Yet we have seen how a moment after the crime had been committed and its perpetrators realized that they were murderers in fact, they “stampeded,” the proof shows; they trembled with fear, though no one was on their tracks then. Their hearts turned to water. What did they fear? Punishment.
The bloody dictators of Breathitt County had abrogated the law, as they believed, yet feared the law they pretended to despise. This is clearly established by the methods with which they killed off their enemies. They resorted to secret assassination in each case because it would make discovery and punishment difficult, if not impossible. Each assassination had been shrewdly and carefully planned. Notwithstanding their temporary power and supremacy they lived in constant fear and dread, believing that punishment would and must sooner or later overtake them. This belief was strengthened by the fate of other criminals elsewhere.
If, then, the criminal fears the arm of the law, it requires very simple reasoning to come to the conclusion that the criminally inclined can, by the sure guaranty of swift, condign punishment be intimidated and forced into abstaining from following that inclination, and be so put in fear that he will think twice before he gives his atavistic tendencies free rein.
This history was written to teach a moral. The remedies suggested here for lawlessness and contempt for the law, may be applied with equal benefit where mob spirit is rampant. The mobist, to coin a phrase, that starts out to do murder upon a defenceless prisoner, is on a par with the bushwhacker—even inferior to him in courage. For mobs are courageous only through mass numbers; or when under strong and aggressive leadership. Mobs have been known to slink away ignominiously when confronted by one or two loyal citizens.
Disloyalty has been at the bottom of all great social disturbances.
Let the spirit of true Americanism, which is loyalty to country, return and with it will come the courage to uphold the law at whatever cost. Then and not till then is our flag the true symbol of American liberty; then and not till then will the phrase “American citizen” cease to be a banality, as it now is with many, and become what it is intended to be, a badge of honor, the most precious a man can wear on this earth.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Collin’s “History of Kentucky.”
[2] Roosevelt’s “Winning of the West.”
[3] “Rowan County Feud,” [Chapter 2].