"A trial was had before a preliminary court recently, Col. S.C. Vance
appearing for Col. English. After a hearing of all the testimony the
court reached a decision of justifiable homicide and English was
released. The locality of the shooting is in the mountains of western
North Carolina, and not far from the Flat Rock mica mine, the scene of
the brutal midnight murder, Feb. 17, of Burleson, Miller, and Horton
by Rae and Anderson, two revenue officers, who took this means to gain
possession of the mica mine."

My knowledge of such affairs in the South is, that the black and the
white have an altercation over some trivial thing, and the white to
end the argument shoots the black man down. The negro is always a
"_powerful fellow_" and the white man a "weak sickly man." The law and
public opinion always side with the white man.




CHAPTER IV

_The Triumph of the Vanquished_


There are those throughout the length and breadth of our great country
who make a fair living by traducing better men than themselves; by
continually crying out that the black man is incapable of being
civilized; that he is born with the elements of barbarity,
improvidence and untruthfulness so woven into his very nature that no
amount of opportunity, labor, love, or sacrifice can ever lift him out
of the condition, the "sphere God designed him to occupy"--as if the