The Union times. [volume] (Union, S.C.) 1894-1918, 1912-05-24
Aliens Conviction.

Again a Virginia jury has vindi-
Gated Virginia. Again it is jury
composed chiefly of Virginia farmers,
the real conservative power ani pre-
serving strength of our common
wealth. Men of the same stock and
breed that has asserted and maintain
ed the right of the people to govern
themselves and the rights of the
States to conduct their own affairs,
have declared that the law must be
supreme and that lawlessness, riot
and anarchy shall be met with strong,
stern front and repressed and punish
ed relentlessly. A Wythe county jury
has adjudged Floyd Allen guilty cf
murder in the first degree for his
part in the slaughter of the judge
and officers of Carroll county court
little more than two months ago.
He will pay the final penalty of his
act by death in the electric chair.
Even if the appeal probably to be
taken should be successful and new
trial should be ordered-a result most
unlikely because the wise and able
presiding judge gave the defendant
the benefit of every doubtful point
his fate yet would be sealed. Unless
nature intervenes with death stroke
or he can find some means to end
his own life, Floyd Allen will go to
the electric chair.
He ought to go. According with
the old law of human contrariness, an
astonishing sympathy for him and his
associate criminals has been developed
and expressed. 1t is the cid story,
Some people forget the deed, sud-
denly, untimely and unjustly slain,
and the widows and orphans, the tears
and the desolation caused by their
deaths. Others allow political par
tizan feeling to sway their judgments.
Yet others, anarchists at heart, hat
ing all law and order, government
and restraint ,unmindful of the fact
that they and theirs in time of gen.
eral license to destroy would be the
chief sufferers, would have this killer
of judges and authorities go free or
given light sentence.
The evidence was conclusive. 1t
showed cold-blooded. premeditated,
deliberate murder and purpose to de-
stroy the law and by bloodshed to
prevent it's enforcement. There were
men all of one family, all under the
same influence, all assembled at the
same place, all armed with deadly
weapons and all at the same instant
sending volleys of bullets into the
bodies of the conservators of the law
and the representatives of the peace
and dignity of the commonwealth of
Virginia.
We congratulate Virginia; we con-
gratulate the county of Wythe on the
jury of her men who stood for the
State against the murderous and vio-
lent spirit that would defy the State
and trample her laws and destroy her
officers. We congratulate the good
and quiet and law-abiding people who
are the vast majority in Carroll coun-
ty that stain has been wiped off
their long and honorable history by
this verdict, brought by the courage
and manhood of Carroll men who
went to Wytheville to give their
evidence.
Giving the Aliens credit for cour-
age and fortitude and manhood, the
fact that they undertook to make law
for themselves regardless of the law
made for and obeyed by their fellow
citizens must be remembered. 1t
must be remembered, too, that they
set themselves to defy the common
wealth, which is the people, that in
doing so they put to death cruelty
the chosen representatives and Off
GERS of State and people. Therefore
they must suffer penalties; therefore
some of them must die, not for ven
geance, but for vindication of the law
and the State that makes the law and
is charged with the execution of it.
The punishment is taerrible. 1t ought
to be so. These people are ruined
and scattered, the very bowers of
their flock in Jail awaiting felon's
deaths or stripes, their property gone,