policeman of Murray had conceived the idea that Lube had been hired to kill him, and had sent Lube word that he would kill him on sight, Lube had made it a point to dodge the policeman. Sometime later the policeman, now no longer in office, met Lube on a public highway, and took four or five shots at him. Lube, seeing escape by means of further dodging impracticable, killed the policeman. The shooting occurred in November, and the negro was at once hurried to Hopkinsville for safe keeping. On the 8th day of January, the grand jury of Calloway County was convened in Murray and a thousand or more citizens from out in the Black Patch, so-called becauses of the famous black tobacco it produces, rode into the city to watch the wheels of justice turn round. Martin was promptly indicted and his case immediately docketed for trial the next day. However, by means of a technicality peculiar to Kentucky State Law, Martin's attorney obtained a continuance, for he knew it would never do to try him the next day. The chances were a thousand to one that any jury from the Black Patch country would convict his client, and that if such a thing as an acquittal should happen, Lube Martin would never get away from the courthouse yard alive. So when in the morning, the thousand interested citizens came into Murray to see the wheels of justice grind, they were greeted upon opening of court by the official announcement that the trial of Lube Martin had been postponed to the next term of court and that by order of Judge Bush the prisoner had been taken to Hopkinsville to be placed in the jail of Christian County. Pandemonium broke loose. Immediately the erstwhile solid citizens became a mob. They followed the judge to the hotel where he had gone after the court had adjourned. They filled the block, noses were pressed against the plateglass front of the hotel, and when the door was opened the cry was raised: "Give us the nigger or we will kill the judge." Then the crowd entered the office and surged up the stairs. Witnesses have said the mob members had blood in their eyes and that they had no doubt Judge Bush would have been hanged if he had not ordered the negro back. Anyway, the judge did order the negro back. When the mob had made sure that the order had been given for the negro's return they went back into the country, saying they would return next morning when the negro was due. And it was at 8 o'clock that night that a law-abiding citizen who was afraid to telephone from Murray, telephoned from Paris, Tennessee, to the governor at the Seelbach Hotel in Louisville, telling him he believed the negro would be lynched the next morning, for he was being brought back from Hopkinsville. After a conference with several State officials who were in his room at the time, a course of procedure to save the state of Kentucky from the degradation of another lynching was agreed upon. The state militia being on the Mexican border, could not be sent to Murray. Neither could a company be organized hastily in Louisville, because there was no equipment nearer than the State arsenal at Frankfort. All that could be done was for the governor to keep the negro away from Murray, which he did by countermanding the judge's order that he should be brought back; then go and face the mob and, by the strength of his own manhood, and the majesty of the office he held, send its members back home, cowed and ashamed. And that was what he did. And he did not mince his words. He began by telling them that courthouses and reverence for law and order marked the one difference between savage and civilized communities. In the very second sentence he said: If a man murders my brother, or my son, and I, after having had time to deliberate, arm myself with a deadly weapon and pursue and kill him, I, too, am a murderer, just as guilty in the eyes of the law as the wretch I slew. And if, lacking the courage to do the deed alone, I associate with me a thousand men, each of those men who participates in such a deed is a willful murderer. The circuit judge and the commonwealth's attorney at your behest agreed to produce at this hour the body of the accused. I countermanded that order and I directed the sheriff of McCraken County to hold that prisoner in Paducah and to protect him from violence at all hazards until I was assured that he could and would receive a fair and impartial trial without the possibility of intimidation of the court or violence to the prisoner. The commonwealth's attorney and the judge have acted on good faith with you, and, but for my order, this prisoner would have been here at this hour. I, and I alone, am responsible. I am here without troops, without police protection, practically alone, absolutely unarmed, but I am hedged about by that which is stronger than a cordon of bayonets-the majesty of the law. I am here as the chief magistrate of the commonwealth in the discharge of a sacred duty, and for one I do not fear that any man within the sound of my voice is so lost to every sense of justice and decency as to attempt to force me to choose now between death and dishonor. This county of Calloway has been noted for its churches, for its schools, for its respect for law and order and religion. No county in this state has a greater number of citizens owning their homes. I cannot believe that men, that house-holders, Christians, men who believe that murder is a crime, and that courts are sacred, will do the things that I am told you have threatened to do. When the governor concluded a long, lean, and hungry looking woodsman arose and shouted at the top of his voice: "Say, Guv, you've got the sand, and I'm fer you." This seemed to be a cue, and practically every member of the audience went forward and shook the governor by the hand. Kentucky is one of the states where the Ku Klux flourished. Kentucky crushed the Ku Klux. Citizens of Murray do not approve of the would-be lynchers from the Black Patch. They are ashamed of the mob that strove for Lube Martin's life, and proud of the Governor who saved him. And the same may be said for every community in the State of Kentucky, every community in our broad land. Lawlessness may raise its ugly head, but honest citizenship will quickly stamp it down. Mob law may prevail for one moment, but in the next it gives way to order and decency. And as |