The Chickasha daily express. (Chickasha, Indian Territory [Okla.]) 1899-current, 1913-01-10
SENTENCE IMPOSED BY A
COURT OVER 50 YEARS AGO

Capt. g. O. Buchanan furnishes the
Express with a copy OF the Union
Times Of September 25. 1903, publish
ed at Union, South Carolina, in which
IS reproduced from an old newspaper
the remarkable sentence passed by
Judge O'Nenl on Phineas Johnson, ex-
ecuted on Friday, February i3, 1851
The language used by the court was
as follows:
"Phineas Johnson: Young man, how
can l say to you, in the awful Ian
guage Of the inspired prophet. Set thy
house in order fof thou shalt die,
and not liyel Yet it must be done.
You are here, before me now, in the
morning Of life in a few brief days
you win 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 par
don here Your only hope Of pardon
is in the merciful atonement offered
for you and all men, in the broken
body and streaming biood ol Hin who
cried, Father, forgive them, 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 a poor woman, in her
own cabin, in the stiffness Of night
with her nursling at her feet her first
born wrapt in infantile innocent slum-
Der by her side. when hands We're
preparing the scanty portion OF yege-
tables for her and their food, and to
shoot her as wild beast hardly has
parallel in the annals OF crime.
When to this is added, the guilty
wretch who committed 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 a guilty, degraded
being 10 whom beauty was re-
proach, character was infamy and af-
feetion was hatred For YOU, she had
/ left a fathers house and plenty, and
/ had become a dependent on almost
charity for food and covering. To
/ you. she had given the pledges Of her
love in the starving. degraded chill
dren around her. How could You
young man. slay her who had thus
thus given her all to you2 How could
you level your sun at the head, viii i
had often been pillowed, in guilty af
lection upon your bosomg Remem
Der, I beg you to remember, that hel
blood win sink you forever into ever
lasting torments unless you can fec
that mercy, your savior's diving mercy
has removed the guilty weight of i
from your soul
1T is necessary, too, young man
for your own sake and that Of th'
section Of the country tPea Ridge, d
Union District, from which yol
came that it should be said, ! feai
your crime is the consequence Of thl
/ gross immortality and vice which hal
too much there abounded Femat
virtue has there. 7 nm told, lost it,
appropriate value. Seduction is no
regarded as crime and concubin
age is not at all rare or disgraceful
Will you not, as you approach th
gallows, say with me, shame upol
such a state Of thingsl You viii bs
most probably, the first white ma.
! hanged in Union District and feariu
/ win be the commentary Of your fat,
: elln such a state Of morals.
lis it true that YOU and the decea'
4 ed We're once members Of the sam
1 religious community? Can it be the
s you forgot that the weak and Lowell
being at your side, was your sister
: the house Of your Master, and ths
violating her confidence you snatche
a crown OF peace from her head,
place upon it one of shamel Oh.
these things be SO, think upon thei