The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1859-07-06
Harriet MarIineau ON the sicktcs
Trial.


Harriet Martineau, in a recent letter to the
Anti-Savery Standard, thus moralizes on
the Sickles trial:
"The world may bemistaken; but the gen
eral impression in Europe and the settlements
of Europeans is, that the sympathies Of Amer
leans are more and more openly declared on
the side OF brute force from year to year
almost from day to day. We do not forget,
and never shall, the difference between Abo-
litionists and all other Americans on this
particular point. We can speak to you, sir,
and yonr constituents, as to brethren, pre-.
cisely because you have borne your testimo-
ny long and steadily against this growing
vice Of your national character but the Alb
olitionists apart, what can we think and what
can we say Of Republican society in which
appeals to physical force are applauded;
where citizens carry arms where to waylay,
or take at Disadvantage, an unarmed man,
to put women in prison, or chase them from
their residence on other grounds than legal
guilt, and to insult the depressed, does not
exclude men from society? The lack Of lib
erty 10 bad enough. 1t is bad enough that a
man cannot utter his thoughts in the Senate,
nor woman in letters to her brother: and
that citizens and their wives cannot teach ne
groes to read but that great evil of lack of
liberty in country which calls itself free,
pales before the fearful spectacle of the
growth of barbaric morality in nation
which ought to have been the foremost of the
world in morals and civilization. You and
are perfectly aware that the preservation Of
slave institutions in q democratic republic
must necessarily produce this consequence,
among others but the verihoation is equally
shocking to those who anticipated it, and to
~ A. -
lighted up the whole scene to eyes hitherto
careless. Not to dwell on the evidences of q
puerile condition OF mind--the excitement,
the false enthusiasms and the total absence
of serenity and com mon sense all round--the
moral notions which seem to be actually prev
| aent, fill US with amazemcnt and dismav.--
There are eccentric people everywhere and
we should not have wondered if-pne or two
oddities had stood up for Mr.. Sidkle's way Of
proceeding, or had fanoied some ground OF
/ feminine gratitude for what he had done
but that whole crowdof citizens should de
clare that he had done something right, and
| that fathers, husbands, and even women
should suppose that female virtue was safer
ON account OF his act, utterly confounds oul
| notions, and confuses our conception Of thu
4 Americans as a civilized nation. 1t is no,
only the fuss. We have seen too manJ cpl.
deinio agitations, too many Qualifications o.
ve.y small or worthless persons, to mock a.
any nation for passing folly Of that kind
1t is the low, impure, barbsric morals dis
closed by such scene that dismays Europe
on observers. A stakeholder who had re-
sided solitary on his plantation all his life
: reading only tho birthstone and sulphur lite
} nature OF southern championship, might hav
; been pitied and allowed for, for doing as Mr.
Sickles did but that Northern man shoul
!, do it, that men from oil points OF the com
pass should applaud it, and that wome,
should fancy their virtue the safer for il
makes us ask what age Of the world you hav
receded to, and how you propose to get bac
to condition of progress