ressing an audience from all sections, there is one foul blot
upon the fair fame of the South, at the bare mention of which the heart
turns sick and the cheek is crimsoned with shame. I want to lift my
voice to-night in loud and long and indignant protest against the awful
horror of mob violence, which the other day reached the climax of its
madness and infamy in a deed as black and brutal and barbarous as can be
found in the annals of human crime.

"I have a right to speak on the subject, and I propose to be heard.
The time has come for every lover of the South to set the might of an
angered and resolute manhood against the shame and peril of the lynch
demon. These people whose fiendish glee taunts their victim as his flesh
crackles in the flames do not represent the South. I have not a syllable
of apology for the sickening crime they meant to avenge. But it is high
time we were learning that lawlessness is no remedy for crime. For one,
I dare to believe that the people of my section are able to cope with
crime, however treacherous and defiant, through their courts of justice;
and I plead for the masterful sway of a righteous and exalted public
sentiment that shall class lynch law in the category with crime."

It is a notable and encouraging fact that no Negro educated in any of
our larger institutions of learning in the South has been charged with
any of the recent crimes connected with assaults upon women.

If we go on making progress in the directions that I have tried to
indicate, more and more the South will be drawn to one course. As I have
already said, it is not to the best interests of the white race of the
South that the Negro be deprived of any privilege guaranteed him by
the Constitution of the United States. This would put upon the South a
burden under which no government could stand and prosper. Every article
in our Federal Constitution was placed there with a view of stimulating
and encouraging the highest type of citizenship. To continue to tax
the Negro without giving him the right to vote, as fast as he qualifies
himself in education and property for voting, would insure the
alienation of the affections of the Negro from the state in which
he lives, and would be the reversal of the fundamental principles of
government for which our states have stood. In other ways than this
the injury would be as great to the white man as to the Negro. Taxation
without the hope of becoming voters would take away from