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Franklin Repository, April , 1864 Go To Page :

Sanctity of the Laws
(Column 1)

Summary: Argues that increasingly lax enforcement of laws because of partisan motives threatens the "order and safety of society."

Excerpt: "If in preserving our government by force of arms against treason, we should inaugurate disorder and anarchy in the administration of the civil law, our rescued Nationality would turn to an empty bauble in our hands. In short, a government without law is a libel and a fraud, and is not worth preserving."

Full Text of Article:

If we would preserve our liberties we must maintain the sanctity and supremacy of the laws. They must be supreme under all circumstances, regardless of class or condition; calling or color; prejudice or persuasion; and to this great and every citizen should direct his determined efforts. Especially in troublous days like these, is the good citizen required at times to set his face like flint against the lawlessness, of which civil feud and revolution are ever the fruitful parent. If in preserving our government by force of arms against treason, we should inaugurate disorder and anarchy in the administration of the civil law, our rescued Nationality would turn to an empty bauble in our hands. In short, a government without law is a libel and a fraud, and is not worth preserving.

This journal has repeatedly spoken boldly in behalf of the sanctity of the laws. It has condemned contempt for law whether open or covert; whether displayed by the cowardly foes of the government, or by those who assume summarily to vindicate real or imaginary wrongs against the Country's cause, and plead their devotion to it in justification of lawlessness. Whether soldier or civilian, political friend or foe, we hold that the same obligations to society obtain; the same respect for person, property and life must be practiced, and the same penalties inflicted for crime. To assume that a newspaper is not loyal and therefore destroy it by violence, is none the less lawless if the assumption be true; for the remedy is but an aggravated form of the wrong sought to be redressed; and to justify violence or crime, or even to extenuate the same in opinion or in the administration of justice, because of political difference of opinion touching the support of the government, is but to steal the name and livery of the law to fling anarchy broadcast over the land.

Let us look at home. Three important criminal trials were disposed of in our courts here last week. In one case a soldier had murdered a negro, and lawyers of all shades of political belief were invoked to prosecute and defend. Did it escape the observation of the dullest attendant upon the trial, that men of the Democratic faith only were deemed by the defence acceptable jurors? And why? Was it believed that Republicans would convict the prisoner whether guilty or not, simply because the victim was a negro? We think not; indeed none will assume that they would have done more than hold the prisoner guilty or innocent, without regard to the color, or character of his victim, as the testimony might demand. Why, then, were jurors of a different political persuasion preferred? We concede that it was not because they are wanting in integrity or in a just appreciation of the solemnity of an oath; but they were manifestly chosen because they were presumed to be schooled to hate the negro, and upon their prejudices, operating insensibly upon their reason, did the defence rely for safety. Two advocates, justly eminent for legal learning and for eloquence and skill in appeals to juries, plead for the life of the prisoner. Judge Kimmell lectured the jury on miscegenation, and a stranger would have supposed that the Anglo-saxon race was trembling in the balance for existence, rather than the life of a culprit; and Mr. Sharpe rehashed to the jury the common spawn of petty treason, by his declaration that the war had been prostituted from its original and holy purpose to a war for the elevation of the negro. And why were these startling declarations interwoven with appeals in behalf of a prisoner, in a case with which the purposes of the war and the mingling of races had no more to do than they have with the revolutions of the comets? Messrs. Sharpe and Kimmell do not thus strangely talk from force of habit. Both have made political speeches but never so madly wrong--nor could they to-day be induced to harangue [sic] a public meeting as they did a jury in an issue of life and death. They spoke as advocates, and we are not prepared to say that they spoke unwisely as such. They had sought as jurors men whose hatred for the negro is part of their political faith, and they aimed to brutalize the jury by appealing to their prejudices, hoping to give them the mastery over reason and conscience in the verdict to be made up. They did not say in so many words that the killing of a negro was little or no crime; that he was becoming quite too important in this country; that he would soon be upon equality with the whites; and therefore it was time that the white man's hand should be against him even unto death--for that would have made an honest jury revolt; but they sought to carry the conviction imperceptibly to their minds through their prejudices, trusting to inflamed prejudices to magnify doubts, and magnified doubts to procure an acquittal.

Equally forcible was the illustration of the correctness of our premises in two other cases. A soldier had killed a citizen--they were of different political faith, and the deed had been committed on election evening and in a political fracas. The same rule that dictated Democratic jurors in the case before alluded to, demanded Republican jurors in this one, and political feeling ran high throughout the trial, especially amongst those who live in the locality where the alleged offence was committed. The case was taken from the jury by the judge on the ground that the testimony of the Commonwealth could not be complete, because of the failure to make a post mortem examination of the body; but had it gone to the jury, we should have had an assortment of stars and stripes and fourth of July orations in behalf of the prisoner, in strange contrast with the political speeches of the counsel. Were Republican jurors chosen in this case because they were wanting in honesty or respect for the laws, or in their appreciation of the solemnity of their oath? Not at all. They were chosen because their prejudices might, it was hoped, be turned strongly in favor of one who was enlisted in the defence of his country, and thus cloud the reason to magnify or create doubts to justify an acquitted. In another case the Democratic faith was in demand again. A charge of treason had provoked a blow that maimed the prosecutor for life, and again was political prejudice invoked to shield a wrong. Again did Sharpe forget that this is a government of law, in his speech to the jury, hoping thereby to make prejudice do what unclouded reason must forbid; but in all cases we believe, jurors shamed the novel assumptions of counsel by doing their duty.

We have alluded to these facts not for the purpose of censuring counsel or juries; but to point out clearly to all classes of citizens--to men of all political faith--that there is danger of growing looseness in the administration of our laws, and of necessity a corresponding warfare upon the order and safety of society. Lawyers do not appeal to prejudice where prejudice does not exist; they do not deliver political harangues to juries unless they have good reason to believe that political prejudice may be made stronger than their sense of justice; and until it is discarded by all good citizens; the enforcement of the laws demanded inflexibly, and the administration of justice regarded as too sacred for political or other polluting partialities or hatreds to mingle with it, we shall find a growing tendency to disorder and crime, and even the better class of men may be made insensibly to strengthen the current of lawlessness. Three men died untimely and by violence on last election night in this county; a shocking murder was committed in our midst but a few weeks ago, and half a score of homicides were prevented by accident in the various altercations which have fallen to our lot during last year. For this there is but one remedy--that is obedience to the laws, and the enforcement of their supremacy and the just punishment of crime without regard to creed, color, condition or class. For the sacred maintenance of order let every good citizen make common cause; and let crime of every grade meet its just condemnation and punishment at the hands of all!