Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 April 1896 — Charlotte Corday. [ARTICLE]

Charlotte Corday.

A memorable woman stands upon the scaffold, not this time in whijte, but in the red smock of the murderess. It is Charlotte Corday, born d’Armans; and she has killed Marat. If ever murder were justifiable, it was this assassination. The sternest moralist cannot refrain from admiring this high-souled, undaunted girl; for the murder that she committed is elevated far above an ordinary crime. She was impelled neither by lust of gain, nor by jealousy, nor by ordinary hate; and she only slew a monster in order to save unhappy France from wholesale slaughter. Shortly before his end, Marat had screeched a demand for 2,500 victims at Lyons, for 3,000 at Marseilles, for 28,000 at Paris, and for even 300,000 in Brittany and in Calvados. No wonder that Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and Robespierre went to see this extraordinary and most resolute young woman, whose motive had drugged her conscience, and who neither denied her act nor sought to escape its consequences. She was beheaded at 7:30 in the July summer evening. Calmeyed and composed she went to death, but she turned pale for a moment when first she caught sight of the guillotine. “I killed one man to save a hundred thousand, a villain to save Innocents, a savage wild beast to give repose to my country.” Never has murder found so noble an excuse; and she was only 25. After the execution, the manhood of the Jacobin tyrants caused the headsman and his valets “de rechercher sur les restes encore chauds de Charlotte les traces de vice, dont les calomniateurs voulaient la fletrir. On ne constata que la purete de son corps dans cette profanation de la beaute et de la mort.”—The Quarterly Review.