New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1885-05-29

TIE SURVLTAL OF The BLOOD TEUD.
The killing of SIX men in q fight arising from a
family feud, at church door in Florida. at once
emphasizes all the most barbarOus aspects OF the
blood feGd. and illustrates the tenaclty OF the
custom among the Southern communities. III thls
case, as in most of Its kind. the quarrel out OF
which the feud grew occurred many years ago.
The beginners of it. who the heads OF the two
families are long dead, but the new generation has
kept up the ieu1 and it has as usual. converted all
who came under its influence to barbarians Of the
lowest type. The survival Of the blood feud IN the
South is so curious that it deserves careful study.
1t is perhaps the only instance in which custom
belonging to the earliest stages of civilization has
survived all the enlghtening and humanzing
influences Of modern culture; in which men who as
regards most other things appear abreast of their
time remain as to this practice sunk in the dark
ness of savages. That it is custom blindly and
unreicctingly followed is shown in the grOtesque
facility with which, in the most recent case, the
enemies passed from worship to murder. This is no
new illustration of the strange way IN which men
allow utterly irreconcilabe ideas to lie side by side
in their minds There is a case IN the books OF n
man who cut travellers throat for the sake of
few dollars. but would not cat some meat he found
in the dead mans pocket, because it happened to be
Friday. The religion of those who think it no SIN
to commit murder coming out Of church is of the
same general character. 1t simply has no bearing
Whatever upon their moral character.
But the persistence of the blood feud. based as it
plainly is upon theories which none but sayages
could evolve, and lacking as it plainly does any
warrant dervable from civilized thinking, is full OF
interest for the sociologst. 1t proves among other
things the liability to error inSeparabe from all
attempts to dednce the precise stage Of civilization
existing at any epoch by observation OF the prevail
ing customs. For il is clear that future historian
knowing nothing Of these Southern hen beyond the
fast that they cherished tho blood feud would on
such evidence set them down rs barbarians of low
type, and would infer that they were nonadic per-
haps that they captured thor wives, ana that they
had no religion. Yet of course such conclusions
would he wrong. The Southern people who shoot
one another down like dogs in their blood feuds
regard Themselves, and are regarded by their neigh
bors as civilized; nay, as Christians and gentle
men; and it must be admitted that they possess 50
much general enlightenment to make it astonish-
ing that they do not realize the absurdity and
iniquity of the vendetta. 1t is the "oole' carried
10 its last analysis IL is due to the harbarons
conception of honor, but it is that conception
trayesticd. The tribal sentiment IS dominant in it.
long after the practical ground for that sentiment
has passed away. Ii wOnld almost seem as if the
mere Inst of slaughter had suppaned all the Prim-
tive matter-Of-fact motives for the feud, and this
renders is study still more desirable.
IL is 60 he hoped that before the last Southern
feud is extingnsh"d in the blood of the parties to
it, some man of science will investigate and describe
the custom fully 50 that sociology at least may DC
the "a nor from a survival the useless ferocity OF
which is 80 Strange and pulling The world GER
tainly ought to ascertain why practice which died
out IN all but the most backward parts of Europe
from one and a half to two centuries ago still
persists 80 stubbornly in our Southern States in
spite Of all tho modern increase of reverence for
human life.