Chapter XLVIII: A Noble Effort (2)

“So when we discovered the criminal nature of this organization, and when the evidence of this conspiracy was brought forward to us by McParlan, we issued our warrants for the arrest of the conspirators, and we turned to these men, with the Commissioner of the county at their head, and we said to them: ‘Ha! you have lost the stake.’ They played a deep game, and they played for a great stake. They played to secure the property of this county, by endangering the lives of their fellow-citizens. They had agents as chiefs of police, and as constables and commissioners, and they had one of their number almost on the bench itself. God alone knows what would have happened to us if they had gotten him there, and then elected a jury commissioner besides. With Mollie Maguires as judges, and Mollie Maguires as constables, and Mollie Maguires as commissioners, and Mollie Maguires as witnesses, what would have been the history of this good old county? Think of this for a moment! Can you think where then we would have drifted, and to what it would have led us? Can you imagine the condition of the people of this county, with murderers upon the bench, and in the jury box, and in control of all the principal offices of the county. I lived in the apprehension of all this for two years and a half alone, and God knows that when the time comes that all I know may be told to the world, it will reveal a history such as will make every American citizen hang his head with shame. I have seen a society of murderers and assassins having its members in the highest places of this county. I have seen them elected to fill the positions of constables and police officers. I have seen a trusted member of that band of murderers a Commissioner of the county. I have seen this organization wield a political power in the State which has controlled the elections of a great Commonwealth. I have received the information of meetings between some of the highest officers of the State, and the chief of the murderers, at which large sums of money were paid to secure the votes of this infernal association to turn the tide of a State election. God knows, if ever in the world there was a revelation as deep and as damning as that now laid open to the people of this Commonwealth for the first time.

“I have one other allusion to make to a remark made by my friend Mr. L’Velle in his argument yesterday. At some time or other I thought it would be dragged into the case. Mr. L’Velle, acting for the prisoner, and defending him as his counsel, has said to you that it is the old story of capital against labor. I think I have shown to you how impudent is the claim that these men set up to be the representatives of the Irish race. I am sure I have shown to you the unblushing audacity of their claim that they are the representatives of the Catholic religion; but I now stand here on behalf of the laboring people of this county, the people who have suffered more throughout the length and breadth of this land by the actions of these men than any other—I stand here to protest, with all the power that God has given me, against the monstrous assumption that these villains are the representatives of the laboring people of Schuylkill County. You know very well in what estimation in the public prints the laboring people of this county have been held in consequence of the acts of this society. Two or three hundred assassins have given a name to the whole people of this county, and now, when they are put upon trial for murder, they say it is the old story of capital against labor. On behalf of every honest laboring man in this county, on behalf of every man subjected to the primeval curse of the Almighty, that by the sweat of his face he shall earn his daily bread, I protest with indignation against the assumption that these men are the representatives of labor. It is too early in the history of what I have done in this county to say aught of myself in connection with labor, but those who know me well will bear witness that on every occasion in which I had to take any public part in the conflicts between capital and labor, I have taken pains to assert my belief that the laboring people of this county were as upright, as honest, as law-abiding, and as moral as those of any other community in the State. I took the pains to show that there was a secret association banded together for the purpose of committing outrages which had given a notorious character not only to the laboring people of the county, but to the whole county itself. Look abroad upon this great county, diversified by a thousand industries and beautified by nature to an extent such as few counties in the Commonwealth enjoy. Why is not this a hive of industry, and the chosen seat of the investment of capital? Why do not people from all parts of the country come to these mountains to enjoy the salubrity of the climate, and to revel in the beauties which nature has spread before us? Why is it that a curse and a blight has rested for so long upon this county? Why is it that mothers and wives in far-distant cities have shuddered when their sons and husbands have told them that business led them to the mining regions of Pennsylvania?

“Because, fostered and protected here in the mountains of this county, was a band of assassins and murderers that brought reproach upon the whole county itself. For the first time now they are exposed, and we know where were their secret places, and who were their chosen leaders, and knowing this, we can stand up before the whole country and say, ‘Now all are safe in this county; come here with your money; come here with your enterprises; come here with your families, and make this country your residence; help us to build up this people and you will be safe,’ and by your aid, gentlemen, we will show to the world that not by vigilance committees, and not by secret associations, but by open, public justice the name of the law has been vindicated, and the foul stain that had rested upon us has been wiped out forever.

“A few words more, and I am done. I feel that I have occupied more of your time than I ought to have taken, but ‘out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh,’ and if I have said aught which some of you might think had better have been left unsaid, you must remember the strong provocation that I have had. You must remember what I have been doing for nearly three years. You must remember what a seal I had to put upon my lips. You must remember that it was only when Mr. McParlan consented to become a witness that I could speak of that, the weight of which was enough to crush me to the dust.

“I feel, indeed, that if I failed in my duty, if I should shrink from the task which was before me, that if I failed to speak, the very stones would cry out. Standing before you now with the bright beams of victory streaming upon our banners, how well I can recall the feelings with which I entered upon the contest which is now so near the end. Do not think it egotism if I say, with the hero of romance, that

“‘When first I took this venturous quest,
I swore upon the rood,
Neither to turn to right nor left,
For evil or for good.
My forward path too well I ween,
Lies yonder fearful ranks between;
For man unarmed ’twere bootless hope
With tigers and with fiends to cope.
Yet if I turn, what wait me there,
Save famine, dire and fell despair?
Other conclusion let me try,
Since, choose howe’er I list, I die.
Forward lies faith and knightly fame,
Behind are perjury and shame;
In life or death, I keep my word.’

“And when all had been discovered, and McParlan consented to become a witness, I said that I would come up into this county, where I first had learned to practice law, that I would take my place among the ranks of the counsel for the Commonwealth, and that I would stand side by side with him in the prosecution of these offenses until the last one was wiped from off the calendar of your criminal courts. And let it take weeks, or let it take months, or let it take years, I have buckled on my harness and entered for the fight, and, God willing, I shall bear it out as bravely and as well as I can, until justice is vindicated, and the county of Schuylkill is free.

“My friend, Mr. L’Velle, makes a plea to you for mercy. He pleads to you for the mother and the wife of this prisoner, and he asks you to let mercy enter into your hearts, and to restore this prisoner to his home. Are there no others who plead for mercy? Have I no clients asking mercy at your hands? Why is this young woman made a widow in the early morning of her life? What crime had her husband committed that he was shot down like a dog? Oh, she pleads to you for mercy, more eloquently, even if more silently, than any one on behalf of the family of this prisoner. I plead to you on behalf of the whole people of this county. I plead for mercy on behalf of the whole people of this State. On behalf of the orphans, the fatherless, and the widows, whose protectors have been stricken down before you, I plead to you for mercy. I invoke the spirits of the dead, and ask them silently to pass before you in this court-house. I invoke the spirits of Dunn, of Littlehales, of Muir, of Smith, of Rae, and the many victims of this foul conspiracy, to aid me in pleading for mercy. I ask you to listen to the cries of the wounded, to the shrieks of the dying, and the mournful funereal wailings over the bodies of the dead. If I close my eyes I hear voices against which you cannot close your ears, and which are pleading for mercy, oh! so strongly, that my poor words are but as the empty air.

“‘I hear the dying sufferer cry,
With his crushed face turned to the sky;
I see him crawl in agony
To the foul pool, and bow his head into its bloody slime, and die!’

“Oh! think once more upon your own county, almost one vast sepulchre, where rest the half-buried bodies of the victims of this infernal order—victims whose skeleton hands, bleached by the sun and by the wind, are stretching up from out the thin covering of earth that wraps their bodies in all the eloquence of silent prayer, beseeching you to have mercy upon your fellow-men.

“Oh! gentlemen, I beg to you for mercy, but to this prisoner let it be such mercy as the father, whose slaughtered infant lies beside him, gives to the wolf that has mangled the corpse; such mercy as the seed of the woman bestows upon the serpent whose head is crushed beneath its heel; and when you yield such mercy to assassins such as these, you yield a mercy and grant a protection to society at large, which looks to you now as its only refuge.

“And now the duty which I owe to this case is almost performed, and I commit it to your hands. For three years I have been engaged in an investigation, the result of which has now become known to the community. Two or three days after the commission of this offense I believed, from the information which came to me, that Thomas Munley was one of the assassins of Sanger. I had no evidence that I could use, for it was not until McParlan consented to become a witness that I could furnish the information that led to the arrest of this prisoner. I believe I have done my duty; for God’s sake, let me beg of you not to shrink from doing yours. Solemn judges of the law and of the facts—august ministers in the temple of justice—robed for sacrifice, I bring before you this prisoner and lay him upon your altar, bound and fastened by such cords of testimony as all the ingenuity of counsel cannot unloosen, and, trembling at the momentous issues involved in your answer, I ask you, will you let him go? If you perform your duty without favor and without affection, if, in the pursuit of what appears to me to be your plain and bounden duty, you will say, almost without leaving the box, that this man is guilty of murder in the first degree, you will do that which I believe to be just, and you will do that which will protect society and save the lives of hundreds and thousands of your fellow-men. But if you should falter—if, from any false sympathy, you should unbind this prisoner and let him go, I tremble for the consequences to society. Who then would be safe? For you to do this would be to hold up this prisoner’s hands, and the hands of all his fellows and associates, to place the dagger and the pistol in their grasp, and with the torch of the incendiary, to send them again throughout this land to play their part of murder, of arson, and of crime.

“I have done all that I could to expose the criminal character of this organization. Laying aside all other duties, giving up everything else that I had to do, I have tried to devote myself to this cause, for I believe it to be the highest duty that I could be called upon to perform. I am glad, at the conclusion of this case, to return my thanks to the able gentlemen who have been associated with me, and especially to the District Attorney, under whose administration these crimes have come to light. He was an old student of mine when I was in this county, and I was glad to know that it was he who filled the office when this conspiracy was first brought to light. He has done his duty faithfully and nobly, in the face of danger, without fear, or favor, or affection. I know that we have a Court that will not shrink from whatever duty may be imposed upon it, and I believe, from what I have seen of you, that you will walk unshrinkingly in the plain paths of duty that are opened before you. Do this, gentlemen, and I am sure that, linked together with that of McParlan and of others who have aided in this _glorious crusade_, your names will be enshrined for long coming years in the grateful recollections of an enfranchised and redeemed people.”

This remarkable address had its effect upon the jury and upon the public feeling in the State, and such a demand was there for it that a very large edition in pamphlet form was quickly exhausted. It was read with avidity and greatly commended wherever circulated. With Mr. Kaercher and Mr. Gowen in this case were associated Hon. F. W. Hughes, Gen. Chas. Albright, and Guy E. Farquhar, Esq.

Before the conclusion of the Munley case a jury was impaneled, on the sixth and seventh of July, to try over again the case against Hugh McGehan, James Carroll, James Roarty, James Boyle, and Thomas Duffy, in the matter of the Yost murder, the other defendants in the same cause demanding separate trials. After a full and careful hearing the jury rendered a verdict of “guilty of murder in the first degree,” against the prisoners. The speeches of Gen. Albright and Hon. F. W. Hughes—both very able and eloquent—were also published and very widely read, the interest in the trial as well as their own intrinsic value having created a demand for them. The counsel for the defense and prosecution was the same as in the Munley case. All the defendants named above were sentenced to be hanged on the sixteenth of August. Their cases were carried to the Supreme Court, arguments held, and a _nol. pros._ finally entered, confirming the sentence of the court below.

John Kehoe, Michael O’Brien, Chris Donnelly, John Donahue, _alias_ “Yellow Jack,” James Roarty, Dennis F. Canning, Frank McHugh, John Gibbons, and John Morris were arrested on the sixth of May, 1876, charged with conspiracy, at the famous Mahanoy City Convention of the first of June, 1875, to kill Wm. M. Thomas and Jesse Major. They were tried at Pottsville before President Judge Pershing and Associates Green and Walker, commencing August 9 and ending August 14, 1876. The trial for conspiracy attracted the gentleman of the bar from all parts of the State, and during its continuance the court-room was daily crowded to the point of suffocation with ladies and gentlemen, some of them having traveled hundreds of miles to have a view of the Mollies, the jury, the court and officials, and the witnesses for the prosecution. McParlan’s testimony was intensely interesting, and such a public call for its particulars was there among the legal fraternity and the general reading public, that the entire evidence of the trial was printed in a pamphlet of nearly three hundred pages, and a very large edition quickly exhausted. The newspapers had special correspondents on the ground, and the illustrated journals of New York sent their artists to Pottsville to make drawings of the court and surroundings. The leading facts contained in this extraordinary suit have been given in the course of the preceding narrative. With the exception of the young man, Frank McHugh, who gave evidence for the Commonwealth, the defendants were all found guilty according to the counts in the several indictments, and sentenced to seven years’ confinement each in the penitentiary. McHugh has not been sentenced, having been recommended to the mercy of the court by the jury.

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