, who was guilty of no crime, but being a Negro and
holding, at that place, the Postoffice, a position given him by the
government; he must forget the Wilmington MASSACRE in which some forty
or fifty colored people were shot down by men who had organized
to take the government of the city in charge by force of the
Winchester--where two lawyers and a half dozen or more colored men of
business, together with such of their white friends as were thought
necessary to get rid of, were banished from the city by a mob, and
their lives threatened in the event of their return--all because they
were in the way as Republican voters-"talked too much" or did not halt
when so ordered by some members of the mob; they must forget the three
hundred Negroes who were the victims of mob violence in the United
States during the year 1898; they must forget that the government they
fought for in Cuba is powerless to correct these evils, and does not
correct them.
WHY THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT DOES NOT PROTECT ITS COLORED CITIZENS.
Is due to the peculiar and complicated construction of the laws
relating to STATES RIGHTS. The power to punish for crimes against
citizens of the different States is given by construction of the
Constitution of the United States to the courts of the several States.
The Federal authorities have no jurisdiction unless the State has
passed some law abridging the rights of citizens, or the State
government through its authorized agents is unable to protect its
citizens, and has called on the national government for aid to that
end, or some United States official is molested in the discharge of
his duty.
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