Replying to your esteemed favor of the 27th, I beg to say that I am intensely opposed to lynching. On one occasion I was called from my bed at midnight and personally went before a mob and kept them from lynching a negro man. On another occasion I sent troops by special train one hundred miles to defend a negro in Winston-Salem. Four white men were killed, the prisoner was saved and fifteen of the men who were engaged in the riot have been recently convicted and sentenced to the Penitentiary.

The only way to prevent lynching is for the local authorities to do everything possible to protect prisoners, and this we are doing in North Carolina.

I am sorry that I will not be able to attend the meeting in New York but my work is so pressing here that I will be unable to be away at that time.