A War For Public Opinion
There were a great deal of external concerns interested in the case of the young Methodist girl who had been employed at the Fall River Manufactory. For one, New England Protestantism was suspicious of the encroachment of the comparatively new sect of Methodism, and the trial seemed to confirm their worst fears. Another was the 19th century American industrialists whose cotton mills relied on the labor of young, newly independent women. The case of Sarah Cornell cast into doubt the industrialists' assertion that women would be as safe in the factories as they were working at home with their families.
It was therefore in the interest of the factory-owners to keep Cornell from being smeared in the press, and to push for the arrest and conviction of her murderer. Conversely, the Methodist Church wanted to earn respectability and make converts, and wanted to avoid at all costs a criminal and sexual scandal involving one of its own ministers. Consequently, both of these groups contributed a great deal of effort, money and publicity to the trial, for either the prosecution's side or the defense.
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“Public opinion contains all kinds of falsity and truth, but it takes a great man to find the truth in it. The great man of the age is the one who can put into words the will of his age, tell his age what its will is, and accomplish it. What he does is the heart and the essence of his age, he actualizes his age. The man who lacks sense enough to despise public opinion expressed in gossip will never do anything great.”
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