29 April 1871 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS and transcript: DLC and New York Tribune, 3 May 71,
UCCL 00607 and UCCL 13027)
I have written this thing1explanatory note for an object—which is, to make people talk about & look at, & presently entertain the idea of commuting Rulloff’s penalty.2explanatory note
The last paragraph (as magnificently absurd as it so is,) is what I depend on to start the talk at every breakfast table in the land—& then the talk will drift into all the different ramifications of this case & first thing they know, they will discover that a regret is growing up in their souls that such a the man is going to be hung. If the talk gets started once, that is sufficient—they’ll all talk, pretty soon, & then the acting will come easily & naturally.
The last paragraph of the article is bully.Ⓐemendation Silly as it is, nobody can read it without a startle, or without having to stop & think, before deciding whether the thing is possible or not.
Now if you don’t want this or can’t print it now, I wish you would re-mail it to me, for I want to print it somewhere. Don’t comment on it, unless you’d like to back up this brave r Redeemer for Science.
enclosure:
To the Editor of The Tribune.
Sir: I believe in capital punishment. I believe that when a murder has been done it should be answered for with blood. I have all my life been taught to feel in this way, &Ⓐemendation the fetters of education are strong. The fact that the death law is rendered almost inoperative by its very severity does not alter my belief in its righteousness. The fact that in England the proportion of executions to condemnations is only one to 16, & in this country only one to 22, & in France only one to 38, does not shake my steadfast confidence in the propriety of retaining the death penalty. It is better to hang one murderer in 16, 22, or 38, than not to hang any at all.3explanatory note
Feeling as I do, I am not sorry that Rulloff is to be hanged, but I am sincerely sorry that he himself has made it necessary that his vast capabilities for usefulness should be lost to the world. In this, mine & the public’s is a common regret. For it is plain that in the person of Rulloff one of the most marvelous intellects that any age has produced is about to be sacrificed, & that, too, while half the mystery of its strange powers is yet a secret. Here is a man who has never entered the doors of a college or a university, & yet, by the sheer might of his innate gifts has made himself such a colossus in abstruse learning that the ablest of our scholars are but pigmies in his presence. By the evidence of Prof. Mather, Mr. Surbridge, Mr. Richmond, & other men qualified to testify, this man is as familiar with the broad domain of philology as common people are with the passing events of the day. His memory has such a limitless grasp that he is able to quote sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph, & chapter after chapter, from a gnarled & knotty ancient literature that ordinary scholars are capable of achieving a little more than a bowing acquaintance with. But his memory is the least of his great endowments. By the testimony of the gentlemen above referred to, he is able to critically analyze the works of the old masters of literature, & while pointing out the beauties of the originals with a pure & discriminating taste, is as quick to detect the defects of the accepted translations; & in the latter case, if exceptions be taken to his judgment, he straightway opens up the quarries of his exhaustless knowledge & builds a very Chinese wall of evidence around his position.4explanatory note Every learned man who enters Rulloff’s presence leaves it amazed & confounded by his prodigious capabilities & attainments. One scholar said he did not believe that in the matters of subtle analysis, vast knowledge in his peculiar field of research, comprehensive grasp of subject & serene kingship over its limitless & bewildering details, any land or any era of modern times had given birth to Rulloff’s intellectual equal.5explanatory note What miracles this murderer might have wrought, & what luster he might have shed upon his country if he had not put a forfeit upon his life so foolishly! But what if the law could be satisfied, &Ⓐemendation the gifted criminal still be saved. If a life be offered up on the gallows to atone for the murder Rulloff did, will that suffice? If so, give me the proofs, for, in all earnestness & truth, I aver that in such a case I will instantly bring forward a man who, in the interests of learning & science, will take Rulloff’s crime upon himself, & submit to be hanged in Rulloff’s place. I can, & will do this thing; & I propose this matter, & make this offer in good faith. You know me, & know my address.
———, April 29, 1871. Samuel Langhorne.
on back of letter as folded: Whitelaw Ree id Esq
Clemens enclosed the manuscript (now lost) of a letter to the Tribune, which published it on 3 May, under the heading “A Substitute for Rulloff. Have We a Sydney Carton among Us?” (SLC 1871). The Tribune printing supplies the text of the enclosure printed here.
On 11 January 1871, Edward Howard Ruloff (1819–71) was convicted of murdering a clerk during the burglary of a Binghamton, New York, dry goods store. He was sentenced to hang. Ruloff’s trial and subsequent appeals—among them a tumultuous 5 April appearance in Elmira before the New York Supreme Court—revealed his thirty years of crime, including the murder of his own wife and child, all of which was widely reported in the newspapers. Much attention was also given to Ruloff’s scholarly bent. He was an amateur medical practitioner and a self-taught lawyer who had regularly defended himself and his accomplices. He was also a professed linguist devoted to the completion of his treatise on “Method in the Formation of Language,”which he had been subsidizing for years with the proceeds of his crimes. On 15 May 1871, the governor of New York turned down a last appeal for commutation of the death penalty and Ruloff was executed on 18 May (New York Times: “Edward Rulloff, Philologist and Murderer,” “Verdict of the Jury,” 12 Jan 71, 4, 8; “Rulloff,” 23 Jan 71, 1; “Rulloff Doomed,” 6 Apr 71, 5; Washington Morning Chronicle: “An Accomplished Criminal,” 17 Jan 71, 3; New York Herald: “Rulloff, the Murderer,” 13 May 71, 5, 17 May 71, 7; “Rulloff’s Race Run,” “Rulloff’s Last Crime,” 19 May 71, 3; New York Tribune: “Ruloff Hanged,” 19 May 71, 1, 8; Wilson and Pitman, 473–74).
Clemens’s enclosure was in part an answer to the Tribune’s 25 April editorial opposing the death penalty for Ruloff:
A man in this disordered state of mind is dangerous to the public peace, and should not be permitted to remain at large. But nothing is to be gained by killing him. He should be treated like any other violent madman, and confined under close and merciful surveillance. With his great power of application and method, he might be made of great use in the administration of a prison or an insane asylum, and a liberal portion of his time should be allowed him to develop his scheme of universal philology. (“What Should Be Done with Ruloff?” 4)
The source of Clemens’s comparative statistics about executions remains unidentified.
Richard Henry Mather (1834–90) was a professor of Greek and German at Amherst College and a lecturer on the Boston Lyceum Bureau’s 1870–71 roster (Lyceum 1870, 3). After visiting Ruloff in prison, Mather told the Springfield (Mass.) Republican that Ruloff had said that
many of the classical authors he knew by heart, and would try and repeat portions if I would suggest where he should begin. Thinking that something from the Memorabilia might be appropriate to his present needs, I suggested the third chapter, first book, where the sentiments of Socrates with reference to God and duty in their purity and exaltation approach so nearly to Biblical revelation; and he at once gave me the Greek. Other parts of the same work, as well as the Iliad of Homer and some of the plays of Sophocles, he showed great familiarity with. Then, in order to show his thoroughness, he criticised the common rendering of certain passages, and he did it with such subtlety and discrimination and elegance as to show that his critical study of these nicer points was more remarkable than his powers of memory; in fact I should say that subtlety of analysis and reasoning was the marked characteristic of his mind. (“Rulloff, the Murderer,” New York Times, 23 Apr 71, 1)
Hiram Lawton Richmond (1810–85) studied medicine with his father. In 1834–35 he attended Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, but took no degree. He then studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1838. He practiced at this time in Meadville and would soon be elected as a Republican to the Forty-third Congress (1873–75). The New York Times touched upon his connection with the Ruloff case in an editorial of 25 January 1871: “There is, however, some little danger that this interesting felon may impose upon the public pretty much as he imposed upon MR. Richmond, of Meadville, Penn., with his conchological knowledge about the spondylus spinosus, and his anatomical talk about the zygomatic process, and the lambdoidal suture” (“Recreations of a Murderer,” 4). Surbridge has not been identified.
The source of these remarks remains unidentified.
MS is copy-text for ‘Elmira . . . Clemens.’ (382.6–383.13) Tribune is copy-text for ‘To . . . Langhorne.’ (383.15–384.29)
Copy-text for the letter is MS, Whitelaw Reid Papers, Library of Congress (DLC); copy-text for the enclosure is “A Substitute for Rulloff,” New York Tribune, 3 May 71, 2.
L4 , 382–86; none known for the letter; MTB , 3:1628–29, for the enclosure, which, according to Albert Bigelow Paine, was widely copied although its author was never explicitly identified ( MTB , 1:437).
The Whitelaw Reid Papers (part of the Papers of the Reid Family) were donated to DLC between 1953 and 1957 by Helen Rogers Reid (Mrs. Ogden Mills Reid). The MS of the enclosure is not known to survive.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.