The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1872-01-27
THE BRUTALITY EMBROIDERED by
SLAVERY.
JrDGE BONDS Address BEFORE sENTENc
ING THE KU-KLUX PRISONERS.

JrDGE BONDS Address BEFORE sENTENC
ING THE KU-KLUX PRISONERS.
Before sentencing the prisoners, Judge
Bond addressed them in few words. which
contain perhaps better description of the
low condition of Southern society, and a
keener rebuke to Southern lawbreakers of
high position than the country has lately
| read. The whole of his address is given:
"You have pleaded guilty to an indict-
ment which charges You with conSpirinr
with other men throughout this State t"
inimidtte a certain class of voters by
means of threats, beating and even killing.
! because that class of citizens were opposed
to the conspiratorS in political opinion.
a"We acknowledge great perplexity in
determining what punishment shall be
melted out to you. We have no words
strong enough to signify our horror at the,
means employed to carry out the purpose
of the Klans. Our difficulty is personal to
you.
! "You have as it appears from your
statements to the court been brought up in
the most deplorable ignorance. At the age
of manhood, but one or two of you can
either read or write, and you have lived in
a community where the evidence seems t"
! establish the fact that the men of promi
hence and education those who by their
superiority in these respects establish and
jntrol public opiniun-were for the most
part participants in the conspiracy, or $"
obtain from them neither protection nos
| advice had You sought it.
"There is abundant proof of the nature
and character of the conspiracy. Evidence
of nightly raids by bands of disguised men,
who broke into the houses of negroes and
dragged them from their beds-parelts
and cllildrsn-and, tying them to trees,
numerically beat them, is exhibited il
every case. Murder and rape are not I'M
frequent Accomplishments, the story of
which is too indecent for public mention.
The persons upon whom these atrocities
are committed are almost always colored
people. Whatever excuse is given for a
raid it's conclusion was almost always
accompanied by rebuke for the former
exercise of the suffrage and a warning as
| to the future exercise of the right to vote.
But what is quite as appalling to the
Court as the horrible nature OF these of,
fences is the utter absence on your part
and on the part of others who have made
confession here of any sense or feeling thai
you have done anything very wrong in
your confessed participation in outrages
which are unexamped outside of the Indian
territory.
.'Sume of your comrades recite the cir
cumstances of a brutal, unprovoked muir
der, done by themselves, with as little
apparent adherence as they would relate
the incidents of picnic, and you your,
selves speak of the number of blows with
hickory which you inflicted at midnight
upon the lacerated, bleeding back of de-
frnseless woman. without so much as a
blush or sigh of regret. None of you
seem to have the slightest idea of or respect
for the sacredness of the human person.
Some Of you have yourselves been beaten
by the Klans without feeling a smart but
the physical pain. There appears to be no
! wounding of the spirit; no such sense OF
injury to yourself as IA man as would be
4 IL Ill
in any other part of the United States with
which am acquainted.
"There the citizen upon whom such out
RACES were perpetraied, stung to madness
by the insult to his manhood, would be
swift to follow the wrong doer to the end
of the world to atone for it. You make
excuse for this in your statement to the
cout that You are very ignorant; that the
Klans would have beaten you and even
killed you, had you refused to join them in
their crimes. Some of you now particu-
lArly before me have actually suffered for
your refusal, before you really united in
membership with them. The court. i'll an
endeavor to recognize some features of
humanity in you, has considered these facts
which you plead as excuses. You have
grown up in a country where slavery exist
ed for long time, and where the whil =
ping post was standing institution
ITO see blacks fagellated was no nm
usual occurrence. The scene often viewed.
with it's novelty, lost its revolving effect
And when it come to be understood that
the human person was not so sacred in the
cnlored man as to secure immunity from
Outrage, it did not take it long to lose its
| sacred character in yourselves, and in all
other men who, like the cplored mai, was
obliged to labor. 1t must be from this
cause that your utter Indifference to wrongs
which, among freemen would stir fever
| in the blood of age, arises.
| "And then you tell us that you differ
from many other portions of the country
| in this, that it has always been obligatory
upon you, and the class to which yon
! belong. to look to persons of wealth and
education for command, and that you in
your duCc, lldu " iollo" ouSh pSi SohS
implicitly.
at will appear strange to your fellow
countrymen who read your story and that
OF your confederates, howev' willing they
may be to believe you, that so large por-
ton of the young white men of your coun-
try can he in such state of affect slavery
to the men of property above them. as to
be willing to commit murder at their COM
mand.
I'm no case has there been any resist
ance to these midnight raiders except on
the part of the colored people.
"You say some of you have 'laid out ;
in the woods night after night. and have
hidden yourselves in thickets TO ESCAPE
these marauders. None Of you. however.
! had the manliness to defend your firesdes
from the assaults of these lawless men,
There has not been, on your part, so far as
the evidence shows, an assault and battery
committed in defense of family and home
and all that free men hold dear.
Admitting all you have said to the