"Editor Manley's Responsibilities" Richmond Planet, November 26, 1898
Title
"Editor Manley's Responsibilities" Richmond Planet, November 26, 1898
Description
The Richmond Planet a Republican African American owned newspaper published an article that pointed out the Alexander Manley had broken no laws with the printing of his article rebuking Mrs. Felton’s commits in a speech she gave in Tybe Georgia. The law the article claims should have protected Manley’s property and a court of law should have decided if he had violated any laws with the article. He is not responsible for the twenty-five African American’s killed in Wilmington, North Carolina on November 10, 1898; the men who destroyed his publishing house are responsible. Manley was simply a convent excuse.
Creator
Richmond Planet
Source
"Editor Manley's Responsibilites" Richmond Planet, November 26, 1898.
Date
Richmond Planet
Contributor
Koontz, Cindy
Type
Document
Coverage
Richmond, Virginia
Wilmington, North Carolina
New Hanover county, North Carolina
Original Format
Newspaper Article
Text
EDITOR MANLEY’S RESPONSIBILITIES
The confiscation of the property and exiling of EDITOR ALEXANDER MANLEY of the Wilmington, N. C., RECORD were without palliation or excuse.
That he published a lawful but indiscreet article in the editorial columns of his journal can form no justifiable answer in the reasons given by the mob and it apologists.
Brought down to a simple issue, one has only to ask, Did he violate the laws of the state of North Carolina in any of the utterances of which complaint was made? Did he exercise a right guaranteed to him by the Constitution of the United States? If he did, why did not the lawful authority protect him in the exercise of that right and privilege?
In no country of the Old World would such treatment of a subject have gone unnoticed and unrebuked.
It should not be forgotten that the liberty of the press constitutes one of the bed-rock principles of the government itself, and that it had always been the boast of this country that an American editor or journalist was permitted to say what he please, so long as it worked no material injury to the individual citizen’s financial welfare, and was not the result of malicious persecution.
The extent to which the privilege given could go, was to be determined by the court, not by the mob. To such an extent was this principle recognized that the President of this nation is not free from the most caustic criticism.
The privacy of the family of Hon. JAMES G. BLAINE was invaded and the private record of the Hon. GROVER CLEVELAND displayed to the public. It was passed over by the latter in absolute silence, and it was not long before Mr. BLAINE felt constrained to pursue the same course.
The American people rebuked the policy by the election of Mr. CLEVELAND to the highest office within the gift of the nation.
In Russia the press is suppressed, but it is not presumed to be so in free America.
It is plain then that Editor MANLEY had been made a victim of caste-prejudice and the destruction of his property has upset one of the most carefully guarded privileges of the government itself.
To argue that he was responsible for the flandish murdering of about twen-five innocent, unarmed people, who neither knew who wrote the editorial in question nor to whom it applied is to accept the theory of the murderers themselves and to acquit them of one of the foulest and most atrocious crimes in the history of modern butcheries.
They are guilty of shedding innocent blood.
Editor MANLEY may not have been politician, but he was a man and as such had a right to express an opinion upon any subject he saw fit. The white Democratic press has teemed with reflection s upon the women of our race and is ever forward in telling us to look to our morals.
The Democratic managers had made up their minds to steal the state of North Carolina. They had determined to wrest it from the hands of the Fusion Party at the muzzle of double-shotted guns.
One excuse would have been as good for their purposes as another. Editor MANLEY’S editorial served as only one of many excuses which they had at hand.
The issue, plainly spoken was the right of the Negro to hold office, and it was summed up in two words,--Negro Rule. They wanted no other issue in particular. They took any which came along. They went out and killed about twenty five colored men, to awe the others. They were not trying to find guilty persons, or hunting for the toughs. They shot down colored men, who conscious that they had nothing wrong, for which to be punished were on the scene as onlookers.
The result is that many families in Wilmington, wear the emblems of mourning, and many relatives are in tears. The murderers are anxious for a scape-goat. They wish to charge the murders to some one else. EDITOR MANLEY is not the man to be picked out. The bogus Mayor, A. M. WADDELL would better “fill the bill,†and the men who handled the rifles are the ones to be swung from the gibbet.
The treatment of Editor MANLEY was outrageous, the murder of the colored men without a parallel since the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.
The confiscation of the property and exiling of EDITOR ALEXANDER MANLEY of the Wilmington, N. C., RECORD were without palliation or excuse.
That he published a lawful but indiscreet article in the editorial columns of his journal can form no justifiable answer in the reasons given by the mob and it apologists.
Brought down to a simple issue, one has only to ask, Did he violate the laws of the state of North Carolina in any of the utterances of which complaint was made? Did he exercise a right guaranteed to him by the Constitution of the United States? If he did, why did not the lawful authority protect him in the exercise of that right and privilege?
In no country of the Old World would such treatment of a subject have gone unnoticed and unrebuked.
It should not be forgotten that the liberty of the press constitutes one of the bed-rock principles of the government itself, and that it had always been the boast of this country that an American editor or journalist was permitted to say what he please, so long as it worked no material injury to the individual citizen’s financial welfare, and was not the result of malicious persecution.
The extent to which the privilege given could go, was to be determined by the court, not by the mob. To such an extent was this principle recognized that the President of this nation is not free from the most caustic criticism.
The privacy of the family of Hon. JAMES G. BLAINE was invaded and the private record of the Hon. GROVER CLEVELAND displayed to the public. It was passed over by the latter in absolute silence, and it was not long before Mr. BLAINE felt constrained to pursue the same course.
The American people rebuked the policy by the election of Mr. CLEVELAND to the highest office within the gift of the nation.
In Russia the press is suppressed, but it is not presumed to be so in free America.
It is plain then that Editor MANLEY had been made a victim of caste-prejudice and the destruction of his property has upset one of the most carefully guarded privileges of the government itself.
To argue that he was responsible for the flandish murdering of about twen-five innocent, unarmed people, who neither knew who wrote the editorial in question nor to whom it applied is to accept the theory of the murderers themselves and to acquit them of one of the foulest and most atrocious crimes in the history of modern butcheries.
They are guilty of shedding innocent blood.
Editor MANLEY may not have been politician, but he was a man and as such had a right to express an opinion upon any subject he saw fit. The white Democratic press has teemed with reflection s upon the women of our race and is ever forward in telling us to look to our morals.
The Democratic managers had made up their minds to steal the state of North Carolina. They had determined to wrest it from the hands of the Fusion Party at the muzzle of double-shotted guns.
One excuse would have been as good for their purposes as another. Editor MANLEY’S editorial served as only one of many excuses which they had at hand.
The issue, plainly spoken was the right of the Negro to hold office, and it was summed up in two words,--Negro Rule. They wanted no other issue in particular. They took any which came along. They went out and killed about twenty five colored men, to awe the others. They were not trying to find guilty persons, or hunting for the toughs. They shot down colored men, who conscious that they had nothing wrong, for which to be punished were on the scene as onlookers.
The result is that many families in Wilmington, wear the emblems of mourning, and many relatives are in tears. The murderers are anxious for a scape-goat. They wish to charge the murders to some one else. EDITOR MANLEY is not the man to be picked out. The bogus Mayor, A. M. WADDELL would better “fill the bill,†and the men who handled the rifles are the ones to be swung from the gibbet.
The treatment of Editor MANLEY was outrageous, the murder of the colored men without a parallel since the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.
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Richmond Planet, "Editor Manley's Responsibilities" Richmond Planet, November 26, 1898, Civil War Era NC, accessed April 25, 2024, https://cwnc.omeka.chass.ncsu.edu/items/show/789.