University of Virginia Library

LETTER XLIV.

Dear Charles,—“You wrong me every way.” I do not
say that no good and pious men can be found in extreme abolitionisms,
and among the anti-death penalty advocates.
Good men are often mistaken, and may frequently be found
in bad company. But if a crane be entrapped with the
geese or snared in their net, it must of necesity get now
and then a rough handling around the neck.

Nor do I expect “to be elected grand hang-master general,”
any more than the meek Burleigh expects to be made
grand soup-master of the murderer's pap-house; where
Ethiopians shed their old coats and soon sport a new skin:
in other words, where all bloody villains are made into
saints by virtue of modern doctrines, and the sweet and
gentle moral suasion of imprisonment for life! If such do
shed an old hide, it is after the manner of venomous serpents,
which come forth in early summer, new on the outside, but
with the old nature within.

I am not moved by your appeal about the dreadful consequences
of death to a murderer. For, if the life of a
wilful and malicious murderer is forfeited by a divine command,
and if the instinctive voice of unsophisticated nature

cries “blood for blood,” the consequences of that murderer's
death belong to himself. If he perish beyond the
grave, it is his own act. But show, sir, if you can, why a
man may not, and cannot, make his peace with God, in six
weeks, as well as in six or sixty years?

Be it, first, as most of the anti-gallows men will probably
affirm, that the whole power of changing our hearts is our
own: then, why should not a man who knows assuredly that
he must die within a given number of months, why should
he not immediately change his heart and be ready? Or
put it, in the second place, on our ground, that a man needs
the divine aid to repent and believe; will not sincere and
earnest prayer gain that aid as well now as at any subsequent
period? For my part, I have very little confidence
in the thorough evangelical penitence of pardoned murderers;
yet whatever their penitence be, it need not be delayed
a single hour.

It is more than probable, however, that many persons
are deluded, and secretly believe that, if a murderer shall
externally reform by the pressure of outward circumstances,
he will become somewhat entitled to the grace of penitence
and of faith; and, that many more believe that, when the
enormity of his crime is diminished by length of time, and
the world has in a measure forgotten that crime, all this
takes place in the Divine mind. There is a perpetual and
almost irresistible tendency in us, to make “God altogether
such an one as ourselves;” and we do, in spite of our reason
and judgment, often detect our hearts thus feeling and
prompting our words and actions: thence, we are in danger
of supposing that with God virtue and vice, and praise and
blame, and reward and punishment, are matters of time,
and place, and circumstances, and that He is moved by impulses
as we are. Because we, in length of time forget or
palliate the crime of the murderer, we suppose all is thus
measurably forgotten before God.

Why is it, however, that under the most favorable circumstances,
so very few criminals, after being years in
prison, ever become true Christians? How rarely even
honest men! I have had personal acquaintance with several
such men, and they all were just as had, to say the
least, after their imprisonment as before. One that I employed

in my family robbed me of whatever he could; although
I treated him with great kindness, and appealed continually
to his honor, and reminded him repeatedly of the
importance of redeeming his character from the stigma of
the jail. Is there any special reason for thinking that murderers
shall of necessity be exceptions? Is there any thing
in the enormity of their crime so potent, that thought about
it, above all other crimes, shall change the assassin's heart?
that he shall go into prison a ferocious, blood-thirsty tiger,
and come out, or there be made, a meek and innocent lamb?
Is the villain, who has done one murder, for that special
reason, less likely to do another? Or if the power is not
resident in the nature of the crime to awaken the repentance
of the soul, and to change its moral nature, is God so
moved by the baseness and enormity of the murderer that
He prefers (I speak most reverently) to convert that kind
of criminal rather than any other?

No! no! The wretch who has done one wilful murder,
either for hate or gold, will for that reason do a thousand.
He has tasted blood; and a strange taste for blood awakes
in his heart! he has deliberately cast out all of heaven that
may have remained in his heart, and all of hell has entered!
He may be unhappy, but he loves and cherishes the
hellish principle; it is his food! And when he is liberated,
or escapes from his dungeon, he comes forth a malignant
fiend, and like Freeman, the negro-demon, he will wash his
very soul in blood, and dance in triumph, flourishing his
accursed knife, amidst the gashed and gory victims of his
infernal hate!

It is more than probable—it is certain—that pseudo-philanthropy,
in carrying out its absurd schemes, must end in
inflicting on the imprisoned the most inhuman and atrocious
tortures. Its tender mercy will become cruelty. Will a
murderer, in all coming ages, never again murder a keeper
—a fellow prisoner? If so, then will meek and saintly
and sickly false philanthropy begin with its disgustful twattle:
“Oh! you naughty man! do reflect on what you have
done! Goodness alive! how could you be so thoughtless as
to commit this second crime—and in the very sanctuary of
your penitence and reformation? What! in this enlightened
age! the schoolmaster abroad in the land! locomotives

going at the rate of a mile a minute! and magnetic telegraphs
in all directions!—in spite of all, kill your keeper!
For shame!” And then, like a certain naval officer in some
of Marryat's books, pseudo-philanthropy, warming itself
into a natural indignation, by indulging in rebuke, ends at
last with: “You infernal rascal and most blood-thirsty villain,
if it were not contrary to our Christian principles, we
would hang you up like a dog! but, any how, take that!
and that!”

I repeat again and again, Charles, that I do entirely absolve
some ultra folks from all evil intention; but the cool
impertinence of many, and their very modest assumption of
all the benevolence, and philanthropy, and virtue, and common
sense of the world, is enough to provoke a saint; and,
hence, we ordinary good men cannot be wholly unmoved.

It is often said that death has no terrors for very bad
men; that when bent on murder they will commit the
crime whatever be the penalty. Perhaps in sudden quarrels,
where persons are slain, it may be that homicide occurs
without thought of consequences; and that neither
jails nor gallows can prevent such unpremeditated murders.
But it is not true that the fear of death will not prevent
cool and premeditated murder. It is the hope of escape by
flight, by concealment, by bribery, by want of testimony,
by breaking from jail, and in an hundred other modes,
which emboldens the assassin. If the death penalty was in
every case speedy and inevitable, deliberate and wilful
murder, from hate or avarice, or revenge of wounded honor
and pride, would be exceedingly rare.

Beauty, helplessness, innocence, remonstrance, and all
such things deter not the highwayman from robbery and
murder. Boldly rush upon him with a deadly weapon, and
the fear of death often puts him to flight in a moment.
Such men would infinitely rather be “living dogs than dead
lions.” And why this intense desire on the part of condemned
criminals, and their nearest friends, to have the
punishment of death commuted for banishment or perpetual
imprisonment? And why do such criminals, when a
change of punishment is announced, why do they leap almost
frantic with joy, and seem ready to lick the very dust
at your feet? Common sense understands why—but the

refined sense of sophistry can doubtless account for these
things on principles diametrically opposite.

Charles, granting that neither the fear of death, nor of
perpetual imprisonment, is any bar to the commission of
murder, where men's moral feelings, sensibilities, and principles
are wholly blunted and lost by long habits of wickedness,
is there not remaining a great mass of society to be
affected by good laws and wholesome examples of severity?
It may be granted, that some men are beyond the reach of
all human means of prevention and cure; shall it be concluded
that all men are in that state?—and that because the
execution of one murderer deters not another—who is a
murderer already by the want of proper training, and malicious
temper,—the execution will have no salutary and
preventive influence on the better, or the less bad?

Judging from my own feelings and reflections at an execution,
and from what I observed of other spectators at the
time, and from the remarks afterwards made in my hearing,
I must ever believe—unless human nature suddenly
and wholly changes—that executions, even in public, do awe
down the soul, and make one shudder at the possibility of
committing such a crime as would make his life a just forfeit
to the laws. Never was I so impressed with the value
of human life, as when I saw in the solemnity of that execution
for a wilful murder, how high God and Nature estimate
our blood, in thus requiring it at our brother's hand.

If the awful nature of that unnatural crime was constantly
inculcated by prompt visitations of blood for blood,
on the head of the wilful murderer, the moral sense of the
community would not become so debased that we come at
length to think with David Hume, that “suicide or murder
merely diverts a little red fluid from its ordinary channel!”
No!—we should, on the contrary, feel that the wilful and
deliberate murderer is an unholy apostate that most impiously
dares put his accursed foot on the image of his Maker!
—and, therefore, that he ought to die! We should feel that
any other punishment was a presumptuous insult to the
Governor of the world, who allows no expediency to palliate,
much less excuse, a departure from his clearly expressed
and positive laws.

That punishment is sometimes disciplinary and corrective,

is admitted; but that it is often intended to be utterly
destructive, is evident. The Bible is full on this point. The
daily and hourly providence of God in the government of the
world is full. And even corrective punishment derives its
efficacy from the premonition thus given, of a punishment
that is final, destructive, and not disciplinary—it is always
a foretaste of what irremediable evil must come, unless we
reform. When a man is past reform, or when he commits
certain crimes, marking, as an index point, the state of moral
turpitude, that almost uniformly precludes his honest repentance,
then comes the doom, of which previous chastisement
was the type. As to this life, deliberate and wilful murder
is a crime, which God says is beyond the efficacy of ordinary
corrective inflictions (and all experience corroborates
this fact)—and, therefore, such murder merits a destructive
punishment; and that punishment is death.

The instinctive voice of nature will arm every man with
deadly weapons, when the government of a country basely
abandons his defence, and endeavors vainly to reform those
that it should destroy. When and how communities may
and should throw themselves back upon natural rights, and
redress their own wrongs, is a nice question; but certain is
it, that all falsely merciful principles, if pseudo-philanthropy
shall prevail, must tend to provoke revolutionary movements.
Nor does it matter under what pretexts legislators and
judges and juries habitually acquit criminals; or change
the death penalty for imprisonment; or pardon entirely;—
a “state of insane affections,” will at length arise in the
community, and “violent fits of madness” coming upon the
avengers of blood, homicides and wilful murderers all alike,
without the mockery of trial, will instantly pay—“life for
life.”

I know mawkish and effeminate and affected mildness
says, “Oh, I guess not!” But—why, Charles, we feel indignation
now!—and after all the contemptible flummery,
with which some would soothe and coax, and whine us into
their mercy—we feel there might be times when we might
become members of a lynch-law-club!

Charles!—and mark it!—justice is not mercy, nor is it
love. It is separately and distinctly Justice, and nothing
more nor less, nor any thing else. It may, indeed, be merciful

to be just, but it can never be merciful to be unjust.
Justice has its own peculiar and appropriate claims; and
these claims must ever be regarded and met, or justice is
outraged. Any other view will destroy the perfection of
God; and He cannot then have the love and adoration of
the universe. Error here lays of necessity the foundation
for all false schemes of punishment, present or future; and
hence Universalists, and every cognate infidelity, cry from
their hundred mouths, “away with the death penalty!”
Still we hold on, and sing back, “Justitia fiat!”

Let us, then, Charles, with the old fashioned philanthropists,
“uphold the gallows;” whether the oily tongues of
puling smoothfacedness say, we are fit for hangmen—or
even, as is likely meant,—fit to be hanged.