The real disgrace

Today Minus 100 Years was the Sunday after that double lynching, and the people of Cairo, Ill. are being well and truly punished: the saloons are all closed, by order of the governor. But there’s always church, where various pastors gave fiery speeches denouncing... the authorities, who are to blame for the lynchings by not cracking down harder on crime. According to one of the quoted reverends, George Babcock of the Church of the Redeemer, Episcopalian, “The real disgrace...” (in case you thought people being hanged and then shot into tiny bloody pieces, their head displayed on a pole, the bloody souvenirs etc were the real disgrace) “...lies in the fact the city has allowed lawless elements to control civic affairs... This defiance of law and order made the lynchings necessary for the infliction of justice.” The NYT’s editor is not impressed with this argument, saying the town “cannot win pardon for what it has done by accusing itself of previous incivisms” (i.e., the supposed laxness of the town’s juries).

Sadly, the Cairohoovians who did not trust their own legal system did not have the option of simply locking people up in Guantanamo forever. But as Sarah Palin, modern exemplar of the Spirit of Cairo, says, “Hang ‘em high.”

See, you didn’t think I could work a Sarah Palin reference into my 1909 blogging, did you?