that those not wise parted from when the Southern feeling ran high, to defend slavery before the Civil War. A rehash was made of this book by Payne to get money from the same class during the carpetbag rule. Now, when the people are frenzied by the rapes of the negroes, it is again rehashed to get money from those who take counsel of their passions rather than of reason. Sharpers can always be found to do this.

It is not that we are in danger of the curse of God; we are now suffering it. This terrible crime and the constant dread of it, is the penalty we are paying for keeping the negroes in our midst ignorant and depraved, using them for selfish ends instead of for their good. If we are led by this curse to despise him as a brute and still further denounce and neglect him, the curse must be increased. This is God's order of dealing with man. The only help I can see is an earnest trust in God as individuals and prayer to him for protection from the evils, connected with an earnest effort to lift up and benefit the negro.

The negro responds readily to kindness shown him and interest in his welfare; he is equally resentful of unkindness and injustice, and is stoical and stubborn under punishment. His enfranchisement was unfitted for it was a wrong to him. Depriving him of it, however needful it be, will be felt by him as an effort to degrade and oppress him and will have for a time, an evil influence on him. He responds kindly to trust reposed in him. The most dishonest can be made honest frequently by trusting them. Treat them as devils, and you make demons of them; treat them with kindness as men, show confidence in them and trust them as men, and you make worthy men of them. They are human; they commit rape as other humans in their stage of development have done, have the feelings and passions common to other humans, and can be uplifted or degraded just as other human beings. The cruelty under lawless passion does not and cannot restrain them. A lighter punishment administered by law, free from exhibitions of lawless passion and cruelty, would have greater restraining influences on the negro. I believe were the State to pass a law requiring every one, white or black, guilty of attempted rape, to be castrated, and it were enforced alike on white and black, it would have a much more healthy influence on both parties than the diabolical burnings now administered. It would strip the criminal of his character of martyr and hero, and leave him an object of scorn and ridicule among his people, that none would desire to emulate. This is for the State. I am sure the Christian woman will find her highest safety in drawing near God, living a life of trust and fidelity, cultivating a feeling of good will toward the negroes, and using all efforts in her power, to help the women and men to better lives. I do not believe this course will fail. It would help both black and white; it would draw both nearer to God, and so nearer to each other. D. L.

1. Charles Carroll, The Negro Not the Son of Ham; or, Man Not a Species Divisible into Races (Chattanooga, Tenn.: Times Print, [1898]). I am grateful to Joel Elliott for having furnished me with a copy.