Republican Compiler (Gettysburg, Pennsylvania)
November 17, 1824
Mr.Joseph White and a lady who resided in the fork of the Coosa and Talapoose,
about half a mile from the Indian line in Alabama, were barbarously
murdered on the 8th of Oct. last, by a party who broke into the house,
and inflicted on Mr. White, ten or twelve wounds. After murdering him,
they set fire to the house, and a woman who had acted as his housekeeper
perished in the flames. A company of twelve men started immediately in
pursuit of the ruffians.
[Submitted by Nancy Piper]
Atheist's
Oath
When Mrs. Emma Marshall was sent to the
penitentiary in Alabama, there to await execution, notions began slowly
to revolve inside her head. She had been convicted of murdering her
husband, because he, lying on his deathbed, had signed a document
asserting that she (his Christian wife) had slain him. What possibility
was there then that she could escape the law's severest penalty? Her
husband was an atheist, remembered Mrs. Marshall; false-swearing by an
atheist, even on a deathbed, promises no future punishment. An atheist
is therefore considered more likely to be a liar than a man who believes
in God. In two states, Arkansas and Maryland, there are provisions by
which an atheist's testimony is non-negotiable in court; any court would
be likely to recognize the logic behind the theory or to be swayed by
the prejudice which exists in the minds of God-fearers against those who
are infidels. Thus Mrs. Marshall prepared last week an appeal to the
Supreme Court based upon the probable falsity of her husband's oath.
Should such an appeal be made successfully,
it would become impossible for U. S. atheists to expect justice at the
hand of the law. It would be theoretically permissible to bait atheists
in the streets, to revile or cast filth upon them, to slaughter them in
shambles, all with impunity. Such a condition would not be welcomed by
U. S. atheists; hence it became their interest to see that Mrs. Emma
Marshall failed in her appeal. Charles Smith, President of the American
Association for the Advancement of Atheism, telegraphed to Attorney
General Charles McCall of Alabama, asking permission to have his
organization represented by lawyers at the trial. Attorney General
McCall intimated that he would grant such permission.
Just whom the atheists would send to their
defence was not quite certain. It did not, however, seem probable that
they would lack legal talent. Clarence S. Darrow was of course their
loudest trump; Arthur Garfield Hays was another attorney in their
lineup. Probably Charles Smith, a demure and smiling infidel, with the
gracious manners of a country clergyman, would be present at the
procedure.
Atheists are hampered
in their activities by the fact that few public personages dare testify
to disbelief in God. Sensation seekers crowd their ranks and an atheist
fanatic is equalled in insane ferocity only by an inflamed revivalist.
Yet leading atheists claim many famous figures as their allies. Such
figures are: Sinclair Lewis, Clement Wood, Clarence Darrow, Freeman
Hopwood, Theodore Dreiser, John Broadus Watson (behaviorism), E.
Haldeman-Julius, A. G. Keller.
[Time
Magazine, Monday, Aug. 20, 1928 - Submitted by K.
Torp]
Governor Bibb Graves of
Alabama last week appointed a Captain Ira B. Thompson to be Prosecuting
Attorney of Crenshaw County. Among the unfinished tasks left by his
predecessor, who died, Prosecutor Ira B. Thompson found before him the
indictment of himself, brought last year by a grand jury for the part he
took in a series of thoroughgoing, nocturnal floggings administered to
Crenshaw County citizens, both white and Negro.
[Time Magazine,
Monday, May. 28, 1928 - Submitted by K.
Torp]
Alabalmy
Taking his share of the
capital and "handsome profit" derived by the sale of the Birmingham
Age-Herald (TIME, March 21) Frederick I. Thompson, publisher of all the
newspapers in Mobile, Ala., last week bought an Evening Times, and
thereby became publisher of all the evening newspapers in his state's
capital, Montgomery. He merged the Evening Times with his Montgomery
Evening Journal. Publisher Thompson's onetime partners in Birmingham,
onetime Governor Braxton Bragg Comer and son Donald Comer, were not
associated with him in the new purchase, their interest in newspapers
having been purely industria-political. Save for one newspaper, the
Montgomery morning Advertiser (owned by Publisher Victor H. Hanson of
the Birmingham News), all the newspapers in Alabama's second and third
largest cities are in the hands of one man. Publisher Thompson's future
looks Alabalmy.
[Time Magazine,
Monday, Apr. 11, 1927 - Submitted by K.
Torp]
Brave John Umbles, Negro, one-time
personal orderly to General John Joseph Pershing, helped save five
people from drowning last summer. Later mean Mr. Umbles murdered his
wife and his sister-in-law. Should Mr. Umbles be hanged by the neck?
"Yes," said the Alabama jury which convicted him of his second murder.
"No," said the Alabama Board of Pardons, which last week recommended
that his death sentence be changed to life imprisonment.
Arthur Brisbane, potent Hearstling,
philosophized: "Fortunate is he who dies at the right time. Had Umbles
lost his life saving the five, he would be enrolled among heroes.
Instead, he will be listed among murderers. . . ."
[Time
Magazine, Monday, Jan. 03, 1927 - Submitted by
K. Torp]
