I felt sorry for the white women of the South; there will some day be a terrible reckoning against them. Their honor and safety are being made the pretext for terrible brutality and cruelty. Revenge, when it gains its opportunity, will therefore wreak itself upon the white woman most. Because in the name of the white woman they justify burning Negroes at the stake to-day, white women may be burned by black mobs by and by. There is no doubt that almost any insurrection of Negroes could ultimately be put down by force, and that it would be very bad for the Negroes and for their cause, but before it could be put down what might happen? And should it synchronize with revolutionary disturbances among the Whites themselves, or with a foreign war? I do not believe that there are real conspiracies of Negroes. But there is growing disaffection. The colored people are a friendly, easy-going, fond-to-foolish folk by nature. But their affection and devotion have been roughly refused. It has almost disappeared. Now we have the phenomenon of Negro mothers telling their little children of the terrible things done by the white folk, and every Negro child is learning that the white man is his enemy. Every lynching, every _auto-da-fé_ is secreting hate and the need for revenge in the Negro masses. Because the Negroes are weak and helpless and unorganized to-day, illiterate often, stupid and unbalanced often, clownish and funny and unreliable, white folk think that it will always be so. But they are wrong. While the industrialized masses of the Whites are certainly degenerating, the masses of the Negroes are certainly rising. Trouble is bound to arise and retribution terrible. What the lowbrows of the South are teaching the Negro he will be found to have learned, and as Shylock said about revenge—it will go hard but he betters the instruction. It may be thought that this is written with too much emphasis, and that this statement on the lynchings is too unmerciful to the white South. But I believe it is absolutely necessary. There are those who would be ready to do again the injustice which was done to the Whites in the South after the Civil War. When discussing these matters in the North I have been horror-struck by the opinions I have heard expressed. This is written in no partisan spirit, and I believe those who would rejoice in the destruction or punishment of the Southern white population are utterly wrong in heart. Punishment and revenge will only perpetuate the strife. But an _éclaircissement_, a flood of daylight on these matters, a thorough shaking of these stupid people down below the line—a warning in such terrible terms as I have made, might save Black and White for the religion of love and a joy in God’s creatures.