Lucifers Trials

Various coverages of the founders legal persecutions over the years. The first letter
is what led to the beginning of the legal controversies, which lasted over two decades.

Another “Awful Letter” – W.G. Markland, 6/18/1886

[Dudes, prudes, and statute moralists had better not read this letter.—ED.]

Today’s mail brought me a letter from a dear lady friend, from which I quote and query: “About a year ago
F— gave birth to a babe, and was severely torn by the use of instruments in incompetent hands. She has
gone through three operations, and all failed. I brought her home and had doctors operate on her, and she
was getting along nicely until last night, when her husband came down, forced himself into her bed, and the
stitches were torn from her healing flesh, leaving her in a worse condition than ever. I don’t know what to do.”
Now, Searlites: “Laws are made for the protection of life, person, and property.” Will you point to a law that
will punish this brute? Was his conduct illegal? The marriage license was a permit of the people at large, given
by their agent, for this man and woman—a mere child—to marry. Marry for what? Business? That he may
have a housekeeper? He could legally have hired her for that. Save one thing, is there anything a man and
woman can do for each other which they may not legally do without marrying? Is not that one thing copulation?
Does the law interfere in any other relations of service between the sexes? What is rape? Is it not coition with
a woman by force, not having a legal right? Can there be legal rape? Did this man rape his wife? Would it have
been rape had he not been married to her? Does the law protect the person of woman in marriage? Does it
protect her person out of marriage? Does not the question of rape turn on the pivot of legal right, regardless
of consequences? If a man stabs his wife to death with a knife, does not the law hold him for murder? If he
murders her with his penis, what does the law do? If the wife, to protect her life, stabs her husband with a
knife, does the law hold her guiltless? Can a Czar have more absolute power over a subject than a man
has over the genitals of his wife?

Is it not a fearful power? Would a kind, considerate husband feel robbed—feel his manhood emasculated
—if deprived of this legal power? Does the safety of society depend upon a legal right which none but the
coarse, selfish, ignorant, and brutal will assert and exercise? If marriage is a civil contract, has the female
partner a legal right to “twenty-five dollars” of the firm’s money to purchase the civil consent of civilized law
to a civilized dissolution of said contract? Why charge one dollar to get into the show and “twenty-five” to
get out? Why not reverse it? Does “conjugal fidelity” depend upon a “Be it enacted”? Do chastity, honor,
truth, love, justice, honesty, purity depend upon “an act to define, regulate, and enforce” said virtues? “If
love is taken as the only guide, there will be no trouble,” says A. J. S. Is there any necessity, then, in such
cases, of a legal guide? If the legal bond is recognized, is love the only bond (“guide”)? If there is no “love
guide” in a case, what is the legal guide? Is not consistency a jewel, competency another, honesty another
—another? truthfulness Is a person whose moral horizon is bounded by statute law a safe citizen, entitled to
confidence in preserving the aforesaid jewels? Has freedom gender? Will some archist, or semi-archist,
please tell the mother quoted above, “what to do?”

None – Moses Hull, 3/11/1887

Moses Harman writes us that he and his son have been arrested. They are charged with sending Lucifer
through the U.S. mail, and are undoubtedly guilty. The further charge is made that Lucifer is an obscene
publication. We have read Lucifer for four years without ever having a suspicion that we were reading
obscene literature. Now that we have learned that it is obscene, we shall read it more carefully. The
Harmans have been dragged off to Topeka for trial, and, if power enough can be brought to bear on
the case, will be railroaded through to state prison. The same followers of the “meek and lowly Jesus,”
we understand, are ready to pounce upon Walker as soon as he comes out of jail.

Friend Harman – L.H. Lamaster 3/25/1887

I see that you have been arrested. You are charged with the crime of sending through the mails obscene
literature; you published something obscene in Lucifer. I was glad to hear of your arrest. I hope you may
be imprisoned, and that Lucifer may be suppressed. Christians show only cowardice in not imprisoning
every infidel editor. God is going to damn them all after a while, in hell, and why shouldn’t His followers
begin the good work of damning them in this world. My enemies have so often threatened to imprison me
and to suppress the Iconoclast that I have about concluded that they do not surely mean business. I have,
in my last issue, two woodcuts of the Christians’ pet invention, hell, and the Y.M.C.A. of this godly city tried
to suppress the paper. It was held in the post office here for a week. I knew nothing of its being so held by
any post-office officials for six days. When I found it out, I am inclined to think that our old fossil of a postmaster
thought for a while that a real hell was being raised for a few minutes. Well, the Iconoclast took passage in
the next outgoing mails. The Iconoclast defies all such cowardly organizations as the Y.M.C.A. The imprisonment
of your daughter and Mr. Walker is a disgrace to the State of Kansas. People are not married by courts nor
priests. True marriage can only be consummated by the union of hearts. That can only be done by the parties
themselves. I will have something to say soon in the Iconoclast about your daughter’s and E. C. Walker’s
marriage. I was surprised at Moses Hull’s advice to you to leave Valley Falls. He surely does not want you
to act the coward. My advice to you would be to stay where you are. I don’t believe in showing the white
feather. Of all the people on earth that I fear the least are my enemies. The signs of the times just now
indicate to me a war between Christianity and Liberalism in this country.

It is going to come before fifty years. It will be one, too, of blood. I, for one, do not care how soon it may come,
if come it must. I am as ready now to buckle on my armor to fight for the right as I was twenty-five years ago.
The church is going to retain its power in this country by the sword, if it cannot by moral suasion. It is the great
monopoly today in the United States. The fight will sooner or later come in this country between the church on
one side and the toiling millions on the other. The monopolist, money king, and priest are going to make war
against labor and the muscle of the nation. The hanging of a few poor devils in Chicago for constructive murder
is but the work of the church. Every law now passed by our Congress at Washington is but one more in favor
of the money king and the priest, and against the people. As regards the sending of obscene literature through
the mails, I have this to say: those who make the loudest cry against it are generally the most lewd. I once published
what I called Indianapolis by Gaslight, and I found out that the ones who did not like to see prostitution exposed
were, about all of them, keepers of mistresses and mistresses of married men in this city. Maybe these are the kind
of people in Valley Falls who are persecuting you. You will discover, too, that those who are the most vulgar seem
to be the most opposed to what is called obscene literature. Such people remind me very much of the drunken sot
who always talks and votes in favor of prohibitory liquor laws. I am not in favor of obscene literature, but still I would
favor discreet publications about everything which may concern man’s physical and social welfare. I despise vulgarity
in any form, but a prudent discussion of every organ of the human body should be had in all our public prints. Mrs.
Lake’s manner of dealing with such subjects suits me. There is, after all, nothing in the world so vulgar as ignorance.