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The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. by William G. Allen
page 29 of 95 (30%)
I will now describe the leader of the mob--Henry C. Hibbard. I will do
it in short. This man is a clumsy-fisted, double jointed, burly-headed
personage, about six feet in height, with a countenance commingling in
expression the utmost ferocity and cunning. Hibbard is not a fool--but a
knave. He is essentially a low bred man, and vulgar to the heart's core.

Some idea of the calibre of the man may be had in the fact that in his
published Article in defense of the mob, he makes use of such
expressions as "g'hals," "g'halhood" and the like.

He has great perseverance of character as is evinced in the fact that
though I was several days behind the time at which I was expected to
arrive in Fulton, he or his deputies never failed to be daily at the
Cars so as to watch my arrival, and thus be in season with the
onslaught.

This man set himself up, and was indeed so received by the Elder and
Mrs. King as their friend, counsellor, and adviser. A confirmation this,
of what I have already said about the commingling of the "respectable"
and the base. His mobocratic movements, however, it is but just to say,
were unknown to the Elder and his wife until after the onslaught had
been made. Mrs. King however did not deprecate the mob until its history
had become somewhat unpopular, by reason of many of the "respectable"
men becoming ashamed at last that they had been found in such company as
Hibbard's. And even the Elder himself, though he deprecated the mob,
still characterized it as the "just indignation of the public."

Hibbard, I have already said, published a written defence of the mob.
The article was headed "_The Mary Rescue._"--and a most remarkable
document it was--remarkable, however, only for its intense vulgarity,
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