Part 6

We offered to sacrifice the manhood of the North, and the natural rights of the colored man, upon the altar of the Union. The rejection of that offer saved us from infamy. At one time we refused to allow the loyal black man to come within our lines. We would meet him at the outposts, receive his information, and drive him back to chain and lash. The Government publicly proclaimed that the war was waged to save the Union, with slavery. We were afraid to claim that the negro was a man--afraid to admit that he was property--and so we called him "contraband." We hesitated to allow the negro to fight for his own freedom--hesitated to let him wear the uniform of the nation while he battled for the supremacy of its flag.

These are some of the inconsistencies of the past. In spite of them we advanced. We were educated by events, and at last we clearly saw that slavery was rebellion; that the "institution" had borne its natural fruit--civil war; that the entire country was responsible for slavery, and that slavery was responsible for rebellion. We declared that slavery should be extirpated from the Republic. The great armies led by the greatest commander of the modern world, shattered, crushed and demolished the Rebellion. The North grew grand. The people became sublime. The three sacred amendments were adopted. The Republic was free.

Then came a period of hesitation, apology and fear. The colored citizen was left to his fate. For years the Federal arm, palsied by policy, was powerless to protect; and this period of fear, of hesitation, of apology, of lack of confidence in the right, has borne its natural fruit--this decision of the Supreme Court.

But it is not for me to give you advice. Your conduct has been above all praise. You have been as patient as the earth beneath, as the stars above. You have been law-abiding and industrious, You have not offensively asserted your rights, or offensively borne your wrongs. You have been modest and forgiving. You have returned good for evil. When I remember that the ancestors of my race were in universities and colleges and common schools while you and your fathers were on the auction-block, in the slave-pen, or in the field beneath the cruel lash, in States where reading and writing were crimes, I am astonished at the progress you have made.

All that I--all that any reasonable man--can ask is, that you continue doing as you have done. Above all things--educate your children--strive to make yourselves independent--work for homes--work for yourselves--and wherever it is possible become the masters of yourselves.

Nothing gives me more pleasure than to see your little children with books under their arms, going and coming from school.

It is very easy to see why colored people should hate us, but why we should hate them is beyond my comprehension. They never sold our wives. They never robbed our cradles.. They never scarred our backs. They never pursued us with bloodhounds. They never branded our flesh.

It has been said that it is hard to forgive a man to whom we have done a great injury. I can conceive of no other reason why we should hate the colored people. To us they are a standing reproach. Their history is our shame. Their virtues seem to enrage some white people--their patience to provoke, and their forgiveness to insult. Turn the tables--change places--and with what fierceness, with what ferocity, with what insane and passionate intensity we would hate them!

The colored people do not ask for revenge--they simply ask for justice. They are willing to forget the past--willing to hide their scars--anxious to bury the broken chains, and to forget the miseries and hardships, the tears and agonies, of two hundred years.

The old issues are again upon us. Is this a Nation? Have all citizens of the United States equal rights, without regard to race or color? Is it the duty of the General Government to protect its citizens? Can the Federal arm be palsied by the action or non-action of a State?

Another opportunity is given for the people of this country to take sides. According to my belief, the supreme thing for every man to do is to be absolutely true to himself. All consequences--whether rewards or punishments, whether honor and power, or disgrace and poverty, are as dreams undreamt. I have made my choice. I have taken my stand. Where my brain and heart go, there I will publicly and openly walk. Doing this, is my highest conception of duty. Being allowed to do this, is liberty.

If this is not now a free Government; if citizens cannot now be protected, regardless of race or color; if the three sacred amendments have been undermined by the Supreme Court--we must have another; and if that fails, then another; and we must neither stop, nor pause, until the Constitution shall become a perfect shield for every right, of every human being, beneath our flag.

TRIAL OF C. B. REYNOLDS FOR BLASPHEMY.

Address to the Jury.

* Within thirty miles of New York, in the city of Morristown, New Jersey, a man was put on trial yesterday for distributing a pamphlet argument against the infallibility of the Bible. The crime which the Indictment alleges Is Blasphemy, for which the statutes of New Jersey provide a penalty of two hundred dollars fine, or twelve months imprisonment, or both. It is the first case of the kind ever tried in New Jersey, although the law dates back to colonial days. Charles B. Reynolds is the man on trial, and the State of New Jersey, through the Prosecuting Attorney of Morris County, is the prosecutor. The Circuit Court, Judge Francis Child, assisted by County Judges Munson and Quimby, sit upon the case. Prosecutor Wilder W. Cutler represents the State, and Robert G. Ingersoll appears for the defendant.

Mr. Reynolds went to Boonton last summer to hold "free- thought" meetings. Announcing his purpose without any flourish, he secured a piece of ground, pitched a tent upon it, and invited the towns-people to come and hear him. It was understood that he had been a Methodist minister: that, finding it impossible to reconcile his mind to some of the historical parts of the Bible, and unable to accept it in its entirety as a moral guide, he left the church and set out to proclaim his conclusions. The churches in Boonton arrayed themselves against him. The Catholics and Methodists were especially active. Taking this opposition as an excuse, one element of the town invaded his tent. They pelted Reynolds with ancient eggs and vegetables. They chopped away the guy ropes of the tent and slashed the canvas with their knives. When the tent collapsed, the crowd rushed for the speaker to inflict further punishment by plunging him in the duck pond They rummaged the wrecked tent, but in vain. He had made his way ont in the confusion and was no more seen in Boonton.

But what he had said did not leave Boonton with him, and the pamphlets he had distributed were read by many who probably would not have looked between their covers had his visit been attended by no unusual circumstances. Boonton was still agitated up on the subject when Mr. Reynolds appeared in Morristown. This time he did not try to hold meetings, but had his pamphlets with him.

Mr. Reynolds appeared in Morristown with the pamphlets on October thirteenth. A Boonton delegation was there, clamoring for his indictment for blasphemy. The Grand Jury heard of his visit and found two indictments against him; one for blasphemy at

Boonton and the second for blasphemy at Morristown. He furnished a five hundred dollar bond to appear for trial. On account of Colonel Ingersoll's throat troubles the case was adjourned several times through the winter and until Monday last, when it was set peremptorily for trial yesterday.

The public feeling excited at Boonton was overshadowed by that at Morristown and the neighboring region. For six months no topic was so interesting to the public as this. It monopolized attention at the stores, and became a fruitful subject of gossip in social and church circles. Under such circumstances it was to be expected that everybody who could spare the time would go to court yesterday. Lines of people began to climb the court house hill early in the morning. At the hour of opening court the room set apart for the trial was packed, and distaffs had to be stationed at the foot of the stairs to keep back those who were not early enough. From nine thirty to eleven o'clock the crowd inside talked of blasphemy in all the phases suggested by this case, and the outsiders waited patiently on the lawn and steps and along the dusty approaches to the gray building.

Eleven o'clock brought the train from New York and on it Colonel Ingersoll. His arrival at the court house with his clerk opened a new chapter in the day's gossip. The event was so absorbing indeed, that the crowd failed entirely to notice an elderly man wearing a black frock snit, a silk hat, with an army badge pinned to his coat, and looking like a merchant of means, who entered the court house a few minutes behind the famous lawyer. The last comer was the defendant.

All was ready for the case. Within five minutes five jurors were in the box. Then Colonel Ingersoll asked what were his rights about challenges. He was informed that he might make six peremptory challenges and must challenge before the jurors took their seats. The only disqualification the Court would recognize would be the inability of a juror to change his opinion in spite of evidence. Colonel Ingersoll induced the Court to let him examine the five in the box and promptly ejected two Presbyterians.

Thereafter Colonel Ingersoll examined every juror as soon as presented. He asked particularly about the nature of each man's prejudice, if he had one. To a juror who did not know that he understood the word, the Colonel replied: "I may not define the word legally, but my own idea is that a man is prejudiced when he has made up his mind on a case without knowing anything about it." This juror thought that he came under that category.

Presbyterians had a rather hard time with the examiner. After twenty men had been examined and the defence had exercised five of its peremptory challenges, the following were sworn as jurymen. * * * *

The jury having been sworn, Prosecutor Cutler announced that he would try only the indictment for the offence in Morristown. He said that Reynolds was charged with distributing pamphlets containing matter claimed to be blasphemous under the law. If the charge could be proved he asked a verdict of guilty. Then he called sixteen towns- people, to most of whom Reynolds had given a pamphlet.

Colonel Ingersoll tried to get the Presbyterian witnesses to say that they had read the pamphlet. Not one of them admitted it. Further than this he attempted no cross-examination.

"I do not know that I shall have any witnesses one way or the other," Colonel Ingersoll said, rising to suggest a recess. "Perhaps after dinner I may feel like making a few remarks."

"There will be great disappointment if you do not" Judge Child responded, in a tone that meant a word for himself as well as for the other listeners. The spectators nodded approval to this sentiment. At 4:20 o'clock Col. Ingersoll having spoken since 2 o'clock, Judge Child adjourned court until this morning.

As Colonel Ingersoll left the room a throng pressed after him to offer congratulations. One old man said: "Colonel Ingersoll I am a Presbyterian pastor, but I must say that was the noblest speech in defence of liberty I ever heard! Your hand, sir; your hand,"--The Times, New York, May 20,1887.

GENTLEMEN of the Jury: I regard this as one of the most important cases that can be submitted to a jury. It is not a case that involves a little property, neither is it one that involves simply the liberty of one man. It involves the freedom of speech, the intellectual liberty of every citizen of New Jersey.

The question to be tried by you is whether a man has the right to express his honest thought; and for that reason there can be no case of greater importance submitted to a jury. And it may be well enough for me, at the outset, to admit that there could be no case in which I could take a greater--a deeper interest. For my part, I would not wish to live in a world where I could not express my honest opinions. Men who deny to others the right of speech are not fit to live with honest men.

I deny the right of any man, of any number of men, of any church, of any State, to put a padlock on the lips--to make the tongue a convict. I passionately deny the right of the Herod of authority to kill the children of the brain. A man has a right to work with his hands, to plow the earth, to sow the seed, and that man has a right to reap the harvest. If we have not that right, then all are slaves except those who take these rights from their fellow-men. If you have the right to work with your hands and to gather the harvest for yourself and your children, have you not a right to cultivate your brain? Have you not the right to read, to observe, to investigate--and when you have so read and so investigated, have you not the right to reap that field? And what is it to reap that field? It is simply to express what you have ascertained--simply to give your thoughts to your fellow-men.

If there is one subject in this world worthy of being discussed, worthy of being understood, it is the question of intellectual liberty. Without that, we are simply painted clay; without that, we are poor, miserable serfs and slaves. If you have not the right to express your opinions, if the defendant has not this right, then no man ever walked beneath the blue of heaven that had the right to express his thought. If others claim the right, where did they get it? How did they happen to have it, and how did you happen to be deprived of it? Where did a church or a nation get that right?

Are we not all children of the same Mother? Are we not all compelled to think, whether we wish to or not? Can you help thinking as you do? When you look out upon the woods, the fields,--when you look at the solemn splendors of the night--these things produce certain thoughts in your mind, and they produce them necessarily. No man can think as he desires. No man controls the action of his brain, any more than he controls the action of his heart. The blood pursues its old accustomed ways in spite of you. The eyes see, if you open them, in spite of you. The ears hear, if they are unstopped, without asking your permission. And the brain thinks in spite of you. Should you express that thought? Certainly you should, if others express theirs. You have exactly the same right. He who takes it from you is a robber.

For thousands of years people have been trying to force other people to think their way. Did they succeed? No. Will they succeed? No. Why? Because brute force is not an argument. You can stand with the lash over a man, or you can stand by the prison door, or beneath the gallows, or by the stake, and say to this man: "Recant or the lash descends, the prison door is locked upon you, the rope is put about your neck, or the torch is given to the fagot." And so the man recants. Is he convinced? Not at all. Have you produced a new argument? Not the slightest. And yet the ignorant bigots of this world have been trying for thousands of years to rule the minds of men by brute force. They have endeavored to improve the mind by torturing the flesh--to spread religion with the sword and torch. They have tried to convince their brothers by putting their feet in iron boots, by putting fathers, mothers, patriots, philosophers and philanthropists in dungeons. And what has been the result? Are we any nearer thinking alike to-day than we were then?

No orthodox church ever had power that it did not endeavor to make people think its way by force and flame. And yet every church that ever was established commenced in the minority, and while it was in the minority advocated free speech--every one. John Calvin, the founder of the Presbyterian Church, while he lived in France, wrote a book on religious toleration in order to show that all men had an equal right to think; and yet that man afterward, clothed in a little authority, forgot all his sentiments about religious liberty, and had poor Servetus burned at the stake, for differing with him on a question that neither of them knew anything about. In the minority, Calvin advocated toleration--in the majority, he practiced murder.

I want you to understand what has been done in the world to force men to think alike. It seems to me that if there is some infinite being who wants us to think alike, he would have made us alike. Why did he not do so? Why did he make your brain so that you could not by any possibility be a Methodist? Why did he make yours so that you could not be a Catholic? And why did he make the brain of another so that he is an unbeliever--why the brain of another so that he became a Mohammedan--if he wanted us all to believe alike?

After all, may be Nature is good enough and grand enough and broad enough to give us the diversity born of liberty. May be, after all, it would not be best for us all to be just the same. What a stupid world, if everybody said yes to everything that everybody else might say.

The most important thing in this world is liberty. More important than food or clothes--more important than gold or houses or lands--more important than art or science--more important than all religions, is the liberty of man.

If civilization tends to do away with liberty, then I agree with Mr. Buckle that civilization is a curse. Gladly would I give up the splendors of the nineteenth century--gladly would I forget every invention that has leaped from the brain of man--gladly would I see all books ashes, all works of art destroyed, all statues broken, and all the triumphs of the world lost--gladly, joyously would I go back to the abodes and dens of savagery, if that were necessary to preserve the inestimable gem of human liberty. So would every man who has a heart and brain.

How has the church in every age, when in authority, defended itself? Always by a statute against blasphemy, against argument, against free speech. And there never was such a statute that did not stain the book that it was in, and that did not certify to the savagery of the men who passed it. Never. By making a statute and by defining blasphemy, the church sought to prevent discussion--sought to prevent argument--sought to prevent a man giving his honest opinion. Certainly a tenet, a dogma, a doctrine, is safe when hedged about by a statute that prevents your speaking against it. In the silence of slavery it exists. It lives because lips are locked. It lives because men are slaves.

If I understand myself, I advocate only the doctrines that in my judgment will make this world happier and better. If I know myself, I advocate only those things that will make a man a better citizen, a better father, a kinder husband--that will make a woman a better wife, a better mother--doctrines that will fill every home with sunshine and with joy. And if I believed that anything I should say to-day would have any other possible tendency, I would stop. I am a believer in liberty. That is my religion--to give to every other human being every right that I claim for myself, and I grant to every other human being, not the right--because it is his right--but instead of granting I declare that it is his right, to attack every doctrine that I maintain, to answer every argument that I urge--in other words, he must have absolute freedom of speech.

I am a believer in what I call "intellectual hospitality." A man comes to your door. If you are a gentleman and he appears to be a good man, you receive him with a smile. You ask after his health. You say: "Take a chair; are you thirsty, are you hungry, will you not break bread with me?" That is what a hospitable, good man does--he does not set the dog on him. Now, how should we treat a new thought? I say that the brain should be hospitable and say to the new thought: "Come in; sit down; I want to cross-examine you; I want to find whether you are good or bad; if good, stay; if bad, I don't want to hurt you--probably you think you are all right,--but your room is better than your company, and I will take another idea in your place." Why not? Can any man have the egotism to say that he has found it all out? No. Every man who has thought, knows not only how little he knows, but how little every other human being knows, and how ignorant, after all, the world must be.

There was a time in Europe when the Catholic Church had power. And I want it distinctly understood with this jury, that while I am opposed to Catholicism I am not opposed to Catholics--while I am opposed to Presbyterianism I am not opposed to Presbyterians. I do not fight people,--I fight ideas, I fight principles, and I never go into personalities. As I said, I do not hate Presbyterians, but Presbyterianism--that is, I am opposed to their doctrine. I do not hate a man that has the rheumatism--I hate the rheumatism when it has a man. So I attack certain principles because I think they are wrong, but I always want it understood that I have nothing against persons--nothing against victims.

There was a time when the Catholic Church was in power in the Old World. All at once there arose a man called Martin Luther, and what did the dear old Catholics think? "Oh," they said, "that man and his followers are going to hell." But they did not go. They were very good people. They may have been mistaken--I do not know. I think they were right in their opposition to Catholicism--but I have just as much objection to the religion they founded as I have to the church they left. But they thought they were right, and they made very good citizens, and it turned out that their differing from the Mother Church did not hurt them. And then after awhile they began to divide, and there arose Baptists; and-the other gentlemen, who believed in this law that is now in New Jersey, began cutting off their ears so that they could hear better; they began putting them in prison so that they would have a chance to think. But the Baptists turned out to be good folks--first rate--good husbands, good fathers, good citizens. And in a little while, in England, the people turned to be Episcopalians, on account of a little war that Henry VIII. had with the Pope,--and I always sided with the Pope in that war--but it made no difference; and in a little while the Episcopalians turned out to be just about like other folks--no worse--and, as I know of, no better.

After awhile arose the Puritan, and the Episcopalian said, "We don't want anything of him--he is a bad man;" and they finally drove some of them away and they settled in New England, and there were among them Quakers, than whom there never were better people on the earth--industrious, frugal, gentle, kind and loving--and yet these Puritans began hanging them. They said: "They are corrupting our children; if this thing goes on, everybody will believe in being kind and gentle and good, and what will become of us?" They were honest about it. So they went to cutting off ears. But the Quakers were good people and none of the prophecies were fulfilled.