[justify]They got them from Leo Frank?s statement to the jury, and Frank, of course, got them from his lawyers. Frank told the jury he saw the cinders when he examined the corpse at the morgue, whereas, the witnesses all swore that he shrank away from the sight of the girl, and never looked at her face at all.
Frank?s words were:
?Mr. Gheesling * * * took the head in his hands, turned it over, put his finger exactly on the wound on the left side of the head; I noticed the hands and arms of the little girl were very dirty?blue and ground with dirt and cinders, the nostrils and mouth?the mouth being open?nostrils and mouth just full, full of sawdust and swollen.
?After looking at the girl, I identified her as the one that had been up after noon the previous day and got her money from me.? (Pages 202 and 203, Official Brief)
Here was the corpse of a girl whom he had claimed not to know; it had undergone a frightful change since the noon before; the face was swollen out of its natural proportions; it was discolored with dirt and congested blood; the mouth was wide open in ghastly disfiguration?and yet he told the jury that he identified this corpse as that of the girl who had come to him the day before.
Even her chums had some difficulty in recognizing her, and it was her hair that enabled them to do it!
?I knew her by her hair,? swore her work-companion, Miss Grace Hicks. (Page 15)
W.H. Gheesling, who turned the girl?s face so that Frank could see it, testified that he did not know whether Frank looked at it! The officers swore that he did not. No witness said that her mouth was open, but everyone said the tongue protruded through the teeth. Not a single witness said that there were any cinders on her tongue, on her nose, in her nose, in her mouth, or under her nails. ?Some dirt? was found under her nails, just as some can be found under those of all persons who are not very careful of their hands.
Mr. I.U. Kauffman was put up by Frank?s lawyers to prove the condition of the basement at the time of the crime. He said, ?The floor of the basement is dirt and ashes. The trash-pile is 57 feet from where the body was found. There are ashes and cinders along the walk in the basement.?
No witness swore to any pile of cinders, pile of ashes, pile of sawdust, bank of cinders or anything else in which a person could held face downward and smothered. Absolutely no evidence of that sort is in the record.
How could anybody crush a girl?s face into cinders, or ashes, or trash, and not leave evidences of such a crime in the cinders, in the ashes, in the trash and in the girl?s face?
All the witnesses said there were no bruises or even scratches on the child?s nose, but were on the eye, where she had been struck, and on her side-face, where she had been dragged over the dirt floor.
And why would anybody need a cinder pile, when they had the horrible cord tied fast and tight around her neck?
No! Frank?s lawyers invented the banks and piles of cinders; and Frank merely repeated what he told them; but the jury could not disregard the sworn testimony of Gheesling, Doctors Harris and Hurt, Sergeant Dobbs, I.U. Kauffman and other disinterested witnesses.
Connolly proceeds:
?There was not an ounce of cinders on the second floor, where Conley said he found her dead. The upper floors were swept clean every day. There were some strands of loose hair found on a machine on the second floor where Frank is supposed to have struck Mary Phagan. They were not discovered by the officers on Sunday in a complete search of the factory. The expert who microscopically examined this hair and compared it with Mary Phagan?s informed the prosecutor before the trial that the hair was not that of Mary Phagan?s; but this information was withheld from the defense, and was not brought out by the prosecutor on the trial who afterward said the matter was not important, and that he had proved by other witnesses that the hair ?resembled? Mary Phagan?s. On the trial the prosecutor claimed to have lost these strands of hair.?
Whose hair was it, Mr. Connolly?
You say the officers failed to find it, Sunday. What of that? They also failed to find the blood-spots on the floor. What difference does it make, if they were not found Sunday and were found, early Monday morning?
The unanswerable question remains, How came the hair and the spots to be there?
You say the floor was swept every day. So it was; and the man who swept it Friday, to clean up before closing for the week, swore that no blood-spots were on the floor, then.
And Frank?s machinist, whose hands had left that lathe handle Friday evening at 6:30, swore there was no hair on it, then, but he discovered it immediately, when he went to use his machine Monday morning.
At that time, nobody suspected Leo Frank, except the rich Jews who had pussy-footed to Rosser and employed him to defend Frank.
They knew what was coming, for they had learned of Frank?s wild drinking and confession, the Saturday night of the murder!
As an illustration of Connolly?s ?thoroughness? and ?conscientiousness,? I respectfully beg the editor of Collier?s to consider the following:
?Monteen Stover?s testimony contradicted Frank, who swore he had not been out of his office between 12 and 12:30 noon. Frank said it was possible that he had stepped out of his office for a moment in the performance of some routine which would not ordinarily have impressed itself on his mind.?
It?s a small matter, yet tremendously important, for that was one of the fatalities against Leo Frank. He had said so positively and so often that he did not leave his office between 12 and 12:30 o?clock, there was no way for him to deny saying it. But there was Miss Stover who, most unexpectedly to him, proved that he had lied about it. This created a fearful dilemma, the existence of which had not been expected until after Frank for a whole week, had stuck to the story that he had not left his office, and that Mary came to him there at ?from 12:05 to 12:10, maybe 12:07.?
Nobody at the factory knew that Monteen had come at that time, had waited 5 minutes, and had gone away.
Jim Conley told Frank he had seen another girl go up stairs, but Jim did not know her name, and Frank was so excited by the crime in which he had involved himself, that he either paid no attention to Jim, or he supposed the other girl to have been Mrs. White.
Monteen, not seeing anyone in the office, or anywhere about, went home and reported to her mother her failure to get her pay envelope. They were poor people, and the girl?s wages were a Saturday evening necessity.
She told her mother that there did not seem to be anybody there, at the factory, and she had come away after waiting five minutes. Her mother went to the factory, the next Saturday, to apply for Monteen?s pay-envelope, and the detective stopped her to inquire who she was and what she wanted. Then, for the first time, the terrible fact was made clear, that Frank and Mary were both missing, at the very time he had been saying they were together in his office!
It was a crushing blow to the defense.
Now, when Frank took the stand to make his four-hour statement, he used these extraordinary words: ?To the best of my recollection, I did not stir out of my office, but it is possible, that to answer a call of nature, or to urinate, I may have gone to the toilet. Those are things that a man does unconsciously, and cannot tell how many times nor when he does it.?
This is what Connolly calls ?the performance of some routine which would not ordinarily have impressed itself on his mind.?
If Connolly were a student of human nature, he?d know that there never was a jury who would believe that a man is unconscious, when, in the day time, he answers a call of nature.
If Connolly were a man of thoroughness in analyzing evidence, he?d know that when Frank stepped out of the frying pan, made for him by Monteen?s evidence, he fell into the fire, made for him by the blood-spots and the hair, near the toilet to which he would have had to go, in response to that call of nature!
If Connolly were a lawyer, he?d see the similarity between Frank?s explanation of his call of nature, and that which the notes attribute to Mary Phagan. Frank told the jury that he might have gone to the toilet, and the notes say that Mary Phagan did go there!
It is a most peculiar feature of the case, equaled only by the suggestion, in the notes that the tall, slim, black negro had had unnatural connection with the girl?a vice not of robust negroes, but of decadent white men.
Sodomy is not the crime of nature, barbarism or of lustful black brutes; it is the over-ripe fruit of civilization, and is always indicative of a decaying society. A plowman-poet, like Robert Burns, would never dream of such a vice, and it is well known that he wrecked his life by sensuality; but an effeminate dude, like Oscar Wilde, was convicted of it, and served his time at Reading Goal?and his mentality was perhaps greater than that of any Englishman since the days of Browning.
Mr. Connolly, of course, mentions the unmashed excrement at the bottom of the elevator shaft, and adds:
?If the elevator cage had gone into the basement that Saturday noon, it would have been crushed. It was crushed when the elevator was operated on Sunday. This is a physical fact which cannot be argued away, and which unimpeachably disproves Conley?s story. The two silent workmen on the fourth floor never heard the elevator run that day. The gearing of the elevator was on the fourth floor, unenclosed, and they could not have avoided hearing the noise and feeling the vibration.
The two silent workmen on the fourth floor were noiselessly tearing down a planked partition and building a new one?a process that never makes any fuss. These carpenters knew that Connolly required silence; and they, therefore, persuaded the old planks to pull the old nails out, easy, and they sawed and fitted and nailed the new partition into place, so deftly, that Connolly never heard a single hammer.
As silently as the Czarina reared the famous ice palace, whose building is so beautifully described by Cowper, these two Atlanta carpenters, Harry Denham and Arthur White, slipped a new partition in the place of the old one.
If Connolly had studied this record with thoroughness, he would have learned that Conley described Frank as being so excited that he jumped in and out of the elevator before it reached its proper place, and came near causing an accident. He fell up against Jim twice, and nothing would have been more natural for the cage not to strike, evenly, the dirt floor of the shaft. In fact, it was uneven; and, therefore, the cage might very well miss the excrement, if it were not carefully stopped at the very bottom.
It was a freight elevator, and they seldom stop on a level with the landings.
But in any event, the girl?s dead body was in the basement, with the limbs rigid, the arms folded, the hair caked with dried blood, and her privates in the same condition. Her face showed signs of having been dragged over the grit, and the dirt floor showed the trail, leading back to the elevator. That trail of death was 136 feet long, by Kauffman?s evidence; and nobody ever found on the ladder, at the foot of the same, or anywhere in the basement, a single sign of blood, or a struggle.
How unreasonable it is to contend that, because the cage of the elevator did not do what it might or might not have done, we must obliterate all the damning evidence on the second floor, and forget the absence of evidence on any other floor!
Connolly concludes:
?All this trouble has come upon Frank because of a bottle of cheap whisky purchased by one worthless negro from another negro in a Southern city which prohibits the sale of whisky.
The verdict of the jury was but the echo of the clamor of the crowd.?
So, you see, this writer who was the ally of Burns, misrepresented the record, every time he touched it, and failed to tell Collier?s that Frank?s lawyers proved Conley?s inability to have described the night-watch at the time the notes were written; failed to tell Collier?s that Frank?s lascivious character had been proved by a dozen unimpeachable white women; failed to tell Collier?s that the hair found on the machine handle had been identified as Mary?s, and that Frank?s lawyers never even tried to prove that it was another girl?s hair; failed to point out that Frank refused to question the women who swore away his character, and refused to let questions be put to him; and told Collier?s a most arrant, inexcusable falsehood when he said that our Supreme Court did not posses legal jurisdiction over the evidence in a criminal case!
And this writer whose thoroughness and conscientiousness are still believed in by Collier?s, declared that one bottle of mean liquor, in a prohibition town, caused Leo Frank to be arrested, tried and condemned for the murder of a Southern girl.
?The verdict of the jury was but the echo of the clamor of the crowd,? and the Supreme Court was powerless to right the wrong, because it had no legal authority to review the evidence!
On that kind of stuff which Connolly knew was untrue, he followed the lead of the Atlanta Journal, and others followed his lead, until the continent vibrated with the tread of the disciplined Hessians of vilification.
Not one of those hired writers, or their honest dupes, have ever been to Solicitor Dorsey, to go over the record with him, and to learn the real evidence upon which he relied to convince the jury, satisfy Judge Roan, and satisfy our Supreme Court twice?the last time, unanimously.
The editor of Collier?s has himself been so warped, blinded and embittered by Connolly, Burns, Hearst, Straus, Ochs & Co., that he publishes the following:
?Our own emotions about the Frank case are expressed by the words of a Pittsburgh reader, Mrs. Iva Jewel Geary:
??There was not only no reason to convict Frank, but there was no reason to suspect him. His persecution outdoes anything I have ever read in Russian history. The wanton cruelty of his murderers is the most heartbreaking glimpse into hell that I have ever known. I am not a Jewess, I am only a human being, the mother of a little boy. For three days and nights the consciousness of that cruelty has suffocated me. Is this humanity?
??I beg of you not to let the matter rest. It must not rest. I feel that Leo Frank was a little comforted in his last agony by the thought of all the people who believed in him and had tried to help him. It might have been your son or your young brother caught in the hellish trap?it might sometime be my son.?
?That?s just it. It might have happened to any of us and it may happen any of us in the future unless we stop it. And our idea of stopping it is not by piling vengeance on top of vengeance in an increasing mass. Let us look very closely into it. Let us admit the very obvious fact that the men who lynched Frank thought they were doing the right thing. Now let us try to find the thing that made them think wrong. That is ignorance, and let us deal with ignorance as ignorance ought always to be dealt with?not with a club, but with light and sympathy. What is here said in charity is said for the benefit of the men who lynched Frank. They thought he was guilty. They thought they were doing a right thing. But are there men in Georgia among those who helped prosecute Frank who knew he was innocent, but, notwithstanding, pushed the prosecution from motives of their own? If there are any such, for them there need be no charity. If any vials of vengeance are to be poured, let it be on these individuals. But for the lynchers and Georgia generally let us seek the only things that will cure, that is, sympathetic understanding?and education.
Such an editor as this, gives one new conceptions of the self-complacent imbecile. He probably has a college-diploma, framed in his study, and he believes he is educated, for hasn?t he a written certificate, signed by the President of the College?
He says that Mrs. Iva Jewel Geary has expressed his emotions.
Mrs. Iva Jewel Geary says that Frank might have been her son. Might not Mary Phagan also have been her daughter?
Is Mrs. Iva Jewel Geary ignorant of the fact that Jewish employers use the duress of employment to coerce Gentile girls into compliance with the wishes of Jew libertines?
Are the Mary Phagans to have no sympathy, and no protection from lustful Jews that never run after Jewish girls?
In the Oregon Daily Journal (Portland), I find the following news item, August 25, 1915:
?Carl A. Loeb, floorwalker in a local department store, was convicted of disorderly conduct in the municipal court yesterday for making improper proposals to young women who came to him for employment, and was sentenced to thirty days in jail. Loeb was represented by Attorney Bert E. Haney, and notice of appeal to the circuit court was given. Bail was set at $500. Miss Lillian Murdoch was the complaining witness. Mrs. Lola G. Baldwin, superintendent of the department of public safety for women, said today that similar complaints against Loeb had been made by four other girls. Evidence was introduced showing that Loeb had no authority to hire employees for the store.
Here was a wretch engaged in exactly the same vile practices that Leo Frank used on girls who were in his employ.
This floorwalker struck the wrong girls at last, just as Frank did, but how many girls had yielded to Loeb, to keep their jobs? He gets off at 30 days, when the hungry boy who steals bread, gets months, and even years.
Would it not be more to the credit of Collier?s and Mrs. Iva Jewel Geary, if they bestowed a moiety of their tears and lamentations upon the girls?
Collier?s says that what we need is ?education.? What do the Franks and the Loebs need?
We have been so often reminded that Frank was a college graduate, that we may soon forget how the eminent negro educator, who is so popular at the North, got chased through the streets of New York, and scandalously beaten, because he happened to make a little mistake in the street address of a strange and scarlet woman?
What is mere education worth, when Doctor Booker Washington has to flee from the bludgeon of an infuriated but not educated carpenter, named Ulrich?
Alas! Education is a good thing, but it isn?t everything; else some of our greatest scholars would not have been some of our greatest criminals!
Judge Roan had officially declared that Leo Frank had had a fair trial.
The Supreme Court had officially declared that he had been legally convicted upon sufficient evidence.
The verdict of the jury was six months old; and before it had been announced, Hearst?s Sunday American had declared that the long trial of Leo Frank, stretching over a period of four weeks, had been as fair, as it was possible for human minds and human efforts to make it.
Nobody contradicted this deliberate statement of the Hearst Atlanta paper.
Frank?s lawyers did not; the correspondents of Northern papers did not.
But when the Haas brothers, months afterwards, followed up on the Cohen attack on the witnesses, the jurors, the judges, and the people of Atlanta, there arose a clamor about the mob, the frenzied mob, the jungle fury of the mob, the blood lust of the mob, and the psychic drunk of the mob.
That clamor grew louder and louder, spread farther and farther, became bolder and bolder, until millions of honest outsiders actually believed that the mob stood up in the courtroom during the month of the trial, and yelled at the jury.
?Hang the damned Jew, or we will hang you.?
It was not until John Cohen and James R. Gray, of the Atlanta Journal, had started this flood of libel against the State, that The Jeffersonian said one word about the case.
Then the Jeffersonian did what no other editor with a general circulation seemed willing to do: I came out in defense of the Law, the Courts and the People.
Are the Laws not entitled to support? Are the Courts not worthy of respect? Are the People not deserving of fair treatment?
The Jeffersonian did not stoop to any personalities, or mean abuse, or malignant misrepresentation.
We had given to Leo Frank as much as we had to give to anybody. We had measured him by the same yardstick that measures Gentiles before they are condemned.
We could not kill poor old Umphrey, of Whitfield County, on circumstantial evidence, and then refuse to execute a Jew.
The one was an aged tenant, aggravated by a dispute with his landlord, about his share of a bale of cotton; the other was a middle-age Superintendent of a factory, presuming on his power over the girls hired to him.
We could not kill Bart Cantrell and Nick Wilburn?led astray by evil women?and then find a different law for the 31-year-old married man, led astray by his own lusts.
No! By the Splendor of God! We couldn?t have two Codes in Georgia, one for the Rich and the other for Poor.
At the time the Atlanta Journal and other papers jumped on the witnesses, the jurors, the judges and the people, Governor John M. Slaton was a member of the firm of Frank?s leading lawyer.
He had been so for nearly a year.
Mary Phagan?s body was found Sunday morning, and on Monday morning, early, Rosser showed up with Haas, as Frank?s lawyer.
Who hired him, and when?
Not a Gentile tongue had wagged against Leo Frank!
No detective, no police-officer, no civilian had accused this man.
Why did his rich connections employ the supposedly best lawyers for him, before he had been accused?
Do Atlanta lawyers go to their offices before 8 o?clock of Monday mornings?
Rosser and Haas were at Frank?s side, as his lawyers, at 8 o?clock Monday morning.
Had the Seligs tipped it off to Montag and Haas, that Frank had drunk heavily the Saturday night of the crime, and had raved about the murder?
At any rate, Frank?s lawyers were on deck, bright and early the next morning, at a time when nobody was working up a case on him, and when he was industriously working up a case against the night-watch whom he had accused in the notes that he placed near the dead girl.
Mark the date: it was April 28, 1913, when Rosser publicly appeared as Frank?s leading lawyer.
On June 22, the papers announced that Slaton had become Rosser?s partner.
Slaton had been elected governor at the October elections of 1912; and was to be inaugurated in June, 1913. Why did he need a new partnership?
And why did Rosser need a new one?
Ah, there?s where the shoe pinches!
There?s where the lash hits the raw place on Slaton.
There are some of the commuters who say that the Law does not forbid a governor to take law cases.
Doesn?t it?
When the Law carves out an Executive Department, separating it jealously from the Judicial and Legislative, and constituting in the Governor, the embodiment of the Executive power, with chief command of the Army and Navy, to enforce the Laws, does anybody, claiming to be a lawyer, deny that the very nature of the office debars a governor from practicing law?
I am not aware of any law which prevents President Wilson from teaching school, but the very character of his office does. Suppose President Taft had taken law cases! Suppose President Cleveland, or President Harrison had done so!
You can?t suppose anything of the kind. You know that a holder of a chief Executive office cannot be dabbling in the judiciary, where cases are always likely to come to him on some final appeal.
Governor Herschel V. Johnson quit the practice when he became governor. So did Gov. Henry D. McDaniel. So did Gov. Nat Harris.
There has been a dispute as to the date when Slaton became Rosser?s partner. Some say it was in July, 1913.
Does that date make it any better for Slaton?
Are we to be told that after Slaton became our Chief Magistrate and Commander of our Army, he needed Rosser?
What for?
Are we to be told that Rosser waited until Slaton was sworn in as governor before he took him in as partner?
What for?
The new firm was announced in the Atlanta Constitution of June 22, 1913; hence it was formed before Slaton?s inauguration. I see the advertisement of the new firm, soon afterwards, in ?The Fulton County Daily Record.?
I see the same firm advertised in the Record for May 14, 1915.
Therefore, Slaton and Morris Brandon had continued to be the partners of Rosser & Philips during the entire gubernatorial term of John M. Slaton.
In the Record for August 1915, I find that Morris Brandon has left Rosser and Slaton. Why did he leave?
It is reported that he withdrew from the firm because he believed in Frank?s guilt, and could not endorse the course which Rosser and Slaton had decided to adopt.
Is it true?
Anyway, he left the firm. Who took his place?
Stiles Hopkins. And who is he?
Why, Stiles is the hanger-on of the Slaton-Rosser firm who did some of the mole-work on that very Extraordinary Motion for New Trial.
His affidavit is in the record, and in it he swears he was doing this mole-work for the firm of Rosser, Brandon, Slaton and Philips?a firm with which he was ?connected.?
After Morris Brandon quit the firm, Stiles was taken in?his intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the Frank case being perhaps too valuable to take any chances on.
We are blandly asked to believe that, although this new firm of Rosser and Slaton was formed soon after Rosser was employed to defend Leo Frank, there was a written agreement to the effect that partners should not be partners.
They waived the Code; and, with suave smiles at each other, obliterated the encyclopedic accumulation of legal lore on the subject of Partnerships.
In The Jeffersonian, I have stated, again and again, that just before ex-Congressman Howard was employed, Luther Rosser went on to Senator Ollie James of Kentucky, and made him a proposition of a discreditable kind.
That proposition had no other meaning than that Rosser knew the sentence of Frank was to be commuted by his partner, Slaton; but, for the sake of appearances, Rosser and Slaton wanted to make the case for Frank as imposing as possible.
Rosser offered Senator James a fee out of all proportion to the service, and told him that his argument would be prepared for him, and that he could not possibly lose the case.
The accusation has been standing more than a month, and all of Slaton?s commuters dodge it. They plough round it. THEY DON?T DARE GO TO IT.
Do you need any better proof of the complete understanding between Partner Rosser and Partner Slaton?
Can you ask any clearer evidence of the fact that Slaton wasn?t caring two straws about the Judge Roan letter, the Chicago delegations, the Texas legislature, the telegram from vice-President Marshall, and the petitions from ?all parts of the world.?
Rosser and Slaton realized the need of all the strength they could muster, on the side of their client, and every possible resource was exhausted.
They drummed up commuters wherever there was political, financial, or professional influence which could be brought to bear.
It was a case where every little helped; and they got together as many mickles as they could, in the effort to make a muckle.
BUT THEY FAILED ON SENATOR JAMES!
If Rosser?s assurance to the Senator did not mean that he knew in advance what his partner would do, WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
In effect, Rosser said to Senator James:
?We want to use you! We want to buy your name and prestige. We want you to act a part in the drama of Treason, that we are staging in Atlanta.
?The Jews have brought the opera house; our troupe of players is already large and well practiced; but we need a first-class orator to make a first-class appearance in the Final Act of the play.
?Here?s a large pile of Jew money! Will you take it? Everybody else is doing it.
?You can?t possibly lose the case.?
But the Kentucky Senator remembered there was something else he might lose, and he spurned the offer which the circumstances justify us in believing was as much the offer of Slaton as it was of Rosser.
Add to the shame of this rejected proposition, the clandestine meeting between the two crooks, Rosser and Slaton, a few hours after the Prison Commission startled them by its adverse decision.
Why did Rosser slink up a side street, and take it afoot to hold a midnight meeting wit his partner, Slaton?
Why talk to us about alleged agreements which exempted this partnership from the Law of Partnerships?
Why ask us to believe the unbelievable?
Tell us what Rosser meant by his statement to Senator James, and what he meant by his stealthy, thief-like visit to John M. Slaton.
No legitimate errand demanded this cover of darkness.
It is said that nobody raised the point with Slaton that he ought not to pass on the Frank case?being Rosser?s partner.
Wrong again! The point was raised, by a member of the Atlanta bar, and it was done in writing, and in a most delicate, respectful way. I published the letter in The Jeffersonian.
The point was also raised, in a Cobb county mass-meeting, held at Marietta, last year.
The question was put squarely up to Slaton, while he was in the race for the Senate, and he evaded it!
What a reckless thing it is, therefore to say the point came too late! Dorsey knew of the letter, and knew of the Cobb county action; consequently, he knew it was useless to again endeavor to reach the ?honor? of a man who has none, or to arouse a ?conscience? that doesn?t exist.
It has been said that it would have been ?cowardly? for Slaton to have reprieved Frank and left him for Governor Harris to dispose of.
Why, then, did he reprieve two negroes who were under death sentences, and leave them to Governor Harris?
And if he is such a brave man, why didn?t he pardon the Jew whom he says was innocent?
I am very credibly informed that Leo Frank, on his way to Cobb county, denounced Slaton as a crook.
This must mean that Frank had been promised a pardon.
If innocent, he was entitled to one; and if Slaton believed him innocent, he acted pusillanimously, in not setting him free.
There is no middle ground.
Those who admit that they believed Frank to be guilty, but favored commutation can only excuse themselves by saying they oppose capital punishment.
If married men of middle age are not to be hanged when they deliberately leave young and healthy wives, and pursue young girls to such a horrible death as fell to the hard lot of Mary Phagan, then we?ve got no use for the law of capital punishment.
Slaton saw lots of use for it, last year, as a protection to homes, and human lives; the commuters saw it, too; it was not until this year, AND THIS CASE, that the railroad lawyers and some Doctors of Divinity became such rampant commuters.
It is said that Slaton made no money by the commutation.
That is an assertion which settles the question without debate. It is perfectly clear to every lawyer that, as Rosser?s partner, he was legally entitled to share whatever Rosser got.
It is said that Slaton knew that the commutation would kill him politically.
He doesn?t talk that way. He expresses the most buoyant confidence in his future popularity.
He says that none of the best people are against him. He says that those who made the outcry against him are mere scum, riff-raff, rag-tag and bobtail; men whose wives take in boarders and washing.
He says that these low-down creatures have always been against him, and he hopes they always will be.
Unless your political eye-sight is failing, you can see a formidable line-up in favor of Slaton for the Senate.
The Jews will be solidly for him. So will the Chambers of Commerce, of Atlanta and Savannah.
So will the L. & N. Railroad system. So will the Hearst papers. So will the Atlanta dailies.
The Roman Catholics will support him almost to a man, on account of The Jeffersonian being against him.
You need not doubt that Slaton made himself reasonably certain of a powerful combination, before he took the bit in his teeth.
He is crafty, and he doesn?t act upon impulse.
It will be remembered that while the Frank case was on its way to him, Nathan Straus, of New York, came to see him.
It will be remembered that while the Frank case was on its way to him, William Randolph Hearst came to see him.
It will be remembered that immediately after the commutation, and the flight from Georgia, he was banqueted by Mr. Hearst in New York.
It will be remembered that Mr. Hearst?s personal representative, John Temple Graves, in his address to a Northern press-club, proclaimed the intention of Mr. Hearst to put Slaton in the race for the Senate or Vice Presidency.
Slaton himself has repeatedly told the Northern people that he would re-enter politics in Georgia, and make his action in the Frank case an issue before the people.
Those who defend Slaton say that his previous character had been good.
If the character of Judas Iscariot had not been good, Christ would not have made him one of the Twelve, and Keeper of the Treasury.
If the character of Benedict Arnold had not been good, Washington would not have made him Commander at West Point.
Lots of folks enjoy the reputation of being straight, when in fact, they are crooks who have not been found out.
WHAT WERE THE REASONS FOR THIS COMMUTATION?
In one place, Slaton says that he was guided by the advice of Sally, his wife. In another place he says he was influenced by the dissenting opinions of the minority Justices of the Supreme Courts.
In another place he says that important new evidence, never produced before any other tribunal, was produced before him.
In another place, he says that the hair found in the metal room, and proved at the trial, to have been Mary Phagan?s, was afterwards shown to be the hair of somebody else.
Who this somebody is, he provokingly keeps to himself. What that new evidence was, he mysteriously declines to state.
In still another place, he leans heavily upon the tomb of Judge Roan, and says that he commuted because of the dead judge, when the official record shows that Slaton paid no attention to the pleas of living judges, last year, and that he can?t assign any reason why L.S. Roan?s alleged change of mind should have out weighed Judges Evans, Lumpkin, Hill and Atkinson, who had not changed their minds.
Like many other mortals, L.S. Roan?s value was not appreciated until after he died. To his pastor he confided his worries about the Frank case, and said that, according to the evidence, Frank ?was unquestionably guilty.?
On his farewell visit to his daughter, at Tampa, Florida, he said the same thing.
I have said, and repeat, that entirely too much has been made of L.S. Roan. When he ended his official connection with the case, his opinion was not worth a bit more than that of any juror, or of any spectator who heard the evidence.
L.S. Roan in Massachusetts, had no more to do with the case than you or I did.
Every lawyer knows that our Supreme Court had exactly the same power over the evidence, in this case, that Judge Roan had.
He had the right to say the verdict was not sufficiently supported by the evidence, and the Supreme Court had the right to overrule him on that very point, if the Justices believed the evidence insufficient.
How dishonest, then, is the continued effort to fool the people about Judge Roan!
What possible weight could be given to a tardy, unofficial, and doubtful letter of a disabled, suffering, enfeebled judge, when the Justices of the Supreme Court were all in life, all in full vigor, and all firm in their conviction that the evidence against Frank was sufficient?
The effort to use a dead man to shield John Slaton is the most cowardly and reprehensible feature of the campaign of the commuters.
The Atlanta Journal, the New York Times and the Western papers are saying that ?WATSON ATTEMPTED TO BRIBE SLATON!?
They allege that Watson sent a message to Slaton demanding that he ?hang the Jew,? and that, in return for this personal favor, Watson would send Slaton to the Senate.
It is a characteristic Slaton falsehood.
During the campaign, last year, Slaton did his utmost to secure my support for the Senate. He sent several gentlemen to Thomson to see me about it. The final desperate proposition that he made me, I will reserve for the present. He knows what I mean.
But since he and his brother-in-law, and their hired writer, and the Rabbi have endeavored to besmirch the character of Dr. J.C. Jarnagin, of Warrenton, I will tell exactly what happened.
Last year, my friend Jarnagin came to my home several times to bring messages from Slaton.
One message Dr. Jarnagin was reluctant to deliver to me, for he felt that it put Slaton in a bad light.
Slaton had explained his failure to run against Hoke Smith, for the Senate, on the ground that he, Slaton, was a poor man, and that his brother-in-law, John Grant, would not let him have the money for a campaign against Smith!
On each of his visits to my home, my friend Jarnagin was told that I could not go back on Rufe Hutchins, to whose support I was committed.
In May of this year, Governor Slaton made an address, on a Warren County Fair Educational Day.
While in Warrenton, he stopped with Maj. McGregor, and he discussed the Frank case with particular reference to what Judge Roan had told his pastor.
Slaton also talked with Dr. Jarnagin, and asked him if there was no way for him, Slaton, and myself ?to get together.? He asked Dr. Jarnagin, if there was not something that he, the Governor, could do for my son, or for my son-in-law, Mr. Lee.
In reporting the conversation to me, Dr. Jarnagin said, ?Jack says we must get together.? I considered that the Governor was making overtures to me, as he had done last year, and, of course, some sort of answer to his message was necessary.
I therefore said in substance to Dr. Jarnagin:
?You tell Jack Slaton to stand like a man against all this outside pressure in the Frank case, and to uphold the Courts and the Law, and I will stand by him.
?Tell him that I have never allowed my personal feelings to keep me from supporting any man, when the good of the State seemed to require it, and that I have no feeling against him in doing what is right in the Frank case.
?Tell him to do what is right, regardless of these newspaper libels and these foreign petitions.
?Tell him that I want nothing for myself, nor for any member of my family, but I do want to see the law vindicated in this Frank case.?
That was my answer to his message?the answer which the jurors, and the Supreme Court would have given him; the answer which 90 per cent of the people of Georgia would have given him.
That message was, in substance, the very same that I was sending to him, from week to week, in the editorial columns of The Jeffersonian.
That message was in effect the same that the mass meetings, in various counties, were sending to him.
That message was given to him in thousands of letters, telegrams and petitions from all over Georgia.
That message was the same in spirit and meaning, that the Cobb county delegation carried to him.
Out of every hundred men in Georgia, ninety would have been willing to have gone upon the house-tops and shouted a similar message.
All that we ever wanted Governor Slaton to do, was, to enforce the Law against rich people, as he had enforced it against the poor.
Had he proved himself a man, he would have rallied to his enthusiastic support thousands of voter who had never supported him before?men who believe that it is nothing but right to reward a public servant, of whom they can say, WELL DONE!
God in Heaven knows how passionately the people yearn for public servants of whom they can say that.
If John Slaton had just withstood temptation and proved true, he would today have been wearing the crown of Georgia?s admiring approval, a crown more precious than that of any King.
In 1914, John Slaton told Dr. Jarnagin to explain to me that the reason why he did not run against Hoke Smith for the Senate instead of against Hardwick and Felder, was that he, Slaton, was a poor man, and that John Grant wouldn?t let him have the money to run against Smith.
John Slaton explained that it was his wife who was rich, and that John Grant was the manager of the property, and therefore Slaton had to go to Grant for cash.
In Los Angeles a few weeks ago, he told the newspapers quite a different story. He said:
?I am a man of wealth.?
His exact language as reported in the Los Angeles paper is this:
Spends His Own Money.
?I have been accused of capitulating to the overwhelming influence of public sentiment,? he said, ?of reversing the judgment of the courts, and many other violations of my oath, but no one in Georgia who knows John Slaton believes the charges, and I am proud to say that, amid all of the censure I have received, there has not been even an insinuation that I profited financially as a result of my action.
?My record of seventeen years in public life, Speaker of the House, President of the Senate, and Governor for two terms, precluded the possibility of such a taint. I am a wealthy man, my family is rich, and I am one of the few men of the country who has been elected to office without accepting funds from any outside source for my campaigns. Every penny spent in the interest of my candidacy came from either my own pocket or from members of my own family. As a result I have never been under obligations to anyone. No corporation or clique has ever been able to control me.?
If Slaton told Dr. Jarnagin the truth in the Spring of last year, and told the California reporters the truth in the Fall of this year, the question arises,
Where did this sudden wealth come from?
THE ROMAN CATHOLICS.
Rosser, Grant and Slaton are well aware of the animosity that I have aroused among Roman Catholics by that attacks made upon their hierarchy and secret organizations. They also know that an alliance has been formed in this country between the Jewish organizations and the Papal secret orders.
They, of course, know that the Roman Catholic Knights of Columbus were able to use the Federal Government against me, and that I am under indictment for having copied into one of my books a portion of the Moral Theology of Saint Alphonsus Lignori.
They know that the case is to come up at the approaching November term in a city where Jews and Catholics, combined, are predominant, and where old political enemies of mine, are implacable and revengeful.
Therefore, Rosser had a purpose in lugging the Catholic question to the front, just as he had in alluding to Foreign Missions.
I have never insulted any man on the subject of his religion, and, in all my articles, it has been my endeavor to show that it was the system, the hierarchy, the law and the real purpose, of the Italian Papacy, that I antagonized.
As a Jeffersonian democrat and American citizen, I detest the foreign church which has always been the bitterest foe to democracy, and whose fundamental laws are irreconcilable with ours.
I detest a Papacy which tells me that I must take my religion and my politics from a lot of Italian priests.
I detest a church which stigmatizes the memory of my mother by saying that she was not my father?s wife, but that they were living together ?in filthy concubinage??as Pope Pius IX did say while my parents were both alive.
I detest a church which says by its fundamental law, that your wife and mine, your married daughter and mine, your married sister and mine?is a concubine, not a lawful wife, and that the children of our Protestant marriages are nothing but bastards.
I detest a church which comes into my state with its foreign law, and breaks up the homes of lawfully married people, as the priests broke up those in Macon and at Arlington.
I detest a church which sends a foreign ambassador here to tell our people to vote for the Roman Church, rather than for our Country, and who is now trying to plunge this country into a war with Mexico, in order that 300 years of oppression by Spanish priests may be the doom of the native Mexicans.
I detest a church which creates an imaginary near-hell, fills it with suffering souls, and sells releases from it.
I detest a church which puts a bachelor priest between a man and his wife, and orders the bachelor to use filthy language to her in secret, such as no decent husband would ever use, even at night and in the marriage bed.
I detest a church which has to have so many secret organizations, the oaths and secret purposes of which make those secret societies a deadly menace to Protestants and Democrats, to true religion and real civic liberty.
I detest a church whose fundamental law condemns ?heretics? to death, and whose records reek with the blood of Christian martyrs.
I detest a church which declared that ?Ignorance is the mother of devotion,? and which destroyed libraries, closed the schools, penalized mental research, outlawed science, and plunged Europe into darkness and horror and carnage for a thousand years.
No Roman Catholic who knows the law of his foreign church, and obeys it, can be a loyal American citizen; for the one master is the enemy of the other, and a Catholic cannot serve both.
In public opinion throughout the Union, Georgia has been condemned for an unjust verdict, an unfair trial, and a technical judgment of our Supreme Court, when the facts clearly demonstrate the sole guilt of the drunkest nigger that ever swilled rotgut.
They say the ?mob? stood up in the courtroom, and threatened the jury; that the judge was as much terrified by our ?blood lust? as the jury was, and that our Supreme Court passed on nothing save the dry points of law, not reviewing the evidence and not expressing any opinion as to its sufficiency.
This is the indictment against us, first made in Collier?s, by the Hessian from Montana, C.P. Connolly.
In the wake of this mendacious hireling, came Macdonald, of the Western press; and after these, came trooping scores of scribblers who took their facts, from the arrant and abominable lies of Connolly and Macdonald.
Use your Reason! Call upon your Common Sense!
Don?t you know that Frank?s lawyers could not have lost their case at every turn, in all the Courts, if it had not been a desperately bad case?
Don?t you know that the evidence on which Connolly, Burns, Hearst and Straus have acquitted Frank, at the bar of public opinion, is different from the evidence upon which the jury acted?
Where did that hired cohort of Hessians get the evidence which they have used in fooling the public?
They made it up! They took the various lies of Burns, of W.E. Thomson, of Luther Rosser, and of the excited Jews of Atlanta; and out of the medley of falsehood, they have made the abhorrent noise which caused other States to turn against Georgia.
Are you willing to be governed by the official Brief of Evidence? The lawyers on both sides agreed to it, and Judge Roan officially approved it.
Oughtn?t that to settle the question as to what is the real truth of the case?
Unless we go by the record, we are at sea, and resemble angry boys, quarreling.
Unless we go by the record, we are left to the folly of saying week after week, ?You?re a liar!? and ?you?re another!?
To deal fairly with the jury, the Supreme Court and the people of Georgia, you must put yourself in their place.
You must see what they saw, hear what they heard, and learn what they learned.
After doing this, judge us as you would have yourselves be judged.
BE FAIR TO US! DEAL JUSTLY WITH US!
Would you outsiders want your Courts and people condemned on the unsworn statements of such hirelings as Burns, Lehon, Connolly and Macdonald?
Wouldn?t you think that your Courts had the right to be judged by the evidence of sworn witnesses, all of whom were put through the ordeal of cross-examination?
Be fair to us, and JUDGE US BY THE SWORN TESTIMONY; that?s all we ask of you.
Is it asking too much?
ARE YOU UNWILLING TO GIVE US A HEARING?
Are we to be hounded and harassed forever, on the unsworn statements of interested parties?
Let us go to the record and see what the witnesses said under oath.
That?s the only way to try a law case.
We did not carry this Frank case into the newspapers; the other side did it.
Gentlemen, it is high time these rich Jews, and Slatons and Railroad Lawyers quit misrepresenting this case.
THE PEOPLE are not going to allow a convicted criminal?s own lawyer to lynch the courts and save his client.
THE PEOPLE ARE NOT GOING TO ALLOW IT!
The People would deserve the contempt of mankind, if they did allow it.
Leo Frank was under sentence of death, when the Vigilantes executed him.
The commutation, signed by his lawyer, was not only a nullity, but was a most flagrant, intolerable insult to the State, and a most unparalleled attack upon our judiciary.
Time cannot cover that unpardonable sin of John M. Slaton, and he will do well to remember that Treason is not protected by any Statute of Limitations.
He betrayed us; he did it deliberately! He made his bed; now let him lie on it![/justify]
Leo Frank Case - The Murder of Mary Phagan
Moderator: Le Tocard