Turn then to that horror-striking scene at St. Louis. A single victim
only was sacrificed there. This story is very short, and is perhaps the
most highly tragic of anything of its length that has ever been witnessed
in real life. A mulatto man by the name of McIntosh was seized in the
street, dragged to the suburbs of the city, chained to a tree, and
actually burned to death; and all within a single hour from the time he
had been a freeman attending to his own business and at peace with the
world.
Such are the effects of mob law, and such are the scenes becoming more
and more frequent in this land so lately famed for love of law and order,
and the stories of which have even now grown too familiar to attract
anything more than an idle remark.
But you are perhaps ready to ask, "What has this to do with the
perpetuation of our political institutions?" I answer, It has much to do
with it. Its direct consequences are, comparatively speaking, but a
small evil, and much of its danger consists in the proneness of our minds
to regard its direct as its only consequences.
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