One of the laws enacted of late in the South permits a white man to kill a black man for a crime committed aginst his honor, and if the white man commits the same crime and the black man takes the same revenge, he is killed at once accordin’ to law—one man liberated with rejoicings, the other shot down like a dog. Do you say the black man is more ignorant? That is a bad plea.
And wantin’ to act dretful lawful, a short time ago a gang of white law-makers dug up the dead body of a dark-complexioned husband they had murdered accordin’ to law, and after breakin’ its bones, hung it over agin.
He could find in the law no help to defend his home or protect his honor, no refuge in the grave to which the law had sent him.
I wonder if his freed soul has found some little safe corner in space fenced round by justice and compassion, where it can hide itself forever from the laws and civilization of this 19th Century, in this great and glorious country of the free.
To select this one instance of cruel wrong and injustice from the innumerable ones similar to it is like takin’ up a grain of sand from the seashore and contemplatin’ it—the broad seashore that stretches out on either hand is full of them.
And why should not wrongs, and crimes, and woes be inevitable—why, indeed?
A race but lately slaves, with the responsible gift of freedom dropped too soon into their weak hands—
The race so lately the dominant and all-powerful one through the nation, by the fiction of law dropped down under the legal rule of these so long down-trodden, oppressed, ignorant masses, what could the result be?
And the law-makers who had proclaimed peace and liberty, on paper, sot afar contemplatin’ the great work they had done, and left the Reign of Horror to be enacted by the victors and the victims.
Poor colored man! poor white man! both to be pitied with a pity beyend words.