“We don’t want religion, we want blood,” yelled a voice.
The mob was now thoroughly stirred; it ceased to hesitate; it was controlled wholly by its emotions. The leaders plunged down the court-room and into the witness chamber, where the Negroes sat with their wives, Reed’s wife with a young baby. The officers of the law accommodatingly indicated the right Negroes, and the mob dragged them out. Hanging was at first proposed, and a man even climbed a telegraph-pole just outside the court-house, but the mob, growing more ferocious as it gathered volume and excitement, yelled its determination:
“Burn them! burn them!”
They rushed up the road, intending to take the Negroes to the scene of the crime. But it was midday in August, with a broiling hot sun overhead and a dusty road underfoot. A mile from town the mob swerved into a turpentine forest, pausing first to let the Negroes kneel and confess. Calmer spirits again counselled hanging, but some one began to recite in a high-keyed voice the awful details of the crime, dwelling especially on the death of the little girl. It worked the mob into a frenzy of ferocity.
“They burned the Hodges and gave them no choice; burn the niggers!”
“Please don’t burn me,” pleaded Cato. And again: “Hang me or shoot me; please don’t burn me!”
Burning of the Negroes
Some one referred the question to the father-in-law of Hodges. He said Hodges’s mother wished the men burned. That settled it. Men were sent into town for kerosene oil and chains, and finally the Negroes were bound to an old stump, fagots were heaped around them, and each was drenched with oil. Then the crowd stood back accommodatingly, while a photographer, standing there in the bright sunshine, took pictures of the chained Negroes. Citizens crowded up behind the stump and got their faces into the photograph. When the fagots were lighted, the crowd yelled wildly. Cato, the less stolid of the two Negroes, partly of white blood, screamed with agony; but Reed, black and stolid, bore it like a block of wood. They threw knots and sticks at the writhing creatures, but always left room for the photographer to take more pictures.
And when it was all over, they began, in common with all mobs, to fight for souvenirs. They scrambled for the chains before they were cold, and the precious links were divided among the populace. Pieces of the stump were hacked off, and finally one young man—it must be told—gathered up a few charred remnants of bone, carried them uptown, and actually tried to give them to the judge who presided at the trial of the Negroes, to the utter disgust of that official.
After Effects of Mob-law