Address to the Jury in U.S. v. Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~5,680 words · 27 passages
Cite this work
- APAEmma Goldman. (n.d.). Address to the Jury in U.S. v. Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/emma-goldman/address-to-the-jury-in-u-s-v-emma-goldman-and-alexander-berkman
- MLAEmma Goldman. Address to the Jury in U.S. v. Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/emma-goldman/address-to-the-jury-in-u-s-v-emma-goldman-and-alexander-berkman.
- ChicagoEmma Goldman. Address to the Jury in U.S. v. Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/emma-goldman/address-to-the-jury-in-u-s-v-emma-goldman-and-alexander-berkman.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
What Goldman said to the jury trying her, in 1917, for campaigning against conscription.
Context and history
One of the great addresses in American judicial history: it does not ask for acquittal, it defends the right to oppose war. They were convicted anyway — two years in prison, then deportation — and the speech outlived the verdict. This is a short article, not a book: its size in the catalogue is no defect of the copy. Much of Goldman's work took this form, in her magazine Mother Earth and in pamphlets.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
Your Government is allied with the French Republic. Need I call your attention to the historic fact that the great upheaval in France was brought about by extra-legal means? The Dantes, the Robespierres, the Marats, the Herberts, aye even the man who is responsible for the most stirring revolutionary music, the Marseillaise (which unfortunately has deteriorated into a war tune) even Camille Desmoulins, were never within the law. But for those great pioneers and rebels, France would have continued under the yoke of the idle Louis XVI., to whom the sport of shooting jack rabbits was more important than the destiny of the people of France. Ah, gentlemen, on the very day when we were being tried for conspiracy and overt acts, your city officials and representatives welcomed with music and festivities the Russian Commission. Are you aware of the fact that nearly all of the members of that Commission have only recently been released from exile? The ideas they propagated were never within the law. For nearly a hundred years, from 1825 to 1917, the Tree of Liberty in Russia was watered by the blood of her martyrs. No greater heroism, no nobler lives had ever been dedicated to humanity. Not one of them worked within the law. I could continue to enumerate almost endlessly the hosts of men and women in every land and in every period whose ideas and ideals redeemed the world because they were not within the law. Never can a new idea move within the law. It matters not whether that idea pertains to political and social changes or to any other domain of human thought and expression--to science, literature, music; in fact, everything that makes for freedom and joy and beauty must refuse to move within the law. How can it be otherwise? The law is stationary, fixed, mechanical, "a chariot wheel" which grinds all alike without regard to time, place and condition, without ever taking into account cause and effect, without ever going into the complexity of the human soul.…