Publication information |
Source: Liberator Source type: newspaper Document type: editorial Document title: “The President a Victim of the Mob Spirit” Author(s): anonymous City of publication: Los Angeles, California Date of publication: September 1901 Volume number: 3 Issue number: 2 Pagination: 4 |
Citation |
“The President a Victim of the Mob Spirit.” Liberator Sept. 1901 v3n2: p. 4. |
Transcription |
full text |
Keywords |
McKinley assassination (African American response); anarchism (compared with lynching); lawlessness (mob rule); McKinley assassination (personal response); law; society (criticism). |
Named persons |
Leon Czolgosz; Benjamin R. Tillman [misspelled below]. |
Document |
The President a Victim of the Mob Spirit
Since the cold-blooded shooting of our good president
by the anarchist Czolgosz has aroused the people as nothing else could against
anarchy and anarchists and a demand will be made for laws for the suppression
of this band of cold-blooded murderers of innocent people [sic]. When the people
set to work to rid the country of anarchy no species of this dangerous disease
should be overlooked. The mobs that have been murdering and burning American
citizens without the slightest hindrance for the past twelve months have done
as much to bring about the fiendish attempt upon the president’s life as the
assassin himself by setting the law at defiance and bringing our civiliaztion
[sic] into contempt. The anarchist must go, whether he be a cowardly Czolgosz
or a Ben Tilman in the federal senate. Upon this subject the Times comments
strongly as follows:
“Finally, this desperate action of a degraded
man should fill us with a determination to insist more strictly upon the enforcement
of law and order. There has been altogether too much laxity in this direction
of late. The liberty of which we boast is rapidly degenerating into license.
The courts are becoming lax in their methods and justice too frequently halts,
or stumbles. Let us have a revulsion of public sentiment on this subject. Let
a strict line be drawn between law-breaking and law-abiding citizens. Let it
be clearly realized that, in this country, where the people are sovereign, there
is absolutely no excuse for any contempt or defiance of the laws that have been
made by the people themselves.”