The Potter journal. [volume] (Coudersport, Pa.) 1857-1872, 1866-05-29


of the old Hebrews, because we have oppres-
sed the poor, and because the God of the poor
is determined to write with His own hand
His adherence of slavery and oppression all
over our land in characters so legible that
neither we nor our chldren's children can
ever mistake His mind and Will in coming
generations.
To our shame and disgrace it must be ad-
mitted that, so far as we are advised, every
one of the numerous conflicts of races which
/ have occurred in this State during the past
year, has been the wantou and unproVoked
work of wicked white men upon poor, quiet,
unofending, and in most cases unarmed and
unresisting colored people. Why should we
murder, rob, or interrupt them, burn their
school houses and churches, insult and attack
the teachers, who in the cause OF improve
ment and elevation and Christian charity,
have come to us from the ever friendly North,
IN the same spirit that brought them in 1855
to this devoted city, when the scourge Of yell
low fever was here in its wrath. Let US not
forget that then as now it was to the North
and its generous people that we had to look
in our want for aid and assistance.
Unless q stop is put to such violence and
outrage upon the freedmen, we can never e1-
pect relief from the presence OF Northern pay
onets, and admission to the rights and priVi-
| leges of the Federal Union but we shall be-
come the by-word and scorn of the whole
civilized world We shall be considered bar
barians, and be justly excluded from the SYM
pathies ofall Christian men 1t is your duty,
gentlemen Of the jury, to see to it that peo-
pie who were loyal and true to the nations
| flag in the time of trial and danger shall be
protected against the persecution of those
who, fresh from scenes of treason and rebel
/ lion, are pursuing their victims with most in
! fernal hate, for no apparent reason, except
their fidelity and devotion to the country.
We fully appreciate the magnitude and diff
Guilty of the task set before you-the monstrous
wrong with which you are called to grapple,
like the giant hydra, still lifts some OF its
many heads, which you mnst strike down, or
| they will continue to disturb the public tran
guilty. 1t would be childish to expect that
so great an iniqui!y could be extirpated IN
single year or even in single generation 1t
should be remembered that it had invaded
every source of public, private social, and
domestic life. Not only did it control the po-
! litical press and all political parties in this
State, but, with rare exceptions, 1t spoke
from all our pulpits, perverIing the gospel OF
human brotherhood into the gospel OF human
chattelhood, and Of the absolute submission
Of part to the lust and ayarice of the rest OF
human kind.
Our religious teachers had forgotten to
preach the wrong of Withholding the hire of
labor, trading in the bodies and souls Of our
! fellow-men, of separating husbands and
wives, parents and children, and sending them
to a returnless distance from each other, and
ON the homes oftheir living and the graves
of their dead and had become, with some
worthy and glorious exceptions, panderers
and apologists of the lust and Violence Of the
master, who, in return for their services, were
willing to feed them on the fat of the land.
Our legislators, instead Of following the chris
tian law requiring much where much is given
and proportioning accountability to the gifts
and talents Of nature, had tablished the re-
verse enactments, furnishing the ignorant
and uneducated whom it was made crime
to enlighten, with death for many offences,
which, when committed by the educated and
privileged, were satisfied with fine or impris-
onment.
Our courts ofjpstice had proclaimed the in
famous doctrine that dusky men had no rights
which white men were bound to respect; and
into this very temple Of law pious woman
had been dragged rs criminal for an act
which might almost invite on archangel to
come down from the mansions of the blest-I
and of licensed wrong TO read the Bible, and
the laws made not to govern them, but to
crush out of them every feeling Of humanity
EAnd worst of all and most to be deplored'
was the prostitution Of our homes, the very
heart and seat Of domestic purity, the poison
ing Of which is fatal to all moral vitality and
death to public and private happiness. The
subjection Of the women Of one complexion TO
the wild fury of unbridled licentiousness, and
as consequence denying to thewomen ofour
own complexion the holy rites of marriage or
making in thousands of cases those rites as
much a mockery as a conscious traitors oath
were proclaimed on every plantation in the
bleached faces of the children of the slave
women, bleached by the blood of the first
families, until hardly half our births were of
lawful wedlock, and until it would seem that
masculine virtue must be nearly extinct in
the proud circles of the chiYalric aristCcracy
of the State.
Your duties, under these circumstances, ARE
both difficult and dangerous, for you are called
upon to oppose the worst passions of very des-
perate men, who will make vigorous efforts to
verify their often repeated predictions that
freedom would bring ruin and determination
upon the colored people, and it is possible
that some of you may meet with violence for
faithful discharge Of your duties, as one of
the last Grand Jury has already done. But
better, thousand times better, to fall by the
hand of the assassin, as Lincoln and Dixon
have fallen, or Gle under the mockery Of pre-
tended forms of law, as our Savior did, in
the cause of freedom and humanity, than to
shrink like towards from our public trust, in
order to drag out few more years of ignoble
life before filing unhonored graves.
The laws of Congress which will guide your
action are instinct with equity, and are am
pie, if fearlessly administered, to check and
humble the most defiant, differeng essentially
in this respect from the laws of our State Leg
isla'ure, which, like those of an ancient
heather nation, seem "like cobwebs made to
catch the weak, but to permit the strong to
break through Them Yours is the rough
pioneer work Of removing the great obstruc-
tions of crime and violence from our midstSo
4 hot aIu intallaptuo1