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RUSSIA IN FLAMES

1
Russia in 1917

2
 RUSSIA
IN
FLAMES
WAR, REVOLUTION, CIVIL WAR
1914–1921
LAURA ENGELSTEIN

3
 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s
objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a
registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New
York, NY 10016, United States of America.
© Laura Engelstein 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University
Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate
reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above
should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on
any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Engelstein, Laura, author. Title:
Russia in flames : war, revolution, civil war, 1914–1921 / Laura Engelstein. Description: New York, NY
: Oxford University Press, 2018. | Includes
bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017000595 | ISBN 9780199794218 (hardback) ebook ISBN
9780190621773
Subjects: LCSH: Soviet Union—History—Revolution, 1917–1921. |
Soviet Union—History—Revolution, 1917–1921—Causes. | World War,
1914–1918—Russia. | Russia—History—1904–1914. | Civil war—Soviet
Union—History. | Soviet Union—Social conditions—1917–1945 |
BISAC: HISTORY / Europe / Russia & the Former Soviet Union. |
HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century.
Classification: LCC DK265.E476 2018 | DDC 947.084/1—dc23 LC record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov/2017000595
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by Edwards Brothers Malloy, United States of America

4
For Michael

5
О, если б знали, дети, вы,
Холод и мрак грядущих дней!
O, you children, if only you knew,
What hunger and darkness are waiting for you!
– Alexander Blok, Voice from the Chorus (Golos iz khora) (1910–1914)
Ешь ананасы, рябчиков жуй,
День твой последний приходит, буржуй.
Gorge on pineapple! Chomp on grouse!
Your days are numbered, bourgeois louse!
– Vladimir Mayakovsky (1917), in Vladimir Il’ich Lenin (1925)1
Население, это классовый враг.
The population is the class enemy.
– Andrei Platonov, Hurdy-Gurdy (Sharmanka) (c. 1930)

6
 Contents
List of Maps
Author’s Note
Introduction
PART I: LAST YEARS OF THE OLD EMPIRE, 1904–1914
PART II: THE GREAT WAR: IMPERIAL SELF-DESTRUCTION
1. The Great War Begins
2. Germans, Jews, Armenians
3. Tearing Themselves Apart
4. Conflict and Collapse
PART III: 1917: CONTEST FOR CONTROL
1. Five Days That Shook the World
2. The War Continues
3. From Putsch to Coup
4. Bolshevik October
5. Death of the Constituent Assembly
6. Politics from Below
PART IV: SOVEREIGN CLAIMS
1. The Peace That Wasn’t
2. Treason and Terror
3. Finland’s Civil War
4. Baltic Entanglements
5. Ukrainian Drama, Act I
6. Colonial Repercussions
PART V: WAR WITHIN
1. The Unquiet Don
2. Foreign Bodies
3. Trotsky Arms, Siberia Mobilizes
4. Kolchak—the Wild East
5. Ukraine, Act II
6. War Against the Cossacks
7. Miracle on the Vistula
8. War Against the Jews

7
9. The Last Page
10. War Against the Peasants
PART VI:VICTORY AND RETREAT
1. The Proletariat in the Proletarian Dictatorship
2. The Revolution Turns Against Itself
Conclusion
Notes
Acknowledgments
Bibliographic Essay
Index

8
 List of Maps
Russia in 1917
Eastern Front and Brest-Litovsk
The Baltics
Transcaucasia
Central Asia, 1917
Siberia, 1917
Ukraine

9
 Author’s Note
All translations are my own, unless otherwise indicated. When
transliterating Russian from the Cyrillic alphabet, I have used a modified
Library of Congress system. In the text, the names of well-known figures are
Anglicized—Kerensky, Trotsky (but Kerenskii, Trotskii in the notes); Petr
Tchaikovsky, the composer, but Nikolai Chaikovskii, the revolutionary.
Place names offer complications of their own. Some were multiple at the
time (Lithuanian Vilnius, Russian Vilna, Polish Wilno; German Lemberg,
Polish Lwów, Russian Lvov, Ukrainian Lviv), some changed when borders
changed, some were rechristened for political reasons (St. Petersburg,
Petrograd). When the differences are part of the story, they will be indicated,
but the choice of one over the other should not be taken as endorsement of
any current national claim. English equivalents will be used when possible:
thus Warsaw, Moscow, Kiev.
As for the issue of dates, the Bolsheviks marked the political rupture by
switching to a new calendar. On February 1, 1918, by the Julian calendar used
in Russia, the Bolsheviks adopted the Gregorian calendar used in the West,
which in the twentieth century was thirteen days ahead. Thus, February 1,
1918 Old Style became February 14, 1918 New Style, although the Russian
Orthodox Church and some opponents of the Bolsheviks in the Civil War
rejected the change. Up to January 31, 1918, I use Old Style ( Julian calendar)
dates for domestic events, indicating New Style (Gregorian calendar) for
dates of international significance, or when double perspective is needed.
Dates in the notes are those used in the various sources cited.

10
Plates 1

11
12
 1. “The Emperor and the Grand Duke Nicholas at G.H.Q., 1915,” in Sir John Hanbury-
Williams, The Emperor Nicholas II as I Knew Him (London: Arthur L. Humphreys, 1922).
Joseph Regenstein Library, University of Chicago.

2. K. K. Bulla, “The Horse Draft.” Postcard, Slavonic Library, National Library of Finland.

3. “The Second Patriotic War, 1914–1915–1916: Refugees from Galicia.” Postcard,

Slavonic Library, National Library of Finland.

13
 4. “Encounter of Kuban and Ural Cossacks After the Battle.” Postcard, Slavonic Library,
National Library of Finland.

14
 5. Vladimir Mayakovsky, “Deutschland über alles–The Germans cry, And from the
battlefield they fly.” Postcard, Slavonic Library, National Library of Finland.

15
 6. Mukhomor, “Hand Over the Tribute!” Postcard, Slavonic Library, National Library of
Finland.

16
 7. A. F. Postnov, “Down With the Pale of Settlement!” The Pale no longer restrains us / We’re
now free on Russian lands / To sell our garlic and sausage / Even where the Kremlin stands.
Postcard, Slavonic Library, National Library of Finland.

17
 8. Leonid Pasternak, book cover: Shchit: Literaturnyi sbornik, ed. Leonid Andreev, Maxim
Gorky, and Fedor Sologub, 3rd ed. rev. (Moscow: Mamontov, 1916) [The Shield: A Literary
Collection. Russian Society for the Study of Jewish Life]. Joseph Regenstein Library, University
of Chicago.

18
 Plates 2

1. “Burning the Emblems of Royalty. In one instance the crowd seized an American eagle,
which shared the fate of its Russian brothers.” Stinton Jones, Russia in Revolution: Being the
Experiences of an Englishman in Petrograd during the Upheaval (London: H. Jenkins, 1917).
Joseph Regenstein Library, University of Chicago.

19
 2. “Guns behind barricade commanding the Litainai Prospect and Bridgehead.” Stinton
Jones, Russia in Revolution: Being the Experiences of an Englishman in Petrograd during the
Upheaval (London: H. Jenkins, 1917). Joseph Regenstein Library, University of Chicago.

20
 3. A. I. Savel’ev, “Bread Lines,” Used as title-page illustration, Iskry: Illiustrirovannyi
khudozhestvenno-literaturnyi i iumoristicheskii ezhenedel’nyi zhurnal s karikaturami, no. 39
(Moscow: Sytin, October 8, 1917). [Sparks: Illustrated Artistic-Literary and Humorous Weekly
Magazine with Caricatures]. Getty Images.

21
 4. K. K. Bulla, “Demonstration of soldiers’ wives on Nevskii Avenue, Petrograd, April, 9,
1917.” Banners read: “Feed the Children” and “Better Rations for Soldiers’ Families Defending
Freedom and the People’s Peace.” Slavic and East European Collections, The New York Public
Library.

22
 5. Provisional Executive Committee of the State Duma, 1917. Library of Congress.

6. “Meeting of the Executive Committee of Worker and Soldier Deputies.” Library of

Congress.

7. Funeral ceremony for victims of the revolution, March 23, 1917. Banners read: “Long
Live the Democratic Republic!” Library of Congress.

23
8. Vladimir Il’ich Lenin. Library of Congress.

24
 Plates 3

1. Russian delegates arrive in Brest-Litovsk, January 1918. Trotsky center in profile, Lev
Kamenev between the German generals, Adolf Ioffe on the left. Getty Images.

25
2. Leon Trotsky as Commissar of War. Getty Images.

26
 3. G. Gasenka, “The Whole World in Ukraine!” Ukrainian poster, Slavonic Library,
National Library of the Czech Republic.

27
4. First Red Cavalry, 1920, TASS. Getty Images.

28
 5. Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak. Bain Collection, Prints & Photographs Division, Library of
Congress.

29
6. General Baron Petr Wrangel. Getty Images.

30
 7. Ataman Grigorii Semenov. Ludovic-H. Grondijs, La guerre en Russie et en Sibérie, intro
Maurice Paléologue, pref. Émile Haumant (Paris: Bossard, 1922). Joseph Regenstein Library,
University of Chicago.

31
8. General Dmitrii Khorvat. Bain Collection, Library of Congress.

32
 9. Lenin and Trotsky (center) with delegates to the Tenth Congress of the Russian
Communist Party, Moscow, March 8-16, 1921. Getty Images.

33
 10. “The Peasant Woman and the Woman Worker. Take the place of brothers and husbands
who have left for the Red Front. Your strong alliance guarantees victory over Wrangel and over

34
economic ruin.” Ukrainian ROSTA, Nikolaev, 1920. Slavic and East European Collections, The
New York Public Library.

35
 Introduction
In 1913 the Romanov dynasty celebrated three centuries of rule. In
August 1914, Russia went to war against Germany and Austria-Hungary. Less
than three years later, in February 1917 by the old Julian calendar, the last of
the Romanovs fell from power. Incapable of prosecuting the war, the
monarchy had succeeded only in forfeiting the loyalty of its subjects. In
February, Imperial Russian society, from top to bottom, rose up against the
autocratic regime. Tsar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate, and the leaders of
respectable society installed themselves in the seat of power. The workers and
soldiers who had brought the monarchy to bay followed the lead of moderate
socialists in establishing a political arena of their own. Aware of their tenuous
claim to rule, the revolutionaries of the first hour were still saddled with the
burden of the war and faced with the popular unrest, now in organized form,
which had enabled their own break with the past. In October 1917, as the
crisis deepened, Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik Party staged a coup d’état that
dislodged the “bourgeois” officeholders, stole the moderates’ thunder, and
inaugurated four years of civil conflict, ending in early 1921 with the
consolidation of history’s first socialist government.
It took more than ten days to shake the world. The monarchy was ousted
by the representatives of privileged society, backed by the fury of soldiers,
peasants, and workers, whose long-term grievances had been pushed to the
edge by the war. The men who assumed the reins of government were
constitutional conservatives, aiming to control, not intensify, disorder, but in
toppling the sovereign power they had taken a revolutionary step. From the
beginning, the revolution held out the possibility of a democratic outcome, a
potential dramatized by the remarkable turnout for elections to the Empire-
wide Constituent Assembly, even after the Bolsheviks had taken command.
The potential for civil war was also implicit in the revolution from the
beginning. As the crisis deepened, a group of officers attempted
unsuccessfully to seize control and prevent the Left from gaining ground, but
it was the October coup that tipped the balance into armed warfare. The
military and social establishment, which had supported the February
Revolution in the hopes of prosecuting the war more successfully, rallied its

36
forces against the usurpers, whom they viewed not only as political extremists
but as pawns of enemy German power.
The Civil War unleashed by the coup was deep and extensive, embracing
every corner of the Empire, from the ethnic borderlands to the peasant
heartland, at every rung of the social hierarchy. It was a story of crisis and
collapse, but also of surprising resilience. The chaos on the streets and behind
the front revealed enduring allegiances and habits of collective action; the
institutions of civil society, rudimentary though they were, provided a
platform for political mobilization. At the pinnacle of power, the elites
battled each other for control. But at the level of the state, the basis of power
—political authority, a functioning bureaucratic apparatus, and “monopoly of
the legitimate use of physical force,” as Max Weber put it—had itself been
shaken.2 Power was not simply there to be seized; it had to be reconstructed.
All parties to the Civil War fought with savage intensity. In the end, the
Bolsheviks proved the most adept at controlling and deploying violence, at
shaping new instruments with which to impose social discipline and compel
consent. The Civil War was thus in part a war waged by the monarchy’s
emerging successor, having repurposed its vestigial institutions, against the
remnants of the old society and the old regime, in order to build a radically
new social order. Even when it emerged victorious, the Soviet state continued
to wage war against the society it had brought into being, as though the
process of transformation and subjugation was never complete.
The Civil War was extraordinarily brutal, on all sides. Unfolding over a
vast territory, the conflict consisted of many interlocking wars and caused
immense material and human damage. Demographers have estimated total
losses, military and civilian, between 1918 and 1922, out of a population of
about 170 million, at over 15.5 million, or about 9 percent. The total
included 2.5 million victims of violence on and off the battlefields, two
million victims of terror from all sides, six million who succumbed to
starvation and disease, and the five million victims of famine in 1921.3 None
of the contenders were able to control the conduct of the improvised forces
they deployed; none shied away from forms of violence, such as hostage-
taking, reprisals against civilians, summary executions, rape and torture, and
the targeting of ethnic communities, considered at the time as violations of
moral, if not also legal, norms. The Bolsheviks, in the end, were most effective

37
in institutionalizing the violence they needed to win—and with which, in its
organized form, they proceeded to build a new social order.
At its core, however, the revolution was not a military but a political
struggle, in all its interlocking dimensions, and that struggle is the focus of
this book. It is a political contest in which the ideal of democracy—of broad
participation in the workings of power—achieved enormous resonance, at all
levels of society. And was ultimately betrayed. It was a contest in which
warfare became a political medium and a substitute for politics. Here was the
Bolshevik key to success.
The story of war, revolution, and civil war is very much also an imperial
story. In 1914 the Russian Empire extended west to east from the Finnish
Gulf to the Pacific Ocean, north to south from the White Sea to the Black
Sea. Almost three-quarters of the population lived west of the Ural
Mountains, in what was called “European Russia.” To the east lay the vast
expanse of Siberia. The western border included Finland, the Baltic littoral, a
large portion of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and most of
what is today Ukraine. The southern periphery included the mountainous
Caucasus region and the steppes and deserts of Central Asia, reaching to the
Chinese border.
Only 15 percent of the overall population lived in cities. But Russia was
rapidly changing. In 1913 the capital, St. Petersburg (renamed Petrograd in
August 1914), had 2.5 million inhabitants, Moscow two million.
Manufacture, science, and many of the attributes of urban civilization were
producing a bourgeoisie, an industrial working class, a professional elite, civic
associations, and a market for books, newspapers, and culture—both high
and low. Europe took notice. In 1906 impresario Sergei Diaghilev mounted
an exhibit of Russian modernist painting in Paris, which was all the rage. In
1913 his Ballets Russes staged Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, creating a
sensation with its shocking theme and discordant rhythms—a foretaste of the
primitivist modernism that was to characterize the revolutionary years.
There is no doubt that Imperial Russia was evolving. Had it not been for
the trauma of the Great War, which also destroyed the Hohenzollern,
Hapsburg, and Ottoman Empires, Russia might conceivably have developed
toward some form of capitalist society, with a truly representative and
empowered political system. Indeed, the monarchy itself actively promoted
economic advance. Yet that same regime, which considered itself autocratic

38
down to the very end, clung to its monopoly on power. It was only the
Revolution of 1905, roiling the Empire from stem to stern, that extracted the
concession of an elected parliament, the State Duma, from the unwilling
sovereign, who continued to regard it with disdain and allowed his ministers
to limit its operation and diminish its mandate. The contradiction between
the persistent traditionalism of the monarchy and the growing pressure for an
expanded civic arena and a meaningful political role for the establishment
elites, for a share in power—developments which had accompanied the
emergence of civil society in the West—led to ever-growing tensions and
seemed to justify the posture of the radical political extremes.
The Great War provided an opportunity for society, in a swell of patriotic
fervor, to assert its claim to a role in the management of public affairs.
Despite its distrust of independent social forces, however patriotic they might
be, the regime was obliged to solicit their cooperation. While increasingly
seen as unable to meet the challenge of a war that demanded the engagement
of civilian as well as military forces, the monarchy stubbornly refused to
broaden access to political life. The chronic friction between the state and its
loyal but frustrated public intensified with each passing month. This was,
moreover, a war that placed a heavy burden on the mass of the laboring
population—peasants in uniform, peasants pressed for grain, industrial
workers struggling to feed their families. Above all, it was a war in which the
government itself was at cross-purposes, the Army High Command pursuing
policies that disrupted the domestic economy and aggravated social tensions,
its own propaganda fueling internal conflicts. In short, it must be said, the old
regime contributed largely to its own demise.
In undermining its own authority, the monarchy opened the door to
defiance of authority across the board—mutiny, industrial strikes, the burning
and pillaging of rural estates. When the revolution erupted in February 1917,
however, it was more than a revolt of the masses against the power of their
superiors and the demands of the war. The men who took matters into their
own hands and turned against the monarchy were the notables of the State
Duma, backed by critical figures in the military High Command. Duma
deputies representing the propertied and privileged classes then created what
they called a Provisional Government. Meanwhile, Duma deputies from the
moderate socialist parties formed a leadership organ for the popular
movement that had flooded the streets of Petrograd and forced the Duma’s

39
Discovering Diverse Content Through
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Why is the
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This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHY IS THE

NEGRO LYNCHED? ***
 Why is the Negro
Lynched?
BY THE LATE

FREDERICK DOUGLASS.

Reprinted by permission from “The A.M.E. Church

Review” for Memorial Distribution, by a few
of his English friends.

BRIDGWATER:
PRINTED BY JOHN WHITBY AND SONS, LIMITED.
1895.
We have felt that the most fitting tribute that we, of the Anti-
Caste movement, can pay to the memory of this noble and
faithful life is to issue broadcast—as far as the means entrusted
to us will allow—his last great appeal for justice (uttered
through the pages of “The A.M.E. Church Review” only a few
months before his death). A slanderous charge against Negro
morality has gone forth throughout the world and has been
widely credited. The white American has had his say both North
and South. On behalf of the accused, Frederick Douglass claims,
in the name of justice, to be heard.
Copies can be obtained free from the Editor of “Anti-Caste,”
Street, Somerset, England.
 Why is the Negro Lynched?
(“The Lesson of the Hour.”)
BY THE LATE

FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
Reprinted by permission from the “A.M.E. Church Review.”

I.
THE AFRO-AMERICAN PEOPLE INDICTED ON A
NEW CHARGE. INTRODUCTORY—THE
WRITER’S CLAIM TO BE HEARD.[A]

I PROPOSE to give you a coloured man’s view of the so-called

“Negro Problem.” We have had the Southern white man’s view of
this subject at large in the press, in the pulpit and on the platform.
He has spoken in the pride of his power and to willing ears. Coloured
by his peculiar environments, his version has been presented with
abundant repetition, with startling emphasis, and with every
advantage to his side of the question. We have also had the
Northern white man’s view of the subject, tempered by his distance
from the scene and by his different, if not his higher, civilization.
This quality and quantity of evidence, may be considered by some
men as all sufficient upon which to found an intelligent judgment of
the whole matter in controversy, and, therefore, it may be thought
my testimony is not needed. But experience has taught us that it is
sometimes wise and necessary to have more than two witnesses to
bring out the whole truth. Especially is this the case where one of
such witnesses has a powerful motive for suppressing or distorting
the facts, as in this case. I therefore insist upon my right to take the
witness stand and give my version of this Southern question, and
though it shall widely differ from that of both the North and South, I
shall submit the same to the candid judgment of all who hear me in
full confidence that it will be received as true, by honest men and
women of both sections of this Republic.
There is one thing, however, in which I think we must all agree at
the start. It is that this so-called but mis-called Negro problem is one
of the most important and urgent subjects that can now engage
public attention. Its solution is, and ought to be, the serious
business of the best American wisdom and statesmanship. For it
involves the honour or dishonour, the glory or shame, the happiness
or misery, of the whole American people. It not only touches the
good name and fame of the Republic, but its highest moral welfare
and its permanent safety. The evil with which it confronts us is
coupled with a peril at once great and increasing, and one which
should be removed, if it can be, without delay.

EPIDEMIC OF MOB-LAW.
The presence of eight millions of people in any section of this
country, constituting an aggrieved class, smarting under terrible
wrongs, denied the exercise of the commonest rights of humanity,
and regarded by the ruling class of that section as outside of the
government, outside of the law, outside of society, having nothing in
common with the people with whom they live, the sport of mob
violence and murder, is not only a disgrace and a scandal to that
particular section, but a menace to the peace and security of the
whole country. There is, as we all know, a perfect epidemic of mob
law and persecution now prevailing at the South, and the indications
of a speedy end are not hopeful. Great and terrible as have been its
ravages in the past, it now seems to be increasing, not only in the
number of its victims, but in its frantic rage and savage
extravagance. Lawless vengeance is beginning to be visited upon
white men as well as black. Our newspapers are daily disfigured by
its ghastly horrors. It is no longer local but national; no longer
confined to the South but has invaded the North. The contagion is
spreading, extending and overleaping geographical lines and state
boundaries, and if permitted to go on, threatens to destroy all
respect for law and order, not only in the South but in all parts of our
common country, North as well as South. For certain it is, that crime
allowed to go unpunished, unresisted and unarrested, will breed
crime. When the poison of anarchy is once in the air, like the
pestilence that walketh in darkness, the winds of heaven will take it
up and favour its diffusion. Though it may strike down the weak to-
day, it will strike down the strong to-morrow.
Not a breeze comes to us from the late rebellious states that is not
tainted and freighted with Negro blood. In its thirst for blood and its
rage for vengeance, the mob has blindly, boldly and defiantly
supplanted sheriffs, constables and police. It has assumed all the
functions of civil authority. It laughs at legal processes, courts and
juries, and its red-handed murderers range abroad unchecked and
unchallenged by law or by public opinion. If the mob is in pursuit of
Negroes who happen to be accused of crime, innocent or guilty,
prison walls and iron bars afford no protection. Jail doors are
battered down in the presence of unresisting jailors, and the
accused, awaiting trial in the courts of law, are dragged out and
hanged, shot, stabbed or burned to death, as the blind and
irresponsible mob may elect.
We claim to be a highly-civilized and Christian country. I will not stop
to deny this claim, yet I fearlessly affirm that there is nothing in the
history of savages to surpass the blood-chilling horrors and fiendish
excesses perpetrated against the coloured people of this country, by
the so-called enlightened and Christian people of the South. It is
commonly thought that only the lowest and most disgusting birds
and beasts, such as buzzards, vultures and hyenas, will gloat over
and prey upon dead bodies; but the Southern mob, in its rage, feeds
its vengeance by shooting, stabbing and burning their victims, when
they are dead.
Now, what is the special charge by which this ferocity is justified,
and by which mob law is excused and defended even by good men
North and South? It is a charge of recent origin; a charge never
brought before; a charge never heard of in the time of slavery or in
any other time in our history. It is a charge of assaults by Negroes
upon white women. This new charge, once fairly started on the
wings of rumour, no matter by whom or in what manner originated,
whether well or ill-founded, whether true or false, is certain to raise
a mob and to subject the accused to immediate torture and death. It
is nothing that there may be a mistake in his case as to identity. It is
nothing that the victim pleads “not guilty.” It is nothing that the
accused is of fair reputation and his accuser is of an abandoned
character. It is nothing that the majesty of the law is defied and
insulted; no time is allowed for defence or explanation; he is bound
with cords, hurried off amid the frantic yells and curses of the mob
to the scaffold, and there, under its ghastly shadow, he is tortured,
till by pain or promises, he is made to think that he can possibly gain
time or save his life by confession—confesses—and then, whether
guilty or innocent, he is shot, hanged, stabbed or burned to death
amid the wild shouts of the mob. When the will of the mob is
accomplished, when its thirst for blood has been quenched, when its
victim is speechless, silent and dead, his mobocratic accusers and
murderers of course have the ear of the world all to themselves, and
the world, hearing only the testimony of the mob, generally
approves its verdict.
Such, then, is the state of Southern law and civilization at this
moment, in relation to the coloured citizens of that section of our
country. Though the picture is dark and terrible, I venture to affirm
that no man, North or South, can successfully deny its essential
truth.

ATTITUDE OF UPPER CLASSES.

Now the question arises, and it is important to know, how this state
of affairs is viewed by the better classes of the Southern States. I
will tell you, and I venture to say in advance, if our hearts were not
already hardened by familiarity with crimes against the Negro, we
should be shocked and astonished, not only by these mobocratic
crimes, but by the attitude of the better classes of the Southern
people and their law-makers, towards the perpetrators of them. With
a few noble exceptions, just enough to prove the rule, the upper
classes of the South seem to be in full sympathy with the mob and
its deeds. There are but few earnest words ever uttered against
either. Press, platform and pulpit are generally either silent or they
openly apologise for the mob and its deeds. The mobocratic
murderers are not only permitted to go free, untried and
unpunished, but are lauded and applauded as honourable men and
good citizens, the high-minded guardians of Southern virtue. If lynch
law is in any case condemned by them, it is only condemned in one
breath and excused in another.
The great trouble with the Negro in the South is that all
presumptions are against him. A white man has but to blacken his
face and commit a crime to have some Negro lynched in his stead.
An abandoned woman has only to start a cry, true or false, that she
has been insulted by a black man, to have him arrested and
summarily murdered by the mob. Frightened and tortured by his
captors, confused, he may be, into telling crooked stories about his
whereabouts at the time when the crime is alleged to have been
committed, and the death penalty is at once inflicted, though his
story may be but the incoherency of ignorance or the distraction
caused by terror.
In confirmation of what I have said, I have before me the utterances
of some of the best people of the South, and also the testimony of
one from the North, a lady of high character, from whom,
considering her antecedents, we should have expected a more
considerate, just and humane utterance.
In a late number of the Forum, Bishop Haygood, author of the
“Brother in Black,” says that “The most alarming fact is that
execution by lynching has ceased to surprise us. The burning of a
human being for any crime, it is thought, is a horror that does not
occur outside of the Southern states of the American Union, yet
unless assaults by Negroes come to an end, there will most probably
be still further display of vengeance that will shock the world, and
men who are just will consider the provocation.”
In an open letter addressed to me by ex-Governor Chamberlain, of
South Carolina, published in the Charleston News and Courier, in
reply to an article of mine on the subject of lynching, published in
the North American Review, the ex-Governor says: “Your
denunciation of the South on this point is directed exclusively, or
nearly so, against the application of lynch law for the punishment of
one crime; the existence, I suppose I might say the prevalence, of
this crime at the South is undeniable. But I read your article in vain
for any special denunciation of the crime itself. As you say, your
people are lynched, tortured and burned, for assault on white
women. As you value your own good fame and safety as a race,
stamp out the infamous crime.”
And now comes the sweet voice of a Northern woman, Miss Frances
Willard, of the W. C. T. U., distinguished among her sisters for
benevolence and Christian charity. She speaks in the same bitter
tone and hurls against us the same blasting accusation. She says in
a letter now before me, “I pity the Southerners. The problem in their
hands is immeasurable. The coloured race multiplies like the locusts
of Egypt. The safety of women, of childhood, of the home, is
menaced in a thousand localities at this moment, so that men dare
not go beyond the sight of their own roof tree.” Such, then, is the
crushing indictment drawn up against the Southern Negroes, drawn
up, too, by persons who are perhaps the fairest and most humane of
the Negro’s accusers. Yet even they paint him as a moral monster,
ferociously invading the sacred rights of woman and endangering
the homes of the whites.
 INCRIMINATION OF THE WHOLE RACE.
Now, I hold, no less than his accusers, that the crime alleged against
the Negro is the most revolting which men can commit. It is a crime
that awakens the intensest abhorrence and tempts mankind to kill
the criminal on first sight.
But this charge thus brought against the Negro and as constantly
reiterated by his enemies, is plainly enough not merely a charge
against the individual culprit, as would be the case with an individual
of any other race, but it is in large measure a charge constructively
against the coloured people as such. It throws over every man of
colour a mantle of odium, and sets upon him a mark of popular
hate, more distressing than the mark set upon the first murderer. It
points the Negro out as an object of suspicion, avoidance and hate.
It is in this form of the charge that you and I and all of us are
required to meet it and refute it, if that can be done. In the opinion
of some of us it were well to say nothing about it, that the least said
about it the better. They would have us suffer quietly under the
odium in silence. In this I do not concur. Taking this charge in its
broad and comprehensive sense, the sense in which it is presented
and as now stated, it strikes at the whole coloured race, and,
therefore, as a coloured man, I am bound to meet it. I am grateful
for the opportunity now afforded me to meet it. For I believe it can
be met and met successfully. I hold that a people too spiritless to
defend themselves against unjust imputations, are not worth
defending, and are not worthy to defend anything else.
 II.
THE DEFENCE—“NOT GUILTY.” CHARACTER OF
THEIR ACCUSERS CHALLENGED.
Without boasting in advance, but relying upon the goodness of my
cause, I will say here I am ready to confront ex-Governor
Chamberlain, Bishop Fitzgerald, Bishop Haygood and good Miss
Frances Willard and all others, singly or altogether, who bring this
charge against the coloured people as a class.
But I want however, to be clearly understood at the outset. I do not
pretend that Negroes are saints and angels. I do not deny that they
are capable of committing the crime imputed to them, but utterly
deny that they are any more addicted to the commission of that
crime than is true of any other variety of the human family. In
entering upon my argument, I may be allowed to say again what
should be taken for granted at the start, that I am not a defender of
any man guilty of this atrocious crime, but a defender of the
coloured people as a class.
In answer, then, to the terrible indictment thus read, and speaking
for the coloured people as a class, I venture in their name and in
their stead, here and now, to plead “not guilty,” and shall submit my
case with confidence of acquittal by good men and women, North
and South, before whom we are, as a class, now being tried. In
daring to do this I know that the moral atmosphere about me is not
favourable to my cause. The sentiment left by slavery is still with us,
and the moral vision of the American people is still darkened by its
presence.
It is the misfortune of the coloured people of this country that the
sins of the few are visited more or less upon the many. In respect to
the offenders, I am with General Grant and every other honest man.
My motto is, “Let no guilty man escape.” But while I say this, and
mean to say it strongly, I am also here to say, let no guilty man be
condemned and killed by the mob, or crushed under the weight of a
charge of which he is not guilty.
I need not be told that the cause I have undertaken to support is
not to be maintained by any mere confident assertions or general
denials, however strongly worded. If I had no better ground to stand
upon than this, I would at once leave the field of controversy and
give up the coloured man’s cause to his accusers. I am also aware
that I am here to do in some measure what the masters of logic say
is impossible to be done. I know that I cannot prove a negative;
there is one thing that I can and will do. I will call in question the
affirmative. I can and will show that there are sound reasons for
doubting and denying this horrible charge of rape as the special and
peculiar crime of the coloured people of the South. I doubt it, and
deny it with all my soul. My doubt and denial are based upon three
fundamental grounds.
The first ground is, the well-established and well-tested character of
the Negro on the very point upon which he is now so violently and
persistently accused. I contend that his whole history in bondage
and out of bondage contradicts and gives the lie to the allegation.
My second ground for doubt and denial is based upon what I know
of the character and antecedents of the men and women who bring
this charge against him. My third ground is the palpable unfitness of
the mob to testify and which is the main witness in the case.
I therefore affirm that a fierce and frenzied mob is not and ought
not to be deemed a competent witness against any man accused of
any crime whatever, and especially the crime now in question. The
ease with which a mob can be collected, the slight causes by which
it can be set in motion, and the element of which it is composed,
deprives its testimony of the qualities necessary to sound judgment
and that which should inspire confidence and command belief.
Blinded by its own fury, it is moved by impulses utterly unfavourable
to a clear perception of facts and the ability to make an impartial
statement of the simple truth. At the outset, I challenge the
credibility of the mob, and as the mob is the main witness in the
case against the Negro I appeal from the judgment of the mob to
the judgment of law-abiding men, in support of my challenge. I lay
special emphasis on the fact that it is the mob and the mob only that
the country has recognised and accepted as its accredited witness
against the Negro. The mob is its law, its judge, jury and
executioner. I need not argue this point further. Its truth is borne
upon its face.
But I go further. I dare not only to impeach the mob, I impeach and
discredit the veracity of men generally, whether mobocrats or
otherwise who sympathise with lynch law, whenever or wherever the
acts of coloured men are in question. It seems impossible for such
men to judge a coloured man fairly. I hold that men who openly and
deliberately nullify the laws and violate the provisions of the
Constitution of their country, which they have solemnly sworn to
support and execute, are not entitled to unqualified belief in any
case, and certainly not in the case of the Negro. I apply to them the
legal maxim, “False in one, false in all.” Especially do I apply this
maxim when the conduct of the Negro is in question.
Again I question the Negro’s accusers on another important ground;
I have no confidence in the veracity of men who publicly justify
themselves in cheating the Negro out of his constitutional right to
vote. The men who do this, either by false returns, or by taking
advantage of the Negro’s illiteracy, or by surrounding the ballot box
with obstacles and sinuosities intended to bewilder him and defeat
his rightful exercise of the elective franchise, are men who should
not be believed on oath. That this is done and approved in Southern
States is notorious. It has been openly defended by so-called honest
men inside and outside of Congress.
I met this shameless defence of crime face to face at the late
Chicago Auxiliary Congress, during the World’s Columbian Exposition,
in a solemn paper by Prof. Weeks, of North Carolina, who boldly
advocated this kind of fraud as necessary and justifiable in order to
secure Anglo-Saxon supremacy, and in doing so, as I believe, he
voiced the moral sentiment of Southern men generally.
Now, men who openly defraud the Negro of his vote by all manner
of artifice, who justify it and boast of it in the face of the world’s
civilization, as was done by Prof. Weeks at Chicago, I hardly need
say that such men are not to be depended upon for truth in any
case where the rights of the Negro are involved. Their testimony in
the case of any other people than the Negro would be instantly and
utterly discredited, and why not the same in this case? Every honest
man will see that this point is well taken. It has for its support
common sense, common honesty, and the best sentiment of
mankind. On the other hand, it has nothing to oppose it but a vulgar,
popular prejudice against the coloured people of our country, a
prejudice which we all know strikes men with moral blindness and
renders them incapable of seeing any distinction between right and
wrong where coloured people are concerned.

THE NEGRO’S CLEAN RECORD DURING WAR

TIME.
But I come to a stronger position. I rest my denial not merely upon
general principles but upon well-known facts. I reject the charge
brought against the Negro as a class, because all through the late
war, while the slave-masters of the South were absent from their
homes, in the field of rebellion, with bullets in their pockets, treason
in their hearts, broad blades in their bloody hands, seeking the life of
the nation, with the vile purpose of perpetuating the enslavement of
the Negro, their wives, their daughters, their sisters and their
mothers were left in the absolute custody of these same Negroes,
and during all those long four years of terrible conflict, when the
Negro had every opportunity to commit the abominable crime now
alleged against him, there was never a single instance of such crime
reported or charged against him. He was never accused of assault,
insult, or an attempt to commit an assault upon any white woman in
the whole South. A fact like this, though negative, speaks volumes,
and ought to have some weight with the American people on the
present question.
Then, again, on general principles, I do not believe the charge,
because it implies an improbable change, if not an impossible
change in the mental and moral character and composition of the
Negro. It implies a radical change wholly inconsistent with the well-
known facts of human nature. It is a contradiction to human
experience. History does not present an example of a transformation
in the character of any class of men so extreme, so unnatural and so
complete as is implied in this charge. The change is too great and
the period for it too brief. Instances may be cited where men fall like
stars from heaven, but such is not the usual experience with the
masses. Decline in the moral character of such is not sudden, but
gradual. The downward steps are marked at first by slow degrees
and by increasing momentum, going from bad to worse as they
proceed. Time is an element in such changes, and I contend that the
Negroes of the South have not had time to experience this great
change and reach this lower depth of infamy. On the contrary, in
point of fact, they have been, and still are, improving and ascending
to higher and still higher levels of moral and social worth.

EXCUSES FOR LYNCHING—DELICACY OF

SUBJECT; POSSIBILITY OF CRIMINAL’S
ESCAPE FROM JUSTICE.
Again I utterly deny the charge on the fundamental ground that
those who bring the charge do not and dare not give the Negro a
chance to be heard in his own defence. He is not allowed to show
the deceptive conditions out of which the charge has originated. He
is not allowed to vindicate his own character from blame, or to
criminate the character and motives of his accusers. Even the
mobocrats themselves admit that it would be fatal to their purpose