is
way and let fall a second time. Numberless shots were fired into the
dangling body, for most of that crowd were heavily armed, and had been
drinking all day.
Miller's body hung thus exposed from three to five o'clock, during which
time, several photographs of him as he hung dangling at the end of the
chain were taken, and his toes and fingers were cut off. His body was
taken down, placed on the platform, the torch applied, and in a few
moments there was nothing left of C.J. Miller save a few bones and ashes.
Thus perished another of the many victims of Lynch Law, but it is the
honest and sober belief of many who witnessed the scene that an innocent
man has been barbarously and shockingly put to death in the glare of the
nineteenth-century civilization, by those who profess to believe in
Christianity, law and order.
5
LYNCHED FOR ANYTHING OR NOTHING
(_Lynched for Wife Beating_)
In nearly all communities wife beating is punishable with a fine, and in
no community is it made a felony. Dave Jackson, of Abita, La., was a
colored man who had beaten his wife. He had not killed her, nor seriously
wounded her, but as Louisiana lynchers had not filled out their quota of
crimes, his case was deemed of sufficient importance to apply the method
of that barbarous people. He was in the custody of the officials, but the
mob went to the jail and took him out in front of the prison and hanged
him by the neck until he was dead. This was in Nov. 1893.
HANGED FOR STEALING HOGS
Details are very meagre of a lynching which occurred near Knox Point, La.,
on the twenty-fourth of October, 1893. Upon one point, however, there was
no uncertainty, and that is, that the persons lynched were Negroes. It was
claimed that they had been stealing hogs, but even this claim had not been
subjected to the investigation of a court. That matter was not considered
necessary. A few of the neighbors who had lost hogs suspected these men
were responsible for their loss, and made up their minds to furnish an
example for others to be warned by. The two men were secured by a mob and
hanged.
LYNCHED FOR NO OFFENSE
Perhaps the most characteristic feature of this record of lynch law for
the year 1893, is the remarkable fact that five human beings were lynched
and that the matter was considered of so little importance that the
powerful press bureaus of the country did not consider the matter of
enough importance to ascertain the causes
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