The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1888-12-16

doing violence 10 our civilization, our
professions and our laws; and those
men OF Birmingham who are doing
their utmost to bring the sheriff to the
scaffold are not moved by the spirit
which should actuate good citizens. We
say that Sheriff Smith is a hero, and
that his act should be applauded. He
had in his custony a prisoner for whose
safe keeping he was responsible to
the law. 1t does not alter the case that
his charge was the rankest scoundrel
unhung. 1t was the sheriff's duty to
hold the man against everybody and
everything save the law itself, and he
did it. Nor does it change the condi-
tons that the mob which attacked the
jail, was made up largely of reputable
citizens; they were engaged in an I'M
lawful act; they were bent on setting
at defiance the law enacted for their
protection; they intended to murder,
and they were repulsed in the only way
they could have been repulsed.
Briefly, the facts are these: One
Richard Halves murdered his wife, tied
weights to her body ard sank it in
pond; he also murdered his two chill
dren and then started to run away with
another woman. He was arrested and
taken to prison, when the people, learn
ing the truth, formed themselves into
mob and marched to the prison with
the intention of taking Halves out and
lynching him. The sheriff met the
crowd and pleaded with it to desist, but
it would not; he warned it that if it did
moi stop he would fire, and it still
rushed on, needing neither him nor
the law. Some shots were fired at the
I jail, and then the sheriff ordered his
deputies to discharge the gatling, which
was done, the shots moving down the
mob which had crowded into the pas
sage way leading to the door to be at
tackled. Some fell dead or wounded
and the others fed. 1t was an awful
scene, but the law was INDICATED, and
the sheriff's honor as an officer and
courage as a man, maintained.
There have been times and places
where Judge Lynch was an essential
parsonage, and vigilance committees
were necessary. In the early days of
some of the Territories the vigilance
committee had to play an important
part, for there were no statute laws and
no organized governments or society to
enforce any. But where there are civil
hzation and law and constitutional
authority, there is no room for the
vigilance committee, aad the lynching
mob is out of place. Such a mob de-
clsres the failure of governments and
proclaims the uselessness of statutes
and legal formalities. If the Birming-
ham mob was right, then Alabama is a
barbarous land, having made little ad-
vance toward civilization; if the mob
was wrong, as all must admit it was,
then the sheriff was right, and instead
of being annoyed and prosecuted by
malicious or yengeful prosecutions, he
should be applauded and rewarded as a
courageous officer who dared to do his
duty in the face of popular displeasure.
1t would be well for Kentucky and
Kansas and some other States profess
ing high degree of civilization if thel-
sherifs were of the Smith stripe. 1t
would be better for the American
people if al their sheriffs were like
Smith, and would shoot down "repu-
table" or other citizens who take the
law into their own hands and as bar
barians undertake to wreak vengeance
on individuals. A few such affairs as
that at Birmingham would put stop
to lynching bees which are so numerous
in some sections of the country.