My political trial and experiences

Preface

"He who stands on the eternal side of Right stan^ not alone, though alone he stands, for with him are the Unseen and under him are the Everlasting Arms."

Patriotism and persecution are words often found in each other's company. Indeed anybody who reads history arig-ht must be struck by the frequent association. Wherever man has sought to reaHze his patriotic desires, wherever he has dared oppression and slavery, there has persecution threatened if not encompassed him. The records of every nation are rich in example. In the purple dawn of our own Republic the youthful form of Nathan Hale is silhouetted in immortal glory above the ignominy of the British gallows. And but yesterday, so to speak, a world paused in the mad orgy of war at the spectacle of the heroic Pearse and his associates facing the vengeance of the British Empire thattheir beloved Erin might not lose her soul.

Happily, persecution unto death is rarely the penalty of the patriot in this Republic of ours. But from time to time, and at the present moment, there are lapses from national ideals amounting almost to tragic retrogression. A notable instance affecting the individual has been the arrest, indictment, and prolonged imprisonment of the author of this book, Mr. Jeremiah A. O'Leary, an American of militant and unsullied patriotism. In setting forth this record of his splendid and successful fight and of the sinister forces that beset the liberties of his country, he has rendered a valued service to patriotism the world over. The publication of this book will serve among other useful purposes to emphasize Mr. O'Leary's vindication by the Court and in the words of Edmund Burke, it will help "to protect the author against the calumnies of malice and the judgment of ignorance."

The book will be read and read widely, for all over the United States Jeremiah A. O'Leary has countless admirers and friends — more than many imagine. The writer, therefore, considers the presentation of the salient facts of his trial as a real public

VI

Preface service, and Mr. O'Leary deserves the thanks of all those sincerely devoted to American traditions and to the ideals underlying our institutions.

Ireland has ever had many friends in America. Such have not been lacking even in the highest circles until recently. We cannot forget the distinguished honor paid to Charles Stewart Parnell when he was invited to and did address the Congress of the United States. During the recent war this signal distinction has been extended to Viviani, Balfour and others. Up to Parnell's visit this honor had been conferred but twice before in the course of a century. The celebrities held worthy of it were no less personages than the great Lafayette, friend and companion-in-arms of Washington, and the scarce lesser hero, Kossuth, Liberator of Hungary. Even in the past four years, when Anglo-philism overwhelmed officialdom and influenced and drugged the sources of public opinion, men of courage were found to warn the American people of its objects. They ran no risk save that of envenomed attack by a mendacious and a corrupt press. It was left for Jeremiah A. O'Leary to test the limits of safety as to life and liberty by public avowal of cherished principles. While O'Leary believed and said that American ideals should prevail in Ireland, he also contended with all the ability and vigor with which Providence endowed him that American principles of liberty should continue to prevail in the United States. True, he believed and said that British power and influence should depart from Ireland, but more strenuously did he strive with courage and persistency to drive British power and influence from the United States.

Alike with eloquence of tongue and pen, with vitriolic denunciation, and scathing satire; with keen, incisive wit, and sometimes powerful verse, he essayed to counteract the British propaganda. Fearlessly, he flashed the light of truth upon the hosts who, intrenched behind the ramparts of financial, corporate, and political power, sought to undermine the foundations of the temple which Washington had laid. Wielding a fulcrum, the might of which was unknown to Archimedes,

Preface vii

they sought to exercise the lever of a strategically disposed press in order to control public opinion, or at least tO' blind public intelligence. Against the cohorts of error, prejudice, and malice, against the phalanxes of greed, corruption and treachery, O'Leary battled. Never faltering, scarce pausing to count his followers or to weigh the moral and material worth of their assistance, because the need was dire, he carried the fight to those who were, he was convinced, the enemies of America at their most vulnerable points. He struck and struck repeatedly, vigorously, forcefully, and with telling results. His blows told. More than once he disarranged their plans and threw their ranks into confusion. Here was an antagonist who compelled their respect but to an exactly corresponding degree stirred their wrath and resentment. Shafts of malice the myrmidons of the hireling press launched against him. They sought to assail his character. They cried "German gold." They published weird, fantastic tales of fabulous sums employed to bribe him. Just as every lie, however atrocious, bears some relation to the truth, so every calumny, whether outrageous in its malice or ridiculous in its improbability, contained in itself a tribute of esteem, a measure of flattering appraisement from a malevolent foe. They styled him a "professional Irishman," "Irish agitator," "Anti-British agitator," "Pro-German," although conscious all the while of the purity of his devotion to the principles he espoused. They did this to discount the intrinsic merit of his valiant fight for true and unadulterated Americanism, yet he gloried in their wrath and derived satisfaction from their discomfiture and fear.

O'Leary's fight failed. Appropriately, Good Friday, 1917, marked the height of his almost superhuman effort. There have been other calvaries in human history, supreme moments in religion and in nationality, in the lives of all individuals, when the sun disappears as if forever, the earth is shrouded in gloom, and rocks are cleft in twain and hearts break from very anguish. Religion teaches and human experience shows that the R^urr^ction is the necessary sequence to the real Calvary, viii Preface

just as in nature — the day follows the night. We are now approaching the dawn. We went to war but O'Leary still showed the strong, vibrant character of his Americanism. He supported his country's bond issues to the limit of his ability and beyond. He contributed to the American Red Cross. He wrote sympathetically of the American soldiers. He did not oppose the Conscription Act, holding it to be the duty of every American to be ready to fight and, if need be, to die for his country. Scores of young men, their patriotism confirmed by the fire of his eloquence, enlisted in Army and Navy. He proved this by copious evidence at his trial. Later, when the tempting offer was made him of a New York Mayoralty nomination on an anti-draft platform, he refused the tender, declining to surrender his convictions, favoring the principle of universal military service, in order to reap political prestige.

He drew the line on loans to foreign powers by the Secretary of the Treasury, holding them to be without warrant of Constitutional sanction, pointing out that the only lawful method by which such loans could be made was by treaty, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. He also warned that the loans might never be repaid and suggested purchase of British territory on the American Continent, as the wisest course to pursue if England really needed the money, basing this idea on Jefiferson's purchase of the Louisiana territory from France.

O'Leary's enemies, whom he believed were the enemies of his country, had not forgotten nor forgiven the splendid fight which had retarded their victory and frustrated their plans. Deeper than their wrath at his past agitation was their concern at the prospect of his future activities. They had vision enough to foresee that their very victory would in time to come be a resistless weapon in O'Leary's hands. Craven fear of his vindication on this side of the Atlantic matched the dire need of the British ministry to stem the rising tide of Sinn Fein in Ireland. The details of the plot were hatched, a drug fiend in the appropriate masque of a German spy, a perjured witness or two, and a few other actors, carefully coached in their lines,

Preface ix

and the plot, crude withal, and unworthy of the real dramatic qualities of its authors, was complete. The stage was set and the curtain was lifted on the tableau to the gaze of two continents by the combined power of seventy thousand printing presses. Only action was needed to vitalize the drama. Within twenty-four hours O'Leary and sundry others had been indicted for a conspiracy to attempt treason in this country, while De Valera, Griffith, McNeil and five hundred Irish patriots, the backbone of the Sinn Fein (We Ourselves) movement, were languishing in English or Irish jails, without indictment or other charge save Lloyd George's statement in the House of Commons that the Ministry had received information from "a friendly Government" of an Irish-German plot. With the gallows in the background on this side and firing squads on the other, began the second act of the great international drama, which was to crush Irish liberty in Ireland and championship of it in America, and to make disloyal forever the memories of 1776 and odious the advocacy of the principles of the Fathers of the Republic.

This book tells the story; it explains the collapse of the conspiracy on the Government's own presentation. Readers will remember how, even before O'Leary began his defense in American Courts the British Ministry began to free the Irish leaders who were to share in O'Leary's conviction and punishment. Every American should read these chapters. They have not read the true story because the newspapers, as well as the Department of Justice, have been interested in suppressing facts and reports which would militate against them. Americans should read it because the conspiracy against O'Leary was a conspiracy against human rights, their rights and their liberties, and when they have read it they will agree that not Jeremiah A. O'Leary but the Department of Justice and the Administration itself were on trial, and that his vindication was a verdict of condemnation of those who persecuted him. O'Leary now stands vindicated of trumped up charges of treason, disloyalty, and conspiracy to resist the draft, of an attempt to create mutiny and of every other charge

X Preface

which could taint his character as a man or his patriotism as a citizen — vindicated in a Federal Court by an American Jury.

The hurrying tread of events, now fast marching to their climax must soon rouse from slothful inactivity the great masses of patriotic Americans. Their imagination dormant under the soporific influence of a mercenary and controlled press ; their vision obscured by the clouds of malevolent propaganda, they have not perceived the rocks toward which their loved Ship of State has been drifting. Proudly conscious of the nobility of the great pilots who have grasped that wheel in the past, Washington, Jefiferson, Jackson, Lincoln and others of perhaps lesser fame but of equally powerful devotion, they have been unable to conceive of such a thing as treachery in the pilothouse. The covenant fabricated in the secret recesses of the Quai D'Orsay places alien helmsmen in charge of this, our craft, and takes the wheel of the Ship of State from true American hands. We are launched upon new seas, never ventured upon by our great helmsmen of the past, and uncharted for us today except by the sinister cunning, imperial ambitions of historic enemies and present restive and envious kinsmen. Every patriot in the crew, from cabin to forecastle, every officer faithful to his oath, and every seaman devoted to his allegiance, must strive to bring Longfellow's allegorical "Ship of State" back to its moorings. This is a task fit to test the temper, the fibre, the patriotism of every true American.

Leadership tried and true, the possession of a courage which has never been found wanting is needed for the herculean task which confronts Americans of today, namely that of restoring the institutions established by the Fathers, of reviving the principles of the immortal Washington; in a word, of saving this, our beloved country, and all its institutions from the gulf which awaits if the United States is to become a guarantor of European equilibrium. This restoration has always been Jeremiah A. O'Leary's ambition. The struggle over the League of Nations will determine whether it will be the ambition of a hundred millions of the American people.

Joseph W. Gavan.

Part I. PAGE

I. Early Life 1

II. The American Truth Society 13

III. The Society in Action . . . : 28

IV. The National Campaign of 1916 38

V. The O'Leary-Wilson Telegrams 45

VI. Conception of Americanism 51

VII. "America First" 68

VIII. Political Opponents Strike 73

IX. Testifies at Brother's Trial 80

X. A Character Sketch 88

Part II

I. I Leave for the West 99

II. Impressions on the Journey 104

xi xii Contents

PAGE

III. In Search of a Habitation 109

IV. Life on a Chicken Farm 115

V. Housecleaning 122

VI. Laments Decay of Virile Americanism 125

VII. The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table 129

VIII. Clouds Begin to Gather ^ 133

IX. A Stranger Among His Own 144

X. Betrayed and Arrested 149

XL Homeward Bound 155

XII. In New York Again 159

XIII. Stone Walls Do Not a Prison. Make 166

XIV. At John's Trial 172

XV. Sunday in the Tombs 176

XVI. John's Case Breaks Down 180

XVII. Reflections in the Tombs 183

XVIII. Celebrates Birthday in Jail 190

XIX. The Slacker Raid 194

XX. Evils of System in Tombs 202

XXI. In the Prison Ward at Bellevue 206

Contents xiii

PAGE

XXII. Happy Christmas in Hospital 219

XXIII. Trial Again Delayed 224

Part III

I. On Trial at Last 237

II. Tables Turned on Prosecution 245

III. Adolph S. Ochs on the Grill 253

IV. Attempted Subornation of Perjury 277

V. Mme. Gonzales Admits Perjury 281

VI. Mme. Victorica Shocks Jurors 294

VII. A Discredited Chief of Police 300

VIII. Felix M. Brecher Breaks Down 318

IX. Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness 322

X. The Defense Opens 358

XL A Grave Official Scandal 364

XII. Monsignor Power Defends the Irish 372

XIII. Defendant's Father a Witness 381

XIV. Sons of Erin and the Draft 395

XV. Irish Soldiers Spurn British Uniforms 399 xiv Contents

PAGE

XVI. Sensations in Court 408

XVII. Bazaar Workers Contradict Gonzales 415

XVIII. Cartoon an Amusing Fiasco 420

XIX. Stephen Johnson Scores Heavily 427

XX. Defendant on the Stand 439

XXI. Conclusion of the Trial ,. .452

XXII. Free at Last .469

XXIII. Enormous Public Reception 473

XXIV. More Persecution 482

Appendix

The Ridder Letter 485

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Jeremiah A. O'Leary Frontispiece

Facing page

Major Michael A. Kelly xvii

Jeremiah A. O'Leary's Birthplace 1

Jeremiah A. O'Leary at the age of thirteen years 4

At the age of twenty-four years 10

As an Officer of the "69th Regiment" 13

John J. O'Leary 80

Stephen Whalen O'Leary 105

The Ranch at Sara 110

Mrs. Jeremiah A. O'Leary 115

Poster Circulated by the Government 149

The Tombs 161

The Cell in the Tombs 163

Keeper Felix McCarron 207

Robert Emmet, Gertrude and Gerald O'Leary 221

John Gill 224

Willard J. Robinson 227

Colonel Thomas B. Felder 238

Miss Margaret Sullivan 297

Lieutenant Arthur T. O'Leary 358

Mr. Daniel O'Leary, his father 381

Mrs. Daniel O'Leary, his mother 418

On the Witness Stand 439

Eamonn De Valera 480

XV

Major Michael A. Kelly, D. S. C, Chevalier of the Legion of Honor of France and Winner of the Croix de Guerre, of the 165th U. S. Infantry (formerly the 69th New York Regiment).

Part I

Biographical Sketch Jeremiah A. O'Leary

By

Major Michael A. Kelly

Distinguished Service Cross, Clievalier of the Legion of Honor of France,

and Winner of tlie Croix de Guerre

Late of the 165th U. S. Infantry, A. B. P.

(The 69th New Yorlt Regiment)

The Old Homestead on Warren Street, Glens Falls, N. Y., Where Jeremiah A. O'Leary Was Born.

I. Early Life

Jeremiah A. O'Leary was born on July 24th, 1881, at Glens Falls, in the State of New York. His birthplace is a beautiful little city, nestling in the foothills of the Adirondack Montains, nine miles from Lake George, one of the famed picture-spots of America. It derives its name from a very pretty water-fall in the Hudson River about two hundred miles north of its mouth. The city was founded during Colonial days in the midst of the stirring period of the French and Indian Wars. A little later it was the scene of some of the most momentous events connected with the American Revolution. The battle of Saratoga was fought in the vicinity, — in fact but a few miles from the O'Leary homestead. A short distance to the northeast occurred the Battle of Bennington, where Mollie Stark won enduring fame and the British redcoats were driven back; to the north lay Forts George and Ticonderoga, made famous by the victory of Montcalm over Wolfe and by the thrilling exploit of Ethan Allen and his "Green Mountain Boys," which gave early life and inspiration to the cause of the patriots, by the speedy capture of Fort Ticonderoga, the most important British fort south of Quebec and the Gibraltar of America in strength of strategic position as well as the northern British base of operations against the Revolutionists.

Jeremiah's father, Daniel O'Leary, was also born in Glens Falls, while his mother was a native of County Kerry, Ireland. She migrated to America with her parents at a tender age. Jeremiah was the second of a family of seven children. He spent the spare hours of his early youth in reading the history of his native land and not only acquired a vast wealth of information respecting the Revolution and its leaders and the early history of the Republic, but more important even than his knowledge of facts and dates and places, was the avidity with which he absorbed eagerly the spirit which animated all America in these eventful times. His grandfather, John O'Leary, a native of Buttevant, County Cork, Ireland, spent many hours of the latter years of his good old age narrating to his grandchildren, with whom he lived, many anecdotes relating to American and Irish history. He had a remarkable memory and would devote hours telHng the younger O'Learys, grouped around his easy chair, thrilling stories of the Indians, of the struggles of the early immigrants, the hardships of the early Irish settlers, of the battles fought in the vicinity of their own birth place, of the wrongs inflicted upon Ireland by England, of the scattering and the suffering of his own family in the early part of the nineteenth century, and generally of the contributions made by the Irish in America to the creation, development and growth of the American Republic. The subject of this sketch was only twelve years old when his grandfather died at the age of eighty-seven, but the grandfather had already implanted in the grandson the germ of that devotion to American ideals, which later was to plunge him with all his energies and talents into the vortex of America's fiercest struggle for the preservation of its historic policies.

When Jeremiah was thirteen years of age, his father, Daniel O'Leary, was appointed by Gov. Levi P. Morton head of the Factory Department of the State of New York, and the O'Leary family in consequence removed from Glens Falls to Albany, the Capital City of New York State. Here for six years Jeremiah found much to interest and inspire him in the splendid collection of war relics preserved in the great Capitol building. He was also afforded an opportunity for more extensive reading by the comprehensive library which is one of the features of the building. At the age of eighteen he decided to study law and tliree years later, upon attaining his majority, was admitted to the Bar. Two months later found him in New York City, practically a stranger in the big metropolis, entering upon the practice of his profession without seeking assistance or patronage from financiers or politicians — the method usually followed by the young lawyer eager to adopt the surest means of professional success. Following his talents he began to specialize in trial work and five years later found him a busy attorney and frequently in court as counsel in civil causes. He never lost a jury case until 1911, when after several years of the most intense professional effort his strength began to waver under the severe strain with the result that he lost three cases in succession. When this occurred he took a complete rest.

Recovering quickly, he again took up his legal work and from 1912 to 1914 we find him one of the most aggressive and successful trial lawyers at the New York Bar. He was the type of lawyer who went to Court thoroughly prepared, the master of his case. He usually won his cases by cross-examination and his final appeal to the jury. When the European War broke out he had built up a lucrative practice, earning a large income for a lawyer scarcely thirty-three years of age. In 1909, O'Leary was married to Gertrude E. Whalen, the daughter of Michael H. Whalen of New York City, a prominent Civil War Veteran and successful business man. His first son, born in 1911, he called Robert Emmet, and his next boy, Gerald. In all he has had four children, a girl, Gertrude, and Stephen Whalen, named after his uncle. Lieutenant H. Stevenson Whalen, who died an officer of the 69th Regiment at the Mexican Border just before the outbreak of the European War.

When twenty-four years of age, Jeremiah joined the Sixty-ninth Regiment. He refused a Commission, preferring to serve as a private in the ranks, where, as he frequently remarked, he "could be among the men." Eighteen months later however, he consented to become Second Lieutenant in Company B with which he remained until he resigned from the Regiment in 1910, after a service of almost six years. While in the Sixty-Ninth, he organized a Regimental Athletic Association and athletic teams and devoted himself to work calculated to build up the Regiment and improve the morale of the men. He became president of the Regimental Athletic Association, in which office he received all the assistance the writer, its secretary could give him. He was always popular among the men and active in their behalf, devoted to their comfort and interests, and aided by myself and other young officers, he succeeded in strengthening the organization greatly when it was threatened with disorganization by factional fights. As a consequence of such work under the command of Colonel Louis D. Conley, the Sixty-Ninth became a strong and compact body and fit for any service in 1916 when it was ordered to the Mexican border, and there trained for its later distinguished service in France.

An incident occurred shortly before O'Leary's resignation from the Sixty-Ninth, which throws a flood of light on his character. The Regiment, which has such a splendid war record, was organized during the days of the young Ireland Movement, when patriots such as Thomas Francis Meagher and John Mitchell were cast into prison by British courts for political offenses in Ireland. At that time American sympathy for Ireland ran high, and so pronounced was it, that the Sixty- Ninth Infantry was formed as a distinctively Irish Regiment for the express purpose of aiding in the liberation of Ireland and as such was admitted as a part of the National Guard of New York State. The finest types of young Irish-Americans joined it and drilled assiduously in the ardent hope that by becoming proficient in military tactics they might be better equipped to strike a blow for Ireland. This spirit of these days, so exotic to American Tories now was further evidenced by the great public reception which John Mitchel, grandfather of John Purroy Mitchel, late Mayor of New York, received in 1854 upon his arrival at New York following his escape from the British Convict settlement in Van Dieman's Land. Receptions were tendered him at the City Halls of New York and Brooklyn, at which the Mayors of the respective cities attended, while prominent public men and noted newspaper men like Horace Greeley, then owner and editor of the "Tribune," were conspicuous in paying their respects to the man who was stigmatized as a felon by British law merely because he loved human liberty. These incidents are in sharp contrast to the public opinion of our day, which in 1917 found.,

Jeremiah A. O'Leary at the Age of Thirteen Years.

the United States actually fighting with England and persecuting men like Jeremiah A. O'Leary for opinions which a few short years before were the badge of purest patriotism and the sign manual of unadulterated Americanism.

From the days of its organization down to the present the Sixty-Ninth Regiment has always been distinctively Irish and is recognized as such by public opinion and by public officials. On each St. Patrick's Day the Regiment attends Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral, and in the afternoon marches proudly up Fifth Avenue at the head of the St. Patrick's Day Parade. When Lieutenant Colonel John Duncan Emmet resigned from the Regiment in 1901, various individuals, notably H. H. Rogers, Jr., son of the President of the Standard Oil Corporation, sought his place. Mr. Rogers, rich and powerful, with no Irish blood, undertook to use his wealth and influence and actually succeeded in securing the support of a large number of officers in the Regiment. O'Leary, anxious to preserve the Regiment's Irish traditions, and affronted at the idea of an outsider becoming its Colonel, organized with my assistance and co-operation, the young officers into a solid unit against Rogers. We finally succeeded in bringing about the selection of Louis D. Conley, a man of Irish blood, who commanded the Regiment until 1916.

O'Leary's active interest in Irish organizations began about the time he joined the Sixty-Ninth. While a member of the Regiment, he never lost an opportunity at smokers and public affairs to remind the men of its traditions, or to portray the Regiment as a constant reminder of what America owes to Ireland and what the American of Irish blood owes to America. In speeches to the men he frequently referred to the fact that when the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, visited New York in 1861, Col. Corcoran, then Commander of the Regiment, refused to order it to parade in the Prince's honor, although instructed to do so by his Commander-in-Chief, for which disobedience he was placed under arrest. He also related how the charges were withdrawn a short time later so that the Colonel might lead the Regiment to the front at the outbreak of the Civil War. He narrated frequently how Thomas Francis Meagher, later Commander of Meagher's famous Irish Brigade, the fighters par excellence of the Union Army during the Civil War, of which the Sixty-Ninth was a part, had been tried for treason in Ireland and sentenced to death, how his sentence was subsequently commuted to imprisonment in the penal colony at Van Dieman's Land, how he escaped, came to America to organize the Irish Brigade which won for the Irish in America imperishable glory upon the battlefields of the Civil War, notably at Marye's Heights, Fredericksburg — sometimes called the Balaklava of America.

The first Irish organization Jeremiah O'Leary joined was the Gaelic League. His entrance into this organization was no mere accident but a result of his convictions. He had read an address delivered by Dr. Douglas Hyde, appealing for the preservation of the Irish language and was so impressed by it that he immediately joined the Harlem Gaelic Society established in connection with All Saints' Church, New York, then as now under the guidance of Mgr. James W. Power, one of the staunchest friends of Ireland in this country. He studied Irish faithfully and at the end of one year became president of the Society, devoting himself earnestly to the promotion of the Gaelic revival until he retired in 1910. Included in its agenda were Irish language, literature, history, music and dancing. He was a member of the Executive Committee of the Gaelic League of the State of New York and served as a member of the Reception Committee which received Dr. Douglas Hyde at a great public meeting at Carnegie Hall on his visit to America. With his associates he also organized the Cumann Ceoil, a singing society, and aided in the organization of the Cumann na Rinnce, a dancing society of which his brother, John, was president and chief instructor. In this connection he aided materially in securing recognition by the Board of Education of Irish figure dancing, being one of the most excellent methods of developing agility and grace in children, with the result that it became a part of the physical culture curriculum in the Public Schools of New York City.

A few years after Mr. O'Leary joined the Gaelic League, he assisted in the establishment of the first Sinn Fein Society in America. Its presidency was tendered him, and while he declined the honor, he nevertheless took a very active part in the work and delivered a number of addresses before the Society on the possibilities of the Sinn Fein policy. He was an early subscriber to "Sinn Fein," the periodical established by Arthur Griffith and read all the splendid literature which this movement has inspired.

O'Leary's early grasp of Sinn Fein policy as a practical political policy serves as an excellent illustration of his vision. His ability to appreciate and understand the power of political ideas can be seen by the following peroration of an address delivered by him before the Brooklyn Gaelic Society in Imperial Hall, Brooklyn, March 17th, 1909, on the "Failure of Parliamentary Agitation." Speaking at that time, he said: —