Friday, July 23, 2010

The Testimony of Julian P. Steunenberg

As a follow-up to the previous short newspaper account of the testimony of my grandfather, Julian Steunenberg, here is the transcript of that portion of the trial. Click on the pages to enlarge for reading or go directly to the Haywood Trial Transcript, Volume I, page 70 (page number on the left lower corner of the transcript) at the University of Minnesota Law Library and use their viewer.



This is of course a very short sample of the Haywood trial transcript courtesy of the University Of Minnesota Law Library. You can view all 5,000 plus pages of the transcript at: Clarence Darrow - His Life, Legal Career & Legacy.

Visit this great website if you haven't already.

Other blog entries of interest:
Did the Steunenberg children favor commuting Orchard's sentence?

Julian Steunenberg riding in a carriage

Letters from Assassin Harry Orchard (to Julian)



One of many memorable walks with my grandpa Julian (circa 1954)

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Friday, July 9, 2010

Clarence Darrow - His Life, Legal Career and Legacy

Darrow_Photo_Idaho_Daily_Statesman_5_14_1907
It had been quite a long time since I last visited the University of Minnesota Law Library online. I received a Google alert today about the Clarence Darrow Digital Collection. Wow, they have really updated and added a lot of material. A great collection of documents, court transcripts, photographs, etc. You have got to check it out. Click on the link below.

Clarence Darrow - His Life, Legal Career and Legacy

And of course don't miss within the above collection:
The Bill Haywood Trial

Lots and lots of resources and photographs. Should keep me busy for awhile.

Sunday, July 4, 2010

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

Here is the complete text of the Declaration of Independence.
The original spelling and capitalization have been retained.

(Adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776)

The Unanimous Declaration
of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

--Source: The Pennsylvania Packet, July 8, 1776

More

The Unfinished Revolution

History is a Weapon - The Meaning of July 4th for the Negro

Friday, July 2, 2010

Great Grandson of Albert Horsley (aka Harry Orchard) Speaks Out

Over the years, I have had the pleasure of a couple of brief contacts with descendants of Albert Horsley, better known as Harry Orchard. Several years ago I learned of a great grandson of Orchard but was never able to establish direct contact. At times, there seems to be a reluctance to come forward, to make contact or to start a conversation. I can certainly appreciate if that is the case. As one of Orchard's ancestors once said to me (paraphrase of my recollection),"Albert was not the subject of conversation around the dinner table."

I am very pleased that Mr. Larry Taylor, a great grandson of Harry Orchard, has stepped forward and responded to the feedback page on the Idaho Public Television (IPTV) website for Assassination: Idaho"s Trial of the Century. Mr. Taylor's contribution to the historical record is an important one. Until now, views from descendants of Harry Orchard have generally been missing from the discussion of these tragic events that brought murder and misery to so many. I encourage Mr. Taylor, other descendants of Harry Orchard, or descendants of any of the many participants in this saga, to continue expressing your views and your opinions regarding this troublesome time in our history.

At a moment in time that I shall never forget, Bruce Reichert, of Idaho Public Television, stated at the premiere of Assassination: Idaho Trial of the Century, "John Richards has helped all of us realize how a murderous deed does not simply vanish. It can resonate for a century, its treachery touching many innocent souls."

I would now add that Larry Taylor has helped us realize it too.
Feedback Page: Assassination: Idaho's Trial of the Century