orted in our dispatches from
Anniston, Ala., for a brutal outrage committed upon a white woman will
be a text for much comment on "Southern barbarism" by Northern
newspapers; but we fancy it will hardly prove effective for campaign
purposes among intelligent people. The frequency of these lynchings
calls attention to the frequency of the crimes which causes lynching.
The "Southern barbarism" which deserves the serious attention of all
people North and South, is the barbarism which preys upon weak and
defenseless women. Nothing but the most prompt, speedy and extreme
punishment can hold in check the horrible and beastial propensities of
the Negro race. There is a strange similarity about a number of cases of
this character which have lately occurred.

In each case the crime was deliberately planned and perpetrated by
several Negroes. They watched for an opportunity when the women were
left without a protector. It was not a sudden yielding to a fit of
passion, but the consummation of a devilish purpose which has been
seeking and waiting for the opportunity. This feature of the crime not
only makes it the most fiendishly brutal, but it adds to the terror of
the situation in the thinly settled country communities. No man can
leave his family at night without the dread that some roving Negro
ruffian is watching and waiting for this opportunity. The swift
punishment which invariably follows these horrible crimes doubtless acts
as a deterring effect upon the Negroes in that immediate neighborhood
for a short time. But the lesson is not widely learned nor long
remembered. Then such crimes, equally atrocious, have happened in quick
succession, one in Tennessee, one in Arkansas, and one in Alabama. The
facts of the crime appear to appeal more to the Negro's lustful
imagination than the facts of the punishment do to his fears. He sets
aside all fear of death in any form when opportunity is found for the
gratification of his bestial desires.

There is small reason to hope for any change for the better. The
commission of this crime grows more frequent every year. The generation
of Negroes which have grown up since the war have lost in large measure
the traditional and wholesome awe of the white race which kept the
Negroes in subjection, even when their masters were in the army, and
their families left unprotected except by the slaves themselves. There
is no lon