Conneaut High School - Tattler Yearbook (Conneaut, OH)

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Salutatory. “OTHER BATTLES” We, the class of nineteen hundred and eight, wish to extend to you a sincere greeting. Conneaut High School belongs to you and it is right and appropriate that you should be interested in what it produces. We appreciate your presence at this function which marks our graduation from school life and our entrance into life’s school. We have reached that goal to which we have been aspiring for the last four years, and are about to sever our connections forever with Conneaut High School. Although meeting many obstacles which we have been compelled to surmount, this period of activity has proven very agreeable. Because of the large membership of the class, it has been deemed advisable to choose representatives from our number. However, this is not made necessary by lack of ability of members; each one is gifted, each possesses individual talents. The deep mind, resulting from long and continuous labor, is prominent in this class as in all previous ones. Perhaps, because we are willing to listen to the opinions so often expressed, and are forced to admit, sometimes harshly and bluntly, to the effect that the experience of the high school graduate does not fit him to advise and instruct the rulers of our community, state, or nation, we will attempt, therefore, to hide our superior knowledge “under a bushel.” History is filled with the record of the lives of great soldiers; of valor and courage displayed on the battlefield; of the privations and sufferings of war, and of the far reaching results of these heart rending struggles ; and yet how briefly have the mighty conflicts of the law, the issues of which were peace or war, been treated. These legal contests have “foreshadowed national crises,” and have, to a considerable degree, determined them. A study of the actions of the courts of our land unfolds an interesting as well as instructive portion of its history and “reveals the political and human forces at work.” Assemblages of men, sworn to judge from facts presented to them and not from individual opinions, are forced to determine momentous questions, and render a verdict which may decide the fate of a nation. It is a deep responsibility to determine the destiny of our fellow man. Our juries, therefore, should be made up of men who are willing to devote the best efforts of their unbiased minds toward a conscientious decision. Among the most essential features of a government “of the people, for the people, and by the people,” freedom of criticism is one of the most prominent. Indeed, monarchy looms up in the background when 9

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this privilege is copied. The servants of the people, our law-makers, are chosen to accomplish the desires of their constituents, and only when empowered to criticise or to applaud may the people see the realization of their hopes. Hut once has Congress attempted to stop the flow of public opinion and divert just criticism from its natural course. Goaded to anger by the spurs of a fault-finding faction, the National Legislature instituted restrictions on the freedom of speech and of the press, possessing striking characteristics for shattering the peace of the newly-formed republic. What a fallacy to presume that the masses are to be silenced by mere laws. No law will close the mouth of a wronged people. After a long and tedious trial, by which one person was convicted, after the enactment of a series of measures which resulted in the downfall of the Federalist party. Congress repealed the obnoxious Alien and Sedition Laws Never again will the American people tolerate the passage of such acts, for they rejoice in their birthright of freedom. Under a minor pretext, seemingly, the people will, at times, rise to defend their rights; but if a careful study is made of the motives which impel them to action, momentous underlying principles are found to be involved. A mere word may flame the sparks of discord to a rebellion. The cases of the United States vs Brown and the United States vs Dred Scott were factors which aroused the commonwealth from legarthy to action, which culminated in the Civil War. Watching the proceedings closely as the days of the trial sped by, the feeling between the North and South became more and more intense. Finally, when convicted of treason, the entire country had been fully aroused, and the Union had suffered a wound which only the horrors of a Civil War could heal. “No legal controversy in the United States has ever equalled the Dred Scott case in point of historic interest.” Claiming freedom, resulting from removal of a slave to a free territory, Scott appealed the case to the highest court of the land. But what a shattering to all the hopes of the anti-slavery faction was the decision. The slave was property, the Missouri Compromise illegal, and slavery could exist from border to border of this free land. The North stood aghast, for she understood, as a sequence of this verdict, that the slave holder might walk the streets of Boston as freely as those of Richmond ; but the South was jubilant, for the slavery faction would inevitably be strengthened. But an irreparable breach had separated the two, and soon brother was fighting against brother, and father against son. On March 30th 1868 the “greatest state trial in the history of our country” was about to be tried, when Andrew Johnson for high crimes and misdemeanors was brought before the .Senate of the United .States. By the work of an assassin, the one man, capable of carrying out the problems of reconstruction, had been removed, and the duties of the office 10