Gov. McKinley and Lynch Law

The Governor, despite his many achievements in government, remains silent when it comes to lynchings in his state

We have been and we are as admirer of Gov. Wm. McKinney, Jr of Ohio. We have read his speeches, and formed an opinion as to his ideals, but we must confess that his recent inaction with reference to the lynching within the confines of that grand old state has done much to dissipate our visions of his greatness.
We cannot understand it. we cannot see how a man permitted by great principles and guided by the axioms of Truth, could allow the prospects of future honor to make him careless of those ordinary rules of conduct without the observance of which no man can be truly great and no people truly free.
We have observed with some amusement, not on mixed with interest the “Killkenny cat fight” over the paternity and general construction of an Ohio bill against Lynch law.
The ordinary laws against murder or reach the case, for lynching is murder.
The making of a community or County pay an indemnity for each person lynched within its confines is the only radical departure.
The Lawless elements are encouraged by The Silence of the chief executive.
The governors of Texas, Alabama, and Georgia have spoken against lynching, and the last name the state has lately engrafted up on it statute books a specific law against lynching. These are Democratic states. Can Republican Ohio afford to do last?

“Gov. McKinley and Lynch Law,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed December 7, 2025, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/1540.