526 Slide – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

494 X, AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

designed to prove to you, that on the evening of the Sth of
March, the town waa in a general commotion; that vast num-
bers of people were seen coming from all parts of the town,
armed with clubs and sticks of various sizes, and some with
guns; and that they assembled at and near King street; that
fire was cried, and the bells rung to increase the collection;
and from all this you might be induced to believe that there
‘was a general design, in a great number of the inhabitants,
to attack the soldiers: That it was the inhabitants who began
the disorders of the evening, and that all the evils and mis-
chiefs of it, were the effects of their disorderly conduct. But,
if we will recollect the evidence, we shall find, that previous
to all this collection a number of soldiers had come out of
their barracks, armed with clubs, bayonets, cutlasses and in-
struments of divers kinds, and in the most disorderly and
outrageous manner were ravaging the streets, assaulting ev-
ery one they met, and even running out of their way to as-
sault and endager the lives of some of the most peaceable in-
habitants who were standing at their own doors, and who
neither did nor said any thing to them—and even vented
their inhumanity on a little boy of twelve years of age—that
some of them were conspiring and thratening to blow up
Liberty tree in the same manner as had been lately done at
New York; an account of which had just arrived. Consider
also the testimony of a Colonel and others, who declare the out-
rageous appearance, behavior and threatening of the soldiers,
at other times and places the same evening—and of those who
give an account of the affray at Murray’s barracks, where
eighteen or twenty soldiers rushed out with cutlasses, ete.,
attacking all who came in their way, struck several persons,
and cut an oyster-man on the shoulder, of whose testimony
we are deprived by reason of his absence. This was probably
the beginning of the affair at the barracks, of which so much
has been said. There are yet other witnesses, to whose testi-
mony I might refer, that you may consider in what light that
transaction ought justly to be viewed; but I forbear.

The inhabitants, for a Jong time, had been fully sensible of