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![handle is hein.slavery/wstpomb0001 and id is 1 raw text is:
THE WEST POINT MOB.
[BY G-- ER3:RMIT SMITII],
Nothing else is so frightful as a mob-that many.
headed monster, whose every head refuses to be controlled.
Mobs and their dramshop inspiration threaten the ruin of
our country. Ours is emphatically the country of mobs.
Slavery made it such. All over the laud lawless slavery was
served by lawless mobs, until in 1861 came the crowning
mob. Well may the Rebellion be called such, since all the
worst elements or features of mobocracy characterized it.
The Rebellion was simply slavery-in-arms; and slavery-in-
arms is, like every other great mob, hell-broke-loose. Slavery
has passed away-but its spirit still lingers amongst us, and
still with the help of the dramshop, manifests itself inmobs.
Every day we hear of them in one and another part of the
Southern States-and they are often naked murders on a
large scale. Not unfrequently to we hear of them in the
Northern States also. But whether the mobs be at the
South or at the North, the pro-slavery education of the
country goes far to account for them. The mobs, occurring
now and then at West Point, are to be counted neither as
Southern nor Northern, but as strictly national-the mobo-
crats in these instances being supported, educated, owned by
the nation. Neither Noithern nor Southern mobs, however,
partake more largely than do these of the spirit of slavery.
The recent mob at West Point will, if honestly traced to
its sources, be found, I have little doubt, to be especially the
product of that caste-spirit, which grows so rankly out of
slavery. The mob flattered itself that to get rid of its three
young victims upon the charge of lying would facilitate the
getting rid of the brave colored cadet against whom a simi-
lar charge is trumped up. That this mob was prompted by
high and honorable motives is a mere pretense. Its affecta-
tion of a patriotic, not to say pious concern for the cause of
truth is silly and impudent to the last degree. Of what, at
the worst, were any of the lads guilty ? Of nothing more
than one of those petty dissemblings, which occur in nearly
all schools, and which, as they proceed from no ill will, are
mildly dealt with. But the lying of which these men-grown
mobocrats were guilty- especially in reporting as deserters
those, whom they had themselves kidnapped-was not slight-
ly wicked, and was also exceedingly heartless and cruel.
In mitigation of the crime of the kidnappers it is said that
they were guilty of no violence upon the persons of their
victims. The highwayman has seldom occasion to shoot.
Simply holding a pistol to his ear suffices, in most cases, to
bring the remonstrant to terms, and produce the surrender
of his purse. So, too, the fear of what might follow from
their venturing to resist the ruffians was enough to make the
poor terrified boys submissive and silent. They knew not
what fate awaited them. But they feared the worst at the
hands of a gang of men who could take them from their beds
and walk them, thinly clad, through the midnight cold, and
threaten them, as they went, with tar and feathers. Men,
circumstanced as were these lads, (two of them but seventeen
years old and the other only nineteen) might have been able
to control their fears, but these dear children could not. I
hear that they were not without the fear that they might be
hung upon the next tree. It is no small crime to inspire a
person, and especially a youthful and therefore timid one,
with the fear of being murdered. All the time he fears mur-
der he undergoes murder.
It is, however, alleged that the mobocrats showed their
kindness toward the boys in giving them money to help them
on their unknown way. But this giving money to them, af-
ter having reduced them to straits in which they were com-
pelled to submit to the humiliation of accepting it at the
hands of their kidnappers, was the crowning insult.
Many will be the unhappy effects on the outraged lads of
the crime perpetrated against them. One will be the spirit
of revenge it must necessarily breed and nourish in
their hearts. Think you that they will ever forgive their
kidnappers? Think you that their parents will? They will,
of course, have them punished by the Courts, and, I trust,
severely. But that will not suffice to atone for an injury so
deep. The revenge will still remain unsatisfied, and will still
be calling for retaliation.
The Government has been talking upon this matter of the
West Point mob. We have become impatient for its action
upon it. Will its action be as thorough and decisive as the
case demands ? Government has been so dilatory and hesi-
tant in regard to Southern mobs, that we fear it does not
dare to grapple with this West Point mob. Southern mobs,
because the Government has borne so patiently, if not in-
deed so pusillanimously with them, have brought the country
to the eve of another civil war. The blood of the thousands
slain by these mobs has pleaded in vain ; the terrors of the
living have shrieked in vain; the claim to the whole military
power of the nation, if need be, to protect the Union blacks
and Union whites, who have put their trust in the good
faith of the nation, has been urged in vain. Government still
shrinks from encountering these mobs-perhaps from fear,
perhaps from what is baser, political party calculations.
God forbid that Government should delay longer to strike
for the salvation of the South from mobs! Added to the
conclusive reasons for striking now is the present opportunity
afforded to Government to testify its impartiality and con-
sistency. Thus it will testify if it suppresses its own mob-
ruled school. Let it not delay to stamp out the pro-slavery
mob spirit at West Point. To do this effectually, it must
stamp out the Academy itself-f-or that spirit, ever fostered
in the Academy, inheres in it ineradicably. That spirit trained
traitors to officer the Great Rebellion; and the Academy, as
long-as it shall be permitted to live- will train enemies to re-
publican simplicity and traitors to republican institutions.
I referred to the colored cadet. A very remarkably self-
possessed and high-souled youth must he be if he is not
driven to rage and even to insanity by the cruel and malig-
nant treatment he receives on account of his connexion with
the proscribed and despised race. The pro-slavery caste.
spirit, which reigns at West Point, forbids all social inter.
course with him. So much as speaking to him would work
the forfeiture of the respect and companionship of every
white cadet. Is this a school, which the friends of equal
rights-the friends of justice and fair play--should longer be
taxed to support? No !-it is a school to be indignantly and
instantly broken up. Government cannot continue this school
without alienating from itself the best portion of the American
people-that portion whose moral power is indispensable to
its successful administration.
Obviously the first work of Government is not to enlarge
our territory either at the South or at the North-but to
govern thoroughly, and, where need be, with an iron hand,
our present territory. Hence, both the Federal Government
and the State Governments are without delay to put an end
to mobs and to turn our lawless land into a land of law, that
so person and property shall be no longer at the mercy of
mobs or any other kindred forms of lawless violence.
But it will be asked-how then, if our national military
school is broken up, shall we be able to teach our sons the
art of war ? To the extent that such teaching is necessary,
schools for imparting it will spring up, all over the land. Our
colleges will provide a military department, whose pupils,
instead of being the proud, arrogant and tyrannical young
men into which West Point moulds so large a share of its
scholars, will bear themselves as modestly as the pupils of
their other departments. Very unlike in spirit will they be
to a large share of the young men, who are made exclusive
and haughty by belonging to the only national military school.
I close with saying that the genius of our institutions requires
that Government be permitted to do nothing that the people
can do, and that the people be left free to do all they can do.
Let the people all over the country be left to educate in
schools of generous rivalry with each other the defenders of
their whole country; and let this West Point school so pro-
lific of tyrants and ruffians be suppressed, and this far worse
than useless drain upon the treasury be stopped.
PETE BORO March 13 1871.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.slavery/wstpomb0001&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)