The Real Assassin

     The Rev. Dr. Jacob Cooper, Vice President of Rutgers College, yesterday sent the following letter to the proprietor of the New York “Journal”:—
     “Sir—While the world stands aghast at the horror recently enacted at Buffalo, it looks beyond the weak miscreant who fired the shot at our noble President. It sees in you and those like you, the leaders of a reckless press, the forces which make such an act possible. Behind the much abused license of printing you have for years been uttering, both by word and by picture, that which you knew to be lies of the most damnable blackness, from the vantage ground of your (coward’s) fort. This constant hell broth of vituperation and lies, spewed out all over the land, has done its legitimate work.
     “It has incited weak men, like this ignorant and fanatical Polish anarchist, to do a deed in which you, the real assassin, gloat in your immortal soul, but from which in your craven terror you crouch like a frightened hare.
     “Why don’t you, if what you have been saying for years be true, repeat it now? If false, why do you not have the manliness to admit that all your utterances about the President and Vice President were conscious, premeditated lies? All good men and women in this nation denounce you and your like as THE REAL ASSASSIN WHO FIRED THE SHOT. I denounced you from the pulpit yesterday and shall do so, supplementing your own conscience with the testimony that you, to the full extent of your ability, are the REAL ASSASSIN OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY.
     “Carry with yourself, day and night everywhere, while you curse the earth with your presence, the consciousness that every honorable and virtuous man and woman in our land that has had the opportunity to know the facts holds you and your like responsible for this awful horror, and loathe you, not to the extent your conduct deserves, but to the reach of their ability.