Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1897-04-07
A SCORCHING ARRANGEMENT.
What Judge Bolton O'Neall Said to.a Muir

SCUhChlNU AhhAluNMENI.
What Judge Bolton O'Neall Said to.a Muir
derer.
Mr.. Robin Love, of Hickory Grove,
requests the publication of the follow
ing in THE ENQUIRER. 1t is clipped
from the Unionville Journal of 1852,
and Mr.. Love has vivid recollection
of all the circumstances in connection
Herewith
The court of appeals have refused
to grant new trial in the case of the
state VS.. Phineas H. Johnson, for MUIR
der. We publish below, the sentence
of the court, as delivered by Jukge
O'Neall, in Columbia on Monday, the
18th inst.
Phineas johnson: Young man,
how can I say to you, in the awful
language of the inspired prophet, "set
thy house in order, for thou shalt die,
and not live!" Yet it must be done.
You are before me now, in the morn
ing of life-in a few brief days you
will be cut off, and the place WHICH
now knows you, "shall know you no
more forever" 1t is my duty to say
to you, that the nature of your crime
forbids the possibility of pardon here.
Your only hope of pardon is in the
merciful atonement offered you and
all men, in the broken body and stream
ing blood of him, who cried, "Father,
forgiveithem, for they know not what
they do"
Your crime, awful as it is, must be
set before you, in the hope that it may
do you and the community good. To
creep upon poor woman, in her own
solitary cabin, in the stiffness of night,
with her nursing at her feet, her first
born wrapt in infantile innocent slum-
ber by her side, when preparing the
scanty portion of vegetables for her
and their food, and to shoot her as a
wild beast, hardly has parallel in the
annals of crime. When to this is added,
the guilty wretch who completed this
deed was her seducer, the father of her
little ones-where, oh where, shall we
find another as foul a blot on humanity
To you, at least, her person ought to
have been sacred. For you, she had
made herself the guilty, degrading be.
ing, to whom beauty was a reproach,
character was infamy, and affection
was hatred. For you she had left a
fathers house and plenty, and had be-
come a dependent on almost charity,
for food and covering. To you, she
had given the pledges of her love, in
the starving, degraded children around
her! How could you, young man,
slay her, who had thus given her all
to you? How could you level your
gun at the head which had often been
pillowed in guilty affection upon your
bosom /? Remember, I beg you to re-
member, that her blood will sink you
forever into everlasting torments, un-
less you can feel that mercy, your Sa-
vior's dying mercy, has removed the
guilty weight of it from your soul.
1t is necessary, too, young man, for
your own sake and that of the section
of the country pea Ridge, of Union
district0 from W. "h you came, that it
should be said, I tear your crime is the
consequence of the gross immortality
and vice which has too much there
abounded. Female virtue has there,
1 am told, lost it's appropriate value.
Seduction is not regarded as crime !;
and concubinage is not at all rare or
disgraceful. Will you not, as you ap-
proach the gallows, say with me,
shame upon such state of things
You will be, most probably, the first
white man hanged in Union district /;
and fearful will be the commentary of
your fate, upon such state of morals.
Is it true, that you and the deceased
once were members of the same reli-
gious community? Can it be, that
you forgot that the weak and lovely
being by your side and your sister in
the house Of your sister, and that vio-
lating her confidence you snatched a
crown of peace from her head, to place
upon it one of shame? Oh i! if these
things be so, think upon them-pon-
der them night and day, for they de-
mand fearful reckoning and account.
From you + turn, and with me hope
you will in thought also 60, to the
house Of your parents. What is there ?
Peace? No! oh no! 1 can, in imagi-
nation, hear your young wife frantical-
ly asking to be allowed to share your
prison solitude; your mother, like
Rachel, "weeping for her children, and
would not be comforted, for they were
not" your father, once respectable,
now broken down, and lamenting like
David for Absalom, "oh, my son, would
to God that 1 had died for thee ~
Who has caused this scene of mourn
ing? Must say guilty young man,
"thou art the man !"
Sad and awful as all these thoughts
and "reminiscences may be, they are as
nothing to that which is before you !!