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Cornell University Law Library 
 
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HOMICIDE, 
 
 NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 BEING A COMPARATIVE VIEW OF CRIME 
 
 AGAINST THE PERSON IN SEVERAL 
 
 PARTS OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 BY 
 
 H. V. REDFIELD. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
 1880. 
 
Copyright, 1880, by H. V. Redfield. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 This book is not written in a sectional or party 
 spirit. There is no intent upon the part of the writer 
 to influence a political result or extol one section of 
 our common country over another. But in a large 
 experience in nearh' all the Southern States I have 
 been impressed with the frequency of homicide, — 
 averaging perhaps a homicide a day in a given State 
 for months at a time, and that, too, where the popu- 
 lation was but one-fifth or one-sixth as great as that 
 of Pennsylvania or New York. And, further, that 
 popular attention among those most interested was 
 so little aroused by the frequency of this crime. In 
 those States where the homicidal tendency of the 
 population has such large development, the usual 
 answer to suggestions that man-slaying is very fre- 
 quent is something like this : " Oh, there are no 
 more murders among us than among other people ; 
 there are murders everywhere, always have been and 
 always will be ;" or, " Murder is as frequent in the 
 Northern States or in Europe as here ;" or, " There 
 
 3 
 
4 PREFACE. 
 
 are more murders in New York City or Boston than 
 in our whole State." They regret and deplore crimes 
 of this nature, but accept them as evils that cannot 
 be helped, evils that must be borne, and content 
 themselves with reflections that every civilized coun- 
 try has a murder rate equal to, or even in excess of, 
 that which prevails in most of the Southern States. 
 
 The object of this book is to show how very erro- 
 neous these conclusions are, and to try and arouse 
 the governing elements in the South to a proper ap- 
 preciation of the evil that afflicts society, to the end 
 that there may be increased respect for human life 
 and less consideration shown man-slayers in the 
 courts. 
 
 No civilization yet attained has been equal to the 
 entire suppression of murder. It occurs in all coun- 
 tries and among all people. But that it should be 
 from four to fifteen times more frequent in the South- 
 ern States of our own country than elsewhere is 
 calculated to arouse the latent forces of society 
 against the continuance permanently of this condi- 
 tion of things. 
 
 The writer has spent the greater portion of his life 
 in the Southern States. The friends of his youth are 
 there. In an extended experience as a resident of 
 one of the Southern States, and as correspondent of 
 the Cincinnati Commercial visiting them all again 
 
PREFACE. 5 
 
 and again, he has experienced nothing but kindness. 
 There is no malice in this book. Were the brighter 
 sides of Southern life only dealt with, the hospitality, 
 the generosity, the courage, and the finer and more 
 lovable qualities of the Southern population set 
 forth, the book to be written would be much larger 
 than this. There is more good than evil in the 
 South; more that is lovable than there is that is 
 reprehensible; more cause for hope than for despond- 
 ency. In this little work the writer deals with one 
 of the greatest evils that afflict Southern society, 
 with the belief and the hope that it can be remedied. 
 
 It is not political. Although there have been 
 many political murders in the Southern States, yet 
 the great majority of homicides, and the class dealt 
 with in this book, have no more connection with 
 politics than has petit larceny in New York. 
 
 Washington, D. C, July i, 1880. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I.— Homicide Contrasted, South and North . . 9 
 
 II. — Homicide in Ohio 21 
 
 III. — Homicide in Massachusetts 26 
 
 IV. — Homicide in Kentucky 36 
 
 V. — Homicide in Texas .63 
 
 VI. — Homicide in South Carolina .... 86 
 VII. — Homicide in Indiana and Illinois . . .110 
 VIII. — Personal Difficulties Forty Years ago and 
 
 now 118 
 
 IX. — Homicide in Pennsylvania 126 
 
 X. — Homicide in New York 132 
 
 XI. — Homicide in Iowa, Minnesota, and Michigan . 136 
 XII. — Homicide in other States — Vermont, Rhode 
 
 Island, Maine, Louisiana, Mississippi, Etc. . 144 
 
 XIII. — Census Vital Statistics 171 
 
 XIV. — Shocking Crimes 176 
 
 XV. — Comparisons by States and Counties . . .182 
 XVI. — Carrying Concealed Weapons . . . .193 
 
HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 HOMICIDE CONTRASTED, SOUTH AND NORTH. 
 
 The life of a human being is surrounded by an 
 awful sanctity, and from time immemorial the ad- 
 vance of civilization has been marked not only by 
 an increased respect for human life, but by the en- 
 acting and enforcement of adequate penalties against 
 those who slay their fellow-men. In England, in 
 the last four hundred and fifty years, the murder rate 
 has decreased fully eighteen hundred per cent., cal- 
 culating the relative number of homicides to popu- 
 lation. In England and Wales, with an aggregate 
 population of over twenty-five millions, the number 
 of homicides returned by the coroners' juries as 
 "wilful murders" average about two hundred and 
 thirty-five per annum, or less than one annually to 
 every one hundred thousand inhabitants. Of homi- 
 cides of all descriptions, including infanticide, there 
 are about three hundred and seventy-five annually. 
 
 In our own country, in all the New England 
 States, in the agricultural regions of New York, 
 Pennsylvania, Northern Ohio, and many portions of 
 
 9 
 
10 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 Michigan and Wisconsin, the rate is not higher than 
 in England. Among the rural population of the 
 New England States the number of felonious homi- 
 cides do not exceed a yearly average of one to every 
 one hundred and fifty thousand population. 
 
 It is in the late slave States that the number of 
 homicides in proportion to population is far in ex- 
 cess of the rate ever known in the Northern States, 
 or in England for the past four hundred and fifty 
 years. 
 
 Upon a close investigation of this subject it is 
 found : 
 
 First. That the number of homicides in the South- 
 ern States is proportionately greater than in any 
 country on earth the population of which is rated 
 as civilized. 
 
 Second. That the number of homicides in the 
 Southern States since the war reaches the enormous 
 aggregate of at least forty thousand. Continuing 
 through a generation at the same rate, the destruc- 
 tion of life would equal that of a great war. 
 
 There were in the States of Texas, Kentucky, and 
 South Carolina in the year 1878 seven hundred and 
 thirty-four homicides. During the same time there 
 were five hundred and twenty-two persons severely 
 wounded by shots and stabs. Estimating that fifteen 
 per cent, of the severely and dangerously wounded 
 afterwards died of their wounds, it swells the number 
 of homicides in these three States in one year to an 
 a gg re g ate of e 'g nt hundred and twelve. This is a 
 low estimate of the fatality of wounds. Where, how- 
 
HOMICIDE CONTRASTED, SOUTH AND NORTH. It 
 
 ever, there was no doubt of the mortal character of 
 the wound, it was classed as a homicide. 
 
 The year 1878 was a fair one for comparison, as 
 there were no unusual disturbances that year. Taking 
 it as an average year, multiply by the number since 
 the war, and it would give these three States twelve 
 thousand one hundred and eighty homicides. If 
 killing of human beings was equally frequent in the 
 other Southern States, — and in many of them it is, — 
 the aggregate since the war would reach fifty thou- 
 sand. But in some of the Southern States, notably 
 Virginia, the rate of homicide is much less than in 
 these three States. On the other hand, the rate in 
 Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas is higher than 
 in South Carolina and Kentucky, which would bring 
 up the average. But in Texas the rate is undoubt- 
 edly higher than in any other Southern State of 
 equal population, which would lower the average. 
 Throw off ten thousand because of a higher average 
 in Texas than in the other States, and it leaves forty 
 thousand. After making all allowances for miscal- 
 culation and errors of average, I believe that there 
 has been every one of forty thousand homicides in 
 the Southern States since the war. Taking Texas, 
 Kentucky, and South Carolina as average States, 
 and the year 1878 as an average year, the number is 
 fully fifty thousand. 
 
 The homicides in these three States in the year 
 1878 present some amazing contrasts, and bring out 
 the differences between the Southern and the North- 
 ern civilizations in vivid colors. 
 
I2 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 In Texas during the year there were more homi- 
 cides than in the ten States of Maine, New Hamp- 
 shire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Con- 
 necticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and 
 Minnesota, with an aggregate population of nearly 
 if not quite seventeen millions. 
 
 In Kentucky that year there were more homicides 
 than in the eight States of Maine, New Hampshire, 
 Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, 
 Pennsylvania, and Minnesota, with an aggregate 
 population of nearly ten millions. 
 
 In South Carolina that year there were more 
 homicides than in the eight States of Maine, New 
 Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, 
 Connecticut, Michigan, and Minnesota, with an ag- 
 gregate population of about six millions. 
 
 This shows a bad condition of things, and one 
 that could and should be remedied. The excess of 
 murder and manslaughter in the Southern States was 
 not confined to the year 1878. It exists every year. 
 But I selected that year because it is a fair, average 
 period, and without unusual disturbances in any 
 quarter, either political or communistic. 
 
 It may be asked, Why select Texas, Kentucky, 
 and South Carolina for figures upon which to base 
 an estimate ? Because in each of these States there 
 is published one newspaper covering local affairs in 
 the entire State with a degree of thoroughness that 
 enables at least an approximate collection of the 
 homicides happening in these States for a given 
 period. In the other Southern States an examina- 
 
HOMICIDE CONTRASTED, SOUTH AND NORTH, j, 
 
 tion of the files of from three to five of the principal 
 newspapers would be necessary to collect accounts 
 of all the homicides in those States for a given 
 period, and even then the result would be doubtful. 
 But in each of these three States named there is one 
 newspaper which has departments of local State 
 news, well kept up year after year, and not allowed 
 to be greatly interfered with by " pressure of other 
 matter." Even these papers often miss homicides, — 
 that is, there are cases in their respective States of 
 which no mention happens to be made in their col- 
 umns, — but probably the number missed is not above 
 ten or fifteen per cent, of the whole. In these and 
 other Southern States, I have been unable to find 
 any record of homicides except in newspapers. 
 Another reason for selecting these three States is 
 because they are widely separated, inhabited by the 
 same general class of population as the other ex- 
 slave States, and, all three taken together, can rea- 
 sonably be supposed to give an approximately fair 
 average. The population of these three States is 
 about half a million less than that of the New Eng- 
 land States. At the same rate of slaughter there 
 would be in New England over nine hundred homi- 
 cides annually. There has not been as many in the 
 past eighteen years. In other words, the population 
 of these three Southern States kill one another at a 
 rate about eighteen hundred per cent, greater than do 
 the population of New England. In New England 
 it is comparatively easy to collect the number of 
 homicides for a given period from official documents, 
 
!4 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 and details of each case can be had from newspaper 
 files. There is hardly a murder in any New England 
 State that escapes the columns of the Springfield 
 (Massachusetts) Republican, and certainly from three 
 or four leading papers all can be collected. The av- 
 erage in all the six New England States is about fifty 
 annually among about four millions of population. 
 
 In the three Southern States named, allowing that 
 a small per cent, of those dangerously wounded died 
 of their wounds, we find over eight hundred homi- 
 cides in one year. Fearful as this aggregate is, it 
 probably falls short of the truth, taking one year 
 with another. In a single month I have known 
 twenty-six Kentucky homicides to be reported in 
 the Courier-Journal, and two others not reported, 
 making twenty-eight, or at the rate of three hundred 
 and thirty-six per annum. Massachusetts, with a 
 much larger population, has not so many in a year 
 as often happens in Kentucky in thirty days. The 
 year I selected for comparison, 1878, there were two 
 hundred and nineteen homicides reported in Ken- 
 tucky, and the number in Massachusetts was twenty, 
 with a population about one hundred and forty thou- 
 sand in excess of that of Kentucky. 
 
 In many of the Northern States it is quite easy to 
 collect the number of homicides, either from a care- 
 fully-kept annual registration report, such as that of 
 Massachusetts, Vermont, and Rhode Island, or from 
 the sworn returns of clerks of courts, as in Pennsyl- 
 vania, giving each year the number of indictments for 
 murder and manslaughter in the several counties. 
 
HOMICIDE CONTRASTED, SOUTH AND NORTH. r j 
 
 The registration report of Massachusetts extends 
 back nearly forty years, and is very complete. The 
 number of homicides for any year can be ascertained, 
 also the average for a number of years. The annual 
 average in Massachusetts for twelve years is twenty- 
 three among a population of over sixteen hundred 
 thousand. But this will be treated of more in detail 
 under the appropriate head. 
 
 There is so much that is lovable in the Southern 
 character, — generosity, geniality, frankness, hospi- 
 tality, loyalty to friends, and courage in the highest 
 degree, — that it is doubly painful to see such man- 
 liness marred by these frequent and unnecessary 
 murders. There is in the South precisely the con- 
 dition of things which, in society properly organized 
 and governed, would make murder exceedingly rare. 
 The foreign element is very small. More than ninety- 
 eight per cent, of the Southern population are native- 
 born Americans. The pursuits of the people are 
 mainly agricultural ; there are no large interests. con- 
 tinually clashing, as in the mining and manufacturing 
 centres of the North. The population is relatively 
 sparse ; there is room for all, and certainly murder 
 should not be more frequent among an equal number 
 of people than in the rural portions of New England. 
 New Hampshire and Vermont resemble the South- 
 ern section in some degree in this, that the occupa- 
 tions of the people are largely agricultural, the for- 
 eign element comparatively small, and there are no 
 great cities and mining and manufacturing centres 
 with attendant clashings of classes and interests. 
 
1 6 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 Murder in Kentucky, for instance, should not be 
 more frequent than among an equal number of peo- 
 ple in New Hampshire and Vermont. Reduced 
 to the average rate which prevails in these States, 
 there should not be over seven or eight homicides 
 annually in Kentucky. There are many years when 
 there has not been a homicide in Vermont. But 
 averaging several years together, calculating for dif- 
 ference in number of people, an average of seven or 
 eight annually in Kentucky would be a fair esti- 
 mate. I mention these States because of the simi- 
 larity of the general pursuits of the population, agri- 
 cultural, and the absence of great cities and immense 
 mining and manufacturing interests with the foreign 
 population usually found in such centres. In Massa- 
 chusetts, for instance, from one-third to one-half the 
 homicides are in Suffolk County, where Boston is 
 situated. Outside of that county the number is less 
 than one annually to every one hundred thousand 
 population. 
 
 But as to Kentucky and Vermont, can a rational 
 reason be given why murder and manslaughter 
 should be from twenty to thirty times more frequent 
 among an equal population in one State than in the 
 other ? Is it climate ? No climate has power over 
 passion like this ! Is it diet ? Is it the greater con- 
 sumption of intoxicating liquors in Kentucky ? Is it 
 the virus of slavery which poisoned the foundation 
 of society in Kentucky, while freedom builded better 
 in Vermont ? Is life dearer to a citizen of Vermont 
 than it is to a citizen of Kentucky ? Does he love 
 
HOMICIDE CONTRASTED, SOUTH AND NORTH. \j 
 
 his family and his property more, and prefer to abide 
 with them till the natural end of his days rather than 
 risk his life in a street-fight or a " personal difficulty" 
 with deadly weapons, the result of which may be the 
 orphanage of his neighbor's children or his own ? Is 
 there a higher sense of personal honor in Kentucky 
 than in Vermont which leads to this enormous dis- 
 proportion in the rate of homicide ? If so, does this 
 superior standard of personal honor bring adequate 
 compensation to the orphans and the widows of those 
 slain in combat, or to society? Do the bereaved 
 family, standing over the grave of the freshly slain, 
 find their grief assuaged and their tears dried by the 
 reflection that the husband and father fell in a street- 
 fight defending his right to be called a gentleman ? 
 
 It is the "personal difficulties" with deadly 
 weapons, street-fights, and affrays in the Southern 
 States that swell the number of homicides out of all 
 proportion to the number in a corresponding popu- 
 lation elsewhere. Take the three Southern States 
 named for the year 1878, or any other year, collect 
 all the accounts of " personal difficulties," bar-room 
 affrays, and street-fights with deadly weapons, and it 
 will be learned that there are at least forty such af- 
 frays to every one that can be found in all New Eng- 
 land among an equal population. The result is an 
 enormous preponderance of man-slaying in the South- 
 ern States, a preponderance that has ever existed, and 
 that will continue to exist until the tone of the popu- 
 lation in this matter is elevated and improved. In 
 the old State of South Carolina, with a civilization 
 b 2* 
 
lg HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 dating back a century and a half, there are more 
 than twice as many men killed annually by their fel- 
 low-men than in all the six New England States with 
 four millions of inhabitants! Omitting the year 
 1876, when there was great political excitement in 
 South Carolina, and several riots growing out of this 
 condition, thus swelling the number of homicides far 
 above the average number, — omitting that year, and 
 taking the years 1877 and 1878, when there were no 
 internal disturbances as in 1876, what do we find? 
 We find the number of homicides in these two years 
 almost, if not quite, equal to the average number in 
 all the six New England States in five years ! But 
 dropping the other New England States and com- 
 paring only with Massachusetts, of which we have 
 authentic record of the number of homicides for 
 many years, we find as many homicides in two 
 years in South Carolina, with less than half the pop- 
 ulation of Massachusetts, than in the latter State in 
 ten average years ! But these facts will be treated 
 more in detail in another place. 
 
 There is nothing that so distinguishes the Southern 
 civilization from the Northern as this one matter of 
 homicide. Murder there is everywhere, but the fact 
 that it is so very much more frequent in the Southern 
 States than elsewhere should put the Southern peo- 
 ple upon inquiry as to the cause and the remedy. 
 To do this is the object of this book. 
 
 Contrast the old civilization of South Carolina with 
 the old civilization of Massachusetts, and we find the 
 crime of man-slaying at least twelve times more fre- 
 
HOMICIDE CONTRASTED, SOUTH AND NORTH, IO , 
 
 quent in the former State than in the latter,.compared 
 to population. Contrast Michigan with Kentucky, 
 and we find homicide at least six times more fre- 
 quent in the latter than in the former State, measured 
 by relative population. Contrast Minnesota with 
 Texas, both comparatively new States, the one set- 
 tled largely by people from the old slave States and 
 the other by people from the old free States, and we 
 find homicide twelve to fifteen times more frequent 
 among an equal population in Texas than in Minne- 
 sota. Both are comparatively new States, and the 
 contrast between them is as striking as the contrast 
 between Massachusetts and South Carolina, two rep- 
 resentative older States. 
 
 In Texas in the year 1878, as I have stated, there 
 were more murders and manslaughters than that 
 year in ten Northern States with some sixteen mil- 
 lions of population. If this is the way a compara- 
 tively new State starts out, what are we to expect of 
 her with increased population and years ? Is there 
 any reason why murder and manslaughter should be 
 so very much more frequent in this typical State of 
 the new Southwest than in the new and typical States 
 of the Northwest ? But is it more strange than that 
 murder and manslaughter should be twelve or thir- 
 teen times more frequent in the old State of South 
 Carolina than in the old State of Massachusetts? 
 Have we not here two civilizations? If not, why 
 should there be this condition of things with refer- 
 ence to the highest of human crimes? And why 
 should there be such striking similarity between the 
 
20 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 types of homicide in South Carolina and in Texas ? 
 They are all of the same general pattern, mainly 
 " personal difficulties," affrays, and street-fights with 
 deadly weapons, as I will show in other chapters. 
 Take accounts of say twelve "personal difficulties" 
 with deadly weapons in Georgia or South Carolina, 
 and contrast them with twelve "personal difficulties" 
 in Texas, and they vary only in minute detail. They 
 are all cut from the same cloth and the outgrowth 
 of the same peculiar civilization. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 HOMICIDE IN OHIO. 
 
 In Ohio the system of records of homicides from 
 coroners' inquests is very complete, and extends 
 back many years. From these records, carefully 
 compiled annually, we learn the number of homi- 
 cides in Ohio for a series of years, and also the num- 
 ber in each county for a given time. An inquest on 
 the spot at the time of the killing and the verdict 
 made up from the testimony of those most familiar 
 with the circumstances, would naturally be correct 
 in the great majority of cases. In Ohio each county 
 has a coroner, but in his absence any justice of the 
 peace may act, and there is a justice to every dis- 
 trict. In this way the whole field is covered, and it 
 is next to impossible to find an instance of a homi- 
 cide in Ohio without a coroner's inquest. Reports of 
 these inquests are returned annually to the Secretary 
 of State and published with his report. It is not dif- 
 ficult, therefore, to ascertain the number of homicides 
 in Ohio for a given period. I have them for twenty 
 years. The annual average for twenty years is 78. 
 That these figures are approximately accurate we 
 know by comparing them with the number of in- 
 dictments and prosecutions for murder in the first 
 and second degree and for manslaughter in all the 
 
22 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 courts, which are returned by another set of officers. 
 I have the number of these prosecutions in Ohio for 
 five years, beginning July I, 1 866, and ending July 
 I, 1872, omitting 1870, which I have not been able to 
 procure. In these five years (a fair, average period, 
 certainly) there were 421 homicides reported in Ohio 
 by coroners and justices of the peace acting as cor- 
 oners, — a yearly average of more than 84 and less 
 than 85. During the same time, as we learn from the 
 record of criminal prosecutions returned by sworn 
 officers, there were in all the courts of the State 
 371 indictments and prosecutions for murder and 
 manslaughter, — a yearly average of less than 75 and 
 more than 74. This is 10 less annually than the 
 number of homicides returned by the coroners and 
 justices of the peace acting as coroners. . These two 
 sets of figures, however, prove each other, the aver- 
 age of ten homicides returned annually by one set of 
 officers above the number of prosecutions returned 
 by another set of officers being probably the average 
 number that were accidental homicides, or so clearly 
 justifiable that no prosecution was made. With 
 these two sets of figures before us we can arrive at 
 the average annual number of homicides in Ohio 
 with a good deal of certainty. Taking a series of 
 years together the average number is not far from 
 80. The effect of a commotion or disturbance like 
 the labor and railroad " strikes" in the summer of 
 1877 is plainly seen in the increased number of 
 homicides. The number returned for the year end- 
 ing July 1, 1878 (covering the period of the mem- 
 
HOMICIDE IN OHIO. 23 
 
 orable " strikes") is the largest of any year, reaching 
 a total of 1 16. The year previous the number was 
 101, and the year before that there were 76. 
 
 Nearly one-sixth of all homicides in Ohio happen 
 in Hamilton County, where the largest city, Cincin- 
 nati, is situated. The per cent, of homicides to pop- 
 ulation in this county is greater than in the State at 
 large. On the other hand, the very lowest per cent, of 
 homicide to population is found where those who have 
 investigated such subjects would expect to find it, — 
 in the agricultural counties of the Western Reserve, 
 settled very largely, in fact almost entirely, from New 
 England and New York. The law-abiding character 
 of the New England population, their abhorrence of 
 murder in all its forms, has a most striking illustra- 
 tion in the agricultural counties of the Western 
 Reserve of Ohio, settled originally from New Eng- 
 land, and to this day sometimes called " the New 
 England corner of Ohio." Well it may be ! It has 
 in a striking manner the New England character- 
 istics of a very high average of intelligence and a 
 very low average of crime. In these Western Re- 
 serve counties (excepting Cuyahoga, which has a 
 large foreign population) the homicide rate to popu- 
 lation is the lowest of any cluster of counties in Ohio. 
 Could the number of homicides in the entire State 
 be reduced to the per cent, that prevails in the coun- 
 ties of Ashtabula, Lorain, Portage, Summit, Geauga, 
 Lake, and Medina, taking a series of years together, 
 there would be less than forty annually among the 
 three millions of Ohio population ! 
 
24 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 In these seven counties in Northern Ohio, settled 
 so largely from New England, we find a rate of homi- 
 cide that does not exceed one annually to every one 
 hundred thousand population. Indeed, the popula- 
 tion of these counties have adopted the law-abiding 
 habits of the land from whence they and their fathers 
 came, with such loyalty to precedent that we find 
 the homicide rate among them reduced to almost 
 exactly what it is in New England. 
 
 It has been claimed for General Garfield's Con- 
 gressional district in Northern Ohio that among its 
 people is a higher average grade of intelligence than 
 is found in any other district of equal population ; 
 that is, that the per cent, of illiteracy is lower. This 
 is, no doubt, true. There is certainly much in the 
 inspection of the criminal statistics of some of these 
 counties which confirms it. With a high grade of 
 general intelligence there is also a marked respect 
 for human life, which manifests itself in a very low 
 homicide rate, as well as a proportionate infrequency 
 of all crime against the person. This of itself indi- 
 cates a high degree of civilization. While the want 
 of intelligence is not always the cause of crime, yet 
 it is a fact that crime often reaches its maximum 
 where the general grade of intelligence is lowest. 
 There are, outside of New England and New York, 
 no clusters of counties where the average intelligence 
 (as indicated by the absence of illiteracy) is higher 
 than the seven counties referred to in Northern Ohio. 
 It is also true that there are few clusters of counties 
 outside of New England and New York of equal 
 
HOMICIDE IN OHIO. 
 
 25 
 
 population where homicide is as rare as in these 
 counties. There are such counties, to be sure, where 
 there are equally few homicides, but to find a number 
 adjacent to one another would be a task of some diffi- 
 culty. In this we have very strong evidence of the 
 efficacy of intelligence in the prevention of crime, 
 particularly of crime against the person. In three 
 of these counties, with an aggregate population of 
 over sixty thousand, there were but two homicides 
 in five years. This is very near the New England 
 average. An inspection of the returns for a number 
 of years shows homicide to be very much more fre- 
 quent in the southern counties of Ohio than in the 
 northern. Draw a line through the State east and 
 west, so as to divide the population equally, and a 
 very much larger number of homicides will be found 
 south of this line than north of it. There are more 
 homicides, in proportion to population, in the coun- 
 ties bordering upon the Ohio River than in those 
 bordering upon Lake Erie. Was the per cent, of 
 murder to population as low all over the State as in 
 the Western Reserve counties, taking a series of 
 years together, the annual average in Ohio would be 
 only about half what it is. In Indiana and Illinois 
 we also find murder and manslaughter much more 
 frequent, in proportion to population, in the southern 
 than in the northern portions of these States, and from 
 much the same causes as in Ohio. This will be re- 
 ferred to more in detail in another place. 
 b 3 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 HOMICIDE IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
 
 Massachusetts has a complete system of registra- 
 tion, giving the cause of all deaths in that Common- 
 wealth and publishing the statistics annually with 
 other public documents. Hers is one of the most 
 complete systems of registration of any State, and 
 its general correctness has been tested by forty years 
 of experience. All marriages, births, and deaths are 
 recorded and returned to the Capitol by sworn offi- 
 cers, and there compiled and published as the law 
 directs. These vital statistics are published under 
 the designation of registration reports, having num- 
 bers corresponding with the years of publication. 
 From these reports the numbers of homicides in 
 Massachusetts can be collected for any year, or 
 series of years. Those who doubt their correctness 
 can easily satisfy themselves. If the number of 
 homicides for a year are reported at a certain figure, 
 a file of daily papers, which covers the news of the 
 State very completely, will test the matter. Every 
 test that I have applied has shown these statistics to 
 be correct. For instance, the number of homicides 
 returned as having been committed in Suffolk County 
 (Boston) for the four years ending December 31, 
 1878, are 48. Turning to the Report of the Board 
 26 
 
HOMICIDE IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
 
 27 
 
 of Police Commissioners, 1879, page 16, we find the 
 murders in Boston for the four years, 1875, 1876, 
 1877, and 1878, to have been 43. The registra- 
 tion report gives them for the county at 48. The 
 difference is easily explained, as the city police do 
 not have jurisdiction over the entire county, and the 
 difference probably represents the number of mur- 
 ders in the county but outside the city. Besides, the 
 registration reports include all cases of accidental 
 homicides. 
 
 The total homicides in Massachusetts during the 
 four years mentioned were 87, an average of not 
 quite 22 annually. Outside of Suffolk County, with 
 Boston and its very large foreign population, there 
 were but 39 homicides during these four years among 
 a population of over 1,250,000. The annual average 
 was less than 10, making the number of homicides 
 among the people of Massachusetts outside of Bos- 
 ton less than 1 annually to 125,000 population. 
 
 In Bristol County, with a population of about 
 1 10,000, there was but 1 homicide in four years. 
 In Barnstable County, with about 35,000 popula- 
 tion, there was also 1 in four years. In Essex 
 County, with about 230,000 population, there were 
 6 homicides in four years. In Hampton County, 
 with a population of about 90,000, there were but 2 
 homicides in four years. In Middlesex County, with 
 over 300,000 population, there were but 8 homicides 
 in four years. This county contains the largest for- 
 eign-born population of any county in the State except 
 Suffolk. In Hampden County, with about 100,000 
 
28 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 population, there were 3 homicides in four years. 
 In Norfolk County, with over 100,000 population, 
 there was the same number. In Worcester County, 
 with over 200,000 population, there were 6 homicides 
 in four years. In Plymouth County, with 70,000 
 population, there was not a homicide in four years. 
 In 1877 there were counties containing over 350,000 
 population without a homicide during the year. 
 The same is true of 1878. Indeed, several counties 
 aggregating nearly half a million of population had 
 none for that year. 
 
 Compare Massachusetts with South Carolina. The 
 comparison is fair, for they are both old civilizations. 
 In South Carolina in 1878 there were 115 homicides, 
 with a population not one-half that of Massachusetts. 
 If the murder rate in Massachusetts was as high as 
 in South Carolina, there would have been over 230 - 
 in 1878 instead of 20. Take the county of Suffolk 
 (containing Boston) out of the calculation, and com- 
 paring only the more rural districts of Massachusetts 
 with South Carolina, and we find a murder rate in 
 the latter State more than twenty times greater than 
 in the former ! But including Suffolk County, with 
 its teeming foreign population, from which a majority 
 of the homicides arise, and still the number of mur- 
 ders in South Carolina is more than twelve times 
 greater than among an equal number of people in 
 Massachusetts. Take out the murders by foreigners 
 in Massachusetts, include only those committed by 
 native Americans, and apply the same rule to South 
 Carolina, and it will be found that homicide in the 
 
HOMICIDE IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
 
 2 9 
 
 latter State is twenty or thirty times more frequent 
 than in the former. Who can explain why this 
 should be so? What invisible demon is it that in- 
 cites the people in South Carolina to shoot and stab 
 one another at so enormously disproportionate a rate 
 compared with the native-born citizens of Massa- 
 chusetts ? In the single county of Edgefield, South 
 Carolina, in 1878 there were as many homicides as 
 in all Massachusetts, outside of Suffolk County, with 
 a million and a quarter of population ! In a single 
 street-fight in Edgefield County that year three men 
 were shot dead, and a fourth mortally wounded. 
 These street-fights with deadly weapons swell the 
 homicide rate not only in South Carolina, but in all 
 the Southern States. Such affrays, where citizens 
 stand out in the public streets and shoot at one 
 another, are almost absolutely unknown in Massa- 
 chusetts. Men guilty of this crime are not allowed to 
 go at large in that State. In the Southern States, in 
 these street-fights the dead are buried, and the living 
 reload their pistols for fear of another " difficulty" 
 with the friends and relatives of the deceased, and 
 are allowed to go at large " on bail" until trial. 
 When tried they are usually acquitted on the ground 
 of " self-defence," for, forsooth, the other party was 
 shooting at them. But this is a subject I shall con- 
 sider more in detail further along. 
 
 The following is the number of homicides in Mas- 
 sachusetts for twelve years, as collected from the 
 annual registration reports of that State, and includes 
 accidental homicides : 
 
3Q HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 Year. 
 1867 
 1868 
 1869 
 1870 
 1871 
 1872 
 
 No. 
 
 Year. 
 
 IS 
 
 1873 
 
 16 
 
 1874 
 
 25 
 
 1875 
 
 29 
 
 1876 
 
 25 
 
 1877 
 
 27 
 
 1878 
 
 No. 
 26 
 26 
 23 
 24 
 20 
 20 
 
 This is a yearly average of 23 in a State with over 
 a million and a half of population. 
 
 Taking a period of five years from and after 1856, 
 and we find that the greatest number in one year 
 was 27, and the lowest 18. The total in five years 
 was 101, a fraction over an average of 20 annually. 
 For the five years ending with 1 878 the total was 
 113, an annual average of less than 23. The per 
 cent, of increase, however, for the five years ending 
 with 1878 over the five years ending with 1861 is 
 much less than the per cent, of increase of popula- 
 tion during the same time. We find, therefore, 
 taking a series of years together, that the per cent, 
 of homicide to population is decreasing.* 
 
 The population of Massachusetts by the State cen- 
 sus of 1875 is given at 1,65 1,912. Southern men may 
 doubt that this number of people can live together a 
 year with only twenty homicides, and that, too, under 
 circumstances more favorable to homicide than exist in 
 Kentucky, for instance. The population of Kentucky 
 is about one hundred and fifty thousand less than that 
 of Massachusetts, and the Kentuckians have five times 
 
 * The number of homicides in Massachusetts since 1856 can be 
 found on page 114, thirty-seventh Massachusetts Registration Report. 
 
HOMICIDE IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
 
 31 
 
 as many square miles of territory. There is more 
 " elbow room," very much less foreign population, 
 and no such clashing of classes and interests as in 
 Massachusetts. Compared with Massachusetts, Ken- 
 tucky is rural, with room enough for all. Indeed, 
 we have in Kentucky precisely the natural conditions 
 that in Massachusetts decrease murder instead of in- 
 creasing it. Take the agricultural counties of Massa- 
 chusetts and the agricultural counties in Kentucky, 
 and with much the same natural conditions in Ken- 
 tucky we find about thirty men killed by their fellow- 
 men where there is one killed in Massachusetts. 
 Remove all the cities out of Kentucky and the total 
 annual number of homicides would be reduced but 
 a small per cent, for it is not the cities which swell 
 to such fearful proportions the aggregate of homi- 
 cides in that State. Remove the largest city — Boston 
 — out of Massachusetts, and there would not be in 
 the rest of the State an average of more than ten or 
 twelve homicides annually. In the year 1878 there 
 were but seven homicides in Massachusetts outside 
 of Suffolk County. That year, in Kentucky, there 
 were two hundred and nineteen homicides reported 
 in the Louisville Courier-jfournal, and, allowing that 
 a small per cent, of the dangerously wounded after- 
 wards died of their wounds, the number is swelled 
 to about two hundred and fifty. 
 
 In the Southern States the highest rate of homicide 
 to population is in the country. In the Northern 
 States precisely the contrary is true, — the greatest 
 number is in the cities. 
 
32 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 At the close of 1878 there were seven hundred 
 and fifty-seven convicts in the Massachusetts State 
 Prison, and nearly one-half, or three hundred and 
 sixty-four, were from Boston. Yet the population 
 of Boston is only about one-fifth that of the State. 
 
 As might be supposed, the dockets of Massa- 
 chusetts courts are not burdened with murder cases. 
 Indeed, the court records, like the police records of 
 Boston, confirm the general correctness of the regis- 
 tration reports as to murder and manslaughter. For 
 instance, during the year ending January 15, 1879, 
 there were but one murder and two manslaughter 
 cases pending in the Supreme Court, as we learn 
 from the Attorney-General's report for that year. 
 During the year ending January 21, 1880, there were 
 also but one murder and two manslaughter cases 
 pending in the Supreme Court. In these two years, 
 therefore, there were but six murder and manslaughter 
 cases before the Supreme Court, and but one case 
 of assault with intent to kill. 
 
 Of course the fact that there were but six murder 
 and manslaughter cases pending in the Supreme 
 Court in two years is not evidence as to the number 
 of crimes of this character committed, but it shows 
 that the number of cases in the courts is but small, 
 as the Supreme Court docket is, to a certain extent, 
 a reflex of the lower court dockets. More than 
 one-third of all the criminal cases pending related 
 to the unlawful sale of liquor. Also, during the 
 year 1878, but one man was received into the peni- 
 tentiary convicted of murder in the first degree. Of 
 
HOMICIDE IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
 
 33 
 
 the seven hundred and fifty-seven convicts, embrac- 
 ing the accumulation of many years, but nine are 
 charged with murder in the first degree. 
 
 An inspection of the criminal records of Massa- 
 chusetts shows in a striking manner the difference in 
 the treatment of murderers there and the treatment 
 of the same class of criminals in the Southern States. 
 In the South, for instance, two men get into a fight, 
 or have a " difficulty," as it is called, and one kills 
 the other. In nine cases out of ten the murderer is 
 acquitted. Indeed, I have known cases where the 
 defendant was the aggressor, commenced the fight, 
 and killed his victim, and yet was acquitted ! I will 
 refer to this more at length in another place, as one 
 of the reasons why murder and manslaughter are so 
 very frequent in the Southern States. In Massachu- 
 setts, and, indeed, all New England for that matter, 
 where two men have a " difficulty" and one kills the 
 other, the survivor rarely gets less than twenty years 
 in the penitentiary, and is usually incarcerated for life. 
 Probably this is one reason why we find murder and 
 manslaughter so very much more frequent in Ken- 
 tucky, for instance, than in Massachusetts. If, in 
 Kentucky, when two men engage in a " difficulty," and 
 one kills the other, the survivor were promptly sent 
 to the penitentiary for twenty or thirty years, or for 
 life, it would have a tendency to check the murder 
 and manslaughter rate in that State. And this is 
 true of all the Southern States. 
 
 The number of " personal difficulties" resulting in 
 death are very few in Massachusetts compared to 
 
34 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 any Southern State. There are, indeed, single coun- 
 ties in the Southern States where more men are 
 murdered in a single year than in all Massachusetts, 
 with a million and a half of population. And the 
 difference in treatment of murderers is as striking as 
 the disproportion in number. In Berkshire County, 
 Massachusetts, in April, 1879, two men, Daily and 
 Spellman, had a " difficulty" of the Southern type, 
 except that no deadly weapons were used. In the 
 fight Daily kicked Spellman to death. The attorney- 
 general says " the killing was the result of a quarrel, 
 in which no premeditation of injury to Spellman was 
 apparent." Yet Daily was sentenced to the peniten- 
 tiary for life. Another case that year was somewhat 
 similar. Two men, Montgomery and Ellis, were 
 drinking together. They quarrelled and fought, and 
 Montgomery killed Ellis. The attorney-general 
 says "there was no evidence of previous ill will 
 or deliberate premeditation." Result, Montgomery 
 was sentenced to the penitentiary for life. Another 
 Massachusetts murderer, Callahan by- name, who 
 shot and killed a man, Southern style, was also sent 
 to the penitentiary for life. Here are three cases in 
 Massachusetts in one year, and each distinctively of 
 the Southern type, and in every instance the mur- 
 derer was sent to State's prison for life. This is 
 wholesome. 
 
 Such an administration of law in the Southern 
 States would decrease the number of manslaughters 
 there growing out of " personal difficulties," affrays, 
 and street-fights, for it is from these that a great 
 
HOMICIDE IN MASSACHUSETTS. 35 
 
 majority of the homicides arise. If those engaged 
 in deadly " difficulties" and street-fights had reason- 
 able assurances that if they survived they would 
 get into the penitentiary for twenty or thirty years, 
 or for life, there would be less of this barbarism, and 
 a decrease in the number killed. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 HOMICIDE IN KENTUCKY. 
 
 In 1835, Bishop Smith, of Kentucky, collected 
 some statistics as to murder and manslaughter in 
 that State, with the result that he found the number 
 of homicides to be about one hundred annually. He 
 says the number of "unpunished homicides" reached 
 that number each year. The population of the State 
 at that time was a little less than one-half what it is 
 now. Therefore, provided the condition of society 
 had not improved with respect to taking human life, 
 the number of homicides in Kentucky would now 
 reach a little over two hundred annually. And this 
 is about the number we find, indicating no improve- 
 ment whatever, after a forty-five years' contest be- 
 tween the courts and the men-slayers. 
 
 Some time ago my attention was directed to the 
 number of homicides not only in Kentucky, but in 
 the other late slave States, growing out of the fre- 
 quency of bar-room affrays, street-fights, and "per- 
 sonal difficulties," in which deadly weapons were 
 used. In passing through Kentucky on horseback 
 a few years since, I collected in several counties ac- 
 counts of deadly affrays between citizens, which 
 seemed to be as ridiculous and unnecessary as any 
 I had heard of in other Southern States. Stopping 
 36 
 
HOMICIDE IN KENTUCKY. 
 
 37 
 
 in any neighborhood and engaging with the residents 
 in conversation upon this subject, it was easy to get 
 accounts of stabbing and shooting affrays and bar- 
 room rows between two or more men, often result- 
 ing in a homicide. Investigation and the collection 
 of such statistics as were attainable bearing upon 
 this subject, convinced me that numerous as "per- 
 sonal difficulties" with deadly weapons were in Ken- 
 tucky, they were not more numerous than in many 
 of the late slave States among an equal population. 
 Both in character and frequency these personal diffi- 
 culties and street-fights, in which deadly weapons 
 are used, bear a close resemblance to one another in 
 all the Southern States. The news columns of the 
 Louisville Courier-Journal afforded facilities for the 
 collection of the number of homicides in Kentucky 
 not given by a single paper in other Southern States, 
 with two or three exceptions. But I found that the 
 news columns of this paper, complete as they ap- 
 peared to be, did not give all of the Kentucky homi- 
 cides. Occasionally there was a homicide in that 
 State without mention of it in the Courier- Journal. 
 But the exceptions are probably not over ten or 
 twelve per cent, of the whole number. That is, a 
 file of this paper, say for any year of the past five, 
 will give a pretty good indication of the number of 
 homicides in Kentucky for that year. Ten or fifteen 
 per cent, added for omissions will probably cover 
 them all. I have not been able to find a published 
 account of coroners' inquests, or, in fact, any statistics 
 to get at the number of homicides except as indi- 
 
 4 
 
38 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 cated. To collect from the local accounts of news- 
 papers is tedious but accurate, for certainly the 
 number is not overstated. When we read in a local 
 paper that on a given day, at a given place, Jones 
 had a "difficulty" with Robinson, and shot and killed 
 him, and details are given, it is good evidence that 
 such an affray occurred, and that Robinson was shot 
 as stated. 
 
 From the columns of the Courier-Journal for 
 1878 I collected accounts of 219 homicides, and 
 217 persons wounded more or less severely, a con- 
 siderable portion of the latter growing out of the 
 " difficulties," street-fights, and affrays, in which the 
 most of the homicides occurred. Many of those 
 wounded were reported dangerously so, and undoubt- 
 edly a small per cent, afterwards died of their wounds, 
 but how many we have no means of knowing. Al- 
 lowing that fifteen per cent, died, and this is certainly 
 a low estimate, it swells the total homicides to 25 1. 
 Undoubtedly this is an under- rather than an over- 
 statement, for among so many wounded, mostly by 
 shot and stab, it would be strange if not over fifteen 
 per cent, afterwards died from these wounds. On 
 the other hand, a few reported as mortally wounded 
 and dying may have afterwards got well. Where 
 the contrary could not be learned, those reported 
 mortally wounded were classed as homicides. In a 
 few instances this may have been erroneous. 
 
 As to the severely wounded during the year, so far 
 as collected, 80 were stabbed, 101 shot, and 36 injured 
 by other instruments of warfare. This makes a total 
 
HOMICIDE IN KENTUCKY. 
 
 39 
 
 casualty list of 436, which in a few years' time, at the 
 same rate, would swell to the dimensions of the killed 
 and wounded in a general engagement. But these 
 figures, large as they appear, fall very far short of the 
 truth. In Louisville alone for the year under con- 
 sideration (1878) the police records show 133 arrests 
 for " cutting with intent to kill." The population of 
 Louisville is about one-twelfth that of the State. If 
 cutting and stabbing was as frequent over the State 
 as in Louisville, the number of people wounded by 
 the knife alone during the year would be nearly 
 1600. This in itself shows the impossibility of col- 
 lecting from newspaper accounts alone anything like 
 the aggregate of crime against the person. For the 
 year 1877 the police in Louisville made 107 arrests 
 for cutting and stabbing. For the eleven months 
 ending November 30, 1879, they made 132 arrests 
 for cutting and stabbing {Courier- Journal, January 
 I, 1880). Add 13 similar cases for the month of 
 January, and it makes a total of 145 cuttings and 
 stabbings in twelve months, or an aggregate of 385 
 in these three years. Apply the same rate to the 
 State at large, and it would give over 4500 persons 
 stabbed and cut in Kentucky in three years. Add 
 to this the shooting, and is it strange that we are able 
 to find accounts of over 200 homicides in one year ? 
 In the accounts I was able to collect from news- 
 papers there were more persons wounded by shots 
 than by stabs, and more of the homicides were from 
 shots than from stabs. A strictly accurate collection 
 of every affray and " difficulty" in this State resulting 
 
4 o HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 in death or wounding for one year would make a 
 startling exhibit, and might lead to a correction of 
 the " custom," for such it is. The penalties paid by 
 the people of Kentucky for their code of personal 
 combat is beyond computation. 
 
 The population of Louisville is about one-twelfth 
 that of the State, and embracing a class of citizens 
 of the highest intelligence who contribute nothing 
 to the records of the police courts. Indeed, murder 
 in Louisville is much less frequent than in the re- 
 mainder of the State, according to relative population. 
 But allowing that stabbing and cutting is no more 
 prevalent in the rest of the State than in Louisville, 
 what a large aggregate there must be if all could 
 be gathered, like the list of wounded in a general 
 engagement ! But laying this aside, we will consider 
 only the homicides. These give us an insight into 
 the condition of society in Kentucky, — with respect 
 to taking human life, — a condition so deplorable that 
 often in sixty days there are more murders and 
 manslaughters in this State than in all of the six 
 New England States in one year, with four millions 
 of population. 
 
 Passing the numerous accounts of homicides dur- 
 ing January and the first half of February (1878), 
 and simply aggregating them, we take up the issue 
 of the Courier-Journal of February 16, and find an 
 editorial bearing upon the question. " There were," 
 says the editor, " not less than one hundred and fifty 
 people murdered in Kentucky last year. The Lord 
 only knows how many were stabbed and shot with- 
 
HOMICIDE IN KENTUCKY. 4I 
 
 out serious injury." This estimate is too low. That 
 there were not less than one hundred and fifty per- 
 sons murdered in Kentucky in 1877 is undoubtedly 
 correct, but the total would probably reach two hun- 
 dred or more if they could be accurately ascertained. 
 The statement that the Lord only knows how many 
 were stabbed and shot without being killed is quite 
 correct, for there is no record kept of them in Ken- 
 tucky. 
 
 In the issue of the Courier- Journal containing the 
 editorial referred to there are accounts of several 
 characteristic Kentucky homicides, as many, in fact, 
 as the yearly average in Vermont and Rhode Island 
 combined. At a dance in Carter County several 
 parties got into a " difficulty," with the result that 
 Iram Antis shot and killed James Sinley, and Jake 
 Antis shot and seriously wounded William Ander- 
 son. Also a reference to the stabbing and killing 
 of Ham. Shirly. Also an item from Shelby County 
 stating that Reuben Dennis was taken from his 
 own house at night and shot to death by unknown 
 parties. Also an item from Mount Sterling, giving 
 an account of the stabbing and mortally wound- 
 ing of James Anderson with a bowie-knife. Mr. 
 Anderson was disembowelled, and afterwards died. 
 In the same affray W. Gay was wounded. Also 
 a reference to the attempted assassination of Deputy- 
 Sheriff Wickle, near Crab Orchard. Total, four 
 killed, two woifnded, and one attempted assassina- 
 tion. 
 
 All this in one issue of the paper, in which the 
 4* 
 
42 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 editor estimates the murders of the previous year at 
 not less than one hundred and fifty. 
 
 The next issue contains an account of the shooting 
 and mortal wounding of William Cooley by Oldham, 
 in Fulton County. We are informed that this was 
 Oldham's third recent " shooting scrape." 
 
 The next number has only an account of the find- 
 ing of the body of a murdered man, which, however, 
 turned out to be incorrect. The second issue after 
 this gives an account of the shooting and mortal 
 wounding of Ben. Myers by James Anderson. Also 
 an account of the assassination of John Parker, a few 
 days before, at Flemingsburg. Also reports an attempt 
 of disguised men to lynch a man, who made fight, 
 and wounded two of the would-be lynchers. The 
 second number after this gives an account of the 
 mortal wounding of J. W. Hicks by Joe Frazier, 
 near Frankfort. The " difficulty," we are informed, 
 was the result of an old " grudge." The same issue 
 contains an account of a " difficulty" between Walter 
 Vinson and Carroll Pepper, in which both were 
 badly wounded, one quite dangerously. Also, in the 
 same issue, is an account of the stabbing and disem- 
 bowelling of a father by his son. " He was stabbed 
 in six places so his bowels protruded." 
 
 Including the mortally wounded who afterwards 
 died, here are nine homicides reported in six days. 
 Also six persons wounded less severely, and one 
 attempted assassination. These are more homicides 
 reported in Kentucky in six days than happened 
 in Vermont in eight years, from 1869 to 1876 inclu- 
 
HOMICIDE IN KENTUCKY. 43 
 
 sive ; more men reported killed by their fellow-men 
 in different parts of Kentucky in six days than in 
 eight consecutive years in Vermont. Yet the popu- 
 lation of the two States is distinctively American, 
 the foreign element being comparatively small. Also 
 more men reported killed in Kentucky in six days 
 than in all that year in Massachusetts, outside of 
 Boston, among thirteen hundred thousand inhabi- 
 tants. Following so closely upon the editorial dec- 
 laration that there were not less than one hundred 
 and fifty murders in Kentucky the year before, the 
 facts are calculated to strengthen the belief that one 
 hundred and fifty for the previous year was not only 
 less, but very many less, than actually occurred. 
 
 Further along we learn that Amiss, who disem- 
 bowelled his father with a knife, was admitted to fif- 
 teen hundred dollars bail. During the year two 
 sons killed their fathers and a third was wounded by 
 his son. Six men were killed by their brothers-in- 
 law. Continuing our outline of murder in Kentucky 
 in 1878, we find March ushered in by accounts of the 
 terrible whipping of three men by a mob ; a fight 
 near Flemingsburg and a man shot ; a street-fight in 
 Stanford, in which one, Ely, was killed and four 
 others, Grisham, Fay, Moore, and Ferrel, wounded. 
 Five were engaged, three on one side and two broth- 
 ers on the other. Pistols were used with success, for 
 of the five engaged every one was hit. The " diffi- 
 culty" grew out of the acquittal of one of the party 
 who had previously killed a man connected with 
 some of those engaged in the present affray. The 
 
44 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 account says of the fight, "A large crowd was in the 
 village at the time attending election of delegates 
 to the Democratic convention." This was a typical 
 Southern street-fight, although less deadly than is 
 sometimes the case. In a street-fight in Richmond, 
 Kentucky, a few years ago, four men were shot 
 dead. A street-fight in Edgefield, South Carolina, 
 was equally fatal. Also one at Junction City, Texas. 
 Indeed, I can recount several that have resulted in 
 triple and quadruple killings. 
 
 All these affrays are so similar that it seems useless 
 to particularize. They vary only in detail and the 
 number of killed and wounded. During the month, 
 in addition to the killed and wounded, eleven men were 
 taken out of their houses or from jail and beaten and 
 whipped by mobs without a semblance of authority. 
 
 During April sixteen homicides were reported, by 
 shooting, stabbing, and pounding. The effects of 
 such frequent and deadly affrays are seen on the 
 criminal dockets. The Glasgow (Kentucky) Times, 
 latter part of April, says (quoted in Courier- Journal), 
 " We heard from good authority last week that there 
 were two thousand one hundred and ten criminal 
 cases upon the dockets of the counties of this ju- 
 dicial district. In other words, there are enough men 
 charged with breaking the law in the district to very 
 nearly control the election, if they should band to- 
 gether for that purpose." Among the April murders 
 and manslaughters were two men at what is called a 
 " circus row" at Red Lick. Twenty shots were fired, 
 two men killed, and two more badly wounded. 
 
HOMICIDE IN KENTUCKY. 45 
 
 During May there are seventeen murders and man- 
 slaughters reported, and many persons severely 
 wounded by stabs and shots. 
 
 In an account of one of these murders the deceased 
 is spoken of as dangerous when drunk, "as he was 
 known to have killed several men," and that his 
 slayer also had a record, having killed four men. In 
 reference to a man missed and thought to have been 
 assassinated, it is stated that "he was regarded as 
 dangerous, as he had killed several men and wounded 
 others." Among the assassinations was that of a 
 man just returned from Texas, "where he is reported 
 to have killed a man." During July twenty-one hom- 
 icides were reported, and many persons wounded. 
 In August the number was nearly equal to the aggre- 
 gate in July. 
 
 Passing the ordinary homicides without mention, 
 and only glancing at such as are types of a class, 
 we have an account of still another fight between 
 brothers-in-law, in which one is killed and another 
 has an eye knocked out, the fifth man killed in Ken- 
 tucky by his brothers-in-law during the year. A 
 letter from Mount Sterling mentioning a street-fight 
 says, " In the past ten years a dozen homicides, and 
 twice that many rows in which pistols played promi- 
 nent parts, have taken place in this city alone, not 
 taking into account the county." Within a few weeks 
 after writing thus there was still another street-fight in 
 Mount Sterling, with two killed and several wounded. 
 One of the killed was Marshal Young, a gentleman 
 so estimable and so zealous in the attempt to pre- 
 
46 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 serve order, that the citizens have reared a monument 
 to his memory. This fight took place in the public 
 streets, and was, indeed, a type of the ordinary street- 
 fights with deadly weapons which are so common in 
 the Southern States. Referring to the frequent homi- 
 cides in and around Mount Sterling, a writer in the 
 Courier- Journal says, " Let the Legislature make the 
 carrying of concealed weapons a penitentiary offence. 
 That is the only remedy." 
 
 Little killed Cockrell at Jackson, and, we are told, 
 he had " on a former occasion" killed Cockrell's 
 brother. Indeed, a large proportion of the homi- 
 cides are connected in some way with previous homi- 
 cides. Rarely is the murderer jailed. He is ad- 
 mitted to bail, and there are several instances where 
 a man on bail for one murder killed another before 
 his first trial was reached. In one instance two men, 
 Neil and Gohart, had a " difficulty" at the house of 
 the latter. They fought with knives, and Neil killed 
 Gohart. Gohart's mother interceded to save her son, 
 and Neil stabbed her to death. Another son was 
 wounded, but not killed. Next day, we are informed, 
 " Neil was released on two thousand dollars bond" or 
 one thousand dollars for each person he had killed. 
 
 An item of news from Madison County gives the 
 number of persons murdered in that county in two 
 weeks, and their names, as follows : " Milton Harlow, 
 Martha Stewart, William Burnett, Hiram Boyce, Bob 
 Collins, and Bob Sanders, and two others wounded." 
 Here is a county of about twenty thousand popula- 
 tion with as many murders in two weeks as ordinarily 
 
HOMICIDE IN KENTUCKY. 47 
 
 happen in one of the smaller New England States in 
 two or three years ! Referring to these homicides, a 
 Madison County paper makes this mathematical ob- 
 servation : " This year's killings have equalled last 
 year's, and there are nine weeks yet to do more 
 killing in !" 
 
 The Richmond Register, published in Madison 
 County, said (December, 1878), "In the past two 
 years forty-two persons in Madison County have lost 
 their lives, and forty-three have been wounded by 
 crime or assault." This quotation appears in the 
 Courier-Journal of December 14. During the two 
 years mentioned there were but forty homicides in 
 the whole State of Massachusetts, with a population 
 of about one million seven hundred thousand : act- 
 ually less than in one Kentucky county with a pop- 
 ulation of about twenty thousand ! Yet Massachu- 
 setts has a foreign-born population of nearly four 
 hundred thousand, among whom occur half the 
 homicides in that State, while Madison County has 
 only about one hundred and fifty foreign-born citi- 
 zens ! In Massachusetts over a million and a half 
 of people, one-fourth of whom are foreigners, and 
 where there are great and clashing interests, live 
 together two years with but forty homicides (page 
 59 of Thirty-seventh Massachusetts Registration Re- 
 port), while in Madison County, Kentucky, among 
 twenty thousand people, and less than one per cent, 
 foreigners, there are forty-two homicides and forty- 
 three persons wounded ! In Massachusetts, among 
 the American-born rural population (like that of 
 
48 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 Madison County) the average rate of homicide is 
 only about one annually to two hundred thousand 
 people. Were homicide equally infrequent among 
 the American-born citizens of Kentucky, there would 
 be in Madison County an average of but one homi- 
 cide every nine or ten years, and to reach forty-two 
 would require four centuries of time to roll around ! 
 
 With a condition of society like that of Massa- 
 chusetts, with reference to the sanctity of human life, 
 would the people of Madison County and of Ken- 
 tucky be any the less happy? Ah, the anguish and 
 woe unutterable that would be spared many house- 
 holds, from whence the husband and father has been 
 taken suddenly, to fall uselessly and barbarously in 
 a " personal difficulty" ! But the woe does not stop 
 with the slain and the bereaved. The man who sur- 
 vives these " difficulties" and is conscious of having 
 slain his fellow-man, can he be happy when he thinks 
 of the desolate home not far away, and the widow 
 and the orphans he has made? Can he gather his^ 
 own around him and be happy ? God help that man! 
 No matter if a jury of his "peers" (some of them-, 
 peers in murder) have acquitted him (as they usually 
 do), his conscience will often tell him that the " diffi- 
 culty" he engaged in could have been avoided. 
 
 Among the numerous affrays where several were 
 killed or wounded was one where three men were 
 dangerously stabbed and another shot. Of one of 
 the amiable parties engaged the local account says, 
 " He had been in a vast number of shooting and cut- 
 ting scrapes. He cut a defenceless negro boy with- 
 
HOMICIDE IN KENTUCKY. ^y 
 
 out provocation, and soon afterwards shot a crippled 
 man." Yet, under the free and easy administration 
 of justice in Kentucky, this desperado and murderer, 
 like thousands of others, was allowed to run at large 
 and continue his murderous work. In Grant County 
 a young man named Turner " nearly cut Sam Judd's 
 head off," and the account continues, " this is said to 
 be his fourth victim in three years." He was prob- 
 ably admitted to bail. 
 
 In the numerous accounts of murders and shoot- 
 ing and stabbing by desperadoes who are stated to 
 have previously committed like offences, I have been 
 unable to learn the number necessary to be killed by 
 a single desperado in Kentucky before his operations 
 are abridged by anything stronger than a bail-bond* 
 Bearing directly upon this matter is an item from 
 the Stanford Journal (quoted in Courier- Journal), 
 which says, speaking of recent homicides in Rock 
 Castle County, " Two (homicides) in ten days is 
 going it pretty lively, but it is the best way to get 
 rid of them," — meaning murderers. Such sentiments 
 are to be expected where there is so much murder 
 and so little punishment for it as in Kentucky and 
 the other Southern States. If a murderer is finally 
 got into jail (but a small per cent, ever see the in- 
 side of a jail), his friends often band together and 
 take him out. A few days after the above item was 
 written a band of fifteen or twenty masked and armed 
 men visited the jail at Winchester, broke in and took 
 away one Rutledge, charged with murder. Indeed, 
 during the year under consideration there were be- 
 c d S 
 
j HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 tween thirty and forty different " operations" by armed 
 mobs, such as whipping and killing men, releasing 
 prisoners, etc. In respect to mob operations, the 
 condition of England in the fifteenth century was 
 no worse than that of Kentucky at present. 
 
 During " Christmas week" in the South there are 
 always an increased number of affrays. Men go to 
 the smaller towns to have " an enjoyable time," many 
 drink, and some fight, with the result that the num- 
 ber of homicides during the week is much greater 
 than usual. In a despatch from Maysville to 
 the Courier-Journal, December 27, it is said that 
 " Christmas passed rather quietly, with few casual- 
 ties, and only one of a serious nature. In an affray 
 between John Suns and Wilson Miller the former had 
 his throat cut." At a Christmas affray at Crab Or- 
 chard " thirty or forty shots were fired" between the 
 Myers and the Carson crowds, the weapons being 
 pistols and shot-guns. In a letter from Letcher 
 County, signed Dr. S. H. Breeding, he mentions a 
 little holiday affray between ten persons, in which 
 knives were principally used. Of the ten, nine were 
 wounded, two thought to be mortally stabbed. These 
 are samples of many. The Christmas affrays South 
 are not different from the ordinary homicides, except 
 that the number during the festal week is greater. 
 
 A despatch from Maysville, early in the year 1878, 
 says, " Six murder cases come up for trial next 
 term." The population of the county, Mason, is 
 about nineteen thousand, or nearly one murder case 
 to every three thousand people. 
 
HOMICIDE IN KENTUCKY- 5 I 
 
 In Greenup County, we are informed, October 7, 
 1 1 878, that there were one hundred and thirty cases on 
 the criminal docket, seven for murder, " and four of 
 these seven murders occurred within the last nine 
 months." Population of Greenup, about twelve 
 thousand. 
 
 On the docket of the Circuit Court in Barren 
 County in December, 1878, there were two hundred 
 and eighty-nine criminal cases, and of these seven 
 were for murder. Population of that county is about 
 eighteen thousand. At the same time there were two 
 hundred and eighty-two criminal cases on the docket 
 in Hart County, three of which were for murder. 
 Population of that county, about fourteen thousand. 
 
 The Garrard County court records show that 
 twenty-four men were killed in that county in the 
 six years ending in 1879, all shot or stabbed except 
 one, and he was hung by a mob. The population 
 of the county is about eleven thousand. The Ken- 
 nedy family seems to have done its share of this 
 bloody work. J. H. Kennedy killed Arthur Woods, 
 W. F. Kennedy killed Frank Johnston, E. D. Ken- 
 nedy killed Wyatt Kennedy, Grove Kennedy killed 
 E. D. Kennedy. Recently a Kennedy has been con- 
 victed for one of these homicides, and in a local 
 account published in the newspapers we are told 
 that " The Kennedy family is well connected and 
 famous for its fighting qualities. E. D. Kennedy, 
 murdered by Grove, killed two men ; Grove killed 
 two ; Grove's brother, John H., killed two ; another 
 brother killed one ; his brother-in-law killed a negro, 
 
52 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 and was pardoned by Governor Blackburn ; another 
 brother-in-law attacked Sam Conn, and in the fight 
 both were killed ; Andy Kennedy and a half-brother, 
 Henry Yeaky, were both killed in personal encoun- 
 ters ; an illegitimate son of E. D. Kennedy also killed 
 his man." 
 
 In and around Harrodsburg, Mercer County, there 
 have been five affrays in sixteen years, in which two 
 or more men were killed in each affray. This does 
 not include the numerous " difficulties" in which but 
 one was killed. The Thompson-Davies affray began 
 in a crowded court-room, during the trial of a law- 
 suit, and continued until three men were killed on 
 the spot and, I believe, others wounded. The fami- 
 lies engaged were of the highest respectability. 
 
 In an account of an Owen County " difficulty," of 
 the class which so swell the number of homicides in 
 Kentucky and the South, we read that " Roberts 
 threw off his coat and rushed at Abrams for a fight. 
 They clinched, and while in a close hug Abrams 
 drew a revolver, reached around and placed the muz- 
 zle near Roberts's ear, and fired. The ball glanced 
 around and penetrated the spinal column of Roberts, 
 causing him to fall like a shot beef. As he went 
 down Abrams fired a second shot, which took effect 
 in Roberts's body. Abrams walked away unmolested. 
 Roberts was taken a mile below, near which point he 
 resided, and was carried to his home in an insensible 
 condition. Dr. Supey was called to his relief, and, 
 after diagnosing the case, remarked, 'There is no 
 use trying to save him. He will have to go to the new 
 
HOMICIDE IN KENTUCKY. 
 
 53 
 
 graveyard, where there are thirteen men buried, nine 
 of whom were murdered! " 
 
 We often hear of localities so healthy that it is 
 necessary to kill a man to start a graveyard, but 
 here is a graveyard in Owen County containing a 
 majority of murdered men! 
 
 In an item of news from a place appropriately 
 called Hamlet (in North Carolina), it is mentioned 
 that the little graveyard there contains the bodies of 
 six murdered men. 
 
 In the Northern States, and particularly in the 
 Middle and Eastern States, a very large proportion 
 of the homicides are among foreign-born residents. 
 But in the Southern States precisely the contrary is 
 true. The foreign-born population is very small, and 
 at least forty-nine out of fifty homicides are among 
 native-born Americans. As to Kentucky, it is a 
 singular fact that the foreign population do not go 
 to many of the interior counties. Is it because the 
 despotism of the pistol and the knife is more dreaded 
 than the despotism of government in the Old World? 
 According to the census of 1870 there are counties 
 in Kentucky without a single foreign-born resident. 
 Five had but one each. Breathitt, which is notori- 
 ous for the outlawry of its inhabitants, had not a 
 single foreign-born resident. Twenty-eight counties 
 had less than ten each. Clay County, heretofore re- 
 ferred to, had eleven ; Garrard had thirty-eight ; Hart, 
 eighty-one; Letcher, one; Owsley, three. Now, it 
 is hardly necessary to surmise that if the laws were 
 as thoroughly enforced against crime in Kentucky as 
 
 5* 
 
54 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 in the Eastern States and in England, this condition 
 of things would not exist. In England and Wales, 
 with twenty-six millions of population, with enor- 
 mous mining and manufacturing interests, the annual 
 number of murders and manslaughters is less than 
 double the number in Kentucky, with a million and 
 a quarter of agricultural population, with no great 
 mining or manufacturing centres or large cities. 
 Yorkshire County, England, contains over two and 
 a half millions of population, or about double that 
 of Kentucky. The annual average number of mur- 
 ders and manslaughters in Yorkshire is thirty-three. 
 Kentucky, having half the population, should be able 
 to get along with about sixteen annually. And were 
 the laws enforced in Kentucky as effectively as in 
 England, who will say that crime could not be 
 diminished? 
 
 But to return to the Kentucky homicides 'for 1878. 
 In collecting them, I took names and dates as near as 
 possible, not for the purpose of transcribing here in 
 detail, but for reference. I have also attempted to 
 classify the homicides according to sex and color 
 and relationship. But this cannot be done with accu- 
 racy, as in several instances the details were lacking. 
 For instance, during the year 13 men were killed by 
 mobs and unknown assassins. Classified by color, 
 however, as near as possible, we find that 120 whites 
 were killed by whites; 24 blacks killed by whites; 
 46 blacks killed by blacks ; and 8 whites killed by 
 blacks. This is not entirely accurate, for many are 
 omitted for want of the necessary information. 
 
HOMICIDE IN KENTUCKY. 55 
 
 In these homicides, as classified, we have a striking 
 instance of the effect of enforcing the law. Out of 
 over two hundred homicides for the year, only eight 
 whites were killed by blacks. Why ? Because, when 
 a black man kills a white man the law is enforced 
 with rigor. He is not permitted to escape on tech- 
 nicalities. He is not released on a straw-bond or any 
 other bond. He is not released from jail at night by 
 a clan of his friends. When taken out unlawfully 
 it is by a mob of the murdered man's friends, who 
 hang him. For a negro to be acquitted of the 
 charge of killing a white man requires the most 
 direct and positive proof either of innocence or that 
 it was clearly a case of self-defence, when no other 
 alternative was left but to kill. If the killing of 
 whites by whites and blacks by blacks was reduced 
 to as low a per cent, as the killing of whites by 
 blacks, the homicide rate in Kentucky and the South 
 would not reach such fearful proportions as now. 
 It is the killing of whites by whites that swells the 
 aggregate out of all proportion to that which prevails 
 in well-governed communities. The killing of blacks 
 by whites is probably much less than would be ex- 
 pected, considering the total that are carried away 
 annually by the pistol and the knife. But of the 
 twenty-four blacks killed by whites, the majority 
 were murders of the most cruel and cold-blooded 
 character. This is the case all over the South. 
 The number of blacks killed by whites bears less 
 proportion to the total murders than is generally 
 supposed, except in times of great political excite- 
 
56 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 ment, when there is a race issue and a " color line." 
 At such times, in the Cotton States, there are very- 
 many more blacks killed than ordinarily. But when 
 there is no political or race excitement, it will be 
 found in all the Southern States that very many 
 more whites are killed by whites than blacks killed 
 by whites. The trouble with the blacks in the 
 " border States" of the South (where political mur- 
 ders are unknown or very rare) is not the number of 
 assaults upon them, but the liability of assault and 
 murder to happen at any time with very slight prov- 
 ocation. In a county known to me two years passed 
 without a single crime of magnitude against the per- 
 sons of negroes by whites. Suddenly, and with very 
 slight provocation, a white desperado shot a negro, 
 aud another killed two, and escaped. These mur- 
 ders were unavenged, and will remain so until meted 
 out by Him who hath said, " Vengeance is mine ; I 
 will repay." With negroes there is always a sense 
 of insecurity among armed and quarrelsome white 
 men, and they keep out of the way when possible. 
 But be as discreet as they may, numbers are shot 
 down annually by white desperadoes, who " escape," 
 if not by flight, then by the technicalities of the law, 
 always invoked to the fullest extent in a white man's 
 behalf. If these will not save him, then the next move 
 is for his friends to break into jail and take him out. 
 Be the murder as cold-blooded as it can, as unpro- 
 voked as it may, it is almost impossible, in the pres- 
 ent condition of Southern feeling, to adequately 
 punish a white man for killing a negro. There are 
 
HOMICIDE IN KENTUCKY. 
 
 57 
 
 instances of such punishment, but they are rare. 
 But the number killed by whites is less than gener- 
 ally supposed. For instance, one would hardly be- 
 lieve that four times as many whites were killed in 
 Kentucky in a year by whites than blacks killed by 
 whites, but it is undoubtedly true. 
 
 The greater number of " difficulties" in which men 
 are slain are between whites, and the consequence is 
 more white men than black men fall at the hands of 
 white men, and as many or more blacks are killed 
 by those of their own color as are killed by white 
 men. This is true in ordinary years when there is 
 no great political or race excitement, but, of course, 
 is subject to variations, such as the race massacres 
 in Mississippi in 1875, and in Louisiana for several 
 years, and the political troubles in South Carolina in 
 1876. 
 
 In relation to the general subject of homicide 
 among the white men of Kentucky, Bishop Smith, 
 of that State, contributed an interesting article, pub- 
 lished in the New York World, June 16, 1879. It 
 was in the shape of an interview, and details the 
 bishop's efforts in attempting to devise means to 
 check the barbarism of personal combat. The arti- 
 cle in question is as follows : 
 
 " Yes," said the venerable Bishop Smith, of Ken- 
 tucky, senior prelate of the Episcopal Church in 
 America, " it is a fact that my adopted State has a 
 fearful history of unpunished murder. Every por- 
 tion of her soil and every year of her history have 
 been tarnished by these acts of mistaken chivalry 
 
5 8 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 but real brutality. For many years before the war 
 I was forced to become familiar with events which 
 in this section would have raised a cry of righteous 
 indignation, while there they were put down as justi- 
 fiable homicides." 
 
 * * * * * * * 
 
 " It is the system — for it was a system with a 
 public feeling back of it — against which I would 
 speak. It exists to-day as it did forty or more years 
 ago, and there really seems little hope of making 
 headway against it. I attempted it once, and the 
 attempt brought me into contact with James Guthrie, 
 who was Secretary of the Treasury under President 
 Pierce, and one of the finest of Kentucky statesmen. 
 Our meeting came about in this way. As bishop of 
 Kentucky, in the course of six or seven years I had 
 become somewhat acquainted with the greater num- 
 ber of the more populous counties, and having, 
 during the ten or twelve previous years, been familiar 
 with like portions of Massachusetts and Vermont, I 
 was painfully impressed — indeed, I was absolutely 
 shocked — by the great number of fatal tavern and 
 street broils, resulting chiefly from each party being 
 armed with concealed weapons, and still more shocked 
 that so few of the survivors met with condign pun- 
 ishment, — for I had heard that during twenty years 
 there had been but one man hung in Connecticut, 
 and he the only one who had deserved it according 
 to law. The number of unpunished homicides in 
 Kentucky was dreadful. Poor as I was, — every let- 
 ter costing then, in 1835, twenty-five cents postage, — 
 
HOMICIDE IN KENTUCKY. 5^ 
 
 I addressed a letter to each county clerk asking him 
 to inform me of the number of homicides in his 
 county for each of the three preceding years. I re- 
 ceived replies from only thirty-three counties. Making 
 these the basis of a general estimate, it appeared that 
 each year there had been one hundred unpunished 
 homicides in the State ! Armed with these docu- 
 ments -and with a very strong feeling on the matter 
 I sat down and wrote an earnest article, with which 
 I proceeded to Frankfort, had it printed, and copies 
 distributed to both houses of the Legislature. A 
 few days afterward I applied to Senator Guthrie, who 
 was then chairman of the Judiciary Committee of 
 the House, for permission to appear before them on 
 this question, which was cheerfully granted, and 
 the day and hour were appointed. I was listened 
 to very attentively for half an hour, when the chair- 
 man, turning to me very courteously, remarked, 
 'Why, bishop, you have made out a much worse 
 case than we expected, bad as we well knew it to 
 be. You appear before us, of course, to ask for fur- 
 ther legislation on this painful subject: permit me 
 to ask what you think of the criminal code of this 
 Commonwealth ?' 
 
 " ' A very excellent code indeed, only a little too 
 severe perhaps in certain cases ; better a milder code 
 if only faithfully and impartially administered. Take, 
 for example, a recent act of the Legislature of the 
 State of Georgia on the subject immediately before 
 us. As the Legislature considered it hopeless to 
 attempt to pass a law against going armed, they 
 
60 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 made it a penitentiary offence in the case of the sur- 
 vivor of a broil if it was found that he was armed 
 beforehand for the feud or broil, and it is said that it 
 proved quite a check to what was before only too 
 common.' 
 
 " ' But,' persisted the chairman, ' if the fault is not 
 in the code, where does it lie ?' 
 
 " ' Oh,' I replied, ' no jury can anywhere be found 
 who will bring in a verdict of guilty of anything 
 worse than " done in a state of delirium," or in " self- 
 defence," or in effect justifiable homicide !' 
 
 " ' But,' continued the chairman, ' one would think 
 that public sentiment would compel juries once in a 
 while to do right ?' 
 
 " ' Yes, when a negro out of revenge kills a white 
 man, or a man of the lowest class out of mere cussed- 
 ness kills his wife ; rarely in any other case.' 
 
 " ' What, then, is to be done ?' persisted the chair- 
 man. ' Who has the moulding, forming, and correct- 
 ing of public opinion ? Who but parents, teachers, 
 editors, and above all the clergy ? You come here 
 asking for legislation. In my turn I appeal to the 
 conductors of the press and to the clergy of every 
 religious denomination to dwell on the value of a 
 single life, the enormity of the crime of murder, and 
 the duty of grand juries, of all juries in criminal 
 cases, and of all judges and administrators of the 
 law to do their duty without fear or favor.' 
 
 "I felt the ground surely but utterly slipping 
 away from under me, and not an inch left for me to 
 stand upon. Rising abruptly, making a profound 
 
HOMICIDE IN KENTUCKY. 6 1 
 
 bow, I retired, exclaiming, ' Gentlemen, good-morn- 
 ing ; I have not another word to say.' 
 
 " And thus it remains to this day." 
 
 ****** 
 
 " Who supports the system ?" 
 
 " All classes ; men of family, of position, and of 
 standing in the church, when they sit on juries, look 
 at a case brought before them entirely from the 
 stand-point of their early training. The law is recog- 
 nized only as a shield to protect the prisoner from 
 the consequences of the law, and time and time again 
 I have seen the verdict of justifiable homicide brought 
 in in cases which, by we of New England and the 
 North, would be considered cold-blooded murder." 
 
 Those looking carefully into the history of crime 
 against the person in Kentucky will find Bishop 
 Smith's observations well sustained. But the rem- 
 edy, as the bishop intimates, is not so much in laws 
 as in enforcing the laws, and in creating a popular 
 sentiment that will demand their enforcement. The 
 education and improvement of public sentiment in 
 this respect is largely the province of the pulpit and 
 the press. A great and able journal like the Louis- 
 ville Courier-Journal can do more towards the sup- 
 pression of this murderous lawlessness not only in 
 Kentucky but in the South than the well-directed 
 work of half a dozen sessions of the Legislature. 
 Legislatures can enact laws, but their adequate en- 
 forcement requires the sanction and the " backing" 
 of popular sentiment. This is the key to the whole 
 difficulty in the Southern States. Murder is not 
 
62 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 regarded with sufficient horror, and the disposition 
 is to be lenient with men-slayers. This must be 
 corrected, and until it is the Southern States will 
 have the distinction of protecting from punishment 
 more murderers than any other civilized population 
 on earth. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 HOMICIDE IN TEXAS. 
 
 From the columns of the Galveston News for 1878 
 I collected accounts of four hundred and one Texas 
 homicides. Persons reported mortally wounded 
 were classed as homicides. There were also one 
 hundred and forty-eight persons severely or danger- 
 ously wounded. Many of these have undoubtedly 
 since died of their wounds, which would increase the 
 homicides for the year to considerably over four 
 hundred. Allowing that fifteen per cent, of the 
 severely wounded afterwards died of their wounds, 
 the total number of homicides would be four hun- 
 dred and twenty-three. That there were many 
 more than this number of severely wounded we 
 know, for the ratio is very small compared to the 
 number killed. Besides, it bears but a very small 
 proportion to the number arrested for assault with 
 intent to kill, so far as we can learn. 
 
 I chose the year 1878, for I had collected the 
 homicides in Kentucky and South Carolina, and by 
 comparison, as much so as possible, with other years, 
 found it a fair average period, with no unusual dis- 
 turbances, political or otherwise, to swell the homi- 
 cide rate. But I doubt if the columns of the News 
 contain accounts or references to all the Texas 
 
 63 
 
64 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 homicides. Allowing that ten per cent, of the 
 killed and wounded missed mention in the Galves- 
 ton News, — not an unreasonable supposition, for 
 Texas is a very large State, — the number of homicides 
 would be about four hundred and sixty-five. From 
 four hundred and fifty to four hundred and seventy- 
 five would probably be found to be the actual 
 average number in Texas, if it were possible to 
 collect and record every instance of homicide. This 
 would give, in the fifteen years since the war, a total 
 of nearly seven thousand. I believe that the aggre- 
 gate has been as many. And this in a State which 
 contained, in 1870, a population of eight hundred 
 and eighteen thousand, or about one-fifth that of 
 New York. 
 
 During the year, and included in this great aggre- 
 gate of homicides, were forty-one assassinations ! 
 Actually more assassinations in Texas in one year 
 than total homicides o all descriptions in Massa- 
 chusetts in the years 1877 and 1878. 
 
 Many of these assassinations were of the utmost 
 ferocity and cruelty. In the account of the assassi- 
 nation of George Heaton it is said that " he leaves a 
 lovely young wife and child to mourn his untimely 
 death." Another instance was the assassination of 
 Dr. Grayson and his wife, in Anderson County. The 
 doctor was called put at night and forty shots put 
 into him, and his wife killed also. We are told that 
 "they left several children, the oldest but nine." 
 French Rainsville was taken from his house at night 
 and shot to death, " leaving a wife and two children.',' 
 
HOMICIDE IN TEXAS: 
 
 65 
 
 A man named Springer shot down his brother-in-law, 
 and when the agonized wife ran to his dead body, 
 killed her also. William Sims, Limestone County, 
 was called to his door and shot dead. The local 
 account says, " Mr. Sims is known as an old and 
 respected citizen." A man named Albright was 
 assassinated as he was driving home alone, near 
 Crockett. The team, we are told, carried him home 
 dead, stopping at the gate. Like nine-tenths of the 
 assassinations in Texas, it was " done by parties un- 
 known." A man named Gambrell was assassinated 
 at his home at night. One Bland shared the same 
 fate. A man named Cline was assassinated "while 
 asleep in bed with his wife, to whom he had been 
 married one month." A man named Linch was taken 
 from his house at night, shot and left for dead, his 
 house fired, and his eight children killed and then 
 burned. J. C. Killough was assassinated while riding 
 in a buggy with his wife and child. The local account 
 says, "As Captain Killough and his wife and little 
 son were returning home from his farm yesterday 
 evening he was suddenly assaulted, and shot and 
 killed, nine buckshot entering his right side, coming 
 out on the left side and bespattering his wife and 
 child with blood. He leaves a wife and five chil- 
 dren." The wife, in her statement, says, " I knew 
 them (the assailants) well. One was R. J. Moore, 
 my brother, another, W. B. Moore, my nephew, the 
 third, J. D. Hunt, my sister's husband." It was a 
 repetition of the old Southern story of the use of the 
 shot-gun in the settlement of family feuds. The re- 
 e 6* 
 
66 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 porter of the Galveston News, writing from Brenham 
 of this murder, says, " During my reportorial en- 
 gagement with the News it has fallen to my lot to 
 allude to as many as ten of these feuds, each of 
 which has cost the life of one, and some as many as 
 ten lives ; yet none of the parties engaged therein 
 seem satisfied, each man going about with one, two, 
 and sometimes three huge six-shooters strapped to 
 his horse or around his own body.'' Ten feuds, and 
 some of them costing ten lives each ! Promising 
 condition of society this. 
 
 Another cold-blooded assassination was that of 
 A. Shuchtruff, at Houston, who was called from his 
 house at night and twelve shots put into his body, 
 other shots narrowly missing his wife. " He leaves 
 a wife and several children," we are told. About the 
 same time there was a double assassination. A de- 
 spatch from Waco says, " Sunday morning, before 
 daylight, a party of masked men rode up to the 
 house of John Stull and wakened the inmates. Ru- 
 fus Smith and wife, who were new-comers, staying 
 with Stull until they could build, rushed out of the 
 house, Smith carrying a baby. He was shot dead, and 
 the baby and Mrs. Smith wounded. As Stull ran out 
 he was also shot down ; his wife escaped. The mur- 
 derers went to Smith, turned him over, thence to 
 Stull, and, recognizing him, literally riddled him 
 with buckshot." The murderers then went to the 
 house of Stull's brother, and attempted to assassinate 
 him, but failed. All this "by parties unknown." 
 
 The Chisholm massacre in Mississippi was not more 
 
HOMICIDE IN TEXAS. 
 
 6 7 
 
 brutal than this, yet these assassinations are but two 
 of the forty-one which took place in Texas in a single 
 year in a total of over four hundred homicides ! And 
 these two brutal assassinations, so far as details are 
 concerned, are dismissed in a thirty-line account. 
 
 Another of the numerous assassinations was that 
 of T. S. Parton by his own brother, who fired from 
 the bushes by the roadside, killing his brother as he 
 was going to dinner, accompanied by his little boy. 
 The explanation of this assassination is that it was 
 " on account of business troubles." 
 
 Among double assassinations was that of Mart and 
 Tom Howell, alleged murderers, in jail at Meridian. 
 A mob broke into the jail, " and," in the language 
 of the account, " riddled these men with buckshot 
 as they lay in the cages." It was Sunday night, 
 and we are further informed that " Rev. W. D. Weir 
 was in the midst of a very eloquent sermon to a 
 large congregation not far from the jail." Probably 
 these murderers deserved death, but picture the de- 
 moralization of such an administration of vengeance ! 
 
 Forty-one murders by assassination would be a 
 large quota for a State with the population of Texas, 
 even if there was not another homicide within her 
 borders during the year. But we find that these 
 forty-one assassinations were only about one-tenth 
 of the total homicides ; the remainder, amounting to 
 about three hundred and sixty, were such as grew out 
 of " personal difficulties," bar-room rows, affrays, 
 street-fights, executions by mobs, and the like. The 
 total aggregates more murders and manslaughters 
 
68 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 during the year 1878 than occurred in the ten States 
 of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, 
 Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, 
 Michigan, and Minnesota, with an aggregate popu- 
 lation of over fifteen millions ! In other words, in 
 the single State of Texas, with a population of about 
 one-twelfth the aggregate in these ten States, there 
 are more homicides in a year than in all these States 
 combined. And in these ten States there are great 
 cities, mining and manufacturing centres, millions 
 of foreign-born citizens, and immense and clashing 
 interests. What rational explanation is there why 
 murder and manslaughter in Texas should be more 
 frequent than in all these States combined ? Indeed, 
 in Texas, there is that condition of things which, in 
 the North, reduces the murder rate, namely, an 
 American-born agricultural population and plenty 
 of room. Texas, however, is settled mainly from 
 the older Southern States, and her condition with re- 
 spect to value set upon human life is but a reflex of 
 the state of society throughout the South, with the 
 qualification that in Texas the natural lawlessness 
 of the Southern section has freer sweep, and is less 
 restrained by forms of law. 
 
 During the year there were a number of double, 
 triple, and quadruple homicides in street-fights and 
 affrays, but the larger proportion arose from " diffi- 
 culties" between man and man, in which one was 
 killed. 
 
 At a street-fight in Junction City four men were 
 shot dead, and lay in their own blood near one 
 
HOMICIDE IN TEXAS. 
 
 6 9 
 
 another. The weapons were needle-guns and pistols. 
 Some of these men left families, and they were 
 spoken of in the local account as good and useful 
 citizens. 
 
 An illustration of the effect of the habit of carry- 
 ing concealed weapons is seen in an item from Har- 
 risburg, a small interior town : " As J. J. Ryan was 
 going to dinner, T. J. Collins met him and asked 
 him if he was armed. (The parties had had a mis- 
 understanding.) Ryan said he was not. Collins 
 told him to go and get fixed. Ryan proposed to 
 fight then without arms. Collins replied that they 
 did not fight that way in Texas. (True enough, and 
 more's the pity.) Collins then shot and wounded 
 Ryan." 
 
 Among the affrays in which three men were killed 
 was one in Montague County. The local account 
 says, "Tom Quillan and a man named Robers rode 
 into town together." They were drinking, and met 
 the Pollards, father and son. " A dispute arose be- 
 tween Robers and old man Pollard, which led the 
 former to draw a Winchester rifle on the latter, but 
 Pollard was too quick, and shot Robers dead with 
 a revolver. Seeing Robers fall, Quillan shot Pollard 
 through with a rifle. Young Pollard ran for a doctor, 
 and Quillan mounted his horse to leave town. As 
 he rode off he met Pollard returning with the doctor, 
 and raised his rifle, sending a bullet crashing through 
 the young man's brain." 
 
 A singular affray was that between two men, 
 Tulley and Vancil, neighbors, who quarrelled about 
 
70 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 going to church, drew their weapons, and shot each 
 other dead. " Both leave families," we are informed 
 in the local account. A somewhat similar affray- 
 was that between two young men, Ramsdale and 
 Hays, who fell into a quarrel when returning from a 
 revival meeting, fought with knives, and killed each 
 other by repeated stabs. Here are two " difficulties," 
 one about going to church and the other in return- 
 ing from church, in which four men are killed! 
 Strangely enough, in Kentucky, about the same 
 time, two young men, named Hathaway and Gibson, 
 were going home from church when they quarrelled 
 the same way, and Gibson stabbed Hathaway to 
 death. They were aged but seventeen or eighteen.- 
 
 At Austin, the State capital, in four days, an un- 
 armed white citizen was shot and killed, an un- 
 armed German woman was shot and killed, and an 
 unarmed colored man was shot and killed. An item 
 from that city says, "This morning shots were 
 heard at the river front, and the report spread that 
 another man had been killed. It proved only to be 
 duck-shooting, but the recent tragedies here create 
 so much excitement that people are ready to hear 
 and believe anything without surprise." And this 
 under the very shadow of the Capitol of the State ! 
 More murders in Austin in a week than in one of 
 the New England States in a year. And in the pub- 
 lic streets of the capital two aldermen of the city 
 meet, have " an altercation," and one stabs the other 
 to death. 
 
 Here is a typical difficulty from Coleman County. 
 
HOMICIDE IN TEXAS. 71 
 
 The local account says, "At King & Nathan's 
 store in this county, Robert and Samuel Nathan, 
 brothers, had some dealings with the two Barrett 
 brothers, and cousins of the Nathan boys, and when 
 the time came to settle up their business a misunder- 
 standing caused them to appeal to their Winchesters 
 (rifles) and six-shooters for adjustment of matters. 
 Dick Barrett received two shots, and is said to be 
 dangerously wounded. Sam Nathan was shot in the 
 groin and is seriously hurt. The other two men 
 escaped injury." This is a fine way to " adjust a 
 misunderstanding." 
 
 There is an account of the killing of a man by one 
 Tom Doran, who, it is stated, had previously killed 
 two men. Shortly afterwards he killed Deputy- 
 Sheriff Temple, his third victim (and all this time 
 he had been allowed to run at large). Temple's father 
 killed him, making effective work of the desperado, 
 for he is stated to have " had two pistol-shot wounds 
 in his body, was stabbed eleven times, and his throat 
 cut from ear to ear." 
 
 Among other killings of people of some promi- 
 nence was that of Captain Callan, who was shot down 
 on the streets of Dallas. 
 
 I have hardly touched upon the individual affrays, 
 where two become engaged in a " difficulty" and one 
 falls. To give even five lines to each case would 
 swell this book beyond the prescribed limits. 
 
 From Waller County, early in February, we learn 
 that " five murder cases have been disposed of at the 
 present session of the district court just closed, and 
 
72 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 all acqtiitted." This is a new county, with a small 
 population. They start out well. 
 
 In Washington County the grand jury indictments 
 for the January term (1878) include, murder, six; 
 assault with intent to murder, five. 
 
 On the Lamar County criminal docket, April, 1878, 
 there were thirty-eight cases, six for murder, and 
 twelve for assault with intent to murder. This 
 county, in 1870, had a population of about sixteen 
 thousand. 
 
 In an item in the News in April it is stated " that 
 of 450 arrests in Western Texas, 125 were accused 
 of murder, and 3 convicted." 
 
 In the San Antonio jail, in January, " there were 
 twelve men charged with murder." Usually in a 
 Texas community more murderers are at large on 
 bail than in jail. 
 
 In an item from Palestine, giving an account of the 
 assassination of a man (June, 1878), it is stated "that 
 there are now nine men in our jail charged with as- 
 sassination." 
 
 In Dallas County, August 10, 1878, there were 
 nine murder cases on the criminal docket. Popula- 
 tion of the county thirty thousand. 
 
 The Marshall (Harrison County) Herald gives the 
 number of arrests for murder by the sheriff of that 
 county for 1 877 as thirteen. Thirteen arrests for mur- 
 der in a year in a county the population of which, in 
 1870, was thirteen thousand two hundred and forty- 
 one. Almost an arrest for murder to each thousand 
 of population. This is the county where the un- 
 
HOMICIDE IN TEXAS. 
 
 n 
 
 armed actor, Porter, was assassinated by Currie 
 some time afterwards, and Currie acquitted, as 
 might naturally be expected. In a book published 
 before the war I read not long ago that there were, 
 in 1858, twenty-five widows living on Widow's 
 Creek, in this county, each one of whom had lost 
 her husband by murder. It may not be true, but is 
 it unreasonable in the light of more recent facts ? 
 More arrests for murder in a year in a county con- 
 taining (1870) thirteen thousand two hundred and 
 forty-one population than the yearly average in 
 Suffolk County, Massachusetts, with a population of 
 over one-third of a million, and in which county 
 nearly half the murders in Massachusetts are com- 
 mitted. At the rate of arrests for murder in Harri- 
 son County in 1877, there would be sixteen hundred 
 arrests for that offence in Massachusetts. Do we 
 wonder so much at the statement that there was, 
 twenty-two years ago, a veritable Widow's Creek in 
 that county, where there lived twenty-five widows of 
 murdered men ? 
 
 The report of the Galveston police or 1877, as 
 published in the Galveston News, shows five arrests 
 for murder and fifty-four arrests for assault with in- 
 tent to murder. The population of Galveston in 1870 
 was about thirteen thousand. I have the arrests in 
 Rochester, New York, covering the same period, and 
 also covering the period of the railroad strikes, when 
 there was unusual commotion and lawlessness. The 
 population of Rochester was about eighty-five thou- 
 sand. With at least four times the population of 
 d 7 
 
74 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 Galveston, and during a period of unusual disturb- 
 ance, there were but two arrests for manslaughter, and 
 but six for assault with intent to kill. Had the as- 
 saults with intent to kill been as frequent as in Gal- 
 veston, in proportion to population, the number of 
 arrests for this would have been over two hundred ! 
 
 These illustrations, showing the comparative ex- 
 cess of cutting and shooting in the Southern States, 
 could be multiplied indefinitely. 
 
 Divided by color among the combatants, we find 
 that the proportion in Texas in 1878 was not greatly 
 different from that in Kentucky. In Kentucky, so 
 far as we are able to learn, 120 homicides were com- 
 mitted by whites upon whites. In Texas 269 were 
 of this class, and many others involved in doubt. 
 In Kentucky, 46 blacks were killed by blacks. In 
 Texas, for the same year, but 27 blacks were killed 
 by blacks. In Kentucky, 8 whites were killed by 
 blacks, and in Texas but 6. It will be noted in both 
 States how very largely the killing of whites by 
 whites predominates over all other classes of homi- 
 cide. 
 
 The fact that of all the homicides in Texas in the 
 year but six were committed by blacks upon whites 
 is very significant. The reason is the same there as 
 in Kentucky and other Southern States. When a 
 negro kills a white man the law is enforced with 
 all rigor, if the mobs, usually at hand upon such 
 occasions, allow the law jurisdiction of the case at 
 all. While in Texas but six blacks killed whites, 
 during the same time fifty-three blacks were killed 
 
HOMICIDE IN TEXAS. 
 
 75 
 
 by whites, so far as we are able to learn. Were the 
 law enforced as rigorously against a white man for 
 killing a black man as vice versa the disproportion 
 would not be so great. 
 
 Among other curiosities of crime in Texas, we find 
 that to be a peace-officer in that State is about as 
 dangerous as to be a soldier in active service. Dur- 
 ing the year sixteen town marshals, sheriffs, and 
 deputy-sheriffs were killed in the discharge of their 
 duties. In one small town two deputy-sheriffs were 
 killed within a few months of each other. 
 
 In family fights, that is, affrays among relatives, 
 there were many killed. Ten men were killed by 
 their brothers-in-law, making sixteen for the year in 
 Texas and Kentucky. Four men were killed by 
 their brothers, and a fifth was thought to be mortally 
 wounded. Of women killed there were eleven. But 
 in all Texas, with this fearful record of homicide, 
 there were but three wife-murders reported, that is, 
 wives killed by their husbands. The number of per- 
 sons killed by mobs was eighteen, and the number 
 killed by parties unknown was thirty-eight The 
 majority of these, however, were such as fell by 
 assassination or were " executed" by mobs. In ad- 
 dition to the forty-one assassinated there were eighteen 
 attempted assassinations. 
 
 Some of the assassinations appeared to be for no 
 other reason than that the victim was a witness in a 
 murder case, or had been efficient in having mur- 
 derers arrested. In this way quiet, law-abiding citi- 
 zens are often kept in terror, and dare not take active 
 
76 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 steps in the suppression of lawlessness. In several 
 instances, after a peculiarly atrocious murder or as- 
 sassination, the citizens of the neighborhood would 
 hold a meeting and denounce murder and lawlessness 
 by appropriate resolutions and send a copy of them 
 to the governor. 
 
 The population of the State of New York in 1870 
 was a little over five times that of Texas. If homi- 
 cide were as frequent in New York as in Texas in 
 proportion to population, there would be over two 
 thousand murders and manslaughters annually, an 
 average of over five daily, Sunday included. The 
 annual average number of felonious homicides in 
 New York, with its vast population and great, varied, 
 and jarring interests, and its million or more of for- 
 eign population, is but little over one hundred. With 
 some five times the population of Texas, they get 
 along with one-fourth the homicides. But it may 
 be said that New York is an old, long-settled State. 
 This is true of the most of it. But Western New 
 York, including the Buffalo and Rochester region, 
 has not been settled over seventy years. And it 
 happens that homicide is less frequent in the com- 
 paratively new counties in the western part of the 
 State than in the city of New York ! In the agri- 
 cultural regions of the State homicide is not more 
 frequent than in rural New England. 
 
 Were crime against the person as frequent in New 
 York State as in Texas it would create a revolution 
 in less than two years. If the State authorities were 
 not sufficiently strong to protect life and preserve 
 
HOMICIDE IN TEXAS. <jj 
 
 order, the national government would be appealed 
 to. Come what might, the citizens of New York 
 would not submit to two thousand murders annually. 
 
 Texas is a magnificent State, capable of sustaining 
 eight millions of population, and with great possi- 
 bilities in the future. Her order-loving, law-abiding 
 citizens are a majority, but they seem unable to assert 
 themselves against the murderers. To be sure, Texas 
 is a young State, but so are Iowa and Minnesota 
 young States, and murder should not be more fre- 
 quent in Texas than in these States of the new 
 Northwest. Yet in the face of a rate of homicide in 
 Texas not equalled elsewhere, how very few execu- 
 tions for murder there are ! Occasionally a negro is 
 hung, but among white men there are a hundred 
 homicides to one hanging. Not only that, but mur- 
 derers are allowed to go at large on bail pending 
 trial. There are at all times more man-slayers in 
 Texas at large than in confinement. For instance, 
 the statistics collected with the census of 1870 show 
 three hundred and twenty-three homicides in a year 
 in Texas, and but seventy persons in prison for all 
 offences ! 
 
 Leaving the terrible record made in the year 1878 
 — which I selected for comparison — and coming to a 
 later period, we find much to confirm our impressions 
 as to the extraordinary number of homicides in Texas. 
 Recently at Austin, the capital, three men went to 
 the house of a citizen and shot him to death in the 
 presence of his wife and children. The excuse was 
 that he had been accused of seduction, but the man 
 
 7* 
 
78 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 was killed, according to the local reports, without 
 even knowing why he was killed. Speaking of this 
 murder, a letter from Austin says, " The killing of 
 McMillin by.Eanes, under the shadow of the Capitol, 
 has excited more interest and discussion than any of 
 the last fourteen or fifteen homicides at Austin." 
 
 The writer adds, " a feeling of insecurity pervades 
 the community." Well it may, in connection with 
 the incidental reference to " the last fourteen or fif- 
 teen homicides in Austin." Measured by the aver- 
 age number among an equal population in Eastern 
 States, there should not be in Austin more than two or 
 three murders in a quarter of a century, or an average 
 of one every eight years. Yet so very frequent is mur- 
 der in the capital of Texas that " the last fourteen or 
 fifteen homicides" are spoken of by comparison, as if 
 there were special features of barbarity in the last one. 
 
 After hearing the testimony, the murderers in this 
 instance were released on bail in the sum of five and 
 four thousand dollars each ! Speaking of this small 
 sum compared with the enormity of the crime, the 
 writer says of the justice who admitted them to bail, 
 " Perhaps a residence here of near about thirty years, 
 and familiarity with violence, blood-letting, and 
 brutal exhibitions of deadly vengeance have unfitted 
 his mind to take in the situation. The smallest 
 provocation has been always sufficient excuse" (for 
 taking human life). 
 
 No one can familiarize himself with the details of 
 the so-called administration of justice in Texas with- 
 out coming to the belief that not one murderer in 
 
HOMICIDE IN TEXAS. 
 
 79 
 
 ten in that State ever sees the inside of a jail. The 
 usual course is to admit to bail, and then acquit 
 on the ground of " self-defence," or " great provoca- 
 tion," or possibly " insanity," as in the case of the 
 Currie who killed Porter. 
 
 Among the hundreds of homicides in 1878 was 
 one of peculiar brutality, — the assassination of an 
 unarmed woman, an actress, who was shot down in 
 cold blood by a desperado. The victim being not 
 only a woman, but an unarmed, unresisting woman, 
 the murderer was, after a long and tedious legal con- 
 test, sentenced to be hung. By no possibility could 
 there be a more cold-blooded murder than this one, 
 yet, after all legal quibbles and technicalities had been 
 exhausted and the murderer sentenced, the governor 
 of the State steps in and commutes the sentence to im- 
 prisonment for life ! There was a good deal of com- 
 plaint about this from some of the Texas papers, they 
 claiming that such action was virtually an encourage- 
 ment to mob law. But that a murderer in Texas even 
 gets into the penitentiary should be a matter of con- 
 gratulation among law-abiding people. 
 
 To give the reader an idea of the class of homi- 
 cides that swell the aggregate in Texas to such 
 large proportions I append a few samples from the 
 columns of the Galveston News, covering less than 
 one week in February, 1 880 : 
 
 " Denison, February 2. 
 
 "Marshal Sam Ball, of Sherman, who was se- 
 riously wounded in a shooting affair at Red Light 
 saloon, in Sherman, last Wednesday, died at eight 
 
80 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 o'clock this evening. Marshal Ball was a good, 
 fearless officer, and liked by everybody." 
 
 " Hempstead, February 4. 
 " Last night a dispute about a mere trifle arose 
 between Pierce Calhoun, a young man aged twenty- 
 two or twenty-three years, and Jerry Smith, colored. 
 Nothing was thought of it at the time, but this morn- 
 ing Calhoun went to a neighbor, borrowed a gun, 
 and proceeded to the field where Smith was at work, 
 and, stepping close up to him, fired the contents into 
 Smith's side and heart, killing him instantly. Cal- 
 houn mounted his horse and left." 
 
 " WACO, February 5. 
 
 " Wednesday night Mr. Doyle, living three miles 
 from Marlin, was waylaid and shot five times, the 
 balls taking effect in his hand, hip, thigh, back, and 
 near the eye. He is in a critical condition. No 
 arrests have been made, though Doyle charges Neil 
 Reed and Tom Gross with the foul attempt." 
 
 " Chappell Hill, February 6. 
 
 " Last night Gabe Felder shot and seriously 
 wounded John A. Fraylor, constable, the ball taking 
 effect in the head. Fraylor's condition is critical. 
 It being late at night when the shooting occurred, 
 the examining court will have to develop the origin 
 of the difficulty." 
 
 " Dallas, February 7. 
 
 "The difficulty between Wright and Wicks, at 
 Hutchins, grew out of a wood contract, in which they 
 
HOMICIDE IN TEXAS. 8 1 
 
 were partners. Wright claims that the shooting was 
 done in self-defence, Wicks having attempted to brain 
 him with an axe while in the woods, and subse- 
 quently made threats of taking his life." 
 
 These are samples of the ordinary class of homi- 
 cides, not only in Texas but in the Southern States 
 generally. They differ only in detail. A connecting 
 thread runs through them all. Happening in such 
 numbers in proportion to population, they indicate 
 unmistakably a low grade of civilization with respect 
 to the taking of human life, and an inadequate ad- 
 ministration of law. 
 
 The ordinary homicides, examples of which are 
 given above, are of every-day occurrence. Over two 
 dozen were reported in Texas in February, 1880, or 
 more than the average number in all the New Eng- 
 land States in six months. More than the yearly 
 average in Massachusetts, with a population of over 
 a million and a half, more than the yearly average 
 in the four States of Rhode Island, Vermont, New 
 Hampshire, and Minnesota. 
 
 The effect of so much shooting and stabbing, arms- 
 bearing and pistol-carrying as we find in Texas, and 
 the inadequate protection which the non-enforcement 
 of law gives human life, has a demoralizing effect 
 upon the rising generation. Speaking of the prevail- 
 ing custom of arms-bearing, the Galveston News of 
 February 11, 1880, says, "As long as men see fit to 
 carry concealed weapons the practice will be kept up, 
 for the law, whatever it may be in theory, is not ef- 
 / 
 
82 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 fective in practice. In verification of the old adage, 
 that ' as the old cock crows the young one learns/ 
 even the rising generation is disposed to profit by its 
 chances for instruction. Not long ago an examina- 
 tion of the persons of the boys at a school in Hous- 
 ton revealed that quite a startling percentage of the 
 pupils were carefully provided with weapons of one 
 character or another, and not long afterwards a mere 
 child shot another in the breast with a small pistol. 
 And now Brenham comes to the front with the 
 information that on Wednesday last the explosion of 
 a pistol in one of the schools of that city threw the 
 pupils into a commotion. An investigation led to 
 the discovery that two boys, who had had a quarrel, 
 came to school armed, just as if they were grown up 
 and the school were a mere legislative assembly. A 
 similar practice prevails in Pennsylvania, where not 
 long ago a boy zvas dangerously shot by a school com- 
 rade." The italics are mine. A similar practice 
 does not prevail in Pennsylvania. Search the boys 
 attending the public schools in Pennsylvania and not 
 one in a thousand would be found with a pistol. 
 Although the population of that State is about four 
 millions, and although the foreign population, partic- 
 ularly in the mining regions, add largely to the ag- 
 gregate of crime against the person, yet there is not 
 an average of one hundred homicides annually in 
 Pennsylvania. If, in proportion to population, hom- 
 icide was as frequent as in Texas, the number annu- 
 ally carried off by the pistol and the knife would be 
 about fifteen hundred. If the custom of carrying 
 
HOMICIDE IN TEXAS. 83 
 
 and using concealed weapons was as prevalent in 
 Pennsylvania as in Texas, as intimated by the News, 
 there would be no such enormous disproportion as 
 exists in the number of homicides in the two States. 
 I have collected the annual average number of 
 cases of murder and manslaughter upon all the court 
 dockets, in the four States of Maine, Pennsylvania, 
 Michigan, and Minnesota, representing the East, the 
 Middle States, and the West, with an aggregate popu- 
 lation of about seven millions. The annual average 
 number of cases of murder and manslaughter on the 
 criminal dockets of all the courts in these four States 
 is one hundred and fifty-four. In 1870 the popula- 
 tion of Texas was less than one-seventh that of these 
 four States combined. But call it one-sixth, as Texas 
 has increased rapidly in population. There are in 
 Texas one hundred and fifty-eight counties. Meas- 
 ured by the annual number of murder cases on the 
 dockets of all the courts in these four States, allow- 
 ing for difference in population, and we find that was 
 murder no more frequent in Texas than in these four 
 States, the average would be one murder case on the 
 court dockets of each county in Texas every five 
 and one-half years ; the average to each county not 
 being above five cases in a quarter of a century! 
 But so great is the excess of murder in this State 
 that there are often four, five, eight, ten, and even 
 twelve murder cases on the court dockets of a single 
 county in a single year. This should not be so, and 
 would not but for the great laxity in the administra- 
 tion of law. One Texas paper estimates that there 
 
84 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH 
 
 are at large in that State at least eight hundred mur- 
 derers, '■ many of whom have killed more than one 
 man." And those arrested are treated with extraor- 
 dinary leniency, considering that murder is the great- 
 est of all crimes. In the Galveston News of a later 
 date there is reference to a double murder several 
 years ago, in which one man shot two brothers dead. 
 These murdered men each had a wife and five chil- 
 dren, and the writer says the scene at the coroner's 
 inquest, where the two men lay dead, was very affect- 
 ing, as the two widows and ten orphaned children 
 wept and wailed over the cold bodies of the newly 
 slain. And in this connection he mentions that six 
 years have passed and the murderer is still on bail 
 and his case continued from term to term. What a 
 mockery of justice is this ! It is stated that the 
 widow of one of the murdered men has attended 
 every term of the court for six years, waiting for the 
 case to be tried. Alas ! many of these cases of brutal 
 and cold-blooded murder will not be reached until 
 the judgment-day, when we are led to believe, from 
 anathemas pronounced against murderers in the 
 Bible, that there will not be further continuances. 
 
 Mention is made elsewhere of the number of mur- 
 ders in Austin, the capital of the State, having a 
 population of some twelve thousand. The popula- 
 tion of Albany, the capital city of New York, is 
 eight times greater than the population of Austin. 
 Yet in the city of Albany, for the six years ending 
 November 30, 1878, there were only five arrests for 
 murder and manslaughter, or less than an average 
 
HOMICIDE IN TEXAS. 85 
 
 of one annually among nearly one hundred thousand 
 population. This is shown in the six annual reports 
 of the police commissioners of that city, covering 
 the years named. Measured by relative population, 
 and was "murder as rare in Austin as in Albany, there 
 would be in the former city an average of but one 
 person murdered every ten or eleven years. Were 
 homicide as rare in proportion to population in the 
 capital city of Texas as in the capital city of New 
 York, to speak of " the last fourteen or fifteen homi- 
 cides in Austin" would require a retrospective glance 
 covering more than one hundred and fifty years ! 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 HOMICIDE IN SOUTH CAROLINA. 
 
 South Carolina is an old State, long settled, with 
 none of the flavor of the frontier, and with but a 
 very small foreign-born population. There is no 
 reason why homicide, among the whites at least, 
 should be more frequent than among the American- 
 born white citizens of New England. Measured by 
 relative population, however, we find murder and 
 manslaughter among the white people of South Car- 
 olina to be more than fifteen hundred per cent, more 
 frequent than among the American-born citizens of 
 New England. This indicates a radical difference in 
 habit, not explainable upon grounds of climate alone. 
 It lies deeper. 
 
 I collected from the South Carolina newspapers 
 during 1878 accounts of one hundred and fifteen 
 homicides and eighty-six persons severely wounded 
 in that State during the year. Allowing that fifteen 
 per cent, of the wounded afterwards died of their 
 wounds, and it swells the homicides to one hundred 
 and twenty-eight. Allowing for difference in popu- 
 lation, and this is about the same rate of homicide 
 as in Kentucky, South Carolina having about one- 
 half as large a population as Kentucky. 
 
 During the year 1877 there were one hundred and 
 86 
 
HOMICIDE IN SOUTH CAROLINA. 
 
 87 
 
 thirteen homicides reported in South Carolina, and 
 sixty-eight severely wounded. Allowing that fifteen 
 per cent, of the wounded afterwards died of their 
 wounds, and it swells the homicides for the two years 
 to two hundred and fifty-one. This is upon the sup- 
 position that not a homicide or a serious wounding 
 missed the columns of the Charleston News and 
 Courier. Probably many did miss mention, for oc- 
 casionally we find references to a homicide as having 
 taken place not mentioned at the time. But making 
 no estimate upon this, simply taking those reported 
 as killed and mortally wounded, and allowing that 
 fifteen per cent, of the dangerously and severely 
 wounded died, and we have two hundred and fifty- 
 one homicides in two years. In 1870 the population 
 of South Carolina was less than one-half that of 
 Massachusetts. During the years 1877 and 1878, 
 when we find two hundred and fifty-one homicides 
 in South Carolina, there were but forty in Massachu- 
 setts, with more than double the population ! Had 
 homicide been no more frequent in South Carolina 
 than among an equal population in Massachusetts, 
 the number would not have been two hundred and 
 fifty-one, but only nineteen in two years. This shows 
 at a glance the great and unnecessary prevalence of 
 homicide in South Carolina. Outside of the city of 
 Boston, with its very large foreign population, the 
 homicide rate in Massachusetts is very much less 
 than here given. South Carolina has no city of this 
 description to nearly double her homicide rate. Take 
 the more rural districts of the two States, and the 
 
88 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 crime of man-slaying will be found to be at least 
 twenty times more frequent in South Carolina than 
 in Massachusetts. That this the greatest of all crimes 
 should be so very much more frequent in the rural 
 districts of South Carolina, for instance, than in the 
 rural districts of Massachusetts (taking relative pop- 
 ulation into consideration) shows fatal defects in the 
 structure of Southern society and in the administration 
 of law. 
 
 This estimate leaves Boston and the larger cities 
 out of the calculation, and the comparison is based 
 upon homicides in the more rural districts. But in- 
 clude all the great cities and manufacturing centres, 
 where the bulk of the foreign-born citizens are found, 
 and among whom a majority of the homicides in 
 Massachusetts occur, and still the crime is twelve to 
 thirteen times more frequent in South Carolina than 
 in Massachusetts. 
 
 In the upper counties of South Carolina, as they 
 are locally called, there are much the same general 
 conditions, with reference to the pursuits and occu- 
 pations of the people, as we find in the western 
 counties of Massachusetts. In Massachusetts we 
 would naturally look for the greater number of 
 homicides, for the population is more dense than in 
 any portion of South Carolina and the per cent, of 
 foreigners quite large. 
 
 Take the counties of Pickens, Greenville, Union, 
 Spartanburg, and Anderson, in South Carolina, with 
 an aggregate population of about one hundred thou- 
 sand, collect the number of homicides happening in 
 
HOMICIDE IN SOUTH CAROLINA. 
 
 8 9 
 
 one year, and compare with the number during the 
 same time among an equal population in Western or 
 Central Massachusetts, and what a contrast ! Were 
 the crime of man-slaying no more frequent in these 
 upper South Carolina counties than among an equal 
 population in rural Massachusetts, there would be in 
 Spartanburg County, South Carolina, but an average 
 of one homicide in seven or eight years ; in Green- 
 ville County, one every eight or nine years ; in An- 
 derson County, also, one every eight or nine years ; 
 and in Pickens County, one every sixteen to eighteen 
 years. 
 
 In Massachusetts we find the highest homicide rate 
 in the largest cities. In South Carolina we do not 
 find it so. There are in Suffolk County (Boston) one 
 hundred thousand foreign-born citizens. Here is the 
 highest homicide rate. Turning to some of the South 
 Carolina counties previously mentioned, and we find 
 that, in 1870, Anderson County had but 84 foreign- 
 born citizens; Greenville, 118; Spartanburg, 80; 
 Union, 65 ; Pickens, 10. These are all agricultural 
 counties. There are within them no great cities, no 
 vast manufacturing centres ; no violent clashings of 
 interests betweeli labor and capital ; no large importa- 
 tions of foreigners with their often peculiar habits and 
 associations. Here, indeed, are all the conditions 
 for the ideal law-abiding community, with a murder 
 rate that (measured by the same class of communi- 
 ties in New England) should not cut off more than 
 one citizen annually to every one hundred and fifty 
 or two hundred thousand population, or an average 
 
 8* 
 
go HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 of one homicide in each county in South Carolina 
 every eight or ten years. 
 
 During the year selected for comparison (1878) 
 there were in South Carolina three duels, or rather 
 three duels fought by citizens of South Carolina. 
 Each of these arose from trivial causes, like nine- 
 tenths of the homicides. During the same year there 
 was not a duel in all the Northern States, inhabited 
 by thirty-odd millions of people ! Had they been as 
 frequent as in South Carolina, in proportion to popu- 
 lation, there would have been in the Northern States, 
 in 1878, no less than one hundred and twenty-five 
 duels. In proportion to white population, there would 
 have been over three hundred. Imagine a condition 
 of society that could produce such barbarous results! 
 
 In one of these duels a citizen of Callerton County 
 fell in Georgia, where he went to fight. He fell 
 mortally wounded ; his wife went to him ; he died ; 
 his body was brought home and buried. " He was 
 a good citizen," we are told in the local account, 
 " much respected in the community, and leaves an 
 interesting family to mourn his untimely fate." Pic- 
 ture the grief of that family who can ! And all about 
 nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to the value 
 of the life of a man to himself, his family, and the 
 community. 
 
 Among the numerous assassinations was that of 
 Pickens Goggans, in Edgefield County. He was 
 shot in his house and in the presence of his wife. 
 Going to the scene of the murder, a local reporter 
 writes, " On my way I passed the residence of L. E 
 
HOMICIDE IN SOUTH CAROLINA. g\ 
 
 Holloway, who was killed last year. I am told that 
 Goggans was murdered in the same room where his 
 father was killed three years ago." 
 
 Among the great number of simply "personal dif- 
 ficulties" which caused about seven-eighths of all the 
 homicides, there were a few deserving of notice on 
 account of some peculiarity. Jesse Mitcheson and 
 his son and a man named Black were going home 
 from Branchville. Young Mitcheson and Black had 
 a " difficulty," and Mitcheson, in attempting to shoot 
 Black, hit his own father and killed him. In a quar- 
 rel about " positions on the floor" at a country dance 
 five pistols were drawn, general shooting indulged 
 in, and one man killed. Five men go to a dance 
 loaded with pistols, not because, perhaps, they ex- 
 pected a " difficulty," but because in case of one the 
 pistols would be useful for " self-defence !" 
 
 In a street-fight in Edgefield one afternoon in Au- 
 gust four men were killed, — three shot dead, and the 
 fourth mortally wounded, — and five slightly or se- 
 verely wounded. Two of the killed, we are informed, 
 " were old, gray-haired men," — Benjamin and James 
 Booth. Benjamin Booth had previously killed Luther 
 Toney, and Broker Toney (one of the four killed) had 
 previously killed Deputy-Marshal Gus Harris, and 
 " also another man two or three years before." This 
 affray, therefore, leads us into accounts of seven dif- 
 ferent homicides. All who survived the battle were, 
 I think, acquitted on trial. In a Spartanburg local 
 paper, about the time of this Edgefield street-fight, 
 we find this item referring to a large assemblage of 
 
9 2 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 people in that town : " Although there were over 
 ten thousand persons on the streets of Spartanburg 
 Thursday, not a single row occurred!' But the same 
 paper contains this item: "Jim Johnson shot and 
 (is believed) mortally wounded Charley Riley. . . . 
 Riley opened the ball with a pistol, and Johnson 
 closed up with a shot-gun, lodging five slugs in the 
 body of his adversary!' In an account of the killing 
 of one boy by another with a pistol, we are informed 
 in a local paper that " such occurrences are the cer- 
 tain fruits of carrying concealed weapons, especially 
 ■when practised by boys!' The remark need not apply to 
 boys alone. Seven-eighths of the South-Carolinian 
 homicides grew out of this habit among men. 
 
 Without having space to mention in detail one- 
 fifth of the shooting and cutting scrapes for the year 
 in South Carolina, a few are selected as types of the 
 rest. In Union County two young men of promi- 
 nence have a " difficulty,'' and one kills the other. 
 The victim, Johnson, we are told, " was a young 
 lawyer of fine promise, and the nominee of the Demo- 
 cratic party for probate judge." In Charleston County, 
 after a Democratic meeting, a difficulty " arose," as 
 we are informed, between two prominent citizens, 
 Messrs. Schuler and Harris, in which the former 
 was severely stabbed in the abdomen and thigh. In 
 a Democratic convention in Newberry County a 
 shooting affray occurred between two of the most 
 prominent citizens, and both were wounded. In a 
 Charleston shooting affray a State senator was shot 
 and severely wounded. 
 
HOMICIDE IN SOUTH CAROLINA. 93 
 
 There were during the year in the State one hun- 
 dred and eighty-three personal difficulties, street-fights, 
 affrays, and assassinations, in which deadly weapons 
 were used. To give only a few lines to each case 
 would require more space than can be allowed con- 
 sistent with the limits of this volume. Another 
 striking fact is that a majority — a very large ma- 
 jority — of these could not have terminated either in 
 the killing or dangerously wounding of parties had 
 they not been armed. Without deadly weapons 
 these fights and affrays would have been but simple 
 cases of assault and battery, with bruised noses and 
 blackened eyes, but no household robbed of the hus- 
 band and father, no orphaned children, or wives made 
 widows suddenly and awfully. 
 
 The number of family affrays between relations 
 bear about the same proportion to total deadly diffi- 
 culties as in the other Southern States. During the 
 year a father was killed by his son, who was shoot- 
 ing at another man. A girl elopes with her intended 
 husband, is followed by her father, who shoots the 
 lover dead from his horse in the presence of his in- 
 tended wife. A desperado, the murderer of one and 
 probably more men, kills his wife. A son is killed 
 by his father. A nephew kills his uncle. Two 
 brothers fight, using knives, and cut each other dan- 
 gerously. A son, in a " difficulty" with his step- 
 father, stabs him to death, and is himself stabbed 
 three times by the dying man. But deadly affrays 
 among relatives, of which these are specimens, will 
 be referred to in another place. 
 
94 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 Often in this State we find half a dozen or more mur- 
 ders and manslaughters happening in a single county 
 in a single year, although the average population of a 
 South Carolina county is less than one-fifth the average 
 population of a Massachusetts county. The Abbe- 
 ville (South Carolina) Press and Banner of November 
 14, 1877, says, "It is not without a pang of regret 
 that we record three homicides during the past week 
 in Abbeville County." The week following another 
 is recorded, making four in two weeks. The number 
 of separate and distinct " difficulties" with deadly 
 weapons in a single county within a few weeks or 
 months is sometimes amazing. In Edgefield County, 
 in 1878, seven men were shot dead in " difficulties." 
 In Abbeville, as above, there were four in two weeks, 
 all growing out of separate " difficulties." In Oco- 
 nee County, in five months ending January, 1880, 
 four men were shot dead in " difficulties," as we 
 learn from the local account of a murder published 
 in the News and Courier, " which," it is observed, 
 " makes the fourth homicide that has occurred in 
 this county since August last." Here are four homi- 
 cides in five months in a county containing about 
 eleven thousand population. This is nearly up to 
 the average of one annually to a thousand popula- 
 tion. Among the same number of people in Eastern 
 States we find an average of about one homicide 
 in fifteen years, instead of four in five months. But 
 it is not so remarkable that there should on perhaps 
 exceptional occasions be four homicides in Oconee 
 County in five months, as it is that the annual average 
 
HOMICIDE IN SOUTH CAROLINA. gc 
 
 in the whole State should be so very excessive as we 
 find it compared with Northern States. The more 
 we widen and enlarge the comparison, the greater be- 
 comes the disproportion. He who would attempt to 
 solve the problem on the grounds of climate would 
 need to provide himself with all the meteorological 
 tables from Adam's time down, and then he would 
 be deficient in material. 
 
 The one hundred and thirteen homicides in South 
 Carolina in 1877 I have arranged according to color of 
 the slayers and the slain as nearly as possible. This, 
 however, does not include the severely wounded, some 
 of whom have undoubtedly since died of their wounds, 
 and which, on a fair estimate, would swell the homi- 
 cides that year to over one hundred and twenty. But 
 leaving the wounded out of the calculation, also such 
 as were killed by parties unknown, and we find that 
 there were 109 homicides the color of the perpetrators 
 of which is ascertained. We find that, during the year, 
 45 whites fell by the hands of whites, and 24 blacks 
 fell by the hands of whites, making 69 homicides 
 committed by whites out of an ascertained total of 
 109. The blacks killed 35 of their own number and 
 5 whites. It will be seen, therefore, as in Texas and 
 Kentucky, that the whites, in proportion to popula- 
 tion, kill many more than the blacks. In 1870 the 
 black population of South Carolina was four hun- 
 dred and fifteen thousand eight hundred and four- 
 teen, and the white, two hundred and eighty-nine 
 thousand six hundred and sixty-seven. Rated by 
 relative population, therefore, it is found that homi- 
 
gQ homicide, north and south. 
 
 cide by the whites is more than twice as frequent as 
 homicide by the blacks. While the blacks are not 
 a model as a law-abiding race, yet there is a point up 
 to which their example could be followed by the 
 whites with advantage. 
 
 It will be a matter of surprise to some that so far 
 as known during the year, out of a large aggregate 
 of homicides, only twenty-four blacks were killed by 
 whites. With a third greater population to exercise 
 the art of killing upon, yet they (the whites) killed 
 but twenty-four, while of one another, with a popu- 
 lation very much less, they killed forty-five. On the 
 other hand, but five blacks killed whites, which, among 
 other things, shows the advantages of vigorous ad- 
 ministration of punishment for murder. Of assas- 
 sinations during the year there were five, and five 
 attempted assassinations. 
 
 Of course the columns of a single newspaper can- 
 not be relied upon to get all the homicides in South 
 Carolina in a given period. But it is correct so far 
 as it goes. Probably the number not reached by 
 this means will not exceed ten per cent, of the total. 
 Coming down to a later date, we find in the News 
 and Courier of March 3, 1880, accounts of twenty- 
 one homicides as having happened in South Carolina 
 in seventy-one days. Also of seventeen persons 
 wounded, — nine by stabs and eight by shots. Some 
 of the wounded have since died. Dates and details 
 are given in each case and the matter made the sub- 
 ject of editorial comment. These all grew out of 
 thirty-seven different affrays, street-fights, and " diffi- 
 
HOMICIDE IN SOUTH CAROLINA. gy 
 
 culties" of the usual Southern type. Bad as this is, 
 it is not all. Further investigation shows thirty-one 
 homicides in South Carolina in seventy-three days, 
 or one-fifth of a year, being at the rate of one hun- 
 dred and fifty-five in twelve months ! " An abso- 
 lutely complete record of the crimes committed in 
 this State is not to be obtained," says the paper in 
 the editorial referred to, " but the following summary 
 of offences reported to the News and Courier is very 
 near the truth." Then follows the list of crimes as 
 having happened in seventy-one days, but which is 
 very incomplete. In the next two days after the 
 date of the last affray reported there were three 
 more homicides, — a man in Newberry County killed 
 his brother and dangerously wounded his wife ; a 
 negro accused of attempted outrage was lynched by 
 a mob ; a man named William Stevenson was stabbed 
 to death near Winnsboro', of which the following 
 account is given : 
 
 " Winnsboro', March 2. 
 
 " A fatal affray occurred about two miles west of 
 this place yesterday afternoon between two brothers 
 named Young on the one side and a Mr. William 
 Stevenson on the other, in which the latter was cut 
 in the arm, from the effects of which he died this 
 morning." 
 
 This is a characteristic account of a characteristic 
 
 " difficulty." One of the Youngs was afterwards 
 
 discharged, and the other admitted to bail in the 
 
 sum of five hundred dollars. We are informed that 
 
 e g 9 
 
<j8 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 great sympathy is expressed for Stevenson's young 
 wife, " who is almost crazed by grief at the loss of 
 her husband." Alas ! she is only one of twenty 
 thousand widows made so in the South since the 
 war with the pistol and the knife. Yes, every one 
 of twenty thousand, and twice as many orphans. 
 Who can paint the woe, the anguish of broken and 
 desolated households, this mountain of crime ! And 
 still the deadly work goes on, and murderers are 
 allowed to reload their pistols and go at large " on 
 bail" until acquitted. 
 
 Add these additional homicides and the three mor- 
 tally wounded previously referred to, and it makes 
 twenty-seven in seventy-three days. But still it is 
 not all. The files of the News and Courier itself for 
 February show three homicides not mentioned in 
 the list referred to, and a fourth that probably turned 
 out to be a homicide, as the victim's wound was re- 
 ported to be mortal. This swells the number of homi- 
 cides to thirty-one. Of the three omitted, two were 
 escaped prisoners, who were killed, — John Frierson 
 and a man named Scott. There were also several 
 other affrays not mentioned in the list from which I 
 have quoted (but not resulting in immediate death), 
 although in one instance, certainly, the victim is pro- 
 nounced in a "precarious condition," his skull having 
 been " fractured with a weight." 
 
 The following is an account of one of the many 
 " difficulties" which helped to swell the number 
 slaughtered in February. The affair happened near 
 Laurens, and is a type of its class. The local ac- 
 
HOMICIDE IN SOUTH CAROLINA. gg 
 
 count says, " It appears that there was a valentine 
 party at the residence of Mr. James Shell, and quite 
 a number of the young people of the neighborhood 
 were enjoying the gathering, and it promised to be a 
 most pleasant affair. Shortly before eleven o'clock 
 a difference occurred between the young men as they 
 left the house, and several pistol-shots were heard. 
 A young man who witnessed the altercation ran to 
 the house to report the matter, and when he returned 
 two young men, Willie Parker, son of Amos Parker, 
 and J. F. Martin were found lying in the road, the 
 former dead from three pistol-shots and the latter 
 mortally wounded, shot in the right temple and 
 through the neck." 
 
 According to this one man was killed and another 
 mortally wounded, although the affair figures in the 
 list referred to as but one homicide. 
 
 In Hampton there were two separate affrays in one 
 day, one resulting in the stabbing to death of Conelly 
 by Gill, and the other a general street-fight, of the 
 usual Southern type, resulting, as the local account 
 says, in " broken heads, broken bones, cuts, and so 
 forth." Gill, who stabbed Conelly to death, we are 
 informed is "a deacon in the Baptist church," and 
 his victim " was thirty-five years old, and leaves a 
 wife and three children." 
 
 But, without going into details, although pages 
 could be filled with accounts of these bloody affrays, 
 street-fights, and deadly difficulties, covering only a 
 few months and all from the columns of one South 
 Carolina newspaper, we find the number of homicides 
 
IQ HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 for seventy-three days to be thirty-one. The time 
 covered is one-fifth of one year. At the same rate 
 there would be in one year one hundred and fifty-five 
 homicides in South Carolina. This is quite above 
 the number I found for the years 1877 or 1878, the 
 average for these years being not far from one hun- 
 dred and twenty each. There is no way to get the 
 exact number for any year, but the average, taking 
 one year with another, at a very low estimate cannot 
 be less than one hundred and thirty. An average of 
 one hundred and thirty cases of murder and man- 
 slaughter annually in a small State like South Caro- 
 lina indicates a bad condition of things for a period 
 of profound peace. But take the year 1876, and the 
 number of homicides would undoubtedly be found to 
 be much greater. There were the Hamburg riot, the 
 Ellerton riots, the Cainhoy affair, and, indeed, a great 
 many homicides growing out of politics. Meantime, 
 the merely " personal difficulties" kept up at the 
 usual rate, and those killed in political riots were 
 but so many added to the total, which must have 
 reached that year over two hundred. But obviously 
 that was an exceptional year, and to base an average 
 upon it would be unfair. This cannot be said of 1877 
 or 1878, or of the seventy-odd days mentioned above. 
 The presence of two races in the South is some- 
 times given as a reason of so much murder. This is 
 true as to political murder, race riots, etc., but not 
 true of the ordinary killings, the aggregate of which 
 is immensely larger than all the murders with which 
 politics have anything to do. It is a striking fact 
 
HOMICIDE IN SOUTH CAROLINA. IO l 
 
 that were the blacks taken entirely out of the calcu- 
 lation, the percentage of murders to population would 
 be even larger than it is ! That is, very many more 
 people are killed by whites, in proportion to popula- 
 tion, than by blacks. In 1877, in South Carolina, 
 there was one homicide to about every six thousand 
 five hundred aggregate population. Take all the 
 blacks out of the calculation, and the homicides com- 
 mitted by them, and we find homicides committed by 
 the whites to be at about the rate of one to every four 
 thousand two hundred of their population. That is, 
 measured by relative population, homicide is very 
 much more frequently committed by whites than by 
 blacks. 
 
 A brutal feature of these Southern murders is 
 the frequency of relatives killing relatives. But it is 
 a question if the percentage of these family murders 
 to the total homicides is larger than in the North. 
 In Texas and Kentucky, in one year, there were 
 twenty instances of men killed by their brothers and 
 brothers-in-law, and many were wounded, one, in 
 the language of the local account, " having his eye 
 cut clean out." All these twenty cases of the killing 
 of men by their brothers and brothers-in-law grew 
 out of personal quarrels, disputes about property 
 usually being at the bottom of it, and the result 
 often largely influenced by whiskey. Large as this 
 number appears to be, it is really but a very small 
 percentage of the total homicides, perhaps not a 
 larger percentage than the same class of murders in 
 the North compared to the total. Among the thirty- 
 
 9* 
 
102 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 one homicides in South Carolina in seventy-three 
 days, three men were killed by their brothers, and 
 there were several other " difficulties" among relatives 
 resulting in death or wounding. Also several among 
 immature youth. One of the homicides was by a boy 
 only fourteen years of age, who stabbed Mr. E. E. 
 Truwitt to death because of a quarrel the latter had 
 with the father of the former. 
 
 While the killing of relatives by relatives is not a 
 new thing in the world (the first man born into the 
 world killed the second), yet the proportion of such 
 affairs in the South to population is larger than among 
 English-speaking people elsewhere. So indeed is 
 the number of homicides of all descriptions, without 
 reference to the comparatively few among relatives. 
 
 In New England, among a population equal to 
 that of Texas and Kentucky, about twenty years 
 would elapse (at the ordinary rate of homicide there) 
 before the number would reach as many as in these 
 two Southern States in one year. Whether, in a 
 twenty years' record of homicides among a portion 
 of the population of New England, — equal to that 
 of Texas and Kentucky, — there would be as large a 
 percentage committed by relatives is a question. Of 
 wife-murder alone, however, the percentage to total 
 homicides would be found to be very much larger 
 than in the Southern States. 
 
 But to return to the race view of the question. Of 
 the seven hundred and odd homicides in Kentucky 
 and Texas in 1878, and in South Carolina in 1877 
 (embracing one year in each State), it is impossible 
 
HOMICIDE IN SOUTH CAROLINA. 
 
 103 
 
 to tell in every instance by whom a given murder 
 was committed. Leaving out instances that are 
 doubtful, we have 657 cases that are ascertained. 
 Of such cases we find that 434 whites were, killed 
 by whites; 109 blacks were killed by blacks; 98 
 blacks were killed by whites; and 16 whites were 
 killed by blacks. It is not claimed for these fig- 
 ures that they are absolutely accurate, but it is 
 claimed for them that they are approximately so. 
 These widely separated States, one with an immense 
 majority of black population, and the other two with 
 a still greater proportion of white population, proba- 
 bly give a very fair average of killings by race in the 
 entire South ; that is, when there are no special " race 
 issues," growing out of political campaigns or local 
 disturbances. Take South Carolina for 1876 instead 
 of 1877, and it would not give a fair basis of com- 
 parison, for seventy-five or a hundred blacks were 
 killed that year in political affrays, which was not the 
 case in 1877, or any year since. In the other two 
 States in 1878 there were no political murders or 
 general race disturbances to swell the total, as indeed 
 there seldom are. In 1870 the white population of 
 these three States was one million nine hundred and 
 fifty-three thousand and fifty-nine, and the black eight 
 hundred and ninety-one thousand four hundred and 
 ninety-nine. Rated by population, therefore, it will 
 be seen that the number of killings by the whites is 
 far more frequent than killings by the blacks ; in fact, 
 just about double, counting only the homicides the 
 origin of which is ascertained. If the number of 
 
104 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 those killed by unknown parties could be ascertained, 
 probably the totals would not be materially changed. 
 The comparatively small number of whites killed 
 by blacks is a striking commentary on the relation 
 of the races. There is little mercy for a black mur- 
 derer when his victim is white. If all homicides were 
 reduced to this proportion, the aggregate would be 
 but small. So far as we have been able to ascertain, 
 one million of colored population lived one year with 
 two millions of white population and killed but six- 
 teen ! And during the same time, in these three 
 States, four hundred and thirty-four whites fell by 
 the hands of their own race ! These among the 
 ascertained killings. Take the unknown, and proba- 
 bly a closer investigation would show that a larger 
 percentage of these were killed by whites. Of the 
 thirty-one homicides in seventy-three days, at a later 
 date, twelve were committed by blacks and nineteen 
 by whites. 
 
 Should this rate of homicide continue through the 
 year, the number will be in excess of the number in 
 1877 or 1878, which I have given elsewhere. It 
 would, in fact, bring the aggregate up to one hundred 
 and fifty-five in one year. But put the annual aver- 
 age as low as one hundred and thirty, — probably 
 about what it is, — apply it to the fifteen years since 
 the war, and it gives the little State of South Caro- 
 lina nearly two thousand homicides ! And this with- 
 out taking specially into account the extra homicides 
 committed during the political riots of 1876 and pre- 
 vious years. 
 
HOMICIDE IN SOUTH CAROLINA. 
 
 105 
 
 When South Carolina was under the rule of the 
 Republican party there was the usual number of 
 murders growing out of bar-room rows, "personal 
 difficulties," and street-affrays, as well as many origi- 
 nating in politics. It was said that this would con- 
 tinue until the white people secured control of the 
 State government, when the laws would be enforced 
 and disorder suppressed. But the germs of crime 
 are too deeply planted in Southern society to be 
 eradicated by a mere change of parties controlling 
 State governments. There is, to be sure, a diminu- 
 tion of political murder, for the occasion no longer 
 exists, but of other murder, with which politics have 
 nothing to do, and which is very much more fre- 
 quent, there is no decrease. If anything, an increase 
 is noted. There is as much or more crime against the 
 person in South Carolina under Hampton and Simp- 
 son as there was under Chamberlain and Scott. 
 There are as many or more homicides in Mississippi 
 under Stone as there were under Ames. There are 
 not so many political murders, but the average is 
 well kept up by " personal difficulties," street-fights, 
 and affrays having no connection with politics. 
 
 It is useless to attempt to saddle the responsibility 
 for this upon the " demoralization growing out of the 
 war," for there was the same recklessness of life in 
 the South before the war as now. Besides, th'e war 
 has been over fifteen years. It cannot be said that it 
 is the result of carpet-bag government, for the last 
 vestigas of these so-called governments have disap- 
 peared, and it is well that they have. It cannot be 
 
106 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 laid to the colored people, for, according to relative 
 number of population, murder and manslaughter are 
 not nearly so frequent among them as among the 
 whites, as I have shown. 
 
 In the face of such facts, gathered largely from its 
 own columns, the Charleston News and Courier of 
 February 14, 1880 (speaking of the frequency of 
 homicide), says : 
 
 " At the court for Chesterfield County there were 
 four cases of homicide on the docket ; two were post- 
 poned, one resulted in acquittal, and the fourth in a 
 verdict of manslaughter. For the term of the court 
 at Barnwell Court-House, commencing on Monday 
 next, there are four cases of homicide on the docket. 
 Other courts will probably show as bad a record, at 
 least if we are to judge from the reports of shooting, 
 stabbing, and murdering in various ways which are 
 constantly being received from the interior of the 
 State. True, most of these crimes occur among the 
 colored population ; but they are not by any means 
 confined to any race or class.'' 
 
 The last sentence is entirely erroneous. Measured 
 by relative population, it will be found that homicide 
 in South Carolina is twice as frequently committed 
 by whites as by blacks. Take the one-fifth of a year 
 referred to, ending March 4, 1880, and we find that 
 nineteen of the thirty-one homicides were committed 
 by whites. This would be at the rate of one homi- 
 cide annually by the whites to about every three 
 thousand of their population. 
 
 Compared with the Northern States what a con- 
 
HOMICIDE IN SOUTH CAROLINA. iq-j 
 
 trast these figures present ! In the New England 
 States a murder and manslaughter rate by the whites 
 equal to that by the whites in South Carolina, would 
 yield a crop of about twelve hundred homicides in one 
 year ! This leaves the South Carolina blacks and the 
 homicides committed by them entirely out of the cal- 
 culation, and the comparison is made only with the 
 South Carolina white population and the homicides 
 committed by them. The white population of South 
 Carolina is about one-thirteenth that of New Eng- 
 land. Therefore, if homicides are committed by the 
 whites of South Carolina at the rate of ninety-five 
 annually, then, to be equally frequent among the New 
 England population, would require about twelve hun- 
 dred and thirty-five annually. Instead of that the 
 annual average in all the New England States is less 
 than fifty. It is by such comparisons as these that 
 we get at the enormous difference in man-slaying 
 among and by the white people of the two sections, 
 leaving the Southern colored population and the 
 homicides committed by them entirely out of the 
 question. 
 
 In the editorial quoted from the Charleston News 
 and Courier, mention is made of eight homicide 
 cases on the criminal dockets of Chesterfield and 
 Barnwell Counties for one term. A few days after 
 there is an item from Oconee County stating that 
 seven prisoners are confined in the jail there charged 
 with murder. Here, then, presumably, are fifteen 
 murder cases for trial at one term of court in three 
 counties with a total population of about fifty-eight 
 
108 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 thousand, or less than the average population of 
 single counties in Pennsylvania. 
 
 In four Northern States, representing the East, the 
 Middle States, and the West, I have been able to col- 
 lect from official sources the annual average number 
 of cases of murder and manslaughter on all the court 
 dockets, not for a single term, but for one year. 
 These States are Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, and 
 Pennsylvania, with an aggregate population of about 
 seven millions. The average annual number of 
 murder and manslaughter cases on all the court 
 dockets of these four States, embracing courts held 
 in two hundred and thirty-four counties, is one hun- 
 dred and fifty-four. At the same relative rate there 
 would not be in all the counties of South Carolina, 
 upon the court dockets for all the terms held in one 
 year, more cases of murder and manslaughter than 
 appear in three counties at one term ! 
 
 Obviously, the people of South Carolina are killing 
 one another with too much rapidity. And it is so in- 
 excusable ! It does not grow out of attacks on prop- 
 erty, or " strikes," or communistic riots, or, in fact, 
 anything that could be well pled as an excuse. The 
 fearful aggregate is made up of individual cases of 
 man shooting or stabbing his fellow-man, generally 
 about some trivial matter or so-called insult that 
 in well-regulated and firmly-governed communities 
 would not lead to anything more serious than simple 
 cases of assault and battery. 
 
 As I write these lines news comes of still another 
 deadly affray in Edgefield County, in which a gentle- 
 
HOMICIDE IN SOUTH CAROLINA. 
 
 IO9 
 
 man, spoken of as the most prominent young physi- 
 cian in the county, is shot through the body and pro- 
 nounced mortally wounded. Several others were 
 wounded, and among them one who, we are in- 
 formed, "had previously killed two men in deadly 
 affrays !" 
 
 And almost the same day, in Nashville, Tennes- 
 see, a desperado shot a quiet, inoffensive, unarmed 
 stranger dead (a man whom the murderer did not 
 even know), and it is also mentioned casually that 
 the murderer was regarded as dangerous, as he had 
 on two previous occasions stabbed two men so se- 
 verely that they were believed at the time to be 
 mortally wounded. And yet, under the fine South- 
 ern system, which rears such men by the tens of 
 thousands, they are permitted to stab and shoot and 
 re-arm and stab and shoot again. One would think 
 that after a man had stabbed two men nearly to 
 death on different occasions his operations might be 
 somewhat abridged by the enforcement of law. In a 
 large percentage of these Southern affrays and assassi- 
 nations it is found on investigation, as in these cases, 
 that some of those engaged had previously been 
 parties to deadly difficulties, and were still permitted 
 to go at large. If only desperadoes themselves were 
 killed, there would be less cause of complaint. 
 
 10 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 HOMICIDE IN INDIANA AND ILLINOIS. 
 
 I have not been able to ascertain accurately the 
 number of homicides in these States, but from what 
 I have gathered it is clear that there are more homi- 
 cides in proportion to population than elsewhere in 
 the Northern States. This is particularly the case 
 in Southern Illinois and Indiana, where there are 
 very frequent and well-defined cases of shooting and 
 stabbing, closely fashioned after the Southern pattern. 
 
 Indiana has two penitentiaries, one at Jeffersonville 
 for convicts from southern portions of the State, 
 called the Southern Prison, and one in the northern 
 part of the State, called the Northern Prison. The 
 divisions of population represented in these prisons 
 are about equal. In 1878 there were eighty-four pris- 
 oners in the Southern Prison charged with murder 
 and manslaughter, and but forty-nine in the Northern 
 Prison. The southern counties of Indiana have many 
 more murder cases in proportion to population than 
 the northern counties. The same is true in Ohio, as 
 I have pointed out. But why should a striking type 
 of crime, peculiar to the Southern States, be more 
 frequent in Indiana and Illinois than in most of the 
 Northern States ? And more frequent in the south- 
 ern than in the northern portions of these States ? 
 no 
 
HOMICIDE IN INDIANA AND ILLINOIS. 1 1 1 
 
 " Personal difficulties," resulting in the stabbing and 
 shooting of men, are very frequent in the southern 
 parts of these States as compared with the aggregate 
 population. Why should this be so? Is it because 
 the Southern-born population in these two States 
 exceeds the Southern-born population in all the 
 other Northern States? The closer this subject is 
 investigated the nearer we reach such a conclusion. 
 In Kentucky there is an average of one homicide an- 
 nually to about six thousand population. There are 
 in these two States about one hundred and fifty thou- 
 sand natives of Kentucky. If the number of homi- 
 cides among them were equal to the number in Ken- 
 tucky, there would be an average of twenty-five 
 annually. Among the same number of native New 
 England population there is an average of only one 
 homicide annually. The total Southern-born popu- 
 lation in these two States is nearly half a million, or 
 more than in all the other Northern States. And a 
 majority of this population is in the southern por- 
 tions of these States, where we find " personal difficul- 
 ties" with deadly weapons most frequent. 
 
 I have spoken of the infrequency of homicide in 
 several counties in Northern Ohio settled originally 
 almost entirely from New England. I referred par- 
 ticularly to the counties of Ashtabula, Lake, Me- 
 dina, Geauga, Lorain, and others, giving the number 
 of homicides in those counties as reported by cor- 
 oners' inquests. Were homicide as rare in the rest 
 of Ohio, the annual average for the State would be 
 less than one-half of what it is. 
 
112 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 But compare the criminal calendar in these counties 
 in Northern Ohio for the past several years in refer- 
 ence to crimes against the person with the criminal 
 calendar in counties in the southern portions of Il- 
 linois and Indiana, and a very striking difference will 
 be discovered. Some years ago there was a bad con- 
 dition of affairs in Williamson County, Illinois, re- 
 sulting in half a dozen homicides in a year, and the 
 governor was called upon to suppress the lawless- 
 ness. The Southern newspapers had much to say 
 of this at the time, as it was regarded as an offset 
 to the same type of lawlessness prevailing in the 
 South, of which much was said by the- Republican 
 press. The Northern papers were advised to attend 
 to their own lawlessness, which was good advice, 
 certainly. But those who carefully informed them- 
 selves as to the origin and continuance of the William- 
 son County troubles found a feud among families 
 and factions of the peculiar Southern type, and not 
 the production of Illinois society in its ordinary con- 
 ditions. Williamson County was settled largely by 
 population from the old slave States, and the " feud," 
 which for a time brought that county into unfortu- 
 nate notoriety, on account of the number of result- 
 ing homicides, originated among the population of 
 Southern antecedents, and was carried on in the 
 Southern shot-gun style. But the " feud" was sup- 
 pressed, murder was punished, and Williamson is 
 to-day as quiet and orderly as any county in Illinois. 
 We have in this instance a striking illustration of the 
 value of a rigid enforcement of the law. 
 
HOMICIDE IN INDIANA AND ILLINOIS. II3 
 
 When Charles Dickens was in America in 1842 
 his attention was attracted to the frequency of homi- 
 cides in the slave States and in the Western States 
 and Territories bordering upon the slave States, all, 
 or nearly all, growing out of the class of affrays and 
 personal difficulties to which I have referred. He 
 attributed it all to the poison planted in Southern 
 society by the existence of slavery. He showed 
 that a very large proportion of these affrays occurred 
 in the slave States, or in the States and Territories bor- 
 dering upon the slave States. With his intense feel- 
 ing upon the subject of slavery, finding nine-tenths 
 of these cases in the slave States, he naturally at- 
 tributed the entire evil to the then " peculiar institu- 
 tion." He says, chapter xvii., "American Notes" : 
 
 " But it may be worth while to inquire how the 
 slave-owners, and the class of society to which great 
 numbers of them belong, defer to public opinion in 
 their conduct, not to their slaves, but to each other; 
 how they are accustomed to restrain their passions ; 
 what their bearing is among themselves ; whether 
 they are fierce or gentle ; whether their social cus- 
 toms be brutal, sanguinary, and violent, or bear the 
 impress of civilization and refinement. 
 
 " That we may have no partial evidence from ab- 
 olitionists in this inquiry, either, I will once more 
 turn to their own newspapers, and I will confine my- 
 self this time to a selection from paragraphs which 
 appeared from day to day during my visit to America, 
 and which refer to occurrences happening while I was 
 there." 
 
 h IO* 
 
1 14 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 As to the fact that these bloody personal difficul- 
 ties and affrays did not all occur where slavery ex- 
 isted, he said, " These cases did not all occur, it 
 will be seen, in territory actually belonging to legal- 
 ized slave States, though most, and those the very 
 worst among them, did, as their counterparts con- 
 stantly do; but the position of the scenes of action 
 in reference to places immediately at hand, where slavery 
 is the law, and the strong resemblance between that class 
 of outrages and the rest, lead to the just presumption 
 that the character of the parties concerned was formed 
 in slave districts, and brutalized by slave customs." 
 
 This is directly to the point in the matter under con- 
 sideration, — how it happens that the use of the pistol 
 and the knife in the settlement of personal difficulties 
 is so very much more frequent in Southern Illinois 
 and Indiana than in New England and New York. 
 
 All the evils to society in the then slave and bor- 
 der States growing out of these " customs" Dickens 
 attributes to slavery. In his estimation it was the 
 one great evil, a sort of special Pandora's box, from 
 which came ills to the States afflicted with slavery, 
 that were largely shared by society in the free States 
 immediately adjoining, and that would not have ex- 
 isted but for slavery. How true this is we can never 
 know. But we do know that the crime of man-slay- 
 ing is some five to twelve times more frequent in the 
 late slave States than in the old free States, amone 
 an equal population. A smaller ratio might be ac- 
 counted for upon climatic grounds, but this is alto- 
 gether too large a proportion to charge up to the 
 
HOMICIDE IN INDIANA AND ILLINOIS, ng 
 
 climatic account. Dickens charges it all to slavery, 
 saying of the slaveholder (and quite unjustly in most 
 instances) that, " as he is a coward in his domestic 
 life, stalking among his shrinking men and women 
 slaves armed with his heavy whip, so he will be a 
 coward out-of-doors, and, carrying cowards' weapons 
 hidden in his breast, will shoot men down and stab 
 them when he quarrels." 
 
 Slavery, however, perished sixteen years ago, but 
 we find no improvement in Southern communities 
 with reference to homicide. It is as frequent to-day 
 in the late slave States as thirty-eight years ago, 
 when Dickens wrote. There has been some im- 
 provement in the cities. Fewer men are shot and 
 stabbed in the Southern cities now than forty years 
 ago, but in the rural districts the condition of society 
 with respect to taking human life has not improved. 
 Men are shot and stabbed in merely personal quarrels 
 as they always have^been. There has, however, been 
 a decline in duelling. This refined system of murder 
 is much less frequent now than formerly. There are 
 instances every year in the Southern States where 
 men of courage and good standing refuse to fight 
 duels, and public sentiment sustains them, which it 
 did not do forty years ago. 
 
 But as to ordinary homicide, "in the heat of blood," 
 there is, as I have said, no improvement. The nat- 
 ural tendency of such a condition is to become worse. 
 Where the carrying of weapons is a habit, the chances 
 are that the number carrying them will increase rather 
 than diminish in a given time. 
 
Il6 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 The fact that homicide in Indiana and Illinois, and 
 particularly in the southern portions of these States, 
 is so much more frequent than in most of the North- 
 ern States, is not accidental. If we find in New Eng- 
 land a homicide rate of one annually to every one 
 hundred and fifty thousand native population, it is 
 reasonable to suppose that a section settled almost 
 entirely from New England will not have a higher 
 rate. This we find to be true in the " New England 
 corner of Ohio," previously referred to. If, on the 
 other hand, we find in some of the Southern States 
 a homicide rate of one annually .to every four, five, 
 or six thousand population, is it not reasonable to 
 suppose that States settled largely with this popu- 
 lation will have a homicide rate greatly in excess of 
 States and sections of States settled mainly from New 
 England ? In Illinois and Indiana there is a larger 
 Southern-born population than in all the other 
 Northern States combined. We find homicides of 
 the Southern type more frequent in these two States 
 than elsewhere North among an equal population. 
 Putting these two facts together, the unusual fre- 
 quency of the shooting and stabbing affrays in Illinois 
 and Indiana, and particularly in the southern portions 
 of these States, is accounted for. 
 
 Examine the accounts of pardons of criminals 
 from the two Indiana penitentiaries, published from 
 time to time by the governors of that State, and it 
 will be found that a majority of the murderers par- 
 doned are from the Southern Prison, and that the de- 
 tails in most cases show the murder to have been of 
 
HOMICIDE IN INDIANA AND ILLINOIS. n* 
 
 the Southern type, — that is, two men, often intoxi- 
 cated, have a " difficulty," and one shoots or stabs 
 the other. More murderers are pardoned out of the 
 Southern Prison of Indiana than out of the Northern 
 Prison, yet there remain in the Southern Prison 
 almost double as many murderers as in the Northern 
 Prison. This is hardly accidental. It will also be 
 found that a majority of the murderers in the South- 
 ern Prison came there by reason of having engaged 
 in " difficulties" in which deadly weapons were used. 
 This is the class of homicides that predominate so 
 largely in the South, men shot down suddenly in 
 quarrels, " in the heat of blood" (with the heat of 
 whiskey usually superadded), and without premedi- 
 tated design. 
 
 The pardoning of murderers in the Western as 
 well as in the Southern States is carried to danger- 
 ous excess. A murderer (without justification) should 
 never be taken out of prison unless it is to be hung. 
 Better pardon fifty pickpockets and horse-thieves than 
 one murderer. The depredator upon property can 
 restore what he has taken, but the powers of earth 
 cannot restore the murdered husband and father to 
 the widow and the orphans, or the slain son to his 
 parents. It is a sufficient stretch of mercy when the 
 murderer escapes the gallows and is allowed to 
 breathe away his forfeited life in prison, and to re- 
 lease him from that upon sentimental grounds is a 
 crime against society. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 PERSONAL DIFFICULTIES FORTY YEARS AGO AND NOW. 
 
 I have stated that a connecting thread runs through 
 these Southern street-fights and affrays. They are all 
 very much alike, differing only in detail and the 
 number killed and wounded. In Charles Dickens's 
 " American Notes," referred to, he calls attention to 
 the frequency and deadliness of these affrays in the 
 slave States and in the States immediately adjacent to 
 the slave States. He observed that while all these 
 affrays were not in the slave States, the most of them 
 were, and that the strong resemblance between the 
 affrays in number and character in the slave States 
 and those in free territory immediately adjacent lead 
 to the presumption " that the characters of the parties 
 concerned was formed in slave districts and brutalized 
 by slave customs." 
 
 He quotes a number of local accounts of these 
 barbarous " personal difficulties," and, although hap- 
 pening forty years ago, they are exactly like those 
 of to-day which are constantly occurring in the 
 Southern States to the number of thousands annually. 
 Here are three of the numerotis list quoted by him : 
 
 "AFFRAY IN CLARKE COUNTY. 
 
 " An unfortunate affray occurred in Clarke County 
 118 
 
PERSONAL DIFFICULTIES. no, 
 
 (Missouri), near Waterloo, on Tuesday, the 19th ult., 
 which originated in settling the partnership concerns 
 of Messrs. McKane and McAllister, who had been 
 engaged in the business of distilling, and resulted in 
 the death of the latter, who was shot down by Mr. 
 McKane because of his attempting to take possession 
 of seven barrels of whiskey, the property of McKane, 
 which had been knocked off to McAllister at a sheriff's 
 sale at one dollar. McKane immediately fled, and at 
 the latest dates had not been taken. 
 
 "This unfortunate affray caused considerable ex- 
 citement in the neighborhood, as both the parties 
 were men with large families depending upon them, 
 and stood well in the community." 
 
 "affray on THE MISSISSIPPI. 
 
 " On the 27th ult., in an affray near Carthage, 
 Leake County, Mississippi, between James Cotting- 
 ham and John Wilburn, the latter was shot by the 
 former, and so horribly wounded that there was no 
 hope of his recovery. On the 2d instant there was 
 an affray at Carthage between A. C. Sharkey and 
 George Goff, in which the latter was shot and thought 
 mortally wounded. Sharkey delivered himself up to 
 the authorities, but changed his mind and escaped !" 
 
 "personal encounter. 
 
 " An encounter took place in Sparta, a few days 
 since, between the barkeeper of an hotel and a man 
 named Bury. It appears that Bury had become some- 
 what noisy, and that the barkeeper, determined to pre- 
 
I 20 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 serve order, had threatened to shoot Bury, whereupon 
 Bury drew a pistol and shot the barkeeper down. 
 He was not dead at the last accounts, but slight 
 hopes were entertained of his recovery." 
 
 These were clipped from Southern newspapers 
 forty years ago. I have before me the Charleston 
 (South Carolina) Daily News and Courier of February 
 6, 1880, and in this single issue I find accounts of five 
 bloody affrays in that State of the type mentioned by 
 Dickens, and the counterparts of which are and have 
 been for generations constantly happening in all the 
 Southern States. Without dates it would be impos- 
 sible to tell whether these happened in 1840 or 1880. 
 The types are the same, and grow out of the same 
 conditions of society then as now. It requires but a 
 simple calculation to show that more men have fallen 
 in the Southern States in personal combat since 1840 
 than were killed in battle in both armies during the 
 war of the Rebellion. Collect them all for a single 
 year, multiply by the number of years, and it will be 
 found that this is true. Such an awful sacrifice of 
 life is barbarous. Homicides there are everywhere, 
 but there is no excuse for so many as happen in the 
 Southern States. 
 
 The accounts of the five affrays found in a single 
 issue of the Charleston paper are strikingly like those 
 mentioned by Dickens forty years ago. In Oconee 
 County Thomas Parker shot and killed Jesse Horn 
 on account of a "dispute" the latter had with the 
 father of the former. At Manning there were two 
 
PERSONAL DIFFICULTIES. I2 i 
 
 men, Scott and Dubose, seriously wounded in an 
 affray, one shot and the other stabbed. At Green- 
 ville there was a bar-room affray, and a man shot 
 and wounded. In Anderson County John Barnes 
 was stabbed to death " in a quarrel in which several 
 were engaged." At a place called Fair Play Mrs. 
 Emily Compton was shot and killed by two men 
 who were passing the house, and who shot at her 
 husband for simply requesting them not to fire into 
 the house. 
 
 Here are five bloody affrays, accounts of which 
 are found in a single issue of a daily newspaper in 
 a State containing about three hundred thousand 
 white population. This is as many as the average 
 among three hundred thousand New England popu- 
 lation in two years. That such deadly affrays 
 happen everywhere is not disputed, but their ex- 
 traordinary number in the Southern States is with- 
 out excuse. Often among the white citizens of South 
 Carolina in a single week there is more bloodshed 
 than among an equal number of people in Eastern 
 States in two years. Often in sixty days in a single 
 Southern State there are more deadly affrays between 
 citizens, in which the knife and the pistol are used, 
 than can be found in all the annals of crime in New 
 Hampshire, for instance, in a quarter of a century. 
 The peculiarity of these deadly difficulties is not that 
 they do not sometimes happen everywhere, but the 
 proportion in the Southern States, compared to popu- 
 lation, is simply enormous. There are, in the South- 
 ern States, no class of crimes so difficult to suppress 
 f n 
 
I2 2 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 by punishment (as law is administered there) as 
 these homicides growing out of affrays where deadly 
 weapons are used. The plea of self-defence has be- 
 come a cloak to justify and legalize murder. Two 
 men have a " difficulty," one draws a pistol or knife, 
 or makes a motion as if to do so ; his adversary, a 
 little the quicker, shoots him dead, and is acquitted 
 on the ground of self-defence. It is shown that he 
 believed his own life to be in peril, and hence is ac- 
 quitted. As most of the homicides grow out of this 
 very class of affrays, it is apparent to those acquainted 
 with the structure of Southern society that the per- 
 centage of convictions to trials must be very small. 
 The theory of self-defence, in many cases, has been 
 carried to the extent of making it a cloak for murder. 
 I could give multiplied instances of this, but it is 
 unnecessary. In a case I knew one man opened fire 
 upon another advancing rapidly towards him. The 
 victim returned the fire, but was shot dead. The 
 defendant was acquitted on the ground of self-de- 
 fence. Yet in the county where this happened there 
 had been several murders within a year. But this 
 did not seem to tighten the reins of justice. The 
 more murders the more acquittals. In a street-fight 
 in which several are engaged, and one or two or even 
 more are killed, it is almost impossible to secure con- 
 viction of the survivors. In a street-fight in Edge- 
 field, South Carolina, where four were killed and 
 several wounded, all the survivors were acquitted. I 
 could give many instances like this. Such a condi- 
 tion of things leads to great laxity in the admrnistra- 
 
PERSONAL DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 123 
 
 tion of justice. Self-defence is the all-powerful plea, 
 and jurymen are apt to take a very latitudinous view 
 of what constitutes " provocation." 
 ' Many years ago, in the days of Felix Grundy, the 
 great criminal lawyer of Tennessee, a Tennesseean, 
 Winchester by name, killed a man named Smith at 
 Edwardsville, Illinois. Smith had made a caricature 
 or ludicrous representation of Winchester, which the 
 latter deemed an insult, and he killed Smith. Win- 
 chester was a friend of Grundy's, and the latter came 
 all the way from Tennessee to defend him. We are 
 informed, in what purports to be a history of the case, 
 that when it came to selecting a jury Grundy man- 
 aged to select one composed entirely of natives of 
 Tennessee, without reference to whether they had 
 formed or expressed an opinion as to the merits of 
 the case or not. Natives of New York, Massachu- 
 setts, and the Eastern States were allowed to stand 
 aside, as Grundy wanted only jurymen who were 
 acquainted with the noble art of " self-defence." The 
 result was the acquittal of Winchester. 
 
 Grundy achieved great distinction as a criminal 
 lawyer, and especially for his power before a jury in 
 cases of homicide. Many of those acquitted through 
 his matchless eloquence lived to kill other men. In 
 a book printed in Alabama containing biographical 
 sketches of many of the public men in that State 
 there are accounts of no less than five homicides. 
 Three of these public men killed men, and two were 
 themselves killed. Singularly enough, one of the 
 killed was a murderer from Tennessee, named An- 
 
124 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 derson, who had been acquitted of the crime of kill- 
 ing his brother-in-law through the eloquence of Felix 
 Grundy. The acquitted murderer went to Alabama, 
 killed another man, and was himself killed by a man 
 named Feairson, who was never tried for the crime, 
 as it was a clear case of self-defence. 
 
 Another case mentioned in this book, and which 
 illustrates cases found so often in the Southern States, 
 was that of Hon. John Ewing, of Greene County, 
 Alabama. In a speech in the court-house he had 
 used harsh language towards one Ross, a party to 
 the suit. As he came out of the court-house Ross 
 struck him with a cane, whereupon he stabbed his 
 assailant to death. The writer says (page 295), "Mr. 
 Ewing was subjected to the forms of a trial for the homi- 
 cide, but the jury acquitted him on the ground that 
 he acted in self-defence." 
 
 There are very many instances in the Southern 
 courts where men are acquitted of manslaughter 
 when their only justification was a blow from a cane 
 or even the fist. Indeed, in some instances this 
 is carried to the extent of acquitting for murder 
 when the murderer killed his enemy in revenge for 
 an insult by words, and when he was in no bodily 
 peril whatever. The old common law doctrine as to 
 what really constitutes self-defence is about lost sight 
 of in the precedents established by decisions of the 
 courts. But in other portions of this book I will 
 refer again to instances of so-called " self-defence." 
 Occasions are very rare where one man is justifiable 
 in killing another, yet we find in the Southern States 
 
PERSONAL DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 125 
 
 such laxity in the administration of law and such 
 latitude given the doctrine of self-defence, that not 
 one white man in ten guilty of killing his fellow-man 
 is adequately punished, or even punished at all. 
 
 The custom of stabbing in this country seems to 
 have originated in New Orleans. At least in the 
 first accounts I find of it in the Southern States it is 
 spoken of as having been " introduced" from New 
 Orleans. The first reference to the custom in Ken- 
 tucky is in the Travels of John Melish, 1808, page 
 141, vol. ii. He says, " Seven miles below we 
 reached Port William, at the mouth of Kentucky 
 River, where we stopped for the night. Port Wil- 
 liam is a small place, consisting of about fifteen fam- 
 ilies only ; and being subject to fever and ague in the 
 fall, it is not likely to increase very fast. We were 
 informed here that some of the country people still 
 retain their vicious propensity for fighting, biting, and 
 gouging, and that they had lately introduced stabbing, 
 a practice which had been learned at New Orleans." 
 
 How well the "practice" has been kept up we 
 know from an inspection of the criminal calendar in 
 the Southern States. The deaths and woundings 
 from stabs, frequent as they are, however, are less 
 than the deaths and woundings from shots. If ever 
 there was need of the enforcement of law against the 
 use of the pistol and the knife, it is needed to-day in 
 the Southern States. The whole judicial system, 
 with reference to homicide, needs reconstruction, 
 and fewer opportunities should be given for the es- 
 cape of murderers. 
 
 11* 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 HOMICIDE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 
 
 The annual number of homicides in Pennsylvania 
 is considerably greater than in the adjacent State of 
 New York, outside of that city. A majority of these 
 homicides, however, are in the coal and oil regions 
 of the State and in the counties having very large 
 foreign-born population. On the other hand, there 
 are many Pennsylvania counties where there is not 
 an average of over one homicide in five years. In 
 Potter County, for instance, there is an average of 
 but one in seven or eight years. For a period of 
 over twenty years last past there have been in Potter 
 County but three murders. In the adjacent county 
 of McKean homicide was equally rare until the oil 
 discoveries and developments, since which time the 
 population has quadrupled, and there has been an 
 average of a homicide annually. In Potter County, 
 at the December (1879) term of court, there were no 
 criminal cases on the docket, no indictments by the 
 grand jury, no prisoners in jail, and no paupers 
 in the poor-house. Potter is purely an agricultural 
 county, with a comparatively small foreign-born 
 population, and we find here as in other Pennsyl- 
 vania counties of the same class that homicide is very 
 
 rare. 
 
 126 
 
HOMICIDE IN PENNSYLVANIA. j 2 y 
 
 The returns from all the criminal courts in the 
 State show that homicide is more frequent among 
 the foreign-born residents of the anthracite coal re- 
 gions than among any other class of equal numbers. 
 But since the Mollie Maguire excitement a few years 
 ago, which resulted in the hanging of some eighteen 
 or twenty men convicted of murder, there have been 
 no more Maguire murders. The effect of a whole- 
 some administration of justice when dealing with 
 murderers is seen in the example of Pennsylvania. 
 The number of men executed were actually larger 
 than the number of murders for which these culprits 
 were hanged. In one instance three were hanged for 
 the murder of one man. In another eleven men were 
 sent to the penitentiary for an attempt to kill one, 
 although the intended victim, W. H. Thomas, escaped 
 with slight wounds. The five murders in 1875, which 
 aroused such an intense feeling against the Mollie 
 Maguires, were the assassinations of Gomar Jones, 
 Thomas Gwyther, B. F. Yost, and Messrs. Sanger 
 and Uren. For these murders more men were 
 hanged than the number of their victims. The 
 murders all took place in 1875, and being cold- 
 blooded assassinations it aroused intense feeling, 
 which culminated in a wholesome wholesale hanging 
 and imprisonment of the guilty. These were not 
 all the murders committed by the Mollies, but they 
 were the principal ones, going no farther back than 
 1870. During the war and immediately after the 
 number of homicides in the anthracite regions, and 
 particularly in Schuylkill County, was much greater 
 
128 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 than in 1875, and greater than in any other portion 
 of the State of equal population, but they were not 
 deliberately planned and executed assassinations. 
 For a few years during the war and up to 1867 the 
 number of homicides in the Schuylkill regions aver- 
 aged from ten to fifteen annually. But it was not these 
 which gave the death-blow to Mollie Maguireism, — 
 an importation, by the way, from Ireland, and there 
 called " Ribbonism." It was the assassinations in 
 1875 that so aroused the latent energies of the law, 
 and caused more legal executions for these assassi- 
 nations than the number who were assassinated. In 
 the case of the deadly assault upon W. H. Thomas 
 eleven men, to wit, Kehoe, Donnelly, Canning, 
 O'Brien, McHugh, Donahue/ Roarity, Gibbons, 
 Morris, Hurley, and Doyle, were convicted, the jury 
 being out but twenty minutes. 
 
 In reading the history of the Mollie Maguire 
 crimes and the trials, convictions, imprisonments, 
 and executions which followed, one is impressed 
 with the necessity of an equally energetic adminis- 
 tration of justice in the Southern States. The total 
 number of men killed by the Mollies in Pennsylvania 
 in the year 1875, and for which so many were hanged, 
 was less than the number of murders in Texas and 
 Kentucky during any thirty days in the year 1878! 
 The five assassinations mentioned in Pennsylvania 
 in 1875 led to the execution of over a dozen men 
 for the -crime. Yet in 1878 there were forty-one 
 assassinations in Texas alone, and but few, if any, 
 executions for them. 
 
HOMICIDE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 
 
 129 
 
 The number of felonious homicides in Pennsyl- 
 vania for the six years ending September 30, 1878, 
 including the operations of the Mollie Maguires, 
 which reached their culmination in 1875, was five 
 hundred and forty-three, an annual average of over 
 ninety and less than ninety-one. Pennsylvania has 
 four millions of population, including perhaps three- 
 quarters of a million of foreign-born residents. She 
 has the greatest coal and oil developments on the 
 continent, great and clashing interests, and one city 
 of nearly a million inhabitants. That with all this 
 she keeps the number of murders and manslaughters 
 below an average of one hundred annually is a testi- 
 monial to the vigor of her administration of justice. 
 Were murder and manslaughter as frequent in Penn- 
 sylvania as in South Carolina, rated by comparative 
 population, the number would be over six hundred 
 annually instead of less than one hundred. Yet there 
 is not the excuse for homicide in South Carolina that 
 there is in Pennsylvania. Her foreign-born popula- 
 tion is not one-fiftieth part as great ; she has no large 
 cities, and great mining and manufacturing interests, 
 among the population of which the homicides in 
 Pennsylvania so largely arise. But allowing nothing 
 for this, testing it simply by the number of homi- 
 cides to population, and we find the crime of man- 
 slaying in South Carolina seven or eight hundred 
 per cent, more frequent than in Pennsylvania. 
 
 The criminal statistics of Pennsylvania for a series 
 of years can be obtained at Harrisburg from the 
 sworn returns of the court officers in the several 
 
130 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 counties. These are all tabulated and published an- 
 nually in a volume with other statistics, called " Re- 
 port of the Board of Public Charities." In these 
 reports will be found the number of indictments 
 every year in every county, and for what crimes. 
 The Pennsylvania system of preserving and publish- 
 ing statistics upon all subjects relating to her inter- 
 nal affairs is very thorough. Nothing of moment is 
 omitted. 
 
 The population of Pennsylvania is about three 
 times that of Kentucky. If, in proportion to popu- 
 lation, homicide in 1878 had been as frequent in the 
 former State as in the latter, the total in Pennsyl- 
 vania would have reached between six and seven 
 hundred. Such a rate of killing would far exceed 
 anything that happened during the operations of the 
 Mollies, or the great strikes, or any other internal 
 commotion that has disturbed Pennsylvania in very 
 many years. So many murders and manslaughters 
 would arouse public feeling to an intense degree, and 
 if the fate of the Mollie assassins is any criterion, 
 there would be several hundred hangings the year 
 following such an epidemic of murder. Recently, 
 in that State, five men were hanged for the murder 
 of one, the victim being an old man named Rober, a 
 German, living near Lebanon. Pennsylvania has much 
 to her credit. She spends annually from eight to ten 
 millions of dollars in the support of public schools ; 
 she has school and college property valued at over 
 forty millions of dollars, and church property valued 
 at over fifty millions of dollars, all a free-offering 
 
HOMICIDE IN PENNSYLVANIA. y^x 
 
 from her citizens for the common good ; but also 
 worthy of praise is the wholesale way in which she 
 swings murderers from the gallows, or incarcerates 
 them in the penitentiary. 
 
 The majority of crimes against the person in Penn- 
 sylvania, as I have stated, are in counties having the 
 largest foreign-born population. For the year end- 
 ing October i, 1878, there were received into the 
 Eastern and the Western Penitentiaries of Pennsyl- 
 vania one hundred and three persons convicted of all 
 the various grades of crime against the person. A 
 singular and striking fact in this connection is that 
 fifty-three, or more than one-half of the total convicted, 
 were from the four counties of Alleghany, Schuyl- 
 kill, Philadelphia, and Luzerne, where live about 
 two-thirds of all the foreign-born population in Penn- 
 sylvania. And in twenty-eight counties, embracing 
 mainly the agricultural districts, where the foreign- 
 born population is much smaller than in the mining 
 regions, — in twenty-eight counties containing a popu- 
 lation of over one million, — there was not during the 
 year a single conviction for any species of crime 
 against the person punishable by imprisonment in 
 the penitentiary. This is indeed a most remarkable 
 exhibit. Four counties with two-thirds of all the 
 foreign-born population supply more than half of 
 the total number convicted for crime against the 
 person for the year, and twenty-eight counties with 
 a million of population send not a single one ! Com- 
 ment can only weaken such an exhibit as this. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 HOMICIDE IN NEW YORK. 
 
 The average annual number of murders and man- 
 slaughters in New York State, outside of New York 
 City, is about fifty among a population of over three 
 and one-half millions. In a majority of the counties 
 of the State the rate of homicide is no higher than 
 in New England. 
 
 In New York City the number of homicides is 
 about as great as in all the rest of the State. In- 
 deed, in proportion to population, the rate is much 
 higher than in Boston or Philadelphia, or other large 
 cities of the North. The reports of the Board of 
 Health of New York City give the homicides an- 
 nually, with age and nativity of victims, and much 
 other information, but do not distinguish between 
 felonious homicides and such as were accidental. 
 But this defect is reached by the reports of the Police 
 Department. Between the two we find the annual 
 average of felonious homicides to be about forty- 
 eight. This is a very much higher rate than prevails 
 elsewhere in the Eastern and Middle States, whether 
 in city or country. It is partially accounted for, how- 
 ever, when the returns are examined. Of the 151 
 persons arrested in New York City charged with 
 homicide during the twenty-one months ending Sep- 
 
 *32 
 
HOMICIDE IN NEW YORK. 
 
 133 
 
 tember 30, 1879 (of whom 63 were discharged without 
 trial) 78, or a little over one-half, were foreigners ; 38 
 were natives of Ireland ; 19 of Germany ; 10 of Italy ; 
 6 of England ; 4 of France ; and 1 of Sweden. It is 
 a singular fact that New York City furnishes nearly 
 one-half the murders committed in that State, and 
 that Boston furnishes nearly one-half committed in 
 Massachusetts. 
 
 In New York City the Italian population is com- 
 paratively small, yet for the time covered there was 
 an average of one Italian arrested for murder every 
 sixty days. It is the evidence of the prosecuting 
 attorneys and judges that the Italians with their 
 stilettos have done no little toward increasing the 
 homicide rate in New York. Yet the Italian popu- 
 lation in 1870 was but two thousand seven hundred 
 and ninety-four. The reports of the Board of Health 
 show an average of about fifty-three homicides an- 
 nually in the city. This, however, includes those 
 that are accidental as well as the felonious. The re- 
 ports of the Police Department show an annual 
 average of about fifty persons held to answer for the 
 crime of murder and manslaughter. It sometimes 
 happens, however, that two or more are held for the 
 commission of one murder. Allowing for this, and 
 it is probable that the actual annual average of felo- 
 nious homicides in New York City is not far from 
 forty-seven. Some years, however, it is below this. 
 In 1869 the record of coroners' inquests showed 
 thirteen homicides in Brooklyn and thirty-seven in 
 New York, a total of fifty for the two cities, with an 
 
I3 4 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 aggregate of population of over one million three 
 hundred thousand. In 1870 there were forty-five 
 homicides in New York City. In 1871 there were 
 fifty-three, not including those who fell in the Orange- 
 men's parade riot of that year. In 1874 there were 
 fifty-nine. These, however, include cases of infanti- 
 cide. It will be seen that the annual average is a little 
 over fifty, including accidental homicides. 
 
 I have referred to the foreign-born population of 
 New York as contributing largely to the homicide 
 rate. Recently in sentencing an Italian for stabbing 
 in New York, the judge gave him the longest allow- 
 able term in prison, and stated as a reason the num- 
 ber of such' cases among the Italian population. For 
 the twenty-one months ending September 30, 1879, 
 there were ten Italians arrested in New York charged 
 with murder and manslaughter. This was one to 
 about every three hundred of Italian population. 
 Had there been equally as many arrests for this 
 crime among the native population the result would 
 have been two thousand Americans arrested for 
 murder and manslaughter in twenty-one months! 
 But, as a matter of fact, only seventy-three American- 
 born citizens were arrested for this crime, and nearly 
 one-half of these were discharged without being held 
 for trial. This shows very strikingly how the crim- 
 inal calendar of New York City is augmented by her 
 immense population of foreign birth. But they do 
 not all contribute proportionately by any means. 
 Out of a German population of at least one hundred 
 and seventy thousand, there were but nineteen arrests 
 
HOMICIDE IN NEW YORK. jgg 
 
 for murder and manslaughter in the time mentioned. 
 Among an English and Irish population of at least 
 a quarter of a million there were forty-four arrests 
 for murder and manslaughter. This was, however, a 
 considerably larger percentage than among the native 
 Americans. 
 
 In the State of New York, including the city, and 
 with a population of about five millions, the annual 
 average number of murders and manslaughters is 
 from one hundred to one hundred and ten. A ma- 
 jority of the interior counties show a rate of homi- 
 cide not greater than in the counties of New England. 
 Every year there are a dozen or more New York 
 counties without a homicide. It is shown in the 
 mortuary statistics collected with the last State cen- 
 sus that there was not a homicide in the counties 
 of St. Lawrence, Steuben, Seneca, Richmond, Rock- 
 land, Saratoga, Albany, Allegany, Putnam, Monroe, 
 Cattaraugus, Lewis, Cortland, Franklin, Fulton, 
 Montgomery, Oneida, Orleans, Essex, Schuyler, and 
 Oswego during the year ending June i, 1875. The 
 aggregate population of these twenty-one counties is 
 greater than that of some of the Southern States, yet 
 in all of them, for the year covered by the returns, 
 there was not a single homicide. Of course this is 
 exceptional, but every year a dozen or more counties 
 in New York can be. found without a homicide. 
 Outside of New York City the number is as few, in 
 proportion to population, as the average in New 
 England. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 HOMICIDE IN IOWA, MINNESOTA, AND MICHIGAN. 
 
 I have been unable to get the number of murders 
 in Iowa with any degree of accuracy, but from col- 
 lections from the newspapers and inspection of all 
 available criminal statistics, I believe the annual av- 
 erage to be not far from forty. It is very easy in any 
 State to get the number of convictions for murder 
 and manslaughter annually, but these are of no value 
 except as an approximation, and as they bear a pro- 
 portion to convictions for other crimes. For the ten 
 years ending with 1877 there was in Iowa an average 
 of ten convictions annually for murder and man- 
 slaughter. 
 
 For the year ending October 31, 1874, there were 
 thirteen hundred and thirty convictions for all classes 
 of crime in Iowa, but largely more than one half of 
 these were for " nuisance" and violations of the 
 liquor law. For murder and manslaughter there 
 were ten convictions. In the thirteen counties of 
 Adair, Calhoun, Clay, Crawford, Dickinson, Emmett, 
 Hancock, Humboldt, O'Brien, Palo Alto, Sac, Win- 
 nebago, and Wright, containing an aggregate popu- 
 lation of over fifty thousand, there was not a single 
 conviction for any offence. 
 
 In the year following, ending October 31, 1875, in 
 136 
 
HOMICIDE IN IOWA. i$j 
 
 fourteen counties, with a population of nearly fifty 
 thousanr", there was not a single conviction for crime. 
 The majority of these were new counties, and the 
 conspicuous absence of crime is of itself a strong in- 
 dication of the law-abiding character of the people. 
 Two of these counties — Grundy and Hamilton — had 
 an aggregate population of sixteen thousand, yet 
 there were no convictions in a year for any crime 
 whatever. The population of the other twelve coun- 
 ties run the aggregate up to near fifty thousand, but 
 no convictions. Compare this with any fourteen 
 new counties in Texas, and what a contrast ! Yet 
 these are both new States, and there is no reason 
 why murder should be twelve or fifteen times more 
 frequent in Texas than in Iowa, but it is. The hom- 
 icide rate in Iowa among an equal population is not 
 larger than in the neighboring States of Minnesota 
 and Michigan, settled by the same class of people, 
 and in a certain sense new States. The statistics of 
 homicide in these two States we are enabled to get 
 with reasonable accuracy, as I will show in another 
 place. All that I have been able to collect in Iowa 
 show an annual average about equal to these States, 
 measured by population. 
 
 I have placed little faith in the vital statistics col- 
 lected and returned in the United States census re- 
 ports of 1870. They indicate a portion of the truth, 
 but not all, as one will find on a closer investigation. 
 The most that can be said of these vital statistics is 
 that they approximate the truth without reaching it. 
 But compare the new State of Iowa with the new State 
 
!38 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 of Texas, even as exhibited in these vital statistics. 
 Iowa is mainly settled with people from the older 
 Northern States, and Texas mainly with people from 
 the older Southern States, each carrying their habits 
 and customs with them. These vital statistics in the 
 census report show three hundred and twenty-three 
 homicides for the census year in Texas, and but 
 twenty-four in Iowa. Yet Iowa had nearly four 
 hundred thousand, the larger population. Making 
 these figures a basis of calculation, and we find that 
 had homicide been so frequent in Iowa, with her 
 larger population, as in Texas, the number would 
 have reached four hundred and thirty-eight ! On the 
 other hand, had homicide been as infrequent among 
 an equal population in Texas as in Iowa, the total 
 would have been but sixteen instead of three hundred 
 and twenty-three. In Texas there was an average 
 of one homicide to every two thousand five hundred 
 population, and in Iowa one to every fifty thousand 
 population, showing homicide to have been that year 
 twenty times more frequent in Texas than in Iowa ! 
 Yet the homicides that year in Texas fell far short 
 of the number I collected for the year 1878, namely, 
 four hundred and one, or four hundred and twenty- 
 three, allowing that a small percentage of the severely 
 wounded died of their wounds. Taking one year 
 with another, there is every probability that the 
 homicides in Texas largely exceed an average of four 
 hundred annually. Yet, measured by the relative 
 population, the number in Iowa should be the 
 greater, as she has the larger population. Instead 
 
HOMICIDE IN MINNESOTA. i^g 
 
 of that the census shows but twenty-four. Allowing 
 that this falls short of the number, it cannot fall far 
 short. From all I can gather from local accounts of 
 homicides in the Iowa newspapers, and from inspect- 
 ing the criminal statistics, I do not believe the annual 
 average number of murders in that State exceeds forty, 
 or possibly fifty. 
 
 Minnesota is another new State, settled mainly 
 from the Northern States, and here we find much 
 the same condition of things with respect to homi- 
 cide. Although a new State, and a frontier State, — 
 bordering upon the British Possessions, — the number 
 of murders is but a small percentage above the number 
 among an equal population in the Middle States. In 
 the vital statistics of Minnesota there are annual col- 
 lections of the number of deaths from all forms of 
 violence, including murder. The system is the same 
 as in Massachusetts, Vermont, and Rhode Island, 
 but has not attained the accuracy of detail which 
 characterizes the vital statistics of the New England 
 States. But taking these statistics and the court 
 criminal statistics together, and the number can be 
 arrived at with accuracy. For the two years ending 
 November 15, 1876, there were thirty-two prosecu- 
 tions for murder in the first and second degrees and 
 for manslaughter in that State, an average of six- 
 teen annually. The vital statistics for 1874, 1875, 
 and 1876 show thirty murders, an average of ten an- 
 nually. That the number of persons prosecuted for 
 murder is sometimes larger than the number of mur- 
 ders for a given time is patent, for it occasionally hap- 
 
I4 o HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 pens that two and even three are prosecuted for one 
 murder. But allowing nothing for this, taking the 
 highest numbers, and we find an average of sixteen 
 murders annually in Minnesota. The population of 
 this State is a little over one-half that of Texas. Were 
 the killing of human beings by their fellow-men as 
 frequent in Minnesota among an equal population as 
 in Texas, the average would not be sixteen annually, 
 but over two hundred ! Can any rational explanation 
 be given why the crime of murder in these two com- 
 paratively new States should bear to each other such 
 a disproportionate ratio ? These are typical new 
 States, — the one settled largely from the older South- 
 ern States, the other from the older Northern States. 
 Wherever the two civilizations are brought in con- 
 trast with respect to crime against the person, we 
 find results similar to those here given. It is not 
 confined to Minnesota and Texas any more than to 
 Massachusetts and South Carolina, and Pennsylvania 
 and Kentucky. The murder rate in the new State 
 of Texas over the murder rate in the new State of 
 Minnesota bears about the same proportion as the 
 murder rate in the old State of South Carolina over 
 the old State of Massachusetts. Compare these two 
 civilizations when you will, taking a year or a series 
 of years together, and approximately the same re- 
 sults are reached with respect to crime against the 
 person, but not as to crime against property. It is 
 generally estimated that where murder is frequent, all 
 other crimes are proportionately so. But this is not 
 true in the South. Crime against property is prob- 
 
HOMICIDE IN MICHIGAN. 
 
 141 
 
 ably even less frequent in the Southern States than 
 elsewhere. 
 
 The annual average number of felonious homicides 
 in Michigan is about forty. By the State census, 
 1874, Michigan had a population of one million three 
 hundred and thirty-four thousand and thirty-one, or 
 about equal to that of Kentucky. From the report 
 of the Attorney-General of Michigan for nine months 
 of the year 1873, ending October I, it is learned that 
 there were twenty-seven persons prosecuted for mur- 
 der and manslaughter. Allowing the same rate for 
 the remaining three months, and the total would be 
 thirty-six for one year. This does not include three 
 prosecutions for abortion. For the year ending De- 
 cember 31, 1875, there were forty-two persons prose- 
 cuted for murder and manslaughter. For the year 
 1875 there were also forty-two. For the year 1877 
 there were thirty-nine. This gives one hundred and 
 seventeen in three years, an average of thirty-nine 
 annually. In several instances two persons were 
 prosecuted for one murder, and in a few instances 
 three were prosecuted for one murder ; but chances 
 for error in the aggregate are few, for while it some- 
 times happens that there are a few murders annually 
 with no one prosecuted, it also happens that two, 
 three, and sometimes four are prosecuted for one 
 murder ; and, on the whole, the number of prosecu- 
 tions for murder in a law-abiding community is a rea- 
 sonably correct indication of the number of murders. 
 Measured by these figures, we find the annual average 
 in Michigan, among over a million and a quarter of 
 
142 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 population, to be thirty-nine. In examining the 
 criminal statistics of Michigan, we find that annually 
 in more than one-half the counties there are no mur- 
 ders during the year. The annual average number 
 of murders is only about one-half the number of 
 counties. Every year counties can be found, contain- 
 ing an aggregate population of two or three hundred 
 thousand, 'without a murder happening among them 
 during the time. This is true of almost every North- 
 ern State the criminal statistics of which I have 
 examined. In many of them there are every year 
 counties, containing an aggregate of half a million of 
 population, without a murder. In Michigan, for the 
 nine months ending October I, 1873, there were 
 forty-six counties in which no one was charged with 
 murder. The twenty-seven cases all arose in twenty- 
 five of the larger counties having the largest per- 
 centage of foreign-born population, leaving forty-six 
 counties without a murder or a manslaughter case 
 on their court dockets. The total number of murder 
 and manslaughter cases in the courts of Michigan 
 average but a trifle over one case to each county every 
 two years. Some of the counties show very small 
 criminal dockets indeed, corresponding with the light- 
 ness of criminal business in several Iowa counties 
 before referred to. In one of the Michigan counties, 
 for the time first mentioned, there was but one crim- 
 inal prosecution, and that a case of simple assault 
 and battery. In another but three, — one assault, one 
 burglary, and one the unlawful sale of liquor. In 
 another county there were but three light cases on 
 
HOMICIDE IN MICHIGAN. x\l 
 
 the criminal docket, and in still another but one. 
 Of course these cases of light criminal dockets are 
 exceptional, but the comparatively small number of 
 indictments for murder and manslaughter in propor- 
 tion to population is not exceptional. It is found 
 to be true year after year. Indeed, every year more 
 counties can be found in Michigan without a murder 
 or manslaughter case on the criminal dockets than 
 counties in which such cases arise during the year. 
 In other words, the counties without murder cases 
 are yearly in the majority. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 HOMICIDE IN OTHER STATES — VERMONT, RHODE 
 ISLAND, MAINE, LOUISIANA, MISSISSIPPI, ETC. 
 
 Vermont and New Hampshire are the most dis- 
 tinctively American of any of the Northern States, — 
 that is, the percentage of foreign-born population is 
 smaller. And they are, in respect to taking human 
 life, the model American communities. In Vermont, 
 including those killed by the insane, there is less 
 than an average of two homicides annually. During 
 the years 1869, 1871, 1872, 1874, and 1875 there was 
 not a homicide in Vermont. In 1873 there was one, 
 and in 1866 and 1870 there were two each year. 
 The average, however, is less than two annually 
 among nearly three hundred and fifty thousand pop- 
 ulation. In Bennington County, containing about 
 the same population as Madison County, Kentucky, 
 previously referred to, there was not a homicide in 
 eleven years, beginning with 1866. In Addison 
 County, with a population of about twenty-four thou- 
 sand, there was also not a homicide in eleven years. 
 Indeed, in three of the Vermont counties there was 
 not a homicide in eleven years, which covers the 
 period of which I have the records. In Caledonia 
 County, with a population of twenty-three thousand, 
 there was not a homicide in ten years, beginning 
 144 
 
HOMICIDE IN VERMONT. 145 
 
 with 1866. In Chittenden County, with nearly forty- 
 thousand population, there was only one homicide 
 in eleven yearsj ending with 1876. In Washington 
 County, with twenty-seven thousand population, there 
 was but one homicide in eleven years. In Windham 
 County, with twenty-six thousand population, there 
 was not a homicide from 1867 to 1876. In Windsor 
 County, with thirty-six thousand population, there 
 was not a homicide from 1868 to 1876. In Rutland 
 County, with over forty thousand population, there 
 was not a homicide in eight years. In Orange 
 County, with a population of twenty-three thousand, 
 there was but one homicide in nine years. In the 
 two counties of Essex and Grand Isle there was but 
 one homicide in eleven years. These statistics could 
 probably be brought down to a later date with about 
 the same result, but I only have the official reports 
 for eleven years, beginning with 1866. This, how- 
 ever, is a fair average period. From what I have 
 gathered of the criminal statistics of Vermont, it is 
 apparent that there are counties in that State of 
 twenty thousand or more inhabitants that do not 
 have within their borders an average of more than 
 one murder in a quarter of a century ! Indeed, in 
 all the counties of the State, with nearly three hun- 
 dred and fifty thousand population, there was but one 
 homicide during the five years ending with 1875 ! 
 These were an exceptional series of years, but the 
 average, taking ten or twelve years together, is less 
 than two annually. 
 
 Compared with the rate of homicide in the South- 
 g k 13 
 
146 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 ern States what a striking contrast is here presented ! 
 In several of the Southern States there are single 
 counties where more men are murdered in one year 
 than in all the fourteen counties in Vermont in ten 
 years ! And also single counties, of less population 
 than the average Vermont county, where more men 
 are wounded by shot and stab in twelve months than 
 in all the counties in Vermont in ten years ! In 
 Kentucky alone there are counties, of less popula- 
 tion than the average in Vermont counties, where 
 more men are murdered and more men wounded 
 by shots and stabs in twelve months than in the 
 State of Vermont in ten years. 
 
 Such contrasts as these lead us to the conclusion 
 that murder and manslaughter, shooting and stab- 
 bing, is unnecessarily frequent in the Southern States, 
 and might be curtailed by the rigorous enforcement 
 of law without disadvantage. 
 
 In Rhode Island the average annual number of 
 homicides is three. The population is over a quarter 
 of a million, which is less than that of Vermont, but 
 the number of foreign-born citizens is larger, and a 
 majority of the homicides in Rhode Island are among 
 this class. During the three years, 1875, 1876, and 
 1877, there were nine homicides in Rhode Island 
 (and one infanticide), an average of three annually. 
 Of the three in 1877, two were foreigners. Of the 
 four in 1876, three were foreigners. Among native 
 Americans in Rhode Island the number of homicides 
 do not average above one annually to one hundred 
 and fifty thousand population. 
 
HOMICIDE IN MAINE. j^ 
 
 In the three smaller States of New England, — 
 Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Vermont, — with 
 an aggregate population of nearly one million, the 
 annual average number of homicides is not above 
 seven. 
 
 In Maine, with nearly seven hundred thousand 
 population, the annual average of felonious homicides 
 is eight or nine. There is no way to get the num- 
 ber, however, except from the indictments in the 
 courts, but this is not exactly accurate in every in- 
 stance, for often in Maine a criminal prosecution is 
 carried over from one year to another, and counted 
 as a separate prosecution in the official reports each 
 year. Making allowance for this, and probably the 
 actual average number of felonious homicides annu- 
 ally in Maine is about seven, or possibly eight. 
 
 The population of Maine and that of Louisiana is 
 not greatly different, the latter State having about 
 fourteen per cent, the larger number. A contrast be- 
 tween the two States as to the number of crimes 
 against the person is very striking. For the year 
 ending November I, 1876, there were but eight mur- 
 der and manslaughter cases on the criminal dockets 
 of all the courts in Maine. The year following there 
 were eleven, two at least having been brought over 
 from the previous year. For the same year in Louisi- 
 ana (1877), with four of the eighteen judicial districts 
 omitted from the Attorney-General's report, there 
 were one hundred and twenty murder and man- 
 slaughter trials. (Report Attorney-General for 1877.) 
 This is made up of the separate reports of the dis- 
 
I 4 8 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 trict attorneys. Estimating the four districts omitted 
 at the same rate as those from which reports were 
 received, and it would give thirty-two additional, 
 making one hundred and fifty-two trials for murder 
 and manslaughter in Louisiana in one year ! During 
 the same time there were but nine persons tried for 
 murder and manslaughter in Maine. So far as we 
 can judge from this, murder and manslaughter is 
 about fifteen hundred per cent, more frequent in 
 Louisiana than in Maine. 
 
 The indictments for assault with deadly weapons 
 show an equally striking disproportion. In fourteen 
 of the eighteen judicial districts in Louisiana in 1877 
 there were three hundred and one indictments found, 
 and prosecutions instituted for the various and sev- 
 eral offences of shooting with intent to kill, stabbing 
 with intent to kill, assault with intent to kill, wound- 
 ing, etc. The offences are differently specified in 
 the different districts, and could properly all be 
 classified, as in Maine, under the general head of 
 assault with felonious intent. Estimating the four 
 districts not reported at the same rate, and it gives 
 three hundred and eighty-one deadly or felonious 
 assaults coming within jurisdiction of the courts in 
 one year. These are simply the prosecutions com- 
 menced during the year, and not such as were on 
 the dockets from previous years. Against three 
 hundred and eighty-one felonious assaults in Louisi- 
 ana in one year there were in Maine during the same 
 time but twenty-seven ! (Attorney-General's Report, 
 Maine, for 1877, page 16.) From these returns, and 
 
HOMICIDE IN LOUISIANA. j^q 
 
 they are official, we find murder and manslaughter 
 and assault with deadly weapons to be about fourteen 
 hundred per cent, more frequent in Louisiana than 
 in Maine. The year 1877 is a fair one for compari- 
 son, as there were no unusual disturbances in either 
 State. The great preponderance of crime against 
 the person in one State over the same class of crime 
 in the other indicates very clearly the difference be- 
 tween communities where the carrying of deadly 
 weapons is a habit and where it is not ; where per- 
 sonal combat with weapons is frequent and where it 
 is very rare ; where so-called insults are liable to lead 
 to deadly difficulties and where they are not. 
 
 In Maine, in 1877, there were ten counties with a 
 population of over a quarter of a million without a 
 single case of murder, manslaughter, or infanticide 
 during the year. This happens repeatedly. There 
 is, indeed, hardly a year but what an absence of 
 homicide is noted in from one-third to one-half of 
 the counties, aggregating from two to three hundred 
 thousand population. 
 
 It is a singular fact that the number of murder 
 trials in Louisiana in one year lacked but two of 
 being as many as the annual average in the four 
 States of Maine, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Min- 
 nesota, with a population of over seven millions. 
 The annual average number of trials for murder and 
 manslaughter in these four States is one hundred 
 and fifty-four (and in this average are included all the 
 Mollie Maguire murder trials in Pennsylvania, which 
 swells the average beyond what it otherwise would 
 
 13* 
 
1 5 o HOMICIDE, NOR TH AND SO VTH. 
 
 be), while in Louisiana we find one hundred and 
 fifty-two in one year. The population of Louisiana 
 is about one-ninth or one-tenth that of the States 
 named. 
 
 To show the non-political character of a majority 
 of Louisiana murders, Mr. Nordhoff, the well-known 
 author, made some collections from official documents 
 in that State a few years ago. He found records of 
 354 homicides in 14 parishes in seven years. There 
 are in Louisiana 57 parishes. Estimating the others 
 at the same rate, and it would give 1425 homicides 
 in seven years, or an average of over 203 annually. 
 Probably this is not far from the average annual 
 number of homicides in Louisiana. In proportion 
 to population this is many more than we find in 
 Kentucky or South Carolina, as the population of 
 Kentucky is nearly double that of Louisiana. The 
 same rate since the war would give in Louisiana over 
 three thousand homicides. 
 
 During the investigation of alleged frauds in the 
 Louisiana election of 1876, a record of coroner's in- 
 quests in the parish of West Feliciana was put in 
 evidence by the Democrats (and publis.hed in the 
 testimony) to prove that the murders complained of 
 by the Republicans were not, in fact, political mur- 
 ders. This coroner's record shows that from July, 
 1875, to November, 1876, there were in that parish 
 no less than twenty-one homicides. Six of these 
 were cold-blooded assassinations " by parties un- 
 known," as returned by the coroner. The popula- 
 tion of the parish in 1870 was ten thousand four 
 
HOMICIDE IN MISSISSIPPI. 
 
 151 
 
 hundred and ninety-nine. We find, therefore, that 
 felonious homicide during the period covered was at 
 about the rate of one annually to every seven hun- 
 dred inhabitants ! 
 
 A contrast between Maine and Mississippi would 
 probably show equally striking features, if it were 
 possible to get the number of homicides in the latter 
 State with anything like accuracy. But this I have 
 not been able to do. Were homicide no more fre- 
 quent in Mississippi than in Maine, allowing for dif- 
 ference -in population, there would not be above 
 eleven annually in the entire State. But there are 
 often, in a given period, more in a single county in 
 Mississippi than in the entire State of Maine. It is 
 a question if there have not been double as many 
 homicides in Warren County, Mississippi, since the 
 war, as in Maine. When Dent was killed by Burton 
 in Vicksburg, in April, 1879, it was stated in the 
 local account that " Dent is the fourth man killed 
 here in six weeks." One-half as many homicides 
 in Vicksburg in six weeks as in Maine in a year ! 
 
 Speaking of the frequency of homicide in Missis- 
 sippi, the Vicksburg Herald, the leading paper in the 
 State, says, January 7, 1880: 
 
 " Since our arguments a few days ago in favor of 
 a change in our jury system, a more potent one has 
 been written in blood by the pistol, the rifle, and the 
 shot-gun. On last Saturday five persons were shot 
 in this county, one dangerously wounded, two pain- 
 fully wounded, and two killed. All the affairs oc- 
 curred about the merest trifles. Two men were 
 
152 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 killed and one shot about quarrels that originated 
 about the opening of doors, and two were shot in a 
 difficulty that came of a pitiful debt of a few dollars. 
 In a healthy state of society such things could not 
 occur." 
 
 As many men shot in Warren County, Mississippi, 
 in a single day as in some of the New England States 
 in two years ! That but two were killed outright 
 does not make the matter better. The attempt in 
 each case was to kill. I have been unable to collect 
 the number of homicides in Mississippi, as I could 
 find no record of them except in the newspapers, and 
 no half-dozen papers in the State seemed to have 
 them all. As in most of the Southern States, there 
 is no single newspaper that publishes even the briefest 
 accounts of all the homicides. In Georgia, for in- 
 stance, files of the three leading dailies in different 
 parts of the State will have accounts (mostly very 
 brief and clipped from the country press) of all, or 
 very nearly all, the homicides in the State, but no 
 single paper has them. This can be verified at any 
 time, and is true of most of the Southern States. 
 
 The Vicksburg Herald of May 25, 1879, expresses 
 the belief that there is an average of a murder a day 
 in Mississippi. When in that State, with access to 
 all information, I have known the number of murders 
 to average one daily for months at a time, but taking 
 one year with another, the average is probably less. 
 A murder a day in a State containing but a little over 
 half the population of Massachusetts, for instance, 
 is an awful rate of human slaughter, and not ex- 
 
HOMICIDE IN MISSISSIPPI. 
 
 153 
 
 plained by any known habits and customs which gov- 
 ern civilized society. In the article referred to above, 
 May 25, 1879, the Vicksburg Herald, a courageous 
 and outspoken journal, when dealing with evil, says : 
 
 " Our citizens have deprecated, deplored, de- 
 nounced, published, and done everything but take 
 the law in their own hands, yet crime increases. It 
 was bad last year; it is worse this. We positively 
 believe that Mississippi averages one murder per day, 
 and we have, perhaps, better means of securing in- 
 formation than almost any other person in the State. 
 We have published, published, and published, until 
 we are sick of it, yet we have not published nearly 
 all of the lawlessness that has occurred. There is 
 something radically wrong, and the people one and 
 all must agree that the wrongs shall be righted." 
 The italics are my own. 
 
 There is no reason why murder should be more 
 frequent in Mississippi than in Maine or Minnesota, 
 for instance. Wherever in the Eastern and Middle 
 and Northwestern States I have been able to get the 
 nationality of men-slayers, I have found the crime 
 more frequent among the foreign-born citizens than 
 native Americans. In Minnesota, out of eleven 
 murders in one year, eight were among foreign- 
 born residents. But in Mississippi, in 1870, out of 
 a total population of over three-fourths of a million 
 only about one and one-half per cent, were foreign- 
 born. It cannot be said, therefore, that the foreign- 
 born citizens are a factor in the homicide rate in 
 Mississippi. So far from the foreigners being the 
 
154 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 cause of so much murder, it is more probable that 
 so much murder accounts for there being so few 
 foreigners. Allowing for the absence of foreign 
 population, and measured by the rate of homicide 
 which prevails in the Eastern and Middle States 
 among native Americans, and there should not be 
 more than seven to nine homicides annually in Mis- 
 sissippi. This is quite enough. But an average of 
 a homicide a day, or one-half that number, in a State 
 of so small population as Mississippi, means positive 
 danger of a relapse into barbarism. In this matter, 
 as in others, society either goes forward or back- 
 ward. It is not stationary. We find in Massachu- 
 setts, where the record of homicides has been kept 
 with accuracy for a series of years, that this crime is 
 not increasing. That is, the percentage of murders to 
 the total population has decreased. The police rec- 
 ords of Boston show the same, independent of the 
 State record. Taking the five years from 1869 to 
 1873, inclusive, and the five years from 1874 to 1878, 
 inclusive, and murder decreased in Boston ten per 
 cent, while population increased at least eighteen per 
 cent. This is substantially true of all Massachusetts, 
 as I have shown in another place. As the civilization 
 of a people is largely measured by their respect for 
 human life, it follows that a constant, yearly increase 
 in the number of homicides in a given locality would 
 indicate that society, at the best, was not improving. 
 In the South, if the exact truth could be known, it 
 is probable that the condition of society in the cities has 
 been improving with respect to the taking of human 
 
HOMICIDE IN MISSISSIPPI. 
 
 iS5 
 
 life. But in the rural regions the shootings and stab- 
 bings and " personal difficulties" and affrays are as fre- 
 quent and deadly as ever. What change there is is for 
 the worse, and will continue so until a more enlight- 
 ened and energetic public sentiment is aroused than 
 has yet been found to exist. What is needed is a 
 sentiment against stabbing, for instance, as strong as 
 that which pervaded England two hundred years ago, 
 and which impelled the law-making power to affix the 
 penalty of death to the crime. In the darkest night of 
 England's history, so far as we have record, stabbing 
 was not as frequent as it is to-day in the Southern 
 States, but the population being more concentrated, 
 and a very much smaller area covered, the cases 
 were brought nearer home to the people and the 
 aggregate seemed very large, as indeed it was. The 
 effect of this stringent law was to comparatively ob- 
 literate this barbarous method of settling disputes. 
 A great deal can be done by vigorous legislation. 
 The bowie-knife has been nearly legislated out of 
 existence in most of the Southern States. A large 
 pocket-knife or a dirk is nearly as deadly, but the 
 simple fact that disembowelling with bowie-knives 
 is not one-fifth as frequent now as twenty-five years 
 ago shows what can be done. It may be said that 
 the pistol supplies the place of the bowie-knife. This 
 is measurably true. But is it not possible to legislate 
 against the pistol until there is, at least, a modifica- 
 tion in its use? 
 
 Speaking of the condition of society in Mississippi 
 in 1861 (writing at Jackson, June 16, i86i,and printed 
 
156 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 page 114 of his " Diary"), Mr. W. H. Russell, cor- 
 respondent of the London Times, says, — 
 
 " When my work was over I walked out and sat 
 in the shade with a gentleman whose talk turned 
 upon the practices of the Mississippi duello. With- 
 out the smallest animus, and in the most natural way 
 in the world, he told us tale after tale of blood, and 
 recounted terrible tragedies enacted outside of bars 
 of hotels and in the public streets close beside us. 
 There may, indeed, be security for property, but there 
 is none for the life of its owner in difficulties, who 
 may be shot by a stray bullet from a pistol as he 
 walks up the street. 
 
 " I learned many valuable facts. I was warned, 
 for example, against the impolicy of trusting to 
 small-bored pistols or to pocket six-shooters in case 
 of a close fight, because, suppose you hit your man 
 mortally, he may still run in upon you and rip you 
 up with a bowie-knife before he falls dead ; whereas 
 if you drive a good heavy bullet into him, or make a 
 hole in him with a ' Derringer' ball, he gets faintish 
 and drops at once. 
 
 " Many illustrations, too, were given of the value 
 of practical lessons of this sort. One particularly 
 struck me. If a gentleman with whom you are 
 engaged in altercation moves his hand towards his 
 breeches-pocket, or behind his back, you must smash 
 him or shoot him at once, for he is either going to 
 draw his six-shooter, to pull out a bowie-knife, or to 
 shoot you through the lining of his pocket. The 
 latter practice is considered, rather ungentlemanly, 
 
HOMICIDE IN MISSISSIPPI. 
 
 157 
 
 but it has been somewhat more honored lately in the 
 observance than in the breach. In fact, the savage 
 practice of walking about with pistols, knives, and 
 poniards, in bar-rooms and gambling-saloons, with 
 passions ungoverned, because there is no law to 
 punish the deeds to which they lead, affords facilities 
 for crime which an uncivilized condition of society 
 leaves too often without punishment, but which must 
 be put down or the country in which it is tolerated 
 will become as barbarous as a jungle inhabited by 
 wild beasts." 
 
 Moralizing upon these facts, he says, quite truly : 
 " The most absolute and despotic rule, under which 
 a man's life and property are safe, is better than the 
 largest measure of democratic freedom, which de- 
 prives the freeman of any security for either. The 
 state of legal protection for the most serious interests 
 of man, considered as a civilized and social creature, 
 which prevails in America, could not be tolerated for 
 an instant, and would generate a revolution in the 
 worst-governed country in Europe. I would much 
 sooner, as the accidental victim of a generally dis- 
 organized police, be plundered by a chance diligence 
 robber in Mexico, or have a fair fight with a Greek 
 Klepht, suffer from Italian banditti, or be garroted 
 by a London ticket-of-leave man, than be bowie- 
 knifed or revolvered in consequence of a political or 
 personal difference with a man, who is certain not in 
 the least degree to suffer from an accidental success 
 in his argument." 
 
 In another place I have referred to homicides in 
 14 
 
158 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 Vicksburg. Among notable recent instances of 
 slaughter in that town was the killing of Len and 
 Douglas Clark, two brothers, who were shot dead 
 on Washington Street by one Bolton. The evidence 
 is that these brothers Clark were estimable young 
 men, beloved by the community, and the idols of 
 their family. Washington is the principal business 
 street of Vicksburg, and it seems that the killing of 
 the Clark brothers in February (1880) made the 
 eighth man shot dead on this street within a year ! 
 In addition to those killed there were, as we are in- 
 formed, eight others dangerously wounded, and 
 twenty-one assaults with attempt to kill ! All this 
 on one street, in one year, in the little city of Vicks- 
 burg. These facts are given by a writer in the Vicks- 
 burg Herald of February 28, 1880, who says, refer- 
 ring to the killing of the Clark brothers, — 
 
 " The tragedy of last Friday evening has spoken 
 not only to the passion and resentments of the friends 
 of the murdered boys, but it speaks also, and with 
 the voice of thunder, to the heart of every father 
 and of every mother in this devoted little town. It 
 rings into the innermost recesses of the heart of every 
 loving sister, and the question propounded to every 
 family in this place is, ' Who next ?' Whose dar- 
 ling boy, whose beloved and idolized brother shall 
 be the next to be brought home dead ? Will he be 
 my neighbor's son across the way ? Will he be the 
 son of the widow who lives next door ? 
 
 " Turn back one leaf in the book and read the page 
 which records the shootings on Washington Street 
 
HOMICIDE IN MISSISSIPPI. 159 
 
 during the last year. There have been eight slaugh- 
 ters outright and eight more have been wounded dan- 
 gerously. There have been twenty-one other attempts 
 to kill. Of all these, the slayers and the slain, the 
 shooters and their victims, were armed — except Len 
 Clark — with concealed deadly weapons, so that it 
 does not appear that these hidden instruments of 
 death carry with them any protection against murder 
 or assassination." 
 
 This puts the uselessness of carrying concealed 
 weapons in a very strong light. The carrying of 
 arms does not prevent murder, but causes it. In 
 New England and rural New York, among a popu- 
 lation equal to that of Vicksburg, there is but an 
 average of one homicide every seven or eight years. 
 And this includes murders by the insane, and in fact 
 every class and degree of homicide. In Albany, 
 New York, with nearly one hundred thousand popu- 
 lation, there is less than an average of one murder 
 or manslaughter annually. There are counties in 
 New England more populous than Warren County, 
 Mississippi, with less than an average of one murder 
 every ten years. But the average in all these States 
 is as I have stated. The comparison is perfectly 
 plain and fair, and can be understood by all. From 
 it the people of Vicksburg can see how largely hu- 
 man slaughter is overdone in their city. Measured 
 by homicide among an equal population in Eastern 
 States, there should have been in Vicksburg not 
 over two homicides in the fifteen years since the war. 
 
 Besides the loss of life and the unspeakable dis- 
 
!6o HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 tress to families, these street-affrays with deadly- 
 weapons are extremely demoralizing. Boys imitate 
 their elders, arm themselves for self-defence or to re- 
 sent so-called insults, and season themselves to deeds 
 of violence. Growing up in such an atmosphere their 
 moral sense becomes blunted, and they never know, 
 from their surroundings, what a peaceable and law- 
 abiding community is or should be. The much trav- 
 elling of a wrong road never leads to the right one, 
 and the boy forming the habit of wearing arms and 
 cultivating resentments in his youth will be apt to 
 so continue through life. Not that he has murder in 
 his heart, or intends to take life, but, living in a com- 
 munity where " difficulties" are frequent, he arms him- 
 self so as to be prepared in case he is involved in one. 
 The whole system or custom that sanctions this is 
 radically and totally wrong. Most evils have some 
 sort of compensation, but this has none. There are 
 in the Northern States many little cities, counties, 
 and communities equal in population to Vicksburg 
 where there has not been a homicide in twenty years. 
 No one will claim that the citizens living in commu- 
 nities that are so very rarely shocked with a case of 
 homicide are any the less happy on that account. 
 The man who has been engaged in half a dozen 
 " difficulties" and fairly curved his spine carrying 
 pistols, will hardly claim that he or society of which 
 he is a part is the happier because of this custom. 
 
 One wonders why murderers are so often acquitted 
 by juries in Mississippi. Not many years ago, in one 
 of the counties of that State, a murderer was being 
 
HOMICIDE IN MISSISSIPPI. j6j 
 
 tried. An ex-sheriff of the county told me that the 
 defendant would be acquitted. He spoke with confi- 
 dence. I asked why. He replied that he was ac- 
 quainted personally with every man on the jury, and 
 that a majority of them had been engaged in what 
 he called " killing scrapes" themselves. Having been 
 sheriff of the county he was personally cognizant of 
 each case. 
 
 In a recent murder case in Kentucky it was widely 
 published (but I do not know with how much truth) 
 that five of the twelve jurymen had each killed his 
 man in " difficulties" anterior to the one they were 
 sitting in judgment upon. The result was a hung 
 
 jury- 
 Recently, in one of the many murder trials in 
 South Carolina, the jury "hung" not the defendant 
 but themselves ; that is, they failed to agree. It was 
 a clear case of murder, — an unarmed man stabbed to 
 death in the public streets. Much surprise was ex- 
 pressed that the jury should fail to agree. The 
 sequel shows that the juryman who would not agree 
 to a conviction was himself a murderer, and when 
 tried had been saved by the defendant in the more 
 recent murder case, who was then himself on the 
 jury! A South Carolinian, in detailing this to me, 
 suggested that it was only putting in force the old 
 doctrine that " one good turn deserved another." 
 
 The demoralization and injury to society by such 
 
 easy and frequent acquittals for murder I will refer to 
 
 more in detail in another place. In his book on the 
 
 Chisholm massacre, lately published, Mr. Wells, the 
 
 i 14* 
 
!6 2 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 author, in a chapter upon murder in Mississippi, 
 gives the following incident : 
 
 " Not many years ago, not far from the city of 
 Jackson, while travelling on one of the railroads lead- 
 ing into that place, a lady, still wearing the widow's 
 weeds, entered one of the coaches, leading by the 
 hand a little boy six or eight years of age. After 
 taking a seat her eyes soon became fixed upon a 
 gentleman, well dressed, and apparently in the full 
 enjoyment of life and all its attendant blessings, who 
 was seated in another part of the car. Remaining 
 with her gaze for a moment upon him, she arose 
 from her seat, still leading the boy, and advanced 
 directly in front of the object of her attention, point- 
 ing her finger full in the man's face, in 'a clear and 
 distinct voice thus addressed her child : ' My son, 
 there sits the one who murdered your father!' 
 
 " What a volume of condemnation and reproach is 
 contained in this brief sentence of that widowed 
 mother ! and what a commentary is it upon a state of 
 society that winks at and tolerates such outrages and 
 suffers them to go unpunished ! How many widows 
 and orphans, made so by the unrestrained hand of 
 violence, there are in Mississippi to-day God only 
 knows. . . . Before me, as I write, lie four different 
 papers, all published within one week, in remote and 
 separate parts of the State, and each one reciting the 
 details of a local tragedy, the most hideous and dia- 
 bolical. And by whom are these murders committed ? 
 By men who are at once branded as outlaws and 
 enemies of their race and kind ? Not at all ! Are 
 
HOMICIDE IN MISSISSIPPI. 163 
 
 they at once hunted down by the officers of the law, 
 backed by an indignant and outraged populace, 
 arrested and confined in jail, there to await speedy 
 trial and execution at the end of the law ? No ! . . . 
 Hence it is that in every town and neighborhood 
 may be found men who walk the streets and boast 
 of having killed their man. The writer can call to 
 mind nine of the class last named whom he meets 
 on the streets every day." (Pages 259-262.) 
 
 The usual way of disposing of a murderer in Mis- 
 sissippi is about this : He kills a man in a street-fight 
 or otherwise, but it is usually a street-fight or bar- 
 room affray. He is arrested. The examining magis- 
 trate fixes his bail, usually from five hundred to three 
 thousand dollars, " which he promptly gives," in the 
 stereotyped language of the local papers. The case 
 is continued through a few terms of court. The 
 grass grows over the grave of the slain. It is 
 watered by the tears of the widow and the orphans. 
 Public interest dies out. Some of the witnesses move 
 off. There are a few more continuances to give other 
 witnesses a chance to move around and see the 
 country. The witness, however, who heard the de- 
 ceased " make threats" about the defendant never 
 moves away. He is not of a roving turn of mind. 
 Finally a trial is reached. Major A. and Colonel B. 
 and General C. appear for the defendant. A jury is 
 selected. If there is a murderer or two, or half a 
 dozen on it, all the better. There is a " fellow-feel- 
 ing," especially in the region of the neck. The wit- 
 nesses are examined. It is proved that the deceased 
 
!64 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 was seen to " reach around behind him as if to draw 
 a pistol," or that he started home presumably to get 
 his shot-gun. The defendant had his with him. 
 The case is argued. Authorities are cited. The 
 defendant is acquitted. 
 
 Generally, in the South, it is not held to be neces- 
 sary to prove that the defendant made every reason- 
 able effort to get out of the way rather than kill. In 
 the life of Judge Linton Stephens, of Georgia, lately 
 published, it is stated that he " thrilled the specta- 
 tors" present by exclaiming from the Supreme Bench 
 (where he presided as judge), " Thank God ! there is no 
 running law in Georgia !" It was a murder case, and 
 Judge Stephens plainly intimated that the law as 
 construed in Georgia did not require a man to run to 
 keep from staining his hands with blood. In the 
 biography referred to we are told that " those pres- 
 ent when it (the decision) was delivered can never 
 forget how Judge Stephens thrilled the audience by 
 the awful grandeur of his manner when he uttered 
 the words, ' Thank God ! there is no running law in 
 Georgia!' " (page 169, Waddell's "Life of Stephens"). 
 Unfortunately, there is very little " running law" in 
 any of the Southern States, or there would be fewer 
 homicides. Strict proof that the defendant made 
 every effort to keep out of the way, rather than kill, 
 is not required. Among other incidents in the legal 
 life of Judge Stephens is mentioned (page 361) his 
 defence of a man in Hancock County for murder. 
 The defendant had been called " a dog" and other 
 epithets, but had not been threatened with bodily 
 
HOMICIDE IN GEORGIA. 
 
 I6 S 
 
 harm. Nevertheless, two hours aftertvards he sought 
 and attacked his victim with a pistol, and killed him. 
 The murderer was not in bodily danger. He was 
 seeking revenge for having been slandered. The 
 defence was the great provocation of having been 
 called "a dog," and other epithets ; and further, that 
 the defendant, in beating the deceased over' the head 
 with a loaded pistol, did not intend to kill him, but 
 that the pistol exploded "accidentally." The jury 
 returned a verdict of " not guilty." The ground for 
 this verdict was the great provocation of words, and 
 that when deceased was attacked and was being 
 beaten over the head with a loaded pistol, the pistol 
 accidentally exploded, and he was killed. 
 
 In the Savannah (Georgia) News of March 17, 
 1877, is the following paragraph : 
 
 " Butts County again comes to the front with 
 another case of homicide, making the fifty-ninth 
 since the war. Two young men named Thompson 
 killed a man named Mason on Saturday, near Worth- 
 ville, in Butts County. The Thompsons accused 
 Mason of undue intimacy with a kinswoman. The 
 Thompsons were arrested and jailed." 
 
 Butts is a small county with a population of about 
 seven thousand. Among this population we are in- 
 formed that there were fifty-nine homicides from 
 1865 to 1877, — twelve years! This is an average of 
 about five annually in the county, or one annually to 
 each fourteen hundred inhabitants. In other por- 
 tions of this work I have indicated many counties 
 in the agricultural regions of the Northern States 
 
l6Q HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 where the average was much less than one murder 
 annually to one hundred and fifty thousand inhab- 
 itants. But here is a single county in Georgia, with 
 a population not much above the average in North- 
 ern townships, with more homicides in twelve years 
 than occurred in the same time in two New England 
 States ! This cannot be laid to the " foreign ele- 
 ment," as the total of foreign-born citizens in Butts 
 County in 1870 was but fourteen. Apply the Butts 
 County homicide rate to Georgia, and the number 
 of homicides would be about eight hundred annually, 
 or over twelve thousand since the war. But this is, 
 of course, too high. The annual average in Georgia 
 is probably not higher than among an equal popula- 
 tion in South Carolina. 
 
 In Alabama the condition of matters with respect 
 to taking human life is about the same as in the other 
 Southern States. The Wetumpka (Alabama) Central 
 Alabamian of October 7, 1879, states that there had 
 been ten men murdered in four counties in twelve 
 months, and exclaims, " Is not this a terrible state of 
 public morals, and as long as juries sympathize with 
 murderers where is this lawlessness to stop ?" But 
 it happens that the four counties referred to have a 
 population of about ninety thousand, which gives 
 but one homicide per annum, to every nine thousand 
 population. While this is some eight times greater 
 than in the Eastern States, taken as a whole, yet it is 
 less than the average in many Southern States, taken 
 as a whole. But it is bad enough. A majority of 
 the homicides in the Southern States are not such as 
 
HOMICIDE IN TENNESSEE. \fy 
 
 attract public attention. The percentage of cases 
 among citizens of local prominence and social stand- 
 ing is small. The majority of homicides are among 
 the lower order of society, and very few of them 
 are made the subject of lengthy account even in the 
 nearest newspapers, and still fewer have even mention 
 in the general despatches. 
 
 Before and during the construction of the Cin- 
 cinnati Southern Railway from Cincinnati to Chatta- 
 nooga, I passed over the line two or three times on 
 horseback. The number of homicides along the 
 route of that road during its construction through 
 Kentucky and Tennessee I believe to be equal to 
 half the length of the road measured in miles, — that is, 
 for every two miles of road there was a man murdered 
 in the vicinity of the line. Nine-tenths of these homi- 
 cides were useless and unnecessary, and grew out of 
 the vicious system under which men are influenced 
 to shoot and stab when they quarrel, and especially 
 if intoxicated. A few years ago I happened to be at 
 the point where this road, then building, crosses the 
 Tennessee River. A dead man lay in a little cabin 
 by the river-side. His physical outlines showed 
 strength and muscle, and his features, even in death, 
 were not devoid of beauty. A wound, fringed with 
 his heart's red blood, was in his breast. He had been 
 stabbed. And what, think you, caused this murder ? 
 A dispute between two intoxicated men about the 
 possession of a five-cent pipe! They were not ene- 
 mies. The testimony was that they were friends and 
 companions, and that this quarrel, which cost one his 
 
!68 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 life and made the other a fugitive from justice, arose 
 by the merest accident. Both were drinking ; one 
 missed his pipe, accused the other of having it ; they 
 clinched, and one fell with a knife-wound in his vitals. 
 The coroner of the county, Mr. Allison, was present, 
 and told me that this was the third man murdered at 
 this point within a year. Yet measured by the aver- 
 age number of homicides among an equal population 
 in the Eastern States, there should not be within the 
 borders of Hamilton County (Tennessee) more than 
 an average of one homicide in four or five years, and 
 certainly not above six in a quarter of a century. If 
 homicide were not more frequent than in Vermont 
 and New Hampshire, for instance, one homicide in 
 twelve years would be about the average in Ham- 
 ilton County. 
 
 Vermont and Eastern Tennessee bear a striking 
 resemblance to each other. The population is nearly 
 the same, and composed very largely of native Amer- 
 icans. Both are mountainous, and- neither densely 
 populated. Both in politics are Republican, with the 
 largest freedom of sentiment and expression. The 
 pursuits of the people are mainly agricultural. There 
 can be no reason why murder should be more fre- 
 quent in Eastern Tennessee than in Vermont. In- 
 deed, one would naturally look for about the same 
 rate of crime in the two communities, as the outward 
 conditions are all so similar. Thirty-four counties 
 compose what is known as East Tennessee. Were 
 homicide as rare as in Vermont in proportion to 
 population, there would be an average of only one 
 
HOMICIDE IN TENNESSEE. i6g 
 
 homicide in each county in East Tennessee every 
 twenty-two years ! 
 
 The vital statistics, census of 1-870, show within a 
 fraction of three times as many homicides in Ten- 
 nessee as in all six of the New England States com- 
 bined, and twice as many as in Pennsylvania, with 
 three times the population. These vital statistics 
 will be referred to more in detail in another place. 
 During the year 1878 there were twenty homicides 
 in Massachusetts, yet the Nashville American for the 
 month of December of that year contains accounts 
 of eighteen Tennessee homicides, and two persons 
 believed to be mortally wounded, which, if they 
 died, would bring the number of homicides in that 
 State in thirty days up to the number happening in 
 Massachusetts during the entire year among a popu- 
 lation a quarter of a million larger than the popu- 
 lation of Tennessee. But no single newspaper in 
 Tennessee contains accounts of all the homicides in 
 that State. The Nashville American comes as near 
 it as any other, but it falls many short. Among 
 those mentioned in December are two which reached 
 the paper through the accidental medium of a private 
 letter. An item printed December 24 says, "A 
 private letter received from Hardeman County says, 
 'A terrible affray occurred at Whiteville Thursday 
 night, in which Dr. William Neely and James Mitch- 
 ell killed each other. Pistols and differences of 
 opinion were the causes which led to this bloody 
 affray.' " 
 
 The homicides happened nearly a week before 
 h 15 
 
170 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 even this mention was made of them, and the whole 
 matter is dismissed with four or five lines. This 
 does not arise from laxity in the collection of the 
 news, for the American is one of the best of Southern 
 newspapers ; but homicides are so frequent that it 
 is only now and then a case attracts much atten- 
 tion outside of the very narrow circle where it hap- 
 pens. In the Northern States nearly every homicide 
 is announced in the general despatches, and tele- 
 graphed over the country in the press reports. In 
 the South but a small percentage of the aggregate 
 homicides are mentioned in the general despatches, 
 and the space given such occurrences in the local 
 press is comparatively very small, unless people of 
 some local prominence are involved. 
 
 The population of Tennessee is about equal to 
 the population of Massachusetts, outside of Boston. 
 Were homicide no more frequent in Tennessee than 
 in the Massachusetts counties outside of Boston, 
 there would be in Tennessee an average of but ten 
 or twelve homicides annually, which, considering 
 that the population is almost entirely American born, 
 is as many as should reasonably be looked for. The 
 foreign-born population of this State does not amount 
 to two per cent, of the total. In Massachusetts largely 
 more than half the homicides are among the foreign- 
 born population. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 CENSUS VITAL STATISTICS. 
 
 The vital statistics collected with each Federal 
 census throw some light on this subject, although 
 these statistics are very imperfect. But, imperfect as 
 they are, they show very clearly the great prevalence 
 of homicide in the Southern States compared with 
 the Northern. It is calculated that the census re- 
 turns of 1870 reached less than two-thirds of all the 
 deaths which occurred during the census year, and 
 that the deaths by violence were as imperfectly 
 reported as the rest. It is clearly impossible to get 
 all the deaths from homicide in a given period by 
 confining the collection to careless enumerators, who 
 make up their report from the memory of those 
 whom they consult. Unfortunately, the census of 
 1880 promises to be equally unsatisfactory in this 
 particular. In addition to collections by enumera- 
 tors, physicians, who will willingly do so, are to keep 
 a record of deaths in their practice, and return the 
 same to Washington. In the matter of diseases 
 these returns will be reasonably complete, but not as 
 to violent deaths. Ordinarily, no physician is called 
 to a man shot dead in a " difficulty," or otherwise, 
 and the case will therefore not be recorded in the 
 returns for the year forwarded to Washington by 
 
 171 
 
iy 2 HOMICIDE, N-ORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 " physicians in attendance." Hence the statistics of 
 violent deaths in the census will be very imperfect, 
 from the simple fact that, ordinarily, no physician is 
 called to a man shot dead, and therefore no record 
 will be made in these returns. If, however, he is 
 wounded, becomes the patient of a physician, and dies 
 within the census year, the death will be recorded. 
 
 The statistics of homicide in the several States, as 
 returned in the vital statistics, census of 1870 (vol. 
 ii.), are not worthy of full credence unless sustained 
 by collateral testimony. I have not placed reliance 
 upon them in the material gathered for this book, 
 but depended upon other and more reliable sources 
 of information. Nevertheless, these statistics are 
 confirmatory of the facts reached through other 
 sources. For instance, I find the annual average 
 number of homicides in New England to be from 
 forty-seven to fifty. The number returned in the 
 census report for one year is forty-one. The New 
 England States are so densely populated and murder 
 so comparatively rare, that but few instances would 
 be apt to escape the enumerators' attention. But in 
 the more sparsely-populated Southern States, where 
 murder is from seven to fifteen times more frequent, 
 many cases would naturally escape attention. 
 
 But assuming, for an instant, the correctness of the 
 census statistics in relation to homicide, and the re- 
 sult is largely confirmatory of my own investigations. 
 The population of the six New England States in 
 1870 was very nearly three million five hundred 
 thousand. Among this population forty-one homi- 
 
CENSUS VITAL STATISTICS. 
 
 173 
 
 cides were reported during the census year. Select- 
 ing a group of the older Southern States of about 
 equal population, to wit, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, 
 and North Carolina, and there were three hundred 
 and twenty-six homicides reported. Among an 
 equal population, therefore, in these two groups of 
 older States we find homicide about eight times more 
 frequent in the Southern than in the Northern group. 
 But make another comparison among States of 
 nearly equal population. In 1870 the population of 
 two Middle States, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, 
 was very nearly equal to that of the five Southern 
 States, — Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, 
 and Florida. In the Northern group there were 
 sixty-five homicides reported, and four hundred and 
 fifty-three in the Southern group, showing homicide 
 to be about seven times more frequent in the South- 
 ern group of States than in the Northern group of 
 about equal population. Take a group of North- 
 western States and compare with an equal population 
 in the Southwestern and Southern States. In 1870 
 Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and Michigan had a 
 population of three million eight hundred and sev- 
 enty-three thousand in round numbers. The South- 
 western and Southern States of Texas, Arkansas, 
 Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama had a popula- 
 tion of three million eight hundred and thirty-four 
 thousand in round numbers. From the Northern 
 group fifty-seven homicides were returned, and from 
 the Southern group seven hundred and sixteen were 
 returned. This shows homicide to be very nearly 
 
 IS* 
 
lj^ HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 thirteen times more frequent in the Southern and 
 Southwestern States than in the Northwestern States 
 among an equal population. 
 
 If it is said that these statistics are defective, I 
 readily grant it, but they approximate the truth. 
 They sharply define the contrasts between two civili- 
 zations in this particular without, however, giving all 
 the facts. A thorough and correct collection of 
 homicides would undoubtedly show even a greater 
 proportion as happening in the Southern States. 
 But such a collection can never be had under the 
 present system. 
 
 The statistics of 1870 show not a homicide in Ver- 
 mont during the census year, and but one in New 
 Hampshire. This I find to be correct by consulting 
 other authorities. Here, then, we have two States 
 adjacent to each other, with an aggregate population 
 of nearly seven hundred thousand, among whom 
 there was but one homicide in a year. The same 
 year in Florida, with less than one-third the popula- 
 tion of these two States, there were forty-four homi- 
 cides reported. Measured by respective strength of 
 population, and we find homicide in Florida over one 
 hundred and fifty times more frequent than in New 
 Hampshire and Vermont. Had the population of 
 Vermont and New Hampshire been as sanguinarily 
 inclined as the population of Florida, there would 
 have been in the two States over one hundred and 
 fifty homicides during the year ! There was just one. 
 On the other hand, were Florida as free from murder 
 as New Hampshire and Vermont, instead of having 
 
CENSUS VITAL STATISTICS. 
 
 175 
 
 forty-four homicides in one year she would have an 
 average of less than one annually, or fifteen to 
 eighteen in a quarter of a century. So far from this 
 being the case, it is probable that there are more 
 homicides in Florida in one year than in Vermont 
 and New Hampshire combined in a quarter of a cen- 
 tury. Yet the population of these two States is some 
 three and one-half times greater than that of Florida. 
 It is by such comparisons as these that we bring 
 to. view the great and unnecessary prevalence of 
 homicide in the Southern States. It is a singular 
 and painful fact that among no people of equal num- 
 bers is homicide as frequent as in the Southern sec- 
 tion of our own country. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 SHOCKING CRIMES. 
 
 It is often said that the more horrible class of 
 murders, such as wife-murder and child-murder and 
 the killing of helpless and unprotected females by 
 tramps, burglars, and vagrants, is more frequent in 
 the New England States than elsewhere in America. 
 The percentage of this class of homicide to the total 
 is undoubtedly greater, but family murders of all de- 
 scriptions are more frequent in the Southern States 
 than in New England, while the percentage of this 
 class of crime in the South to the total homicides is 
 probably less. 
 
 The notoriety of New England in respect to hor- 
 rible crimes is to be attributed more to their im- 
 mense publicity than to their frequency. The papers 
 are burdened with the details, and the wires carry 
 the news to the end of the land. There was quite 
 recently a case of this kind in Massachusetts : one 
 Freeman murdered his child, claiming that he was 
 so commanded by God. It was a horrible murder, 
 and its details and discussion filled thousands of col- 
 umns of the newspapers not only in New England, 
 but in all the States. Being nearly contemporaneous 
 with the Kemper County massacre and the Dixon 
 murder in Mississippi, from which political capital 
 176 
 
SHOCKING CRIMES. \ 77 
 
 was being made, many Southern papers attempted a 
 " set-off" of one crime against the other ! A distin- 
 guished Southern senator said to me that the Free- 
 man murder was as horrible as the murders in Kem- 
 per County, and yet he proposed to refrain from 
 branding all the people of Massachusetts as guilty, 
 and desired the same charity shown the people of 
 Mississippi. 
 
 Upon investigation Freeman was found to be in- 
 sane, and is now confined. Shortly after this an in- 
 sane mother in South Carolina murdered her five 
 children in one awful butchery. It attracted very 
 little attention, and was hardly mentioned in news- 
 papers outside the State. Yet it was very similar to 
 the Freeman murder, which took . rank at the front 
 of New England horrors, the difference being that in 
 the New England case an insane parent killed his 
 child, and in South Carolina an insane parent killed 
 her five children. For these killings by the insane 
 society is in no wise responsible. We can draw no 
 conclusion from their occurrence. All we know is 
 that the numbers bear about the same proportion to 
 population the world over. 
 
 The killing of men by their brothers-in-law in 
 open combat might be classed as manly compared 
 to wife- and child-murder. In Texas and Kentucky, 
 in 1878, sixteen men were killed by their brothers- 
 in-law, mainly in " personal difficulties" growing out 
 of family quarrels. Had the same rate of killing of 
 men by their brothers-in-law occurred in New York, 
 Pennsylvania, and New England, in proportion to 
 
178 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 population, there would have been about one hun- 
 dred men killed by their brothers-in-law in these 
 States in one year ! That, indeed, would be a bad 
 year for brothers-in-law. But I only found two or 
 three instances of men killing their brothers-in-law 
 in these States during the year. 
 
 These numerous cases of men killing their broth- 
 ers-in-law in two Southern States in one year grew 
 out of the numerous affrays among relatives, in 
 which the pistol and the knife were employed in 
 the settlement of disputes. There are, to be sure, 
 family affrays everywhere, in which the next of kin 
 shoot and stab the next of kin, but nowhere is this 
 class of crime so frequent, in proportion to popula- 
 tion, as in the Southern States. 
 
 In Texas, during the year, four men killed their 
 brothers in "personal difficulties," and a fifth was 
 believed to be mortally wounded. These were by 
 shooting and stabbing, like nine-tenths of the other 
 homicides. The population of New York, Pennsyl- 
 vania, and New England is about twelve times that 
 of Texas. Were fratricide as frequent as in Texas, 
 the number of men killed in one year in these States 
 by their brothers would be about fifty. There are 
 occasional instances of fratricide in these States, but 
 the average is not above three annually. 
 
 Some years ago, in Hancock County, Kentucky, a 
 man named Rogers killed his two sons in a "' des- 
 perate affray," as the local papers called it. In Han- 
 cock County, Tennessee, in December, 1878, there 
 was a family affray as horrible as this. The local 
 
SHOCKING CRIMES. 
 
 179 
 
 account published in a Knoxville paper says, " The 
 difficulty originated in the family of J. W. Epperson, 
 living five miles east of Thorn Hill. Epperson and 
 wife separated some time since, and the husband re- 
 mained away till Wednesday last. Upon returning, 
 a fight ensued between himself and wife. John, a 
 one-armed son, interfered to protect his mother. The 
 father inflicted several severe wounds with a knife 
 upon his son, who subsequently gained possession 
 of the weapon and killed his father. Tom Epper- 
 son, another son, fired at his brother John, who ran 
 into the house. The mother interposed to protect 
 her one-armed son, and was shot through the heart. 
 As she fell lifeless in the doorway, Tom fired at his 
 brother and missed him, but hit another brother, 
 George, in the thigh. Another shot missed him, 
 but mortally wounded a sister. Tom escaped ; John 
 was arrested and acquitted on the ground of self- 
 defence. The tragedy took place on the locality 
 rendered famous by the terrible Lee-Ledger fight 
 about a year ago." 
 
 The Lee-Ledger fight was almost as deadly, but 
 was not confined to one family. My object in giving 
 some of the details of the Epperson affray is to call 
 attention to the wide difference in the publicity of 
 crime in different sections of the country. The dif- 
 ference is even greater than the number of crimes 
 of the class. Although this affray resulted in three 
 homicides, the local papers only gave it brief atten- 
 tion, and there was no mention whatever of it in the 
 general despatches. Such an affray happening in 
 
l8o HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 New England, for instance, would have been tele- 
 graphed to the corners of the land, and the amplified 
 details would have filled thousands of columns of 
 the newspapers not only there, but elsewhere. It 
 would have taken rank near the head of New Eng- 
 land crimes, and been classed with the Freeman and 
 Jesse Pomeroy murders and others in the long cata- 
 logue of New England horrors. We find in these, 
 as in other instances, not that New England civiliza- 
 tion gives rise to a disproportionate number of ter- 
 rible crimes, but that crimes in that quarter are more 
 extensively published and commented upon, than 
 elsewhere. Multiplied instances could be given of 
 desperate and deadly affrays in the Southern States 
 of which the briefest mention is never made in the 
 general despatches. This results from no disposition 
 to cover up crime, but is more due to the compara- 
 tive inefficiency of the news .system. In New 
 England and all the Northern States nearly every 
 homicide is mentioned (as a matter of news) in the 
 general despatches. In the Southern States very few 
 are. In Rapides Parish, Louisiana, a few years ago, 
 in a deadly family affray three men were killed, but 
 it was not made the subject of extended notice even 
 in the Louisiana papers. The local account, pub- 
 lished in the Rapides Gazette, is very short and con- 
 cludes: "Thus this lady (referring to the unfortunate 
 cause of the difficulty) lost husband, father, and 
 brother in one day by their own hands." 
 
 These deadly family affrays are by no means fre- 
 quent in the South, but they are much more frequent 
 
SHOCKING CRIMES. i8l 
 
 than elsewhere among an equal population. They 
 grow out of the same condition of society which ad- 
 mits of so many merely ordinary homicides. As I 
 have shown, there were sixteen men killed by their 
 brothers-in-law in one year in Texas and Kentucky, 
 and, at proportionately the same rate, there would 
 be about one hundred killed in one year in New 
 York, New England, and Pennsylvania. While it 
 would be but one hundred of this class of homicides, 
 it would indicate a condition of society where several 
 thousand homicides of all kinds could be looked for 
 and found. That is, were homicide as frequent in 
 New York, New England, and Pennsylvania as in 
 Texas and Kentucky, in proportion to population, 
 the number slain in one year would be nearly four 
 thousand. Were the condition of society in New 
 York, New England, and Pennsylvania such as to 
 give rise to four thousand homicides annually, very 
 likely as many as one hundred would be found to be 
 men killed by their brothers-in-law. 
 
 16 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 COMPARISONS BY STATES AND COUNTIES. 
 
 Taking the New England States together, includ- 
 ing cities, manufacturing centres, foreign population 
 and all, and we find the average of homicides to be 
 one annually to about eighty thousand inhabitants. 
 Some years the number is slightly in excess, and 
 other years lower, but taking a series of years to- 
 gether it is found to be about the average. Omit 
 Boston, with its very large foreign population, where 
 there is an average of about ten murders annually, 
 and it would change the result. Indeed, among the 
 native-born population the homicide rate does not 
 reach an average of one annually to every one hun- 
 dred and fifty thousand inhabitants. But taking all 
 together the average is as above given. 
 
 Were homicide equally infrequent in the Southern 
 States there would be in Alabama an average of but 
 twelve homicides annually ; in Arkansas an average 
 of six annually ; in Georgia an average of fifteen " 
 annually; in South Carolina an average of nine an- 
 nually ; in Texas an average of fifteen annually, the 
 population of that State having increased rapidly 
 since the census of 1870. Making the population 
 returned by that census a basis of comparison, and 
 ten homicides annually in Texas would be the aver- 
 182 
 
COMPARISONS BY STATES AND COUNTIES. ^^ 
 
 age number, provided killing were no more frequent 
 than in New England and rural New York. 
 
 Compared by counties, the result would be ap- 
 proximately as follows : Alabama — Montgomery 
 County, including city of Montgomery, an average 
 of one homicide in two years ; Russell County, one 
 homicide in four years ; Clarke County, one in six 
 years ; St. Clair County, one in eight years ; Bibb 
 County, one in ten years; Winston County, one in 
 sixteen years; Geneva County, one in twenty-six 
 years. 
 
 Kentucky — Jefferson County, including Louisville, 
 three homicides in two years ; Kenton County, one 
 in two years ; Fayette County, one in three years ; 
 Daviess County, one in four years ; Bourbon County, 
 one in five years ; Mercer County, one in six years ; 
 Clay County, one in nine years; Wolf County, one 
 in twenty-two years ; Menifee County, one in forty 
 years. 
 
 Georgia — Fulton County, including Atlanta, one 
 homicide in two years; Bibb County, one in four 
 years ; Jasper County, one in eight years ; Butts 
 County, one in twelve years ; Dade County, one in 
 twenty-six years ; Echols County, one in forty years. 
 
 Texas — Anderson County, one homicide in ten 
 years ; Austin County, one in five years ; Bastrop 
 County, one in six years ; Bell County, one in eight 
 years ; Coryell County, one in eighteen years ; Dallas 
 County, one in four years ; Galveston County, one in 
 five years ; Houston County, one in ten years ; Kauf- 
 man County, one in eleven years; Harris County, 
 
l$4 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 one in five years ; Harrison County, one in six years ; 
 Wood County, one in eleven years. 
 
 Tennessee — Davidson County, including Nash- 
 ville, an average of three homicides in four years ; 
 Shelby County, including Memphis, one homicide 
 annually ; Sumner County, one in three and a half 
 years; Franklin County, one in five years; Coffee 
 County, one in eight years ; Bradley County, one in 
 eight years ; Carter County, one in ten years ; Marion 
 County, one in eleven years ; White County, one in 
 eight years ; Scott County, one in fifteen years ; 
 Grundy County, one in twenty-one years ; Lewis 
 County, one in forty years. 
 
 Mississippi — Adams County, an average of one 
 homicide every five years ; Amite County, one in 
 eight years ; Choctaw County, one in five years ; 
 Copiah County, one in four years ; Kemper County, 
 one in seven years ; Lauderdale County, one in seven 
 years ; Yazoo County, one in five years ; Jasper 
 County, one in eight years ; Issaquena County, one 
 in eleven years; Marion County, one in eighteen 
 years ; Jones County, one in twenty-four years ; 
 Greene County, one in forty years. 
 
 By this comparison the Mississippi reader can 
 see at a glance what would be the average number 
 of murders and manslaughters in his State, for in- 
 stance, or any section of it, if crime against the person 
 was as rare among an equal population as in New 
 England and in New York outside the city. 
 
 As to Texas, a word of explanation is necessary. 
 These comparisons were made mainly upon the 
 
COMPARISONS BY STATES AND COUNTIES. 1%^ 
 
 basis of the census of 1870, since which time the 
 population of Texas has largely increased, and the 
 relative figures would, therefore, in fairness, be sub- 
 ject to some modification. But as they are, or as 
 they would be after making all allowances for increase 
 of population, their suggestiveness is not impaired. 
 That in a county of say ten thousand population 
 there should not be over an average of one homicide 
 every eight years may strike the Texas mind as a 
 very small allowance, but this is the average among 
 an equal population in the Eastern States, — that is, 
 one homicide annually to eighty thousand popula- 
 tion. It is the difference between a community 
 where the carrying of concealed weapons is a habit 
 and where it is not; where personal difficulties and 
 street-fights with deadly weapons are frequent and 
 where they are very rare. It is the difference be- 
 tween communities where the plea of self-defence is 
 allowed to be used as a cloak for murder and where 
 it is not. Texas, to be sure, is comparatively a new 
 State, and allowances should be made on that ac- 
 count. But when the Eastern States and the Middle 
 Northern States and the Western States of the North 
 and Northwest were the newest of the new, there 
 never was a time in the history of any one of them 
 when murder and manslaughter was as frequent as in 
 Texas to-day. 
 
 By these comparisons I have given by counties 
 the Southern reader will be able to see at a glance 
 what would be the condition of society with refer- 
 ence to taking human life in localities of his acquaint- 
 
 16* 
 
lS6 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 ance in several of the Southern States were murder 
 and manslaughter as rare, among an equal popula- 
 tion, as in the Eastern States. In the counties I have 
 named in the Southern States the foreign-born popu- 
 lation (with three or four exceptions) is small. Select 
 in New England, for instance, the homicides among 
 native-born Americans, and it will be found that the 
 average is very much less than one annually to eighty 
 thousand population. Indeed, not half that. 
 
 Take the number of murders and manslaughters 
 in Texas, Kentucky, and South Carolina in 1878, 
 and apply the same rate to the Northern States com- 
 pared by population, and it gives some very sugges- 
 tive contrasts. For instance, had murder and man- 
 slaughter been as frequent in Vermont that year as 
 in these three States, the result would have been 
 eighty-five persons killed in twelve months, or more 
 than the average in that State in a third of a century! 
 Apply the same rate to Pennsylvania, and it would 
 give over nine hundred murders and manslaughters 
 for the year, or one about every ten hours, day and 
 night, Sundays included. When Mollie Maguireism 
 was at its worst, the number of homicides in that State 
 never came anywhere near these figures. Apply the 
 same rate to Ohio, and it would give over seven 
 hundred homicides during the year. 
 
 Compared by counties, there would have been 
 during the year in Philadelphia County, Pennsyl- 
 vania, one hundred and sixty-eight murders and man- 
 slaughters ; in Alleghany County, sixty-five murders 
 and manslaughters; in Schuylkill County, twenty- 
 
COMPARISONS BY STATES AND COUNTIES. i%j 
 
 nine murders and manslaughters ; in Lancaster 
 County, thirty murders and manslaughters. 
 
 In the State of New York, had murder and man- 
 slaughter been as frequent during 1878 as in the 
 three Southern States named (relative population of 
 course as a basis of comparison), there would have 
 been in New York County two hundred and thirty- 
 five murders and manslaughters ; in Kings County 
 one hundred and four; in Erie County forty-four; 
 in Oneida County twenty-seven ; in Monroe County 
 twenty-nine ; in Onondaga County twenty-six. 
 
 In Massachusetts, the same rate of killing for 
 the year would have given Suffolk County sixty- 
 eight murders and manslaughters (this is about as 
 many as take place in the whole State in three 
 years); Middlesex County sixty-nine; Essex County 
 fifty; Worcester County forty-eight; Bristol County 
 twenty-six ; and so on. 
 
 In Connecticut, the same rate for one year would 
 give New Haven County thirty murders and man- 
 slaughters ; Fairfield County nineteen ; and Hartford 
 County twenty-seven. 
 
 The extraordinary frequency of homicide in the 
 Southern States grows out of bad conditions, which, 
 we are to presume, are the outgrowth of slavery, as 
 there is no other way to account for them. They 
 cannot be accounted for from climatic reasons, for 
 that would presuppose a more radical difference in 
 climate than exists between the Southern and the 
 Northern portions of the United States. 
 
 Probably one-half of the homicides in the South- 
 
1 88 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 ern States are to be attributed directly or indirectly 
 to whiskey. One who has lived long in the rural dis- 
 tricts South, and having previously been acquainted 
 with communities where there was less disorder, en- 
 abling him to draw comparisons, could hardly fail to 
 be impressed with the prevalence of whiskey-drinking 
 and the frequency of fighting with deadly weapons. 
 In the little towns, where police regulations are inef- 
 ficient, there is apt to be more or less disorder when 
 men congregate in large numbers on " circus-days" 
 or court-days, or like occasions. At such times, 
 towards night, when the whiskey begins to work, it 
 very often happens that there is " a fight" between 
 parties having what is locally called a " grudge," and 
 the chances are that deadly weapons will be used. 
 Perhaps several parties will be drawn in from kin- 
 ship or partiality, and then the " difficulty'' assumes 
 such proportions that the solitary town constable or 
 sheriff, or both, can do little towards quelling it. It 
 becomes a street-fight of the peculiar Southern type. 
 If deadly weapons are used, the chances are that 
 some one will be killed or wounded. And it is a 
 striking feature of these affrays that weapons are 
 always used if the combatants can get hold of them. 
 In the larger towns, where the police regulations are 
 measurably good, there are rarely such scenes of 
 violent disorder, and the killings are usually the re- 
 sult of sudden " difficulties," which the officers can- 
 not prevent. It is in the smaller towns and villages, 
 of from one to seven or eight hundred inhabitants, 
 that street-fights, and affrays, and difficulties most 
 
COMPARISONS BY STATES AND COUNTIES. 189 
 
 often take place. Sometimes these scenes of violent 
 disorder utterly overpower the local authorities, and 
 the contestants fight it out. Often these deadly dif- 
 ficulties arise from very trifling causes, and parties 
 are drawn in to help their friends who had nothing 
 to do with the beginning of the affray. Originating 
 in whiskey, they usually end in blood. 
 
 In the smaller towns and throughout the rural re- 
 gions of New England and New York this type of 
 " affrays" with . deadly weapons is almost unknown. 
 In the average New England village there is not a 
 street-fight with deadly weapons once in a century. 
 The condition of society with reference to lawless- 
 ness and drunkenness and crimes against the person 
 is as different from that which exists in the Southern 
 States as can be easily imagined. Yet, a rigid en- 
 forcement of law, and adequate punishment for crime 
 against the person, and suppression of the liquor 
 traffic would, probably in a few generations, bring 
 society in the South up to the New England stan- 
 dard in this particular. But the type of homicide so 
 frequent in the South is very hard to reach by law. 
 Two men have a " difficulty," both draw weapons, 
 and one falls while attempting to shoot or stab his 
 adversary. He pleads " self-defence," and is acquitted 
 by the jury and by public opinion. He has simply 
 killed his man, and his status in society is not 
 impaired. He may run for Congress and receive 
 the full vote of his party, and be elected, for that 
 matter, if the political party to which he belongs is 
 strong enough. The moral sense of whole commu- 
 
I go HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 nities becomes so blunted that the man-slayer's status 
 is not impaired. I have said that this could be im- 
 proved by a rigid enforcement of law. So it could, 
 but that alone is not enough. The whole tone of 
 society must be elevated and improved, and enforce- 
 ment of law will follow as a natural sequence. 
 
 The effect of education in the suppression of crime 
 is not to be under-estimated. In this connection a 
 few lines of contrast drawn among the States teach 
 important lessons. For instance, there was in Mas- 
 sachusetts in 1877 one homicide to every two hun- 
 dred and seventy-nine thousand dollars expended in 
 support of public schools. In South Carolina there 
 was one homicide to every two thousand dollars ex- 
 pended in the support of public schools. This is a 
 very significant contrast. The amount expended in 
 support of public schools in Massachusetts that year 
 is given in the report of the National Bureau of 
 Education at five million five hundred and eighty-two 
 thousand five hundred and nineteen dollars. The 
 number of homicides in that State the same year was 
 twenty. Here we have over a quarter of a million 
 of dollars expended in public education to every case 
 of homicide happening in the same State during the 
 same time. Had homicide been as frequent in pro- 
 portion to common school expenditure as in South 
 Carolina, the number would have reached almost 
 twenty-eight hundred! On the other hand, had hom- 
 icide borne the same proportion to common school 
 expenditure in South Carolina as in Massachusetts, 
 there would have been but a single case. 
 
COMPARISONS BY STATES AND COUNTIES, igl 
 
 Taking two younger States, Minnesota and Texas, 
 we find in Texas one homicide to about every thir- 
 teen hundred dollars expended in support of public 
 schools, and in Minnesota one homicide to about 
 every seventy-five thousand dollars expended in sup- 
 port of public schools. The figures as to public 
 school expenditures in the several States are from 
 the reports of the National Bureau of Education, 
 and are probably approximately correct. Kentucky 
 has one homicide to about every fifty-six hundred 
 dollars expended in public schools, and Pennsylvania 
 about one to every ninety thousand dollars so ex- 
 pended. Singularly enough, a comparison by amount 
 invested in church property brings out about the 
 same result. Massachusetts has about one homicide 
 annually to every one million and a quarter of dollars 
 in church property, and South Carolina about one 
 annually to every thirty thousand dollars' worth of 
 church property. This is not because the value of 
 church property in the latter State is small, but be- 
 cause the number of homicides is large. In Massa- 
 chusetts the average annual number of homicides is 
 actually below the number of round millions of dol- 
 lars invested in church property. Indeed, this is true 
 of all New England, taken as an entirety. Add to 
 this the ten millipns of dollars or more expended 
 annually in the support of public schools, and we, 
 perhaps, have one reason at least why there are so 
 comparatively few murders and manslaughters. The 
 simple fact that nearly four millions of people live 
 together with an average of only about fifty homi- 
 
192 
 
 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 cides annually indicates a high degree of civilization 
 with respect to the sanctity of human life. Just what 
 superior educational advantages has to do with this 
 we cannot know. We only know that the people of 
 those States expending most in support of public 
 schools have among them correspondingly fewer 
 crimes against the person. 
 
 The average number of arrests annually for mur- 
 der in Boston is ten, as I have shown in another 
 place. In New Orleans, for the fifteen months end- 
 ing January 1, 1875, there were 60 arrests for murder 
 and 21 as accessory to murder. There were also, 
 during this time, 132 arrests for stabbing, 339 arrests 
 for assault with deadly weapons, and 370 arrests for 
 assault with intent to kill. All this in fifteen months. 
 (Annual Report Board of Metropolitan Police, New 
 Orleans, from October 1, 1873, to December 31, 1874, 
 page 36.) The population of Boston is about eighty 
 per cent, greater than that of New Orleans, and if 
 murder were no more frequent in New Orleans than 
 in Boston, in proportion to population, the annual 
 arrests for murder would be but from five to six. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 CARRYING CONCEALED WEAPONS. 
 
 I have travelled in every Southern State, visiting 
 them again and again, riding thousands of miles on 
 horseback through the wildest and most mountain- 
 ous portions of Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky, 
 yet I never carried a pistol, never owned one, and 
 never saw the time when a pistol or a whole armory 
 would have been of service. As for robbery, a man 
 is as liable to be robbed on Broadway, New York, as 
 in any of the Southern States east of the Mississippi. 
 Robbery and skilful burglary are exceptionally rare 
 in the Southern States, and there is no more reason 
 to arm for the protection of property than in New 
 York or New England. Indeed, in New England 
 there is more personal property in the shape of 
 money, bonds, and jewels than in all the Southern 
 States east of the Mississippi. There are also in 
 New England more professional thieves, pickpock- 
 ets, and skilled burglars than in the Southern States. 
 Here, then, are the conditions that would call for the 
 habitual carrying of arms by citizens if there was any 
 truth in the excuse that concealed weapons are neces- 
 sary for "protection" against assaults on property. 
 If it were true, then every male citizen of New Eng- 
 land should have a horse-pistol under his coat and a 
 i n 17 "93 
 
IQ4 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 bowie-knife in his boot-leg. But it is not. The 
 " excuse" itself for arms-carrying in the South is a 
 libel upon that section. Where, possibly, the custom 
 saves five dollars' worth of property, it causes the 
 death of fifty men. This is paying too heavily. So- 
 ciety does not have adequate compensation for the 
 outlay. 
 
 While property is in greater danger from pro- 
 fessional thieves in New England than in the South- 
 ern States, we do not find the habit of carrying 
 concealed weapons to exist in the New England 
 States. If every male citizen of these States was 
 suddenly and simultaneously searched at high noon 
 upon a given day, it would be found that not one in 
 one thousand had a pistol upon his person. Nor did 
 the habit ever exist in that quarter. The laws forbid 
 it, and public sentiment condemns it so strongly that 
 were the laws silent the habit could not be engrafted 
 upon society. 
 
 In a majority of Southern States there are laws 
 against carrying concealed deadly weapons, but these 
 statutes are rendered almost inoperative by qualifica- 
 tions, and at best are inadequately enforced, and the 
 penalties small. In several States attempts have 
 been made by those appreciating the magnitude of 
 the evil to have laws enacted making it a felony to 
 carry weapons. But this is always answered upon 
 the part of the majority with arguments that the use 
 of the pistol in the settlement of " difficulties" is no 
 more frequent with us than in other States, and that 
 the law-making power is not justifiable in abridging 
 
CARRYING CONCEALED WEAPONS. 
 
 195 
 
 the rights of the citizen to so dangerous an extent. 
 Hence in some of the Southern States there is no 
 law against carrying deadly weapons, and in all the 
 penalties are small. 
 
 So fixedly has this deadly custom been engrafted 
 upon society in many portions of the South that a 
 very earnest and prolonged effort will be required to 
 efface it. Nor is it confined to any class. Recently, 
 in the House of Representatives of Louisiana, a pistol 
 dropped from the pocket of the Speaker and exploded. 
 The bullet did no harm, but what of the example ? 
 Some years ago the then governor of Tennessee was 
 a candidate for re-election, and making a canvass with 
 an opponent. During a heated public discussion, 
 which may have threatened to take violent form, he 
 drew from his coat-pocket a pistol ! This in a public 
 discussion before a large audience. What an exam- 
 ple for the youth of Tennessee ! The highest officer 
 in the State, in a time of peace, on a peaceful mission, 
 going among his fellow-citizens armed. The oppo- 
 sition papers made a point on this, but the governor 
 was defended on the ground that he was making a 
 journey from one county to another, and had a right, 
 under the statutes, to carry a pistol. Technically, 
 this was quite correct. 
 
 Recently a prominent State official at Austin, 
 Texas, stepping from his buggy in front of the State- 
 I house door, was surprised to hear the report of a 
 pistol at his feet, and feel the breath of the bullet as 
 it whizzed past his ear. The weapon had dropped 
 from his pocket and exploded. Where the habit of 
 
ig6 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 arms-bearing is participated in by those who make 
 and construe laws, some of the difficulties of suppress- 
 ing the custom are apparent. 
 
 Usually, men in the South who do not habitually 
 carry weapons arm themselves if they expect a "dif- 
 ficulty." It is the common practice. When the 
 danger is past, and the trouble amicably settled by 
 the intervention of friends, or otherwise, without 
 bloodshed, and the pangs of wounded honor are 
 assuaged, the "arms are temporarily laid aside. 
 
 Many Southern judges appreciate the evils which 
 have enveloped society on account of the assassin- 
 like habit of carrying concealed weapons, and are 
 very outspoken and manly in their charges to grand 
 juries. But the penalties affixed are not at all in pro- 
 portion to the crime. The number of homicides in 
 the Southern States since the war exceed the deaths 
 in the same section from yellow fever, yet yellow fever 
 is not a self-inflicted evil, and homicide is. Not that 
 in any condition of society homicide can be en- 
 tirely prevented, but there is certainly no reason in 
 climate or common sense why this crime should be 
 from five to fifteen times more frequent in certain of 
 the Southern States than in the Eastern and Middle 
 States. And what has been accomplished in New 
 England in guarding human life against assassins and 
 murderers can be accomplished in every Southern 
 State. The signs are not propitious that it will be 
 done, but it can be, and rigorous imprisonment for 
 carrying concealed weapons and hanging for murder 
 would help to do it. 
 
CARRYING CONCEALED WEAPONS. I0 7 
 
 Some years ago, Judge Guild, of Tennessee, in a 
 charge to a grand jury, said to them : " I now charge 
 you upon a high misdemeanor, which is too common 
 in the land, and which it is your duty to notice, and 
 bring the offenders to justice. I allude to the vicious 
 habit of carrying about the person concealed weapons. 
 More than half the homicides which occur grow out of 
 ithis debased practice. When I was a boy the bullies 
 of one creek would meet those of another creek upon 
 the muster-ground, a ring formed, and a fair fight 
 had, — no concealed weapons drawn and citizens slain. 
 All their muscles were brought into play, which 
 ended in a knock-down and an occasional bite, but no 
 slain. But now the desperado, with pistols buckled 
 around him, seeks his victim, insults an unarmed 
 man sensitive of his honor, and if he makes an effort 
 to repel the insult the pistol is drawn, — a new grave 
 is made, and a helpless widow and orphans are left to 
 mourn the loss of the husband and father. . . . Such 
 characters as those who loiter about whiskey-shops 
 and attend upon gambling- hells think themselves dis- 
 graced if they have not ' killed their man,' so they arm 
 themselves with the deadly pistol and seek an occa- 
 sion to use it, that they may be lionized by the gen- 
 tler sex, thinking it will give them position or caste 
 with them, who, in every age, have appreciated brav- 
 ery; but the bravery displayed by men should be 
 courage exhibited in defence of their country, and 
 not the bullyism of the murderer." (Page 367, Old 
 Times in Tennessee.) 
 
 If the habit of carrying deadly weapons could be 
 17* 
 
ICj 8 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 suppressed in the Southern States it would diminish 
 the number of homicides very largely. " Difficulties" 
 that now result in manslaughter would, without 
 deadly weapons, be simply assault and battery with- 
 out harmful results. 
 
 Still, the suppression of pistols in private quarrels 
 is not all. Very many of the homicides are caused 
 by the use of ordinary large-bladed pocket-knives, 
 which are not *' unlawful weapons," but are very 
 deadly. It sometimes happens that in general affrays 
 among half a dozen men no pistols will be used, but 
 all will be more or less cut with knives. In the 
 Charleston News and Courier of February 5, 1880, is 
 an account of a case in point, — a general " affray" in 
 which knives only were used, — as follows : 
 
 " The Asheville Citizen learns of a most horrible 
 butchery which occurred on Spring Creek, in Madi- 
 son County, on Wednesday night last, whiskey being 
 at the bottom of the affair. It seems that a crowd 
 had been collected together during the day engaged 
 in what is known as a ' working,' during which liquor 
 had been freely drank. After supper Mr. Merritt 
 Plemmons came upon the scene, and some of the party 
 got into a row with him because of the fact that he 
 had, at some time or another, ' informed' upon them 
 as illicit distillers, and the friends of the two parties 
 generally waded in with the knife. Result, nine men 
 more or less butchered, some of them possibly fatally. 
 A man named Duckett, who was endeavoring to part 
 the combatants, had one eye cut out and his hands 
 literally cut to pieces." 
 
CARRYING CONCEALED WEAPONS., I gg 
 
 Such affrays as this among the lower order of 
 people in the Southern States are not uncommon. 
 They are very much less common than ordinary 
 " difficulties" and street-fights with pistols ; but they 
 do no little in swelling the aggregate of homicides, 
 and indicate the conditions out of which so many 
 homicides grow. 
 
 Such a human butchery as the above happening 
 in any Northern State would have* attracted atten- 
 tion. But happening in one of the Southern States, 
 where affrays of the sort are far too common, it ex- 
 cites no general attention, it is not made the subject 
 of a despatch to any newspaper, and is only given 
 briefly as above in the North Carolina news column 
 of a South Carolina paper, made up from clippings 
 from the local press. The very meagreness of details 
 in accounts of these affrays in Southern newspapers 
 is of itself an evidence of the small impression they 
 make. An account of an ordinary homicide in the 
 rural districts, in which the slayer and the slain are 
 of the lower order of society, is usually dismissed by 
 the nearest newspaper in a ten- or twenty-line account. 
 Ordinarily, it is not made the subject of even the 
 briefest despatch to the nearest city paper. If it gets 
 into the city papers at all, it is usually by clippings 
 from the local press. A still smaller percentage are 
 mentioned in the general despatches. This can be 
 easily verified. Collect the local accounts of homi- 
 cides in South Carolina, for instance, for six months 
 or a year, and then inspect the general despatches in 
 papers outside of the State, and it will be found that 
 
200 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 the briefest mention of not above one homicide in 
 seven is sent outside the State in the general de- 
 spatches. For this reason the general and special 
 despatches in the great New York papers make men- 
 tion of not over ten per cent, of the homicides com- 
 mitted in the Southern States. On the other hand, 
 there is hardly a murder in New York, New Jersey, 
 Pennsylvania, or in the New England States, that 
 escapes mention in telegraphic or news columns of 
 the New York papers. A Southern senator once said 
 to me, speaking of political murder South, that he 
 could hardly pick up a New York paper without 
 finding an allusion to a murder in some one of the 
 Northern States! This is true. The great .New 
 York papers cover the striking crimes in the States 
 mentioned with a good deal of particularity, hence a 
 murder seldom escapes mention in their news col- 
 umns. The population of the States referred to is 
 some fourteen millions, and among so vast a number 
 there would naturally be a good many murders. 
 But in the single State of Texas in the year 1878 
 there were many more murders and manslaughters 
 than in all these nine States combined with their 
 fourteen millions of people ! 
 
 But there is in the Southern States a class of homi- 
 cides that receive large attention from the local and 
 sometimes from the outside press. I refer to such 
 as arise from " difficulties" and street-fights among 
 citizens of local prominence and respectability. For 
 instance, the killing of Alston by Cox in Atlanta ; 
 the killing of Coleman by Gibson in Macon; the 
 
CARRYING CONCEALED WEAPONS. 2 0I 
 
 killing of Hicks and Baxter in Nashville ; the killing 
 of Colonel House in a street-fight in Franklin, Ten- 
 nessee ; the killing of Beach by Coe in Memphis ; 
 the killing of General Clanton by Colonel Nelson at 
 Knoxville ; the killing of Porter by Currie in Texas ; 
 the killing of the Davieses, father and two sons, in Har- 
 rodsburg, Kentucky; the killing of young Brecken- 
 ridge in Lebanon, Tennessee ; the killing of Marshal 
 Young at Mount Stirling, Kentucky ; the killing of Dr. 
 Grayson and wife in Texas ; the killing of Judges El- 
 liott and Burnett in Kentucky; the killing of Captain 
 Callan in Dallas, and Alderman Nelle in Austin, 
 Texas ; the killing of Dr. Walker and Mr. Arnold in 
 a Mississippi affray ; the killing of Postmaster Austin 
 and his son at Lake Providence, Louisiana ; the kill- 
 ing of Rev. Mr. Standing, a Mormon elder, in Geor- 
 gia; the killing of Brice and Johnson in South Caro- 
 lina; the killing of Andrews and Greene and the 
 Clark brothers in Vicksburg, and many others that 
 could be mentioned. Indeed, I mention only such 
 as come to my mind as I write, and the bloody record 
 could be continued through many pages. 
 
 Such cases as these, involving persons of more or 
 less local prominence, have extended mention in the 
 local press, and most of them in the press at large. 
 All these homicides were either assassinations or the 
 result of street-fights. The list could be extended to 
 almost indefinite lengths, but it is not necessary. I 
 merely refer to a class of homicides that have excited 
 unusual interest from the standing and respectability 
 of the parties involved, but which, all told, are but a 
 
202 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 fraction of the number that have fallen in the South- 
 ern States in the few years covered by these cases. 
 Indeed, all here mentioned are not eight per cent, of 
 the murders and manslaughters in the single State of 
 Texas in a single year ! While affrays of the sort 
 from which these grew are liable to happen at any 
 time, yet, as a matter of fact, there are comparatively 
 few in the upper strata of society. It is in the lower 
 walks of life that the most of the homicides occur ; 
 but four-fifths of them, whether in low or high degree, 
 are the outgrowth of a debased civilization which re- 
 sembles semi-barbarism in many of its features, and is 
 liable to be mistaken for that by those who take but 
 a narrow and superficial view of Southern society. 
 
 But to return to the matter of concealed weapons. 
 I have mentioned among a few of the more prominent 
 victims of pistol-practice the case of Colonel House, 
 who was shot down in a street-fight in Franklin, 
 Tennessee. Others were wounded. If those en- 
 gaged in this affray had not had pistols it could 
 hardly have been deadly. The same week that this 
 happened there were no less than six persons killed 
 in Tennessee in street-fights and " difficulties," all, or 
 nearly all, growing out of the fact that deadly weapons 
 were within easy reach. 
 
 Recently a despatch from New Orleans mentioned 
 the mortal wounding of three men in one day in 
 that city in three separate "difficulties," in which 
 concealed weapons were used, and, as it seems, with 
 deadly effect. The New Orleans Times said, not 
 long ago, referring to the increase in crime, " As for 
 
CARRYING CONCEALED WEAPONS. 2 Q>% 
 
 the carrying of firearms and other weapons, that is so 
 notorious and general a practice as to be beyond 
 comment, and the awful fruit thereof is visible in 
 more than a dozen graves within the past few weeks." 
 An effort to get more stringent laws passed against 
 the carrying of deadly weapons always encounters 
 violent opposition. It is said that the way to prevent 
 " difficulties" is to always be prepared for them ! This 
 has been declared again and again in the Legisla- 
 tures of the Southern States, coupled with the usual 
 declaration that murder " is no more frequent in our 
 State than elsewhere." This ignorance as to the 
 contrasted effects of the general habit of carrying 
 weapons is one of the greatest drawbacks towards 
 getting more stringent laws passed. Nearly all the 
 Southern States have laws against the practice, but 
 they are either dead-letters or the punishments merely 
 nominal, generally a small fine. A few years in the 
 penitentiary for this crime would be of assistance in 
 lessening the aggregate of murders and manslaughters. 
 Since the war, as I have before stated, more men have 
 been shot and stabbed to death in the Southern States 
 than have died of yellow fever. The fever comes as 
 an epidemic, remains but a few months, and perhaps 
 does not return for many years. It is deadly, but 
 not constant. But the work of the pistol and the 
 knife in the Southern States is more continuous, — 
 every day has its victims. The world hears not of 
 them. The nearest local paper publishes a short 
 account, usually beginning, " We regret to learn of 
 an unfortunate difficulty," etc. These deadly affiny* 
 
204 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 are not frequent in all communities, indeed, much 
 less frequent in some than in others, but take the 
 Southern States together and the aggregate of homi- 
 cides to population is unequalled. 
 
 The crime of stabbing cannot be reached by laws 
 against carrying concealed weapons, but it can by 
 laws such as were passed and enforced in England, 
 making stabbing a felony punishable with death, 
 without reference to whether the thrust was fatal or 
 not. It was enacted that if any person shall " un- 
 lawfully and maliciously stab, cut, or wound any 
 person with intent to disfigure or disable such person, 
 . . . every such offender, and every person counsel- 
 ling, aiding, or abetting such offender, shall be guilty 
 of felony, and, being convicted thereof, shall suffer 
 death as a felon" 
 
 Laws somewhat similar are needed in the Southern 
 States to-day. The crusade against murder was and 
 is so vigorous in England that the total number of 
 cases of murder and manslaughter annually among 
 the twenty-five millions of population in England and 
 Wales is less than in the single State of Texas ! 
 
 The administration of law in most of the Southern 
 States with reference to crime against the person is 
 very lax. If the murderer has social position, money, 
 and friends, and if the man he killed happened to be 
 wanting in these, conviction and adequate punishment 
 are almost impossible. The killing of Beach by Coe 
 in Memphis is a case in point. Beach was a sewing- 
 machine agent, and wrote Coe's wife a business note 
 in reference to the repair of a machine, which Coe, 
 
CARRYING CONCEALED WEAPONS. 205 
 
 ivith chivalric notions peculiar to the climate, chose 
 to construe as insulting. He went to Beach's place 
 of business armed. When Beach came out he at- 
 tacked him with a cane. Beach seized the cane and 
 was trying to take it from Coe when the latter shot 
 him. Beach was unarmed. He lived two or three 
 days, and it was his dying declaration that Coe shot 
 him. This declaration was supported by concurrent 
 testimony, and much of it was published during the 
 trial by the Memphis newspapers. A minister who 
 visited the dying man (and who was a witness) asked 
 him if he was ready to die, and if he forgave his 
 murderer. " It is hard," replied Beach, " to forgive an 
 assassin," and as he said this his very look conveyed 
 an intensity of meaning which his words could not. 
 Meantime, Coe was on bail. At the trial a witness 
 testified that the shot which killed Beach came from 
 the other side of the street ! No one else was ar- 
 rested, however, and Coe was fined forty-five dollars 
 for assault and discharged. Beach was buried. 
 
 In Macon, Georgia, a man of social standing and 
 respectability, but crazy with drink, drew his pistol 
 and shot down an unarmed stranger whom he had 
 never even seen before. The victim died. The 
 murder was cruel and wanton, but the murderer was 
 acquitted by a jury of his peers. He had no malice 
 against his victim. He did not even know him. Had 
 he not been armed or drinking it would not have 
 happened. But he was acquitted, and has since 
 stabbed another man, as is believed, mortally. 
 
 The murder of Porter, the actor, in Texas, which 
 
206 HOMICIDE, NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 attracted some attention, is another instance of an 
 unarmed man shot down in cold blood. I could 
 multiply instances to the extent of many pages. In 
 the public dining-room of a hotel in one of the 
 Southern States I saw a man deliberately draw a 
 pistol from beneath his coat and shoot an unarmed 
 man sitting opposite him, with whom he was having 
 an " argument." The assailant was immediately re- 
 leased on bail, pistol and all. I was told that he had 
 killed several men, and was regarded as somewhat 
 dangerous. In the State where this happened I think 
 there is no law against carrying concealed weapons. 
 In most of the Southern States, however, there are 
 laws against this barbarous practice, but the penalties 
 are inadequate. A term in the penitentiary for des- 
 peradoes who habitually go armed would be in the 
 nature of reform. It will come to this some time in 
 the future, and the sooner the better. 
 
 In nearly every Southern community the law- 
 abiding, peaceably-disposed citizens are very largely 
 in the majority. The desperadoes, man-slayers, 
 habitual pistol-carriers, fighters, dangerous drunk- 
 ards, and so-called "game" men are in the minority. 
 The number of this class, however, as compared to 
 the total population is larger than among English- 
 speaking people elsewhere. Hence there are more 
 homicides and more shooting and stabbing cases in 
 the Southern States than occur elsewhere among any 
 equal number of English-speaking people. The evil 
 can be corrected and the percentage of homicides 
 largely decreased. We have the example of Eng- 
 
CARRYING CONCEALED WEAPONS. 2 Q>7 
 
 land, where the number of murders and manslaughters 
 as compared to population has been decreased over 
 eighteen hundred per cent, in the last four hundred 
 years. This result has been accomplished by whole- 
 some administration of law, sure punishment follow- 
 ing every case detected. In the New England States, 
 among nearly four millions of people, the number 
 of murders and manslaughters is kept below an 
 average of fifty annually, and a very large percentage 
 of those which do happen are among foreign-born 
 residents. In Vermont and New Hampshire, where 
 the percentage of foreign population is lowest, there 
 is an average of less than two murders annually in 
 each State. Some years there are none at all. What 
 has been done in New England towards the sup- 
 pression of crime against the person can be done in 
 the Southern States. In the South less than three 
 per cent, of the population are of foreign birth. In 
 the Middle States of the North and in the Northwest 
 and in New England fully one-half the homicides 
 are among foreign-born residents. In the Southern 
 States there is not this element to contend with in 
 the suppression of crime. The excessive number of 
 homicides in these States is absolutely without ex- 
 cuse. The remedy must be found in an increased 
 respect for human life, rigid enforcement of law, and, 
 as nearly as possible, adequate punishment for every 
 case of unjustifiable homicide. 
 
 THE END. 
 
1 
 HV 6521+ R31 
 
 " "SeT 
 
 Author 
 
 Redfield, Horace 
 
 Vol. 
 
 Title 
 
 Homicide north & south 
 
 Copy 
 
 
 
 Date 
 
 Borrower's Name 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 \ l 
 
 mm£.m