g the chief officers of the nation. But in the whole vast corps
there are, we believe, but ten who would be accepted as gentlemen by
Southern standards, and only three of these are in posts of any
importance. In the two houses of Congress there is but one.

It is thus absurd to drag the gentry of the South--the Bourbons of New
England legend--into a discussion of the lynching problem. They
represent, in fact, what remains of the only genuine aristocracy ever
visible in the United States, and lynching, on the theoretical side, is
far too moral a matter ever to engage an aristocracy. The true lynchers
are the plain people, and at the bottom of the sport there is nothing
more noble than the mob man's chronic and ineradicable poltroonery.
Cruel by nature, delighting in sanguinary spectacles, and here brought
to hatred of the negro by the latter's increasing industrial, (_not_
political, capitalistic or social) rivalry, he naturally diverts himself
in his moments of musing with visions of what he would do to this or
that Moor if he had the courage. Unluckily, he hasn't, and so he is
unable to execute his dream _a cappella_. If, inflamed by liquor, he
attempts it, the Moor commonly gives him a beating, or even murders him.
But what thus lies beyond his talents as an individual at once becomes
feasible when he joins himself with other men in a like situation. This
is the genesis of a mob of lynchers. It is composed primarily of a few
men with definite grievances, sometimes against the negro lynched but
often against quite different negroes. It is composed secondarily of a
large number of fifth-rate men eager for a thrilling show, involving no
personal danger. It is composed in the third place of a few
rabble-rousers and politicians, all of them hot to exhibit themselves
before the populace at a moment of public excitement and in an attitude
of leadership. It is the second element that gives life to the general
impulse. Without its ardent appetite for a rough and shocking spectacle
there would be no lynching. Its influence is plainly shown by the
frequent unintelligibility of the whole proceeding; all its indignation
over the crime alleged to be punished is an afterthought; any crime will
answer, once its blood is up. Thus the most characteristic lynchings in
the South are not those in which a confessed criminal is done to death
for a definite crime, but those in which, in sheer high spirits, some
convenient African is taken at