776 Page – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

Here is the translated text as follows:

744 X. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS

Victims, or that the sword of the law should fall until it is clogged with massacre. Antonio Ferrer is plainly but a servant. He is listed as a free black in the ship’s papers, but that is no proof that he is free. Were he a slave, he would, in all probability, be represented as free, and this for obvious reasons. He is, in all likelihood, a slave and a native African, as the tattooing on his face proves beyond a doubt. At any rate, he is but a servant. Now, will you make misfortune pay the penalty of guilt? Do not, I entreat you, lightly condemn this man to death. Do not throw him in to make up the dozen. The regard for human life is one of the most prominent proofs of a civilized state of society.

The Sultan of Turkey may place women in sacks and throw them into the Bosphorus without exciting more than an hour’s additional conversation at Constantinople. But in our country, it is different. You well remember the excitement produced by the abduction and death of a single individual; the convulsion which ensued, the effect of which will long be felt in our political institutions. You will ever find that the more a nation becomes civilized, the greater becomes the regard for human life. There is, in the eye, the form, and the heaven-directed countenance of man, something holy that forbids he should be rudely touched.

The instinct of life is great. The light of the sun, even in chains, is pleasant; and life, though supported only by the damp exhalations of a dungeon, is desirable. Often, too, we cling with added tenacity to life in proportion as we are deprived of all that makes existence coveted.

“The weariest and most loathed worldly life,
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on Nature, is a Paradise
To that we fear of Death.”

Death is a fearful thing. The mere mention of it sometimes blanches the cheek and sends the fearful blood to the heart. It is a solemn thing to break into the “bloody house of life.” Do not, because this man is but an African, imagine that his existence is valueless. He is no driftweed on the sea of life.