CHAPTER III.

ELIJAH STRICKLAND, A COLORED PREACHER, LYNCHED.

Sunday night, April 23d, a mob seized a well-known colored preacher, Elijah Strickland, and, after savage torture, slowly strangled him to death. The following account of the lynching is taken from the Atlanta Constitution:

Palmetto, Ga., April 24.--(Special.)--The body of Lige Strickland, the negro who was implicated in the Cranford murder by Sam Hose, was found this morning swinging to the limb of a persimmon tree within a mile and a quarter of this place, as told in the Constitution extra yesterday. Before death was allowed to end the sufferings of the Negro, his ears were cut off and the small finger of his left hand was severed at the second joint. One of these trophies was in Palmetto to-day.

On the chest of the Negro was a scrap of blood-stained paper, attached with an ordinary pin. On one side this paper contained the following:

“N. Y. Journal. We must protect our Ladies. 23--99.”

The other side of the paper contained a warning to the Negroes of the neighborhood. It read as follows:

“Beware all darkies. You will be treated the same way.”

Before being finally lynched, Lige Strickland was given a chance to confess to the misdeeds of which the mob supposed him to be guilty, but he protested his innocence until the end.

Three times the noose was placed around his neck and the Negro was drawn up off the ground; three times he was let down with warnings that death was in store for him should he fail to confess his complicity in the Cranford murder, and three times Strickland proclaimed his innocence, until, weary of useless torturing, the mob pulled on the rope and tied the end around the slender trunk of the persimmon tree.

Not a shot was fired by the mob. Strickland was strangled to death. He was lynched about 2:30 a. m.

The lynching of Lige Strickland was not accomplished without a desperate effort on the part of his employer to save his life. The man who pleaded for the Negro is Major W. W. Thomas, an ex-State Senator, and one of the most distinguished citizens of Coweta County.

Sunday night, about 8:30 o’clock, about fifteen men went to the plantation of Major Thomas and took Lige Strickland from the little cabin in the woods that he called home, leaving his wife and five children to wail and weep over the fate they knew was in store for the Negro. Their cries aroused Major Thomas, and that sturdy old gentleman of the antebellum type followed the lynchers in his buggy, accompanied by his son, W. M. Thomas, determined to save, if possible, the life of his plantation darky.

He overtook the lynchers with their victim at Palmetto, and then ensued the weirdest and most dramatic scene this section has ever known, with only the moonlight to show the faces of the grim, determined men.

It had for its actors the Negro, apparently unconcerned even with the noose around his neck; the old white-haired gentlemen, pleading for the life of his servant, and attempting to prove the innocence of the Negro to men who would not be convinced.

Lige Strickland was halted directly opposite the telegraph office. The noose was adjusted around his neck and the end of the rope was thrown over a tree. Strickland was told he had a chance before dying to confess his complicity in the crime. He replied:

“I have told you all I know, gentlemen. You can kill me if you wish, but I know nothing more to tell.”

The Negro’s life might have been ended then but for the arrival of Major Thomas, who leaped from his buggy and asked for a hearing. He asked the crowd to give the Negro a chance for his life here on the streets of Palmetto, and Major Thomas said he would speak in his defense. A short conference resulted in acquiescence to this, and Major Thomas spoke in substance as follows:

“Gentlemen, this Negro is innocent. Hose said Lige had promised to give him $20 to kill Cranford, and I believe Lige has not had $20 since he has been on my place. This is a law-abiding Negro you are about to hang. He has never done any of you any harm, and now I want you to promise me that you will turn him over either to the bailiff of this town or to some one who is entitled to receipt for him, in order that he may be given a hearing on his case. I do not ask that you liberate him. Hold him and if the courts adjudge him guilty, hang him.”

There were some, however, who agreed with Major Thomas, and after a discussion a vote was taken, which was supposed to mean life or death to Lige Strickland. The vote to let him live was unanimous.

Major Thomas then retired some distance and the mob was preparing to send Strickland in a wagon to Newnan when a member of the mob said:

“We have got him here, let’s keep him.”

This again aroused the mob and a messenger was sent to advise Major Thomas to leave Palmetto for his own good, but the old gentleman was not frightened so easily. He drew himself up and said with all the emphasis he could summon:

“I have never before been ordered to leave a town and I am not going to leave this one.” And then the Major, uplifting his hand to give his words force, said to the messenger:

“Tell them that the muscles in my legs are not trained to running; tell them that I have stood the fire and heard the whistle of the minies from a thousand rifles and I am not frightened by this crowd.”

Major Thomas was not molested.

Then, with the understanding that Lige Strickland was to be delivered to the jailer at Fairburn, Major Thomas saw the Negro he had pleaded for led off to his death. This occurred at about 1 o’clock this morning.

Strickland was then taken in the rear of the home of Dr. W. S. Zellars, to the persimmon tree upon which his lifeless body was left hanging.