South Boston, May 25th, 1849.
Hanging Day!
My Dear Mann: —
If I thought that keeping away from you awhile would bring you to me I should
try the total abstinence plan a few days, but having no faith in it I shall
come after you as soon as I can. It would be much easier, however, to make you
a visit if you lived some hundred or two miles off, rather than so near that
one can run out “at any moment.”
The wind is east, the weather gloomy, my stomach
recalcitrant, and though yesterday I was gay as a lark, I feel now that I could
contest the palm for superiority of depression in the spiritual barometer with
Washington Goode,1 who is to be duly strangled at noon. If killing
or taking life is an evil, did it ever occur to you that the public does wrong
that right may come of it when it takes one life that others may be saved?
However, we have high authority for this, and the great martyr suffered on
Calvary upon this principle.
I have never read anything on capital punishment; that is,
never gave the subject any study. I used to pin much faith on your speech and
opinion, and cling to the old doctrine; but somehow or other my instincts and
sentiments have long made me feel that it was hollow and selfish, and that if
it was ever good for anything the time has long gone by in old Massachusetts.2
I hope to see you soon, and meantime am very faithfully
yours,
S. G. Howe.
_______________
1 A negro homicide.
2 In later life my father's disapproval of
capital punishment became much stronger.
SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and
Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 263-4
No comments:
Post a Comment