Talk of reform and State improvements, impossible while this system of things continue; “as well expect grapes from thorns or figs from thistles.” Not occasional robberies, not occasional murders alone that poison the vitals of society. These will sometimes occur under the best government—under good laws and well administered; it is the ninety-nine chances for escape to one for conviction which produces so much evil. When punishment is sure to immediately follow the commission of crime, then society can repose in security; but otherwise, the honest and peaceable live in fear—the dishonest and disorderly in defiant lawlessness. Overt crime, regardless of law, with a determination to remain and risk all consequences from the farcical courts; in such cases, arrest sometimes follow, but the bail is ready, and with a few dollars acquittal will be almost certain. If the case is too dark and unpopular, time after time the trial will be put off, until, according to common parlance, the case is worn out, or some material witness got out of the way, and then the answer is “ready for trial”—well knowing the result which must follow. But oftener, if the criminal leave the county or State, no more notice is taken—no effort made to reach and bring him back.
It is seldom that redress is ever endeavored to be obtained by process of law. This reluctance cannot be wondered at in the face of so many unblushing recommendations and encouragements from unprincipled attorneys in open court to willful violations of law; not to be wondered at when the injured prosecutor experiences nothing but abuse and malicious, or rather mercenary, invective, while the vile criminal is allowed to walk out of court unhurt and plumed with the laurels of victory, even in the worst cases which can possibly be conceived. If one person becomes irritated against another, no matter for what cause, either real or imaginary, he thinks not of investigation in the courts, but either sets in to break up his antagonist by private and malicious mischief, or he waylays, ambushes or seeks an opportunity to create a quarrel, so that life can be taken under the plea of justifiable homicide! But sordid, corrupt and sinister motives do not always stop at acquitting the guilty; they occasionally labor as hard to harrass and punish the innocent! The author’s case, in his trial at Mobile, is one instance out of many where everything was strained to convict innocence. Sometimes one object in view, and sometimes another. Grand juries are not unfrequently acted on in a very disgraceful manner. One person, through spite, or for getting the property of another in some covert way, will seek an opportunity to get a bill from the grand jury. Another, to avoid paying a just debt, or to screen himself in some other case, for the purpose of producing intimidation, or, as it is more commonly called, “running him off,” will seek to get a bill from the grand jury. Others, if the truth is too plainly spoken, will seek to command the grand jury for libel. Under such a system, the worst of men are generally the most expert in law, and always the readiest to fly to it to subserve their purposes. Alarming abuses in one direction seldom fail to be carried on in the contrary direction pretty much with equal proportion.
Lynch law is an unavoidable consequence of a mockery of civil law. No nation can long prosper under a reign of court corruptions. If the guilty, as a rule, escape, and justice not strictly administered, the sources of wealth will soon languish and decay. If the fashions of the courts are to favor the worst at the expense of the best members of society, the necessary results cannot fail to come shortly afterward. Under such a deplorable state of things, confidence and security cannot dwell. Suspicion and distrust everywhere; industry, the desire to accumulate, and also productive capital, will all be defective.
There are but few crimes which a determined and prudent government cannot suppress. Those aggravated offenses under the name of “Ku Klux” depredations, how soon they were put down under a vigorous execution of law. If the government of this State continues as it has begun, there will be no more of dueling, or at least so rare as not to be productive of much injury. The certainty of punishment, even in rare cases, will relieve society from serious harm on this account.
States, Empires and Republics search for the first causes of their decline and fall, and they will be found to consist in the vitiated customs of the rulers in the various departments of governments, in a reckless trampling on the principles of justice without shame, without remorse, and, above all, in overgrown corruptions practiced with the honors of emoluments and distinctions.
And now it is only necessary to add, in reference to the Wages and Copeland Clan, as an organization, it is broken up, though isolated individuals who belonged to it still continue to perpetrate crime whenever anything like a favorable opportunity offers. For a lengthy duration of time this clan spread terror and desolation both far and wide. Happily for present society, as an organized body, it is numbered on the dark and bloody pages of the past.
The publication of the confessions by the author was productive of much good. The high and mighty outside aiders severely felt the blows. But for the support given by such auxiliary aiders the organization would have come to dissolution much earlier. It is such influential aiders and abettors, in warding off the chains of law, which give vitality to movements of this character. The decline began from the death of the President and leader, Wages, and also at the same time the death of the preaching hypocrite, McGrath. This change was further accelerated by the execution of Copeland, and the narrow escape of another brother, together with the publication of the confessions, laying open to public gaze the implicated parties and the principal movement of the whole.
But the expiration of one sort of lawlessness does not preclude the existence of others more dangerous, because more subtle and more in accordance with the corruptions in the high departments of States, and more in harmony with the operations of those who boldly trample on rectitude and the laws of the nation. Rings and cliques are not confined to political considerations alone, but descend to many other important affairs of life. A union of an inferior and unprincipled lawyer with a subordinate officer, and these again with a league of reckless and desperate “strikers,” who can make money almost at any time from the honest earnings of the less expert, and all by forms and processes of law. This is one class of rings complained of, the evils from which are of a frightful magnitude. They weave the net, goad the honest but unwary into its meshes, and revel on the spoils which have been extorted from litigation. The former modes of robbery, plunder and murder have, to a great extent, been superseded by, if possible, worse evils in the form of a science as taught and practiced by these rings and cliques. Crimes which formerly had to encounter hardships and danger, can now be accomplished by other means with honors, profits, and a plausible sanction of law. Government should have power sufficient to be able and willing to crush such proceedings, which, unchecked, must, ere long, produce another national convulsion.
Copeland’s crimes were huge and many. Before he had reached the meridian of life he paid the last and highest penalty of the law. He was cut down anterior to the attainment of the flower of his days—a melancholy example to all who prefer robbery and murder to the honest and peaceful pursuits of industry. With all the weight of crime belonging, he made some atonement by his valuable confessions in the last hours of his existence. It is not clear what were the actuating motives; whether smarting under disappointment, and goaded on by a spirit of revenge against those who had promised him safety and protection, but did not prevent him enduring years of imprisonment with the immediate prospect of a violent and ignominious death, or sick of life, with no hope of earthly relief, and oppressed with painful reflections on the past—conscious that the affairs of this world could not concern him but a few days longer—it is more than probable that the task of disclosing the dreadful operations of his past life in associations with others, afforded him some repose or satisfaction in the unhappy situation he was then placed. With some, in the condition of distress and despair, there is perhaps nothing which can give a greater temporary relief than for the mind to be intensely fixed and engaged on something which is to live after the body has finished its earthly career.
No matter in what way the confessions may be put to the test, they come out of the ordeal firmer and stronger than before. They cannot be broken down in the severest conflicts in organized courts for the purpose. A partisan Judge, supported by a phalanx of talent and wealth, with all other influences brought to bear, cannot, as has been tried, destroy nor impair the invulnerable facts which they contain. Search for internal evidences of truth, and they will be found in ample profusion. Appeal to the last testimony of a dying man on the scaffold, and it fully confirms the correctness of his confessions as made some short time before. Ask numbers of still living witnesses and they will vouch for the substantial accuracy of the facts as related in these confessions. Call in time, the great arbiter of disputes, and the revelations since made all go to corroborate the validity of the work so obnoxious to the guilty implicated in it.