The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-10-20
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1908.
THAT 1NDEFENs1B1E VERDICT.

XAAT lNDEEENS1BLE VEHO1CI.
 The Advertiser has hitherto refrained from. commenting on the Tillman verdict. but certainly not from any lack of inter- est in it. In one sense it is a matter be- longing to South Carolina and the best newspapers of that State have denounced the miscarriage of justice in terms which cannot fail to have good effect.
 But while this case especially affects South Carolnia, 1t is matter that must reflect on the entire country, and particu- larly on the South. It is one of the ia. vorite gibes of Northern newspapers and orators that human life Is very cheap In he South. and that 1t is safer to kill man than to steal a horse. We are con- tinuaily reminded of our hot blood. and sneered at for our ideas of personal honor and of the duty of all men to avenge any Insult. To all this we have become &C., eustomed, and we are not complaining The Southern people do have different conceptions of honor from those held by the citizens of colder climate, and they do resent insults more readily. But our eneynies are not in the habit of calling the Southern people assassins. They say that we are too quick to resent insults. an too ready to imagine that our honor has been attacked, and that we must demand satisfaction, but they usually admit that the Southern man who has designs on another always gives that other a chance % defend himself.
 h TVtI1 gives our critics We cannot defend the South or the people of the South by claiming that Tillman was defending himself or his honor No plea of self-de- fense will lie in his case in the estima- ton of the public The effort to prove that he acted in self-defense or that he had reason to consider his life in danger was miserable failure Such testI- mony as he and his attorneys produced in justification was so wholly unreliable. that Tillman's attorneys must have been ashamed of them A dog ought not to oe condemned or exculpated on such evidence as Tillman and his lawyers put forward to prove that he acted in self-def snce.
 The other plea that Tillman, as a true Boutherner, was averaging an insult to his honor. would have had much force if the killing had occurred six months earlier than 1t did We have read many of the editorials written by Gonzales and they were something fearful. They were the kind sf editorials which no Southern man writes and publishes unless he is willing 70 take his life in his own hands and be ready at all times to defend it. In the South. at least, the man who writes of another as Gonzales wrote of TiIlman does so with full knowledge of the conse- auencss. and with full knowledge that the man against whom he writes is likely to demand satisfaction.
 But in this case the time had lapsed for rilIman to attack Gonzales with any show of Justification. He submitted to these excoriations without resentlnR them. He waited five months before re. senting what he considered an attack on his hoaor. By his silence under insult. and by his deliberation in averaging him self, he deprived himself of all justifi- cation and appeared in the role of cow ardly assassin. As such he must stand piIioried in the estimation of all good people.
 And it is for this astounding verdict, for this trayesty on justice, and this reflec- ton on Southern manhood that the people of our section must suffer. There is the shame and the sting of it. This verdict win be pointed to as a typical specimen of Southern justice and as a measure of Southern juries. The verdict Is a dis- tinct islander on the South and a shame to South Carolina.