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somewhere which will brood, and wear, and decay itself to the
killing-point and produce that tragedy.
Every negro burned at the stake unsettles the excitable brain of
another one--I mean the inflaming details of his crime, and the lurid
theatricality of his exit do it--and the duplicate crime follows; and
that begets a repetition, and that one another one and so on. Every
lynching-account unsettles the brains of another set of excitable white
men, and lights another pyre--115 lynchings last year, 102 inside of 8
months this year; in ten years this will be habit, on these terms.
Yes, the wild talk you see in the papers! And from men who are sane when
not upset by overwhelming excitement. A U. S. Senator-Cullom--wants this
Buffalo criminal lynched! It would breed other lynchings--of men who are
not dreaming of committing murders, now, and will commit none if Cullom
will keep quiet and not provide the exciting cause.
And a District Attorney wants a law which shall punish with death
attempts upon a President's life--this, mind you, as a deterrent. It
would have no effect--or the opposite one. The lunatic's mind-space is
all occupied--as mine was--with the matter in hand; there is no room
in it for reflections upon what may happen to him. That comes after the
crime.
It is the noise the attempt would make in the world that would breed the
subsequent attempts, by unsettling the rickety minds of men who envy
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