Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/17

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THE NEGRO
13

the flames again and again until death came to his relief. The murder of little Myrtle Vance, aged three years, had been horribly avenged. He had killed the child, after assaulting her, last Tuesday night." But enough; as I have said, nothing would be gained here by recounting in full such ghastly horrors. It takes a negro to assault a pretty and winsome little girl less than four years of age; then catch her by her feet and tear her body in twain; and afterwards to be so indifferent to the crime as to lie down and sleep by his mutilated little victim all night. Scores of similar cases might easily have been retold in the pages of this book, but for very obvious reasons I have refrained from doing so. It is scarcely necessary for me to say, that I am morally opposed to all forms of lynch law, but the negro is with us; savagery and barbarous acts beget savagery and barbarous acts; what some are pleased to call the Christian religion has no more to do with it, has no more control over it, than the bursting of a soap-bubble has to do with an earthquake,— and there you have it. Lynchings, in spite of everything, will continue to occur in the United States of America just so long as there is a negro left here alive, and there is a white woman living for him to assault. He can no more help his instincts than he is responsible for the color of his skin.

So far as transporting any considerable number, say a million or two of the most undesirable class, out of this country, I have little to add beyond what I have said in Chapter VIII at the end of this volume. The members of the National Academy of Sciences, a body supposed to be the advisers to Congress on questions affecting the weal of the country as a whole, might