STATE TRIALS

A Collection of the Important and Interest-
ing Criminal Trials which have taken place
in the United States, from the beginning
of our Government to the Present Day.

WITH NOTES AND ANNOTATIONS

JOHN D. LAWSON, LL.D.

EDITOR

VOLUME XII

ST. LOUIS

F. H. THOMAS LAW BOOK CO.

TO

LIEUTENANT GENERAL ENOCH HERBERT CROWDER, LL.D.

SOLDIER, LAWYER, DIPLOMAT; JUDGE
ADVOCATE GENERAL AND PROVOST

MARSHAL GENERAL, U. S. A.

At this moment of the Ratification of the Treaty of
Peace and the End of the Great War, I, an old Friend,
Dedicate this Volume to You who drafted the Con-
scription Law; perfected with Accuracy and Speed the
Registration of the Manhood of the Land and selected
our Conquering Army, to the Satisfaction of the Nation
and without Disturbing its economic or social Life.
As the Architect of that Law and the Genius of its
Execution, your Name will be coupled on History's Page
with those of CARNOT and STANTON, the Organizer
of the Victory of the Citizen Soldiery of France over
all the Monarchs of Europe, and the Creator of the
Armies of the Union that Preserved the Republic.

PREFACE TO VOLUME TWELVE

The indifference of a good-natured people, so busily engaged in money making as scarcely to notice the abuse of speech and the wild denunciations of existing social conditions that were going on under its very eyes, had its certain culmination in the massacre of its guardians and fellow-citizens (The Chicago Anarchists, pp. 1-319). But this is not a local failing; it is the mark of the American, as may be illustrated by our historical action in morals, in politics, in what you will. For it is our Nation that has permitted corporations to bribe its legislatures, to secure valuable franchises without paying for them, to steal our highways, to take from the public, for services they pretended to render, whatever they pleased to demand, so as to enrich themselves beyond the dreams of avarice; that has allowed crime to flourish and murderers by the thousand to go unpunished, through the chicanery of disreputable lawyers, the bribery of jurors, and the technicalities of eighteenth-century courts; that looked on and made no sign for three long years while the Hun of the twentieth century was overturning civilization in Europe and killing its own people on the high seas; and that permitted for more than a generation the distillers and brewers and saloonkeepers of the land to dictate the nomination and election of its public officers and to debauch its courts and legislatures. And, then, because of this peculiarity, as Kipling has sung of the Ameri

can

"That bids him flout the law he makes,
That bids him make the law he flouts,

Till, dazed by many doubts, he wakes

The drumming guns that have no doubts”—

V