in asserting that the evidence before you,
gentlemen, is of a sufficient character to justify the
conviction of the defendant. The case is so plain that it seems
like arguing an axiom to discuss it. I will not impugn the
intelligence of this jury by a review of the evidence in so
plain a case. But knowing the deadening miasma of race
prejudice that hangs over, envelops and stifles us so often, I
shall dwell briefly upon the nature of the crime committed by
the defendant.

"A Negro, acting upon that instinct of self-preservation that
ramifies all nature, shot down his would-be murderer, no other
course save the surrender of his life being open to him. Have
we gone back to the days of the cannibal kings, when it was
deemed a virtue for a subject to lay down his life to satisfy a
whim of his master? Have we, the proud Anglo-Saxon race, fallen
so low that we are to ask that the Negro meekly lay down in our
pathway, while we enjoy the pleasant sport of boring holes
through his body? If this is not what we mean, how do you
account for that writhing form, the form of that Negro, whose
only offense was that he sought to preserve from the violence
of man a life granted unto him by his Maker?

"And now I come to the crowning horror of the ages. Our poets
have sung in loftiest strains of the devotion of woman.

"A Negro wife, true to that impulse of the woman's heart that
has made this old world worth living in, that has taught men
that the fireside is worth dying for, that
impulse--devotion to a loved one in distress, led that
girl to journey by her husband's side through bog and swamp,
bearing up bravely under the scorching heat of the sun and
wilting not in the dead of night amid the gloom of the beast
infested forest.

"Ah! gentlemen, that girl deserved better of us than what we
gave her. And I declare unto you that as the ages roll by, the
people of the earth are going to make of those cruel flames
that wrapped themselves about her nude body a fiery chariot of
glory to carry the blessed memory of her devotion from age to
age.

[Illustration: "'Is it a crime for me, one of your sons, to invoke
loyalty to the national constitution? If so, I commit
that crime.'"
(174-175.)]