Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 January 1895 — THE “SUNNY SOUTH.” [ARTICLE]

THE “SUNNY SOUTH.”

TncMentv of ■ Day la Dixie Land, At Augusta. Ga., Sunday, a mob of l,oof were with great difficulty prevented iron lynching Jake Wiggins, a negro, whe killed another negro named Williams, oq Saturday. The jail is closely guarded. At New Orleans, Dec. 23, George King, a desperate negro, was lynched at ths slaughter house below the city. He had a difficulty with some butchers, and, saying he would not be bluffed, went off and got a shotgun and a bag of shot. Constable Gurr tried to arrest him, and the negro escaped to a barn, from which ha fired into the crowd which gathered, wounding the constable and half a dozen others, The barn was burned down and the negro forced into the open, where he was shot and then dragged to a tree and hanged. At Maynardville, Tenn., a crowd of 4,000 broke down the stockade that they might witness the execution of two murderers. A Meridian, Miss., special, Dec. 26, says: News of the murder of an old man, followed by a double lynching, has just reached here from Winston county. Jake Copp, •seventy-five years old, a highly respected together with his aged wife, lived near Perkinsville, a small village, where they conducted a country mercantile store. At 12 o’clock Saturday night two shots were fired through the windows of the house in which Copp and his wife were sleeping, instantly killing the old man. The murderers then pillaged the store and attempted to burn it and the residence. Indignant neighbors were soon in search of the guilty persons. Suspicion pointed to anegronamed Dan’el McDonald, and a half-breed Indian named Will Carter, who previously boasted of having slain two negroes and an Indian woman. Before the posse reached McDonald’s house they were joined by Carter, who, by his overzealous efforts to implicate McDonald, sealed his own fate. McDonald attempted to escape, when he espied the armed men, but was riddled with bullets. The half-breed was taken to the swamp and hanged. The stolen plunder was found in the dead negro’s house, and his wife admitted that McDonald and Carter killed Copp.