The following account of the wanton massacre, is from the Memphis Appeal:—
“About four hundred armed, disguised, mounted men entered this town at two o’clock this morning, proceeded to the jail, and demanded the keys of the jailor, Mr. Alexander. He refused to give up the keys. Sheriff Williams, hearing the noise, awoke and went to the jail, and refused to surrender the keys to the maskers, telling them that he did not have the keys. They cocked their pistols, and he refused again to give them the keys, whereupon the Captain of the company ordered the masked men to draw their pistols and cock them, swearing they would have the keys or shoot the jailor. The jailor dared them to shoot, and said they were too cowardly to shoot. They failed to do this. Then they threatened to tear down the jail or get the prisoners. The jailor told them that rather than they should tear down the jail he would give them the keys if they would go with him to his office. The jailor did this because he saw that the men were determined to break through. ‘They were all disguised. Then they came,’ says the Sheriff, ‘and got the keys from my office, and giving three or four yells, went to the jail, unlocked it, took out the sixteen negroes who had been brought here from Pickettsville (Gibson), and, tying their hands, escorted them away. They proceeded on the Huntingdon road without saying a word, and in fifteen minutes I heard shots. In company with several citizens I proceeded down the road in the direction taken by the men and prisoners, and just beyond the river bridge, half a mile from town, I found four negroes dead, on the ground, their bodies riddled with bullets, and two wounded. We saw no masked men. Ten negroes yet remain unaccounted for. Leaving the dead bodies where we found them, we brought the two wounded negroes to town, and summoned medical aid. Justice J. M. Caldwell held an inquest on the bodies, the verdict being in accordance with the facts that death resulted from shots inflicted by guns in the hands of unknown parties. The inquest was held about eight o’clock this morning. These are all the facts relative to the shooting I can give you. I did my duty to prevent the rescue of the negroes, but found it useless to oppose the men, one of whom said there were four hundred in the band.’
“Night before last the guard that brought the prisoners from Pickettsville remained. No fears or intimations of the attempted rescue were then heard of or feared. This morning, learning that four or five hundred armed negroes, on the Jackson road, were marching into town to burn the buildings and kill the people, the citizens immediately organized, armed, and prepared for active defence, and went out to meet the negroes, scouted the whole country around but found no armed negroes. The citizens throughout the country commenced coming into town by hundreds. Men came from Union City, Kenton, Troy, Rutherford, Dyer Station, Skull Bone, and the whole country, but found no need of their services. The two wounded negroes will die. The bodies of the ten other negroes taken from the jail were found in the river bottom about a mile from town.
“We blush for our State, and with the shame of the bloody murder, the disgraceful defiance of law, of order, and of decency full upon us, are at a loss for language with which to characterize a deed that, if the work of Comanches or Modocs, would arouse every man in the Union for a speedy vengeance on the perpetrators. To-day, we must hold up to merited reprobation and condemnation the armed men who besieged the Trenton Jail, and wantonly as wickedly, without anything like justification, took thence the unarmed negroes there awaiting trial by the courts, and brutally shot them to death; and, too, with a show of barbarity altogether as unnecessary as the massacre was unjustifiable. To say that we are not, in any county in the State, strong enough to enforce the law, is to pronounce a libel upon the whole Commonwealth. We are as a thousand to one in moral and physical force to the negro; we are in possession of the State, of all the machinery of Government, and at a time more momentous than any we ever hope to see again have proved our capacity to sustain the law’s executive officers and maintain the laws. Why, then, should we now, in time of profound peace, subvert the law and defy its administrators? Why should we put the Government of our own selection under our feet, and defy and set at naught the men whom we have elected to enforce the laws, and this ruthlessly and savagely, without any of the forms, even, that usually attend on the administration of the wild behests of Judge Lynch? And all without color of extenuation; for no sane man who has regard for the truth will pretend to say that because the unfortunate negroes were arrested as the ringleaders of a threatening and armed band that had fired upon two white men, they were, therefore, worthy of death, and without the forms of law, in a State controlled and governed by law-abiding men.”
No one was ever punished, or even an attempt made to ferret out the perpetrators of this foul murder. And the infliction of the death punishment, by “Lynch Law,” on colored persons for the slightest offence, proves that there is really no abatement in this hideous race prejudice that prevails throughout the South.
CHAPTER XXVI.
Years ago, when the natural capabilities of the races were more under discussion than now, the negro was always made to appear to greater disadvantage than the rest of mankind. The public mind is not yet free from this false theory, nor has the colored man done much of late years to change this opinion. Long years of training of any people to a particular calling, seems to fit them for that vocation more than for any other. Thus, the Jews, inured to centuries of money-lending and pawn-broking, they, as a race, stick to it as if they were created for that business alone.
The training of the Arabs for long excursions through wild deserts, makes them the master roamers of the world. The Gypsies, brought up to camping out and trading in horses, send forth the idea that they were born for it. The black man’s position as a servant, for many generations, has not only made the other races believe that is his legitimate sphere, but he himself feels more at home in a white apron and a towel on his arm, than with a quill behind his ear and a ledger before him.
That a colored man takes to the dining-room and the kitchen, as a duck does to water, only proves that like other races, his education has entered into his blood. This is not theory, this is not poetry; but stern truth. Our people prefer to be servants.