colored tramp. Three days later a colored man named Samuel Bush was
arrested and put in jail. A white man testified that Bush, on the day of
the assault, asked him where he could get a drink and he pointed to the
house where the farmer's wife was subsequently said to have been
assaulted. Bush said he went to the well but did not go near the house,
and did not assault the woman. After he was arrested the alleged victim
did not see him to identify him--he was presumed to be guilty.

The citizens determined to kill him. The mob gathered, went to the jail,
met with no resistance, took the suspected man, dragged him out tearing
every stitch of clothing from his body, then hanged him to a telegraph
pole. The grand jury refused to indict the lynchers though the names of
over twenty persons who were leaders in the mob were well known. In fact
twenty-two persons were indicted, but the grand jurors and the prosecuting
attorney disagreed as to the form of the indictments, which caused the
jurors to change their minds. All indictments were reconsidered and the
matter was dropped. Not one of the dozens of men prominent in that murder
have suffered a whit more inconvenience for the butchery of that man, than
they would have suffered for shooting a dog.


COLOR LINE JUSTICE

In Baltimore, Maryland, a gang of white ruffians assaulted a respectable
colored girl who was out walking with a young man of her own race. They
held her escort and outraged the girl. It was a deed dastardly enough to
arouse Southern blood, which gives its horror of rape as excuse for
lawlessness, but she was a colored woman. The case went to the courts and
they were acquitted.