The Law of the Land / Of Miss Lady, Whom It Involved in Mystery, and of John Eddring, Gentleman of the South, Who Read Its Deeper Meaning: A Novel

by Emerson Hough

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 passed through examination, cross-examination, rebuttal and surrebuttal.

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 analyzed 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 God 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 God has made all manner of things diverse, setting no fence even between species and species, creating all blades of grass 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 document, 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 Constitution 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 Constitution, 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 Constitution 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 Constitution. 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 grass 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!