The son was entirely nude, but the daughter was allowed to retain her chemise. Both became exhausted, and sank down under the terrible punishment inflicted upon them, and the vigorous switching kept up, failed to revive them into further action. The attentions of the Klan were then directed towards Mrs. Gilmore.
One of the band said, “Let’s make the old she radical dance now!”
“We can do better than that,” said another; “we can lick the d— nigger-loving blood out of her.”
Mrs. Gilmore, now upwards of fifty years old, was then seized and thrown violently upon the floor. Her clothes were drawn up over her head, and the cotton under garments covering her limbs were rudely torn off, exposing her naked person to the demons in human form who surrounded her. The switches were then applied with all the vigor of which the executioners were capable. The old lady uttered a few heart-rending shrieks, but speedily fainted, and continued unconscious during the remainder of the infliction.
The punishment of the young woman, Mary Godfrey, was reserved to the last. She was stripped of every thread of clothing, and was thus compelled to experience the shame of indecent exposure, added to her other tortures. During the process of scourging this young woman the vilest and most obscene epithets were bandied about by the Klan, and she was subjected to many other indignities.
She sank under the treatment at last, and lie upon the floor, her life apparently extinct. Cold water was dashed over the faces and bodies of these unfortunate women, who, by this means, were rallied sufficiently to render them conscious enough to listen to the final edict of the Klan, which was, “To cease indulging in and promulgating their heresies, from that hour forward, and abandon the country, on pain of certain death!” With this admonition the defenders of the white man’s government left the house.
Of a truth, “all cruelty springs from wickedness.” But the weakness which could prompt the brutality—exhibited in such cases as those above recorded—is utterly inexcusable in any being wearing the shape of man.
The brutal whipping of these inoffensive women, and the murder of the negro McLane, add one more to the many evidences of the degradation to which the members of the Ku Klux Klan had reduced themselves, in their endeavors to crush out freedom of thought and expression, and compel adherence to their own peculiar tenets. Thank God, and the wisdom that now guides and controls the destinies of the nation, these dark hours of the Republic, fruitful with scenes like those described above, are passing away. A gleam of light appears in the horizon, as a glad harbinger of the dawn that shall usher in the day when
“All crimes shall cease, and ancient fraud shall fail;
Returning justice lift aloft her scale;
Peace o’er the world her olive wand extend,
And white robed innocence from heaven descend.”
MISCELLANEOUS OUTRAGES.