LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
LYNCHING IN GEORGIA A CORRECTION.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE " SPEOTATOR."] SIR,—In the Spectator of June 16th you use very strong words in denunciation of a brutal lynching and skinning of a negro, said to have been committed in this State of Georgia,
which would have been eminently fitting and appropriate if it had been tree. But as it is not fact, and is only fiction, other words equally strong might be used which would be as unpleasant to you as yours have been to us. On reading your article (received July 6th), I at once sent a copy of it to the Executive head of this State, Governor W. J. Northern, asking if he had heard of such an occurrence, as it had not come to my knowledge ; and I have his reply. In this he says he received a clipping of a Philadelphia paper, containing a telegram from London about a sensational affair which was supposed to have taken place in Pierce County, Georgia. Immediately he telegraphed to the Sheriff of that county for particulars. who replied that the story was devoid of any truth. Governor Northern also wrote to one of the best known business men in Southern Georgia, residing at Blackshear, the county seat of Pierce, requesting him to make a personal and thorough investigation, and ascertain if there were any portion of truth in the story. His report was emphatic that it was a pure fiction, and that no such crime was ever committed in the county; no part of the horrible details has any basis of fact, and the whole of the report is absolutely untrue. A similar story was recently on record as having occurred in a Western State, but this also was denied by the Governor of that State, and denounced as a canard.
Credulity appears to be epidemic in England at present, and the law of supply and demand in full operation. This is proved by the success of the Ida Wells Crusade, and the unmistakable evidence we have that any contradiction of her false statements will not be even considered. Your article about lynching, which was to hand about two weeks ago, was evidently based upon this state of feeling, and your usually calm and considerate judgment of men and things was certainly under eclipse. The woman rolled in a barrel stuck full of nails, and the lynching of women and children, are exactly on a par with this Georgia skinning. And on such absurd stories as these you have berated us as worse than Turks or Pagans, and called on the North to consign us to the Tophet of territorial inferiority, to keep company with the polygamous sinners of Utah. From this dread fate, however, we would inform you, we are for the present safe, as such disposition of Sovereign States is not provided for in our Federal Constitutions. Governor Northern closes his letter thus :—" I am thoroughly disgusted with the course of these English papers. I am now satisfied they do not want to know the truth, and I do not think I shall trouble myself about their statements further." With this conclusion I am compelled to agree, and that till you know this Southern people better, or think it is your interest to believe them, we shall have to submit to the misrepresentations which political or sectional interests find necessary for their own schemes. How far this agrees with the national claim of loving fair play you must settle for yourselves.--I am, Sir, &c.,
[We are very glad to have this contradiction, and sincerely hope it is absolutely true; but it is American correspondents who supply this false information to the English newspapers. —En. Spectator.]
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