Mr. President, when I think of the punishment itself I am astonished that a people of such culture could be so intellectually refined in their cruelty as to invent this most awful, this most cruel means of torturing a fellow creature. Why can you not kill outright? Why can you not spill my heart's blood? Why can you not shred my flesh, and grind my bones to atoms, rather than let a living, conscious creature float away, away to that awful desert of space that is so vast, that the greatest and the most enlightened mind among you cannot conceive where it begins, and knows not where it ends? Think but of the thoughts of your victim, who will float about for years and years, unable to live as he should live, yet unable to die. And while you are not asked to alter your laws for one so mean and humble as I am, I pray that in justice to yourselves, as a nation, you will obliterate this terribly cruel punishment from your so-called book of justice which is alike a disgrace to humanity, and to the intelligence with which humanity has been endowed by the Creator.
