I suppose you all realize that as members of the court marshall for the trial of the conspirators in the assassination of our belo...ved president you have on your souls a grave responsibility. The object of this trial is not to determine the guilt or innocence of a handful of rebels but to save this country from further bloodshed. The solemn truth, gentlemen, is that the federal union is on the verge of hysteria. That is why the trial of these conspirators has been placed in your hands rather than in a civil court. Because men of the sword can be hard, and hardness is all that can save this country from riot, mob rule, even resumption of the war itself.... To help you to be hard, first, you must not allow your judgement in decision in this case to be troubled by any trifling technicalities of the law or any pedantic regard for the customary rules of evidence. Second, and most important, you must not allow yourself to be influenced by that obnoxious creation of legal nonsense--reasonable doubt.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In 1694 a law was passed "that every settler who deserted a town for fear of the Indians should forfeit all his rights therein." B...ut now, at any rate, as I have frequently observed, a man may desert the fertile frontier territories of truth and justice, which are the State's best lands, for fear of far more insignificant foes, without forfeiting any of his civil rights therein. Nay, townships are granted to deserters, and the General Court, as I am sometimes inclined to regard it, is but a deserters' camp itself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We went on, feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the soldier, binding up his wounds, harboring the stranger, ...visiting the sick, ministering to the prisoner, and burying the dead, until that blessed day at Appomattox Court House relieved the strain.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I prefer an income tax, but the truth is I am afraid of the discussion which will follow and the criticism which will ensue if the...re is an other division in the Supreme Court on the subject of the income tax. Nothing has injured the prestige of the Supreme Court more than that last decision, and I think that many of the most violent advocates of the income tax will be glad of the substitution in their hearts for the same reasons. I am going to push the Constitutional amendment, which will admit an income tax without questions, but I am afraid of it without such an amendment.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Some men are judges, these August days, sitting on benches, even till the court rises; they sit judging there honorably, between t...he seasons and between meals, leading a civil, politic life, arbitrating ... it may be, from highest noon until the red vesper sinks into the west. The fisherman, meanwhile, stands in three feet of water, under the same summer's sun, arbitrating in other cases between muck-worm and shiner, amid the fragrance of water-lilies, mint, and pontederia, leading his life many rods from the dry land, within a pole's length of where the larger fishes swim. Human life is to him very much like a river.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I do not wish to believe that the courts were made for fair weather, and for very civil cases merely; but think of leaving it to a...ny court in the land to decide whether more than three millions of people, in this case a sixth part of a nation, have a right to be freemen or not! But it has been left to the courts of justice, so called,--to the Supreme Court of the land,--and, as you all know, recognizing no authority but the Constitution, it has decided that the three millions are and shall continue to be slaves. Such judges as these are merely the inspectors of a pick- lock and murderer's tools, to tell him whether they are in working order or not, and there they think that their responsibility ends.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is my contention that civil disobedients are nothing but the latest form of voluntary association, and that they are thus quite... in tune with the oldest traditions of the country.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is all the difference in the world between the criminal's avoiding the public eye and the civil disobedient's taking the law... into his own hands in open defiance. This distinction between an open violation of the law, performed in public, and a clandestine one is so glaringly obvious that it can be neglected only by prejudice or ill will.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Twist was a guided missile, launched from the ghetto into the very heart of suburbia. The Twist succeeded, as politics, religi...on, and law could never do, in writing in the heart and soul what the Supreme Court could only write on the books.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »