' The latent hostility between the white and black races
in the Southern States seems to grow greater, instead of de- creasing, with the gradual education of the negro. The whites are savage in repressing negro crime, and the blacks are provoked at once by their cruelty and their contempt. On the night of the 7th inst., for example, the whites of Springfield, Ohio, lynched a negro murderer, and then, irri- tated by negro denunciations, entered and fired the negro quarter. The blacks were at the same time shot down whole- sale. They retaliated by threatening to burn the city, and it became necessary to call out seven regiments of Militia to restore order, which on Wednesday had not been fully restored. The extraordinary feature to Englishmen in a case of this kind is the absence of any necessity for lynching. The negro murderer had been arrested, no jury would acquit him, and the Governor could have no motive for exercising his right of pardon. The truth seems to be that the killing of a white man by a black is still regarded in the South not only as a crime, but as an insult to all white men, a state of feeling which, of course, breeds civil war. We take it to be certain that the premature concession of the vote to the black popu- lation deepened race-hatred between the two sections of Southern society to a material and dangerous degree. If the blacks bad arms, the races could not continue to live together.
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