Dr. Hart asks, “Why should the negro expect protection when the white man is powerless against any personal white enemy who chooses to shoot him down in the street, when not one white murderer in a hundred is punished for his crime?”
Dr. Albert Bushnell Hart is evidently thinking about the case of James Tillman, of South Carolina, who shot down in the street Editor Gonzales, and who was acquitted, on his trial.
By all sane persons it is admitted to be utterly unfair to judge the entire South, or North, by any one case, or by any one crime.
It is useless to argue the guilt or innocence of James Tillman; but we all know that human nature is prejudiced by political feeling; and none will deny that the feud between Tillman and Gonzales was a political feud. The killing was a political killing. In a case like that the action of court and jury will be influenced by political feeling, whether the result be right or wrong.
Has Albert Bushnell Hart never heard of a political feud in any other part of the world than the South, and has he never known political feeling to protect one who was prosecuted for a crime? Has he never known of instances in Northern cities where prisoners at the Bar apparently owed their salvation to secret societies of any sort—or to political pull of any sort?
It has not been so very long since Edward S. Stokes met James Fisk on the staircase, in the Grand Central Hotel, in New York City, and shot him down.
One might think this amounted to about the same thing as the shooting down of a personal enemy on the street.
Fisk died, as Gonzales died. Stokes was tried, as Tillman was tried. Stokes was not hanged in New York any more than Tillman was hanged in South Carolina.
Will Dr. Hart please furnish an explanation which will not fit the South Carolina case as snugly as it fits the New York case?