hearing his declaration volunteered to find these witnesses, and
telegraphed the governor that he would be in Columbia with them on Monday.
In the meantime the mob at Denmark, learning Peterson's whereabouts, went
to the governor and demanded the prisoner. Gov. Tillman, who had during
his canvass for reelection the year before, declared that he would lead a
mob to lynch a Negro that assaulted a white woman, gave Peterson up to the
mob. He was taken back to Denmark, and the white girl in the case as
positively declared that he was not the man. But the verdict of the mob
was that "the crime had been committed and somebody had to hang for it,
and if he, Peterson, was not guilty of that he was of some other crime,"
and he was hung, and his body riddled with 1,000 bullets.


LYNCHED AS A WARNING

Alabama furnishes a case in point. A colored man named Daniel Edwards,
lived near Selma, Alabama, and worked for a family of a farmer near that
place. This resulted in an intimacy between the young man and a daughter
of the householder, which finally developed in the disgrace of the girl.
After the birth of the child, the mother disclosed the fact that Edwards
was its father. The relationship had been sustained for more than a year,
and yet this colored man was apprehended, thrown into jail from whence he
was taken by a mob of one hundred neighbors and hung to a tree and his
body riddled with bullets. A dispatch which describes the lynching, ends
as follows. "Upon his back was found pinned this morning the following:
'Warning to all Negroes that are too intimate with white girls. This the
work of one hundred best citizens of the South Side.'"

There can be no doubt from the announcement made by this "one hundred best
citizens" that they understood full well the character of the relationship