Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 August 1908 — AND THIS HAPPENED IN ILLINOIS [ARTICLE]

AND THIS HAPPENED IN ILLINOIS

Springfield, the capital of the great republican state of Illinois, has just passed through one of the worst riots that ever occurred In this country. There were six thousand soldiers bad to be hurried In to restore order. The riot was brought about by one of those crimes against women that sometimes occur In the South, and which Northern preachers and republican editors tear great locks of hair from their heads In their fervor In condemning the penalty the Southern people generally 'mete out to the black beast whose guilt it first establishes. Mob spirit Is always to be deplored, and the law should be permitted to deal with these offenders the same as with other criminals. But we have noticed that locality makes little difference In such cases, and the citizen of the North Is ,ls anything, worse when aroused over a crime of this nature In his midst than the white man of the South. Only a few years ago a negro was burned to the stake at Terre Haute, Indiana, and while such things are not so common in the north it should be remembered that we have fewer of them to deal with, because we have fewer colored citizens and those we have are generally of a higher degree of intelligence than those constituting the majority In the south. It proves, however, that our lamentations over the “brutality” of the punishment meted out to the black brutes there are a sham and a fraud, and it only needs an object lesson at home to prove it.

Commenting on this the Chicago Inter-Ocean (republican) says: "After this spectacle In Springfield it does not lie in the mouth of any of us to censure the South for lynching negro criminals. A Southern mob is even more discriminating than that in Springfield. It goes after an offending negro, and kills him, and that is the end of the matter. It does not burn every negro house in its path purely because negroes live in it, nor kill negroes merely because of their race.” We hope the Inter Ocean will not forget this, for its editors have shed barrels of tears in worrying over the "outrages” of southern mobs who have gone to work quietly but firmly and put out of the way the despoiler of some woman or little child’s honor, then hav6 quietly dispersed without wanting to shoot, kill and burn every negro in their midst for a crime that but one had committed and which had already been avenged. But this Illinois affair seems to have been about the wbrst yet—the mob vengeance and the inability' of the civil or military to quell its fury—we mean. The black rapist was saved from the mob’s fury by hustling him off to Bloomington in an auto, but the mob completely wrecked the place of business of the restaurantuer who, at the sheriff’s bidding, had Loaned his auto to carry the brute away, the auto was upset and burned to a smoking pile of scrap iron, two or three peaceable and law abiding negroes were mobbed and killed and scores of homes of negroes were burned and the entire city was at the mercy of the mob. Several other lives were lost and scores were wounded before peace was restored. All this happened within a stone’s throw of the executive mansion and the former home of the great Emancipator of the colored race, Abraham Lincoln. The authorities seemed powerless, and riot reigned supreme, to the everlasting disgrace of that city and the governor of Illinois. There is but one way to deal with mobs, and that is to quell them at once. What sometimes appears to be tlie cruel way is the humane way. The shooting down of one or two of the leaders, if must be to disperse them, generally has a salutary effect on the remainder, and they are quick to seek shelter from the pullets of determined officers. That the capital city of the great state-of Illinois should be in the bands of a mob for two or three days, seems to be almost unbelievable, and yet it was so. —4——- ■■ '