Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 February 1886 — SOUTHERN. [ARTICLE]

SOUTHERN.

The conduct of Lieutenant Greene, of the signal corps, and other members of the recent court-martial at Fort Myer, Virginia, was such as to draw from the Secretary of War an expression of the stem condemnation of the abuse of counsel for the accused and of enlisted men serving as witnesses. An oil explosion in a dwelling at Tangiers, Va., killed two children and dangerously manned or burned five others. The children, finding that the fire had become extinguished, attempted to relight it, aud one of them using oil to aid the kindling, the explosion followed Reports have reached Little Rock that a negro recently murdered a family of six pt ./sons in a remote section of Faulkner County, Arkansas. A negro man named Burns, who had committed an assault upon a respectable white girl, was forcibly taken by a mob from the Martinsburg (W. Va.) jail and escorted to a grove skirting the town, where the mob formed themselves in a circle. What followed is thus described by a telegram from Martinsburg: The negro was mounted on a horse and led to the center of the ring, where a halter was placed

about his neck. The leader then advanced, and in a voice loud enough to be distinctly heard by all. said: “Joseph Bums, are you guilty of this crime?" “I am,” was the low-voiced reply. “Do you deserve this punishment?" was the next question. “I do," said Bums, “and I ask tor your prayers.” This was answered from the circle by a volley of fierce cries, and shouts of “Bum him!” “Cat hm to pieces!” could be heard on all sides, mingled with the crack of revolvers. In a few moments, however, the mob grew more quiet, and then a man approached the center of the circle of desperate men, handed his hat to a companion, and offered up a ferventprayer for the doomed man, Burns sitting quietly on the horse with his chin ra ting on his breast. The prayer concluded, the rope was thrown over the 1 ranch of a tree a few steps away, and the end taken bock to one side of the circle, where fifty men soon hod bold. The leader then spoke a word in a low tone, and the prisoner shot upward and was swinging backward and forward in the moonlight, while the air rang with yells and cheers from the mob, A revolver cracked, and then, while the despairing wretch was endeavoring to grasp the rope which was choking out his life, a volley of revolver shots rang out on the air and Bums was dead, pierced by fiftv balls. A colored lunatic near Savannah, Ga., strangled two boys in a church-yard and left their bodies to be devoured by buzzards. The Panama Canal Company will ship from Now Orleans a third party of 250 negro laborers. Samuel Kaiser, of Fort Worth, Texas, has been awarded damages of $25,000 against H. B. Claflin & Co., of New York, who attached his stock and ruined his business before his indebtedness to them had matured A. A. Steagall, of Henrietta, Texas, charged with incest with his daughter and with murdering her babe, was hanged by a mob, but was cut down by the Sheriff before life was extinct. A fire which originated on a cotton steamer at Wilmington, N. C., swept along Water street for three blocks, causing losses estimated at $1,500,000. The First Methodist Church and two freight depots were among the buildings burned.