With all military, legal and political power in their hands, only two of the lynching States have attempted a check by exercising the power which is theirs.  Mayor Trout, of Roanoke, Virginia, called out the militia in 1893, to protect a Negro prisoner, and in so doing nine men were killed and a number wounded.  Then the mayor and militia withdrew, left the Negro to his fate and he was promptly lynched.  The business men realized the blow to the town’s were given light sentences, the highest being one of twelve financial interests, called the mayor home, the grand jury indicted and prosecuted the ringleaders of the mob.  They months in State prison.  The day he arrived at the penitentiary, he was pardoned by the governor of the State.

The only other real attempt made by the authorities to protect a prisoner of the law, and which was more successful, was that of Gov.  McKinley, of Ohio, who sent the militia to Washington Courthouse, O., in October, 1894, and five men were killed and twenty wounded in maintaining the principle that the law must be upheld.

In South Carolina, in April, 1893, Gov.  Tillman aided the mob by yielding up to be killed, a prisoner of the law, who had voluntarily placed himself under the Governor’s protection.  Public sentiment by its representatives has encouraged Lynch Law, and upon the revolution of this sentiment we must depend for its abolition.

Therefore, we demand a fair trial by law for those accused of crime, and punishment by law after honest conviction.  No maudlin sympathy for criminals is solicited, but we do ask that the law shall punish all alike.  We earnestly desire those that control the forces which make public sentiment to join with us in the demand.  Surely the humanitarian spirit of this country which reaches out to denounce the treatment of the Russian Jews, the Armenian Christians, the laboring poor of Europe, the Siberian exiles and the native women of India—­will not longer refuse to lift its voice on this subject.  If it were known that the cannibals or the savage Indians had burned three human beings alive in the past two years, the whole of Christendom would be roused, to devise ways and means to put a stop to it.  Can you remain silent and inactive when such things are done in our own community and country?  Is your duty to humanity in the United States less binding?

What can you do, reader, to prevent lynching, to thwart anarchy and promote law and order throughout our land?

1st.  You can help disseminate the facts contained in this book by bringing them to the knowledge of every one with whom you come in contact, to the end that public sentiment may be revolutionized.  Let the facts speak for themselves, with you as a medium.

2d.  You can be instrumental in having churches, missionary societies, Y.M.C.A.’s, W.C.T.U.’s and all Christian and moral forces in connection with your religious and social life, pass resolutions of condemnation and protest every time a lynching takes place; and see that they axe sent to the place where these outrages occur.