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[untitled]
At the time of our last issue it
was expected that Mr. McKinley would recover. Since then he has
died. But this calls for no revision of our comment, made under
the impression that he would survive the murderous assault upon
him. It is the assault, not the president’s death, that constitutes
the essence of the crime. The death inspires deeper sorrow for the
victim, warmer sympathy for the bereaved, a keener sense of the
grandeur of democratic-republican institutions, which have by this
murder been impotently assailed. But the essential conditions are
unaltered.
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The fatal outcome of the crime,
however, has garbed a nation in mourning. For one brief interval
on the funeral day it literally stood still. Every railroad train
and street car stopped wherever they happened to be at the instant.
The thought of this is impressively suggestive of a people turning
from their routine of duties and with one accord mourning their
dead. Nor could anyone hesitate at joining in a ceremony so simple
and so strictly significant of the death of a chief magistrate and
of nothing else. It was free from partianship [sic], free
from revengeful impulses, free from the mob spirit, free from hysteria.
Wherever one might be, and whatever his opinion of the record of
the dead, he could but welcome an opportunity to bow in unison with
all his fellow citizens as a token of national respect for the departed
first servant of the republic.
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No well balanced man, left to his
own reflections can stand in the presence of death unawed. None
can think of a wife widowed, without sorrow. None can contemplate
a murder without horror. None can consider the portentous significance
of the assassination of the head of a democratic republic with unblanched
cheek. So no American citizen who appreciates his responsibility
and whose mind is unruffled can regard the assassination of President
McKinley even with apparent indifference. If any have done so, it
is only fair to assume that they have recoiled from giving pronounced
expression to their sorrow under circumstances which were practically
coercive. It is not an uncommon characteristic for men to gratify
even their own wishes grudgingly or not at all, when under compulsion
or appearances of compulsion.
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Unhappily the spirit of coercion
has been too much in evidence in connection with this national mourning.
One shrinks instinctively, of course, from doubting the sincerity
of the general expression of sorrow; yet the dead president’s admirers
over the country have adopted methods which unhappily do leave it
open to suspicion. By mobbing embittered men whose coarse or thoughtless
utterances against the dead president should have been quietly ignored,
and by making their own extravagant praises of his personality and
public service a standard of patriotism to be accepted by all under
more or less thinly veiled threats, they have brought the sincerity
of this national expression of sorrow into legitimate question.
Who can distinguish the sincere from the hypocritical, when fear
reigns? Had a wiser, not to say more manly, course been pursued,
had vulgar detractors been left alone, and pains been taken to show
that hypocritical professions of sorrow instead of being demanded
were not desired, the national mourning would have been sincere
beyond cavil, and at least as general and all the more cordial because
absolutely free.
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In one respect the dangers resulting
from the murderous attack upon President McKinley will probably
be very much intensified by his death. “Anarchy for the suppression
of anarchy,” as one Chicago clergyman aptly puts it, is more likely
to stalk abroad than if the president had recovered. His death appeals
to the diseased imaginations of the lawless-minded who manage newspapers,
who get into pulpits, and who in the name of law and order instigate
mobs to ignore the law and to create disorder.
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This menacing spirit has gone so
far as to incite influential men coolly to urge even sworn officers
of the law to blink at perjury in order to make a case where no
case exists. The evidence appears in two morning papers. In a Buffalo
dispatch of September 12, published in the Chicago Chronicle of
the 13th, this statement was made:
Mr. Penney and Superintendent
of Police Bull would undoubtedly have applied to the governor
of New York for requisition papers to extradite Miss Goldman
if only for the purpose of giving a reason for the Chicago police
to retain their hold on the woman, but the plan met with such
serious opposition from Secretary Root and other members of
the cabinet that it was abandoned. Now Penney and Bull are indifferent
as to whether Miss Goldman is held or turned loose. They simply
say they do not want her in Buffalo.
Compare that statement with this dialogue from another Buffalo
dispatch of the same date published in the Chicago Record-Herald
of the 13th. The dialogue takes place between the correspondent
and District Attorney [369][370] Penney,
of Buffalo. Questioning Mr. Penney, the correspondent said:
“It has been charged,” he was
told, “that an endeavor has been made to bring Emma Goldman
here on trumped-up charges.”
“That is quite true,” he replied.
“Those most concerned in the conviction of the president’s assailant
have desired that the whole truth be known, but they have been
constantly opposed to getting beyond the limits of the law of
the state. It is generally believed that if Emma Goldman was
once delivered to the Buffalo authorities we could strengthen
our case. I am compelled to admit that strong pressure has been
brought to bear upon me to permit of a trumped-up charge being
filed against the woman, thus insuring her delivery by the Illinois
authorities. I am fully alive to the necessities which confront
me, but I cannot ignore the requirements of the law, and the
police have not been able to justify the demand for her transfer
from Illinois.”
We forbear comment upon this disclosure of anarchistic influences
of the worst kind—influences which would strike at the integrity
of the law itself. The two dispatches speak too plainly to need
interpretation, and comment would be altogether superfluous.
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It is gratifying to note, however,
that Secretary Root has appeared throughout this whole tragedy as
a man who preserves his balance and who believes in law and order—who
really believes in it. And although the pulpit of most denominations
has been disgraced at this critical moment with utterances inspired
by the most vicious spirit of mobocracy, and its twin sister autocracy,
some ministers have proved themselves as level headed as Mr. Root.
It would be impossible to name all. Needless to say that Dr. Hiram
W. Thomas, of Chicago, is one. Rev. Rufus A. White is another. Says
Mr. White:
A little more general respect
for law by all classes, a full appreciation of the fact that
every man who breaks laws, be he rich or poor, high or low,
practices anarchy, will do more to destroy the anarchy of the
Herr Mosts than much talk and many persecutions. No compromise
with that kind of anarchy; but in the meantime let many newspapers,
preachers, organizations and corporations now clamoring for
revenge against the “reds” repeat the old adage: “Physician,
heal thyself.”
Dr. Frank S. Crane is another Chicago minister whose sensible
words are worth remembering:
Above all, let each honest man
search himself and see if there be in his thought, word or deed
anything of injustice, of pride, of the prostitution of his
advantages of gifts or of talents that may in any wise have
given semblance of cause for the fact that some of the human
beings among us have left off the proper joy of life and have
given themselves over to the propaganda of diabolism, murder,
anarchy and hate.
Here is another reassuring sentiment. We quote from the Rev. John
R. Crosser:
I am not afraid that the anarchy
on Carroll avenue will ever destroy our institutions. It is
too black and ugly. The anarchy to be found on the boulevards
is the most dangerous, the anarchy which buys a legislature.
Anarchy cannot be put down with laws. We can learn nothing from
European countries in this regard except what not to do. We
must be careful not to go too far in annihilating the class
of anarchists found on Carroll avenue, lest we injure many others
who really have the best interests of our country at heart.
Dr. Muldoon, the auxiliary bishop of the Catholic arch-diocese
of Chicago, gives wise counsel:
In the present moment of excitement
we who love liberty should be careful that our love for the
dead president does not tempt us to acts or expressions that,
in themselves, injure or lessen the effects of constitutional
form. No provocation on the part of disciples of anarchy will
permit us to deprive them of any of their constitutional rights
and privileges. It is sad to see, in these moments of excitement,
that certain clergymen and public men go so far as to intimate
that the people should take the law in their own hands, and
not wait for the proper procedure in the line of punishment.
In the same strain was the sermon of Charles D. Williams, dean
of Trinity cathedral, Cleveland, who, as reported by the Plain Dealer,
“adopted a somewhat different tone from the other Cleveland ministers.”
After “dwelling upon the noble character of the president and the
awfulness of the crime,” says the Plain Dealer, he—
went on to say that it was the duty of all good citizens of
a Christian nation to protest against the clamor for lynch law
which had arisen since the shooting of the president. He declared
that this desire for bloody revenge was unworthy a Christian
community. He also protested against overhasty legislation against
anarchists. He said that if it is desired to make the lives
of our rulers precious the lesson must be taught that all human
life is precious. This can be taught not by oppression, he said,
but by the kindly effort to help the unfortunate and elevate
the lowly.
Pulpit pronouncements like these—and many more like them might
be quoted,—encourage the hope that a more orderly spirit will quickly
succeed the frenzy which for the past two weeks has seemed to possess
so many persons who are usually neither criminal in purpose nor
insane in speech.
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The best resolutions on the assassination
of President McKinley that have come to our attention are those
adopted by the St. Louis Single Tax league. They stand out conspicuously
and reassuringly from the mass of sickly rhetoric and un-American
appeals to the mob spirit with which a crazed people have been deluged.
Although adopted when it was expected that the late president would
recover, they need no alteration now. We think them well worthy
of reproduction in full:
We regard with horror and detestation
the attempted assassination of President McKinley, and rejoice
in the prospects of his speedy recovery. We believe that all
men are by natural, unalienable right equally free, and that
the sole rightful function of government is the preservation
of equal freedom and the prevention of aggression by any persons
against the persons and property of other persons. Any such
aggression is a crime against nature and against all people,
and one of the greatest and most horrible of such aggressions
is the crime of deliberate assassination. While the crime would
be equally great if committed against the poorest and most obscure
man or woman, because President McKinley occupies the position
of a representative and agent of the whole people, selected
by popular vote to execute laws made by the people themselves,
the man who attempted his murder struck a blow at every one
of us and at free popular government, by which alone right political
principles can be established. We insist, however, that through
liberty alone [370][371] can we
escape the terrors of anarchy—not political freedom, merely,
but economic liberty as well. When we return to natural economic
laws, and labor reaps its full reward, and only then, shall
we have a generally happy and prosperous people, in which anarchy
and aggression will disappear.
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In this connection, also, the mayor
and aldermen of Chicago deserve especial recognition and praise.
While other bodies were passing resolutions with reference to the
president’s death, in which disregard of the genius of our institutions
and even of the dignity of our laws was either expressly urged,
or indirectly encouraged by silence on that point when the mob spirit
was rampant in high places, the mayor and aldermen of Chicago struck
a high note for law and order. They denounced the crime of Mr. McKinley’s
assassin, as vehemently as any other public body, characterizing
it—
as a crime against the illustrious man, as a crime against
his sorrowing family, as a crime against the high and useful
office he held, as a crime against the free institutions of
our democratic-republican government.
They furthermore demanded—
that the perpetrator of this crime, and all instigators and
confederates, should any be discovered, be subjected to the
penalties of the criminal law in their full severity.
But they did not stop there. They went on to rebuke the lawless
spirit of the hour by insisting that punishment in these cases should
be inflicted in no hysterical or vindictive spirit, but—
with all the dignity of outraged justice, and strictly in
conformity to those sacred institutions of our republic which
are designed for the protection of innocence and the preservation
of order and liberty.
The committee which reported these resolutions was chosen by Mayor
Harrison, and was composed of Aldermen Mavor, Goldzier, Bennett,
Smulski, Dunn, Scully and Byrne. The council adopted the resolutions
unanimously. In a city in which there has been so marked a disposition
by mobs incited—in the name of law and order, God save the mark—by
some newspapers and some individuals, this action of the mayor and
council is especially gratifying. They, and not the promoters and
stimulators of hysteria, have, as we believe, faithfully represented
the sentiment of Chicago.
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Virginia has more to mourn than
the death of a president. The half-masted flags and the somber draperies
that mark her public buildings tell a double story of humiliation
and sorrow. For Virginia, the home of Jefferson and Madison and
the scene of Patrick Henry’s thrilling speech for liberty, has become
the first to propose repudiation of free government as a failure.
Her constitutional convention, carried away let us hope by the emotional
insanity of the hour, has decided to strike “freedom of speech”
out of the liberties guaranteed in her bill of rights. This must
have been in obedience to a crazy impulse, for who can conceive
an act so self-destructive and revolutionary, as deliberately possible
in the organic-law-making body of any American state? With those
words struck out of the constitution of Virginia, any Virginia legislature
can prohibit public speaking of any kind that it disapproves. To
give up such a right, the right of free speech, for which our race
has fought for more than a thousand years, is to give up one of
the great essentials of liberty. And for what? To secure safety
for the lives of public officials? No. Free speech is a better guarantee
against assassination than suppression is. Where free speech goes
out, underground conspiracies come in. That is one of the lessons
of history. But suppose it were otherwise. Suppose that safety for
officials could be purchased by putting a gag upon public speech.
Would it be worth the price? Is not old Ben Franklin’s maxim as
true in spirit to-day as in the days “that tried men’s souls”? Here
is one of the best lessons which that sage of our infant republic
left us:
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little
temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Is it yet too late for the Virginia convention to withdraw from
the path of absolutism upon which it has entered? Cannot the one
voice that was raised in that convention against this suicidal action,
the voice of A. C. Braxton, one of the republican leaders—cannot
he resurrect the deadened democracy of his Democratic colleagues?
Shall panic, played upon by traitors to liberty, be allowed to swamp
this republic as it has swamped all others? And shall Virginia—of
all the states, Virginia—shall she lead the way into the quagmires
of absolutism?
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How short a time since the people
of the south were supposed to have almost a monopoly of the lawless
spirit which has risen now black and grim above the whole country.
Southern mobs have burned negroes suspected of crimes against women,
and Southern opinion, Southern papers, Southern pulpits and Southern
statesmen have apologized for it—have even urged it on. Northern
as well as Southern mobs are now possessed of the same spirit of
crime. They would tear limb from limb men and women whom they do
not even suspect, whom no one really suspects, but whom they wish
to suspect, of complicity in the murder of the president. How plainly
this shows that the spirit of the mob belongs exclusively to no
section. It is all one, the burning of negroes with impunity by
mobs in the South, and the cry for mob vengeance against “anarchists”
by press and preachers and public officials in the North. But out
of the South there comes a voice to which in this hour of popular
madness the whole country should stop and listen. Quincy Ewing,
rector of an Episcopalian church in Mississippi, a southerner of
southerners, preaches to a Mississippi congregation against Southern
lynching in a tone that should reach the ear of the North also—not
as a lesson to the North on the sins of the South, but as a lesson
on its own sins. Mr. Ewing’s sermon, republished from the Boston
Herald in our Miscellany department this week, comes to the country
as a message with ref- [371][372] erence
to lynching “anarchists,” almost as pointedly as if that, instead
of Negro lynching, were its burden. The same remark applies to the
Boston Herald editorial with which we introduce the sermon. It is
to hoped [sic] that in discussing the murder of President
McKinley, the Herald has preserved the same balance.
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In Russia they make no “fine-spun
distinctions” about anarchy. Says a news report of September 12,
from St. Petersburg:
The pupils of a young ladies’
school near Count Tolstoi’s residence at Yasnaia, who, with
the teacher and other young persons of the neighborhood, called
upon him and presented the count with flowers, have been arrested
and their teacher has been dismissed.
That attitude of government toward such anarchists as Tolstoi,
influenced as it is by no “fine-spun distinctions” between anarchists
who want to kill and those who want to stop killing, ought to be
satisfactory even to David B. Hill.
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