The Law of the Land Part 31

The silent audience was packed close up to the rail back of which was stationed the judge's stand and jury-box. Within the railing there was scanty room; every member of the local bar was there, and many lawyers from counties round about.

Erect in the grave-faced a.s.semblage, there stood one man, pale of face but with burning eyes. It was John Eddring, attorney for the defense in the case of the state against Calvin Blount, charged with murder. His voice, clean-cut, eager, incisive, reached every corner of the room. His gestures were few and downright. He was swept forward by his own convictions of the truth.

Eddring was approaching the conclusion of the argument which he had begun the previous day. The testimony in these cases, known generally as the "lynching cases," had long been in and had pa.s.sed through examination, cross-examination, reb.u.t.tal and surreb.u.t.tal.

Eddring knew that he would be followed by an able man, a district attorney conscientious in the discharge of his duty, however unpleasant it might be. He had therefore with the greatest care a.n.a.lyzed the evidence of the state as offered, and had demonstrated the technical impossibility of a conviction. Yet this, he knew, would not upon this occasion suffice. He went on toward the heart of the real case which he felt was then on trial before this jury of the people.

"Your Honor and gentlemen of the jury," he continued, "we all know that we are, in effect, trying today not one man, not one district, not one state, but an entire system. We are trying the South. The life and the liberty of the South are at stake. To prove this, these men have come in and given themselves up as an atonement, as a blood offering like to that of old; seeking to prove that what they continually have coveted is not lawlessness, but the law.

"Now I say this, and I say, also, let each of us have a care lest he lose touch with the eternal pillar of the truth. There it is. It rises before you, gentlemen, that silent, somber shaft. It finds its summit in the sky. I pray G.o.d to keep my own hand in touch thereto, and my eyes turned not aside. And my life, with that of these others, is offered freely in proof that we covet not lawlessness, but the law! We are white men, and where the white man has gone, there has he builded ever, first of all, his temple of the law. Upon whatever land the Anglo-Saxon sets his foot, of that land he is the master, or there he finds his grave. First he lays his hearthstone, and upon that foundation he builds his temple of the law. A race which has no hearthstone knows no law.

"Inasmuch as G.o.d has made all manner of things diverse, setting no fence even between species and species, creating all blades of gra.s.s alike, yet not one the duplicate of another; then neither should we, being human, essay a wisdom greater than that of the eternal compromise of life. No human doc.u.ment, no sum of human wisdom, not even the Deity of all life can or does guarantee a success which means individual equality in the result of effort. The chance, the opportunity--that is the law, and that is all the law. Beyond that did not go the intent of that Divinity which decreed the scheme under which this earth must endure. To war and conflict each creature is foreordained, for so runs the decree of life. But never, in the divine wisdom, was it established that the mouth of the stream should be its source; that inequality should be equality; that failure should be success; that unfitness should mean survival.

"In reading the pages of the great and beloved Const.i.tution of America there have been those who have juggled the import of the word 'success' with the meaning of the _chance to succeed_.

"There was such juggling in those war amendments to that Const.i.tution, which to-day represent the folly of a part of America-- not of all of America. Those amendments, if they be not of themselves war measures, were at least consequences of war measures. This Const.i.tution which we call supreme can, of itself, be amended--can, indeed, itself be set aside by its own servants, as was proved in that very war whose memory is still in our minds. The Supreme Court, in the Legal Tender case, admittedly set aside the Const.i.tution. It did so of necessity, and as a measure demanded by the times of war.

The supreme letter of the law has not always been respected by this people, nor by its wisest men, by its most august servants.

"It is not the law, gentlemen, vainly to call two blades of gra.s.s identical, vainly to call the hare and tiger alike and equal; vainly to call, if you like, black the same as white. The law is that if it be possible for the hare to approach its neighbor in ways desirable, it be given its _chance_ to do so. If the black man can grow like to the white in all human attainments, if he can grow and succeed, then let him have the _chance_ to do so.

"But that same chance of betterment and advancement, that same selfish chance to prevail and to survive, that chance to succeed given under the divine intent, must be accorded also to that creature known as the white man. If he, the white man, can prevail, can survive, can succeed, he, too, must have his chance. That is the law!

But the chance of either white or black man is his own and is not negotiable. That is the law! Not without fitness can there be ultimate success. Not until the fullness of the years can there be attainment for any creature of this earth. That is the law! There is no tree growing in the center of this ordained universe wherefrom the full fruit of survival and of success may be plucked and eaten without effort and without earning. No individual has done it. No one can do it. Bounty and gift do not make success. It must be _won!_

"Is this doctrine difficult? If so, we can not change it. It is the great law, irrevocable and unamendable, and it is no more kind and no more cruel than life itself is kind or cruel. It is the law. That is the law!

"The makers of the Const.i.tution, the amenders of the Const.i.tution-- that doc.u.ment subject to change, subject to being ignored, as has been the case--could never, under the enduring law, guarantee success plucked as an apple for each and every man who had not earned it.

Gentlemen, talk not to me of the broad charity of this nation, or of its general justice to humanity. Call not this piece-work Const.i.tution of ours, amended and subject to amendment, an approach to divine charity or wisdom. No; for in some of its effects it has proved to be the most cruel and unjust measure ever known in all human laws.

"It was cruel and unjust to whom? To us? To the white man? No, no. It was cruel in that it presented a t.i.tle to success, to fitness and to survival unto eager, ignorant hands, and then by its own limitations s.n.a.t.c.hed that t.i.tle away from them again. It sought to do that which can not be done--to establish growth instead of the chance to grow.

It was cruel. It was unjust. In the wisdom of a later day its patchwork form must once more be changed. It must be changed as a protection, no more against the former slaves of the South than against the future slaves of the North.

"Gentlemen, if that change could be effected to-morrow by the offering up of this life--of these lives now in your hands--I say these lives would be laid down gladly. Take them if you will. They are our pledge that we covet not lawlessness, but the law; our pledge that, having no law, we have been eager to act lawfully as we might.

The reign of lawlessness and terror must end in this country. We must contrive some machinery of the law which shall command respect. We must not continually drag the name of the South--the name of America-- in the mire of lawlessness. To do that is to smirch the flag--the one flag of America. But we denounce and will always denounce that false decree which says that black is white; that inequality is equality; that lack of manhood is manhood itself; that the absence of a hearthstone can mean a home; that the absence of the home can mean a permanent society.

"In the future the North, packed and crowded beyond endurance, with imported and herded white slaves who in time will demand the position of masters--as the blacks may legally demand that position here to- day--will pay her price for the right to make this plea. The South has already paid a thousand times for her right to make it to-day.

With treasure she has paid for it; with roof-tree and hearth-tree she has paid it dear, and with the sacred tears of women. With the sacrifice of her own future she has paid for that right. But the South and the North belong together, not held apart by politics, but held together in brotherhood. In the name of all justice, let us hope that the South shall not be asked to pay the bitterest of all prices, the misunderstanding and the alienation of those whom she loves and would embrace as her brothers. Let us hope, in the name of mercy, if not of justice, that the South shall be understood as a region having a problem, a problem which is national, and not sectional, and _not political_. Let us in all fairness hope that our northern brothers will understand that the South is honest in her attempt to deal with that problem in her time, which is the time of to-day.

"Your Honor, I do not depart from my argument. I am not here for wild talk regarding the relations of the two races. It is the ages alone which will decide that problem. But I am here to stand for the law and not for lawlessness. I am here to say that our flag, the American flag, is for all men, and for America; not for Africa alone, or for Europe alone, but for America. It is the flag of progress, not the flag of anarchy. It is the banner of civilization and not of savagery. That, and not the banner of Africa or of Europe, must be our ensign to-day.

"Your Honor, and gentlemen, we are not here today to conclude that G.o.d set the white man over the black. We are to conclude simply that He set him _apart_ from the black man. The divine right of slavery was an impiety, and, worst of all, an absurdity. The South made that mistake, and bitter has been the price of her folly. Yet the South, having sinned, paid the price of her sinning in all ways exacted of her. She accepted the ruling of the North, and, as a distinguished orator once said, surrendered 'bravely and frankly.' But she did not admit, and please G.o.d, never will admit, that those fresh from savagery should govern the white men, that they should inst.i.tute the machinery of the law whereunder the white man must live.

"Gentlemen, you see before you, sardonically done, the fruits of the Black Justice. Is that the Law? If it be, then send us to our graves; for as that Black Justice formally exists to-day, Calvin Blount, and I, and these others, must go back to our fields or to our graves. Do you wish to send us to the latter? If you do, you send these other white men just as lawfully back to take up the hoe of labor, to bend their necks under the black yoke of African ignorance and savagery.

Is that the Law? In my heart, gentlemen, I believe that those who say this is the law have not read the history of this country, do not understand the theory of this country, and can not speak for it unselfishly or honestly.

"Yet, gentlemen, that is the dilemma into which our brothers of the North would continually thrust us. Suppose that, casting about for some possible measure to free us from one point or the other of that dilemma, we should seek some legal compromise which would free us from the letter of this oppressive law of our national Const.i.tution.

Suppose there should be proposed some general and stern limitation of the franchise? Such an onerous qualification must needs apply to black and white alike. Who would be first to object to it? It would be the politicians of the North, who could not afford to exact even a prepaid poll-tax as a test for a vote. In time the North will need to free her white slaves, already turbulent and rebellious. In time she will have to pay for them, as we of the South have paid. After that great civil war which is yet to come, the men of the North may perhaps understand more fully the meaning of that phrase 'the manhood suffrage' and know that manhood means survival, that good manhood means the product of a good environment, a survival slowly and fitly won. By that time, North and South, perhaps, will know that the franchise should be as the bulwark of the law, not the destroyer of the law. Until that time, we of the South must continue to pay our part of the price of the national lawlessness; and we must continue, each commonwealth for itself as best it may, to enact laws which shall in part lessen the intolerable weight of that which we have set up as the idol of our national laws--that Const.i.tution, which is impossible and not practicable, which is merciless instead of just, which is cruel instead of being kind, and most cruel to those whom it is thought to shelter. Meantime the South feels still the intolerable weight of that Const.i.tution, the intolerable sting of the demand of her northern brothers, that she shall be asked to endure, in the name of this incubus, this body of the law, the continuous burglarizing of her honor and her prosperity--the burglarizing of the house of her society.

"We know that it is the chiefest of cruelty and unkindness, the chiefest of madness, to incite these poor and ignorant people--ever ready to follow the voice of sophistry or selfishness--to believe that their burglary of the house of success is right and reasonable; because it is certain that such burglary will be met in the South by the law, by the White Justice, and that, if need be, until either white or black man shall exist no more in this portion of America.

Gentlemen, North and South owe it to America, America owes it to the world, that there be held aloft for our worship an image of the Law more honorable than this. Until that time of a more honorable image for our worship, there must perhaps go on the enormous folly of one portion of this nation asking another portion to destroy itself for the sake of an unworthy race. This demand, gentlemen, I take to be an actual treason to the law and to this country.

"The white man has won his rights--why? Because he was able to do so.

He accords to any other race the same privilege. That is the law of survival; it is greater than any law of politics, greater than any statute law.

"But, your Honor, these men can not be acquitted under any plea dealing with generalizations alone. The law of the land must be observed in so far as that law exists.

"Now I ask whether at the time of the acts charged against Calvin Blount there existed any adequate machinery of the law. I have pointed out to you the precedent of the great case handled by Mr.

Webster in the city of New York, in which case the statutes were set aside by the greater law of an immediate and overpowering necessity.

I submit to you that necessity, the greatest of all laws, and in precedent respected by our courts as such, would have overridden even the regular machinery of our laws had it been in operation. I submit further to you that no law existed in this country at that time; that the service of the law to its citizens had ceased. If the greatest court of the country still tolerates the burglary of the house of society by this so-called manhood suffrage, which should rather be called the per capita suffrage, then at least the lesser courts, wiser than the greater, recognize the fact that some crimes require no warrant for arrest; that sometimes the citizen is court and executive in one and at once.

"As the greatest authorities of the law have written, in the organization of society the individual never surrenders all of his rights. He retains for ever and inalienably, after all his delegations to society and the law, a residuum of power for his own.

He retains under the great and supreme law of all life, that sweet, that divine privilege, his _chance_ to succeed, his _chance_ to survive! No tyranny, no oppression, can overcome that sweetest and strongest of all the Anglo-Saxon's coveted rights. Instead, he has ever risen against the law, when that law has demanded of him this last, this ultimate and inalienable right, this principle under which he has builded the civilization of the world.

"In defiance of statute laws grown weak and impotent, the barons at Runnymede wrested Magna Charta from King John; in defiance of statute laws grown weak and impotent, the free men of England wrested their Habeas Corpus Act from King Charles; in defiance of statute laws grown weak and impotent, the colonists of America wrested a virgin empire from King George.

"And, please G.o.d, in defiance of statute laws grown weak and impotent, the white man will wrest from whatsoever hand may hold it, the right to protect the integrity of his race, the safety of his women, the sanct.i.ty of his two-fold temple of the law!

"I therefore submit to you that a sacred exigency demanded the action of this prisoner, of these prisoners; and I submit that this prisoner at the bar is innocent before the law. But beyond that I add my plea, with that of this honorable court, and of these gentlemen, that one day we may have given to us an image of the Law which we may venerate in letter and in spirit, and a law capable of its own enforcement.

"As I stand before you, gentlemen, this prisoner, this cause, its feeble advocate, seem small and inconsiderable. But at my side I see arising the eternal pillars of the temple of the White Justice. Do you not see them, rising solemn and stately before you, those pillars, their heads taking hold upon the heavens? If that temple has been defiled, if it has been cast down, then let us hope that South and North will restore it again in its full majesty. And when, finally, aided, as we hope, by our brothers of the North, we, as citizens of an ofttimes mistaken, yet eventually to be united America, shall have builded this renewed temple of the law, then the lives of the white men of this state will be--like ours joined in this trial before you--free pledge that the men of this country, so long charged with lawlessness, shall come and bow in that temple in reverence of that law which they have always coveted and which they covet here to-day. Your Honor, and gentlemen of the jury, in the face of that statement, I say that not Calvin Blount--nor any one of these prisoners--has violated the law. And so I close with the words of the ancient form of pleading: Of this we do indeed put ourselves upon the country."

In the silence which fell upon the room as Eddring closed, the district attorney arose to present the case of the state. He began slowly, gravely, logically. He presented the printed page of the statutes, called attention to the formal accuracy of the proceedings, the overwhelming nature of the evidence; he explained that without law, nothing remained but anarchy. He pointed out to the jury that here was the law, plain and unmistakable; here were the facts, obvious and uncontroverted, the convicting facts. He spoke of the infamy which had been cast upon the name of the South by reason of just such deeds as these. He urged the necessity for an absolute and unyielding observance of the letter of the law, those statutes from which they dared not depart. They were statutes which could not be overswept by any glittering speciousness, or set aside by fine spun theories as to what might or might not be a more desirable order of affairs. He reminded them of their oath, their sworn promise to enforce the law--_this_ law, the law of the printed page.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "OF THIS WE DO INDEED PUT OURSELVES UPON THE COUNTRY."

p. 358]

He spoke for two hours, and he did his duty; but he addressed himself to men of stone, and he knew it even as he spoke. Not to be moved by his words were these set and solemn faces. Concluding with a pa.s.sionate appeal that they should protect the fair name of their country from the stigma of lawlessness, he resumed his seat, knowing then the verdict which would follow.

The judge, an old man with silvery hair, turned to the jury.

"Retire, gentlemen, to consider of your verdict."

The door to the jury-room closed behind them, and left a thousand eyes fixed anxiously upon it.

They had scarcely disappeared when the knock of the foreman was heard at the door.

"Bring in the jury, Mr. Sheriff," the judge ordered.

The foreman of the jury, an unknown man, tall and stooped, with scraggly hair and beard, handed a folded paper to the clerk.

"Mr. Clerk, read the verdict," the judge ordered; and the clerk read: "We, the jury, find the defendant not guilty."

The words were received in utter silence.

Presently all, jury and bar and spectators, filed from the court- room, quietly, not with oaths or threats of violence for those others who at the outskirts of the town were waiting for their answer. And they, the waiting ones, found their answer in this silence, and so now slipped out into the forest. The crowds of white men in the town also quietly melted away.

That night at the hotel the judge and certain citizens were engaged in quiet conversation.

"I think," said the judge, "that this young gentleman, Mr. Eddring, belongs somewhere in a position of trust. I believe that he can be depended upon to think, and not merely to play politics for the sake of office holding. We have had too much politics in the South, and too much in America. It's time now we did a little thinking."