half a dozen innocent Negroes who were pursued by the mob, and brought them to trial in a court of law in which they were acquitted.”  As Bishop Galloway, of Mississippi, has finely said:  “When the rule of a mob obtains, that which distinguishes a high civilization is surrendered.  The mob which lynches a negro charged with rape will in a little while lynch a white man suspected of crime.  Every Christian patriot in America needs to lift up his voice in loud and eternal protest against the mob spirit that is threatening the integrity of this Republic.”  Governor Jelks, of Alabama, has recently spoken as follows:  “The lynching of any person for whatever crime is inexcusable anywhere—­it is a defiance of orderly government; but the killing of innocent people under any provocation is infinitely more horrible; and yet innocent people are likely to die when a mob’s terrible lust is once aroused.  The lesson is this:  No good citizen can afford to countenance a defiance of the statutes, no matter what the provocation.  The innocent frequently suffer, and, it is my observation, more usually suffer than the guilty.  The white people of the South indict the whole colored race on the ground that even the better elements lend no assistance whatever in ferreting out criminals of their own color.  The respectable colored people must learn not to harbor their criminals, but to assist the officers in bringing them to justice.  This is the larger crime, and it provokes such atrocious offenses as the one at Atlanta.  The two races can never get on until there is an understanding on the part of both to make common cause with the law-abiding against criminals of any color.”

Moreover, where any crime committed by a member of one race against a member of another race is avenged in such fashion that it seems as if not the individual criminal, but the whole race, is attacked, the result is to exasperate to the highest degree race feeling.  There is but one safe rule in dealing with black men as with white men; it is the same rule that must be applied in dealing with rich men and poor men; that is, to treat each man, whatever his color, his creed, or his social position, with even-handed justice on his real worth as a man.  White people owe it quite as much to themselves as to the colored race to treat well the colored man who shows by his life that he deserves such treatment; for it is surely the highest wisdom to encourage in the colored race all those individuals who are honest, industrious, law-abiding, and who therefore make good and safe neighbors and citizens.  Reward or punish the individual on his merits as an individual.  Evil will surely come in the end to both races if we substitute for this just rule the habit of treating all the members of the race, good and bad, alike.  There is no question of “social equality” or “negro domination” involved; only the question of relentlessly punishing bad men, and of securing to the good man the right to his life, his liberty, and the pursuit of his happiness as his own qualities of heart, head, and hand enable him to achieve it.