[Perseverando]

I only posted Chapter 1, and didn't excerpt. Obviously it's too long to post the entire booklet.

FWIW, I ran across this at Archive.org while researching available historical ebooks. Lot's of historical books from the 1800's and 1900's. Just a bit of American history, and where better to post it for perpetuity than FR.

BTW, here's a thank you letter to the author from Frederick Douglas:

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HON. FREDERICK DOUGLASS'S LETTER

DEAR MISS WELLS:

Let me give you thanks for your faithful paper on the lynch abomination now generally practiced against colored people in the South. There has been no word equal to it in convincing power. I have spoken, but my word is feeble in comparison. You give us what you know and testify from actual knowledge. You have dealt with the facts with cool, painstaking fidelity, and left those naked and uncontradicted facts to speak for themselves.

Brave woman! you have done your people and mine a service which can neither be weighed nor measured. If the American conscience were only half alive, if the American church and clergy were only half Christianized, if American moral sensibility were not hardened by persistent infliction of outrage and crime against colored people, a scream of horror, shame, and indignation would rise to Heaven wherever your pamphlet shall be read.

But alas! even crime has power to reproduce itself and create conditions favorable to its own existence. It sometimes seems we are deserted by earth and Heaven—yet we must still think, speak and work, and trust in the power of a merciful God for final deliverance.

Very truly and gratefully yours, FREDERICK DOUGLASS Cedar Hill, Anacostia, D.C.

[Perseverando]

For the FR bibliophiles, here’s the link for ebook downloads - https://archive.org/details/theredrecord14977gut

[stylin19a]

thanks for the archive.org
prior to 1886, more whites than blacks were lynched.

[Albion Wilde]

The author, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, was one of the first female journalists in America to take up the cause of racial civil rights. She lived a life of great accomplishment. Wells was depicted in last year's movie by Dinesh d'Souza called Hillary's America, an excoriation of the Democrat Party throughout its history.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

the emancipation of the Negro, the inevitable result of unbribled power exercised for two and a half centuries

Prior to the turn of christianity - specifically, Protestant christianity - against it, slavery was a worldwide institution throughout history. The slaveholders of the American South were uniquely situated to be the last to get the word when christianity did turn against the institution.

Of course, if you reflect on it at all you realize that all those people were poor - not a man of them lived in a house with indoor plumbing or electricity. In short, their mansions would today not be given a certificate of occupancy. Nearly everyone lived and died within a thousand miles of their birthplace, and it was a big deal to ride a railroad. Given those factors and the comparative virtual absence of health care, American secretary today would have to think long and hard about changing her life circumstances for those of Queen Victoria in her time.

The writer comes from a place of cynicism toward “white christianity.” Well, Europe was “christendom” - and no one but christians ever opposed the institution of slavery as such. Slavery for themselves, sure - but for the stranger? Not so’s you’d hazard your life to stop it.