half the white race in this country" and I challenge this "friend and
well-wisher" to give proof of the truth of her charge. Miss Willard
protests against lynching in one paragraph and then, in the next,
deliberately misrepresents my position in order that she may criticise a
movement, whose only purpose is to protect our oppressed race from
vindictive slander and Lynch Law.

What I have said and what I now repeat--in answer to her first charge--is,
that colored men have been lynched for assault upon women, when the facts
were plain that the relationship between the victim lynched and the
alleged victim of his assault was voluntary, clandestine and illicit. For
that very reason we maintain, that, in every section of our land, the
accused should have a fair, impartial trial, so that a man who is colored
shall not be hanged for an offense, which, if he were white, would not be
adjudged a crime. Facts cited in another chapter--"History of Some Cases
of Rape"--amply maintain this position. The publication of these facts in
defense of the good name of the race casts no "imputation upon half the
white race in this country" and no such imputation can be inferred except
by persons deliberately determined to be unjust.

But this is not the only injury which this cause has suffered at the hands
of our "friend and well-wisher." It has been said that the Women's
Christian Temperance Union, the most powerful organization of women in
America, was misrepresented by me while I was in England. Miss Willard was
in England at the time and knowing that no such misrepresentation came to
her notice, she has permitted that impression to become fixed and
widespread, when a word from her would have made the facts plain.

I never at any time or place or in any way misrepresented that
organization. When asked what concerted action had been taken by churches