"As the greatest authorities of the law have written, in the organization of society the individual never surrenders all of his rights. He retains for ever and inalienably, after all his delegations to society and the law, a residuum of power for his own. He retains under the great and supreme law of all life, that sweet, that divine privilege, his _chance_ to succeed, his _chance_ to survive! No tyranny, no oppression, can overcome that sweetest and strongest of all the Anglo-Saxon's coveted rights. Instead, he has ever risen against the law, when that law has demanded of him this last, this ultimate and inalienable right, this principle under which he has builded the civilization of the world. "In defiance of statute laws grown weak and impotent, the barons at Runnymede wrested Magna Charta from King John; in defiance of statute laws grown weak and impotent, the free men of England wrested their Habeas Corpus Act from King Charles; in defiance of statute laws grown weak and impotent, the colonists of America wrested a virgin empire from King George. "And, please God, in defiance of statute laws grown weak and impotent, the white man will wrest from whatsoever hand may hold it, the right to protect the integrity of his race, the safety of his women, the sanctity of his two-fold temple of the law! "I therefore submit to you that a sacred exigency demanded the action of this prisoner, of these prisoners; and I submit that this prisoner at the bar is innocent before the law. But beyond that I add my plea, with that of this honorable court, and of these gentlemen, that one day we may have given to us an image of the Law which we may venerate in letter and in spirit, and a law capable of its own enforcement. "As I stand before you, gentlemen, this prisoner, this cause, its feeble advocate, seem small and inconsiderable. But at my side I see arising the eternal pillars of the temple of the White Justice. Do you not see them, rising solemn and stately before you, those pillars, their heads taking hold upon the heavens? If that temple has been defiled, if it has been cast down, then let us hope that South and North will restore it again in its full majesty. And when, finally, aided, as we hope, by our brothers of the North, we, as citizens of an ofttimes mistaken, yet eventually to be united America, shall have builded this renewed temple of the law, then the lives of the white men of this state will be--like ours joined in this trial before you--free pledge that the men of this country, so long charged with lawlessness, shall come and bow in that temple in reverence of that law which they have always coveted and which they covet here to-day. Your Honor, and gentlemen of the jury, in the face of that statement, I say that not Calvin Blount--nor any one of these prisoners--has violated the law. And so I close with the words of the ancient form of pleading: Of this we do indeed put ourselves upon the country."