Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/193

Rh other parts of the country. You point to the cities of New York and Chicago as examples of the insecurity of human life at the North. I admit at once that robbery, and murder for the sake of robbery, are more rare in the South than among the crowded populations of our great centers, and that in this respect a man's life may be safer almost anywhere in Georgia than on certain streets of New York or Chicago after dark. The same may be said comparatively of all great capitals in the world. But the homicides in the South which attract so much attention and produce so baneful an effect are not murders perpetrated by professional thieves who kill men to rifle their wallets; they are homicides occurring among persons whom, in a multitude of cases, your own journals are in the habit of designating as gentlemen, as citizens of respected standing, of good families, belonging to the better classes of society. And these homicides are the result of commonplace troubles, disagreements about business matters, importunities of creditors, social disputes, family feuds, quarrels about a dog or a horse, accidental insults, heated words at a ball or a card table or a church meeting.

The question may be asked whether homicides of that kind are more infamous in character than murders committed for the purpose of robbery, and I answer at once that they are not. But when I am further asked why such homicides should do more harm to your community in the estimation of the world than murders for the purpose of robbery do to ours, the answer is that here the murderer is, as a general thing, condemned by public opinion and hunted down as an infamous criminal and hung, if caught, while the kind of manslaying in the South I speak of is, as a general thing, greatly “deplored,” but at the same time very frequently excused, and almost universally protected against due punishment by morbid public sentiment. In the one case, the law-abiding citizen finds public