Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 June 1889 — ALEXANDER SULLIVAN. [ARTICLE]

ALEXANDER SULLIVAN.

A Succinct Review of the Noted Clansman’s Life. Alexander Sullivan’s career is studded with startling incident. A small merchant, he was acc used and acquitted .of arsdn.~ A politician, ho has flgured in every camp, holding some offices, seeking others, and assuming to act as a local Warwick, now in one party, now in another. Reduced to fiscal straits he scheduled as a bankrupt, and then relieved by the easy process once in vog&e of legal obligation to discharge enumerated debts he surprised his creditors by payment in full with a high rate of interest In the territories as in Chicago he had received and returned bodily menace. He has exchanged shots. Thirteen years ago in Chicago he killed a schoolteacher. Twice tried he was finally acquitted of murder. Perseverance and audacity marked his subsequent career, and his address can not be better illustrated than by the statement that in the office of that, journal which denounced him with uns paring vigor and bitterness and extended its animadversions to every one connected nearly or remotely with his defense he became a valued counselor. Even looking at it as a justifiable killing Hanford’s murder would have daunted the perpetrator had he a weaker nature than Sullivan. He faced popular indignation with grim but quiet resolve and had the satisfaction of finding himself courted where he had been condemned and sought where he had been repelled. Had Blaine succeeded in 1884 Sullivan’s success would have been complete. Having method, industry, thoroughness, and persistence Sullivan, once embarked on the career of an Irish nationalist, readily reached the first place. To gain leadership was not a difficult task to the possessor of ambition guided by an intelligence unswayed by the emotions. Opposition gave way before a man who wasted no time in thrasonical bar-room discussions, but studying men.and situations, worked while others slept. In the open he supported Parnell and constitutional agitation. Under the cover of a secret society he was one of a “triangle” preaching and practicing physical force. Never wholly without enemies, accusers, and detractors he attained, nevertheless, higher dictinction and broader influence thsn any assumed leader of the Irish in America ever commanded. Irishmen who would not join a secret society and abhorred the use of dynamite applauded him as one who implicitly accepted the leadership of Parnell, while the clansmen rejoiced in the knowledge that at the head of the Irish league was a dynamiter who had taken the bath of the brotherhood and as one of its directing minds was projecting mysterious expeditions against England. Sooner or later fractional differences characterized all Irish organization. Large sums of monej' raised by the secret societies were so mysteriously disbursed as to excite comment which led to accusation. Sullivan’s influence commenced to decline. The league had followed him in American politics and met disaster, but even if he were Alexander the successful and the just the Irish would have wearied of him as the Athenians wearied of Aristides. Some incidents in Sullivan’s life, his known speculations on the stock exchange and in the wheat pit, his lavish use of money in many directions, gave color to the whisperings against his fiscal honor. Chief among those who challenged his integrity was Dr. Patrick H. Cronin. Sullivan is a bitter and implacable foe. His animosity was aroused. He appeared personally to prosecute Cronin as a clansman and procured his expulsion from the society. But resolute and persistent as himself, Cronin, organizing factional camps, continued his charges against the “triangle” of which Sullivan had been the controlling force. A union of the divergent camps was effected and Cronin was once again a clansman. Prosecuted by Sullivan the time came when, despite the bitter protest of the accused, Cronin sat as a juror on the trial of Sullivan. Though in- the minority he held to the truthfulness of his charges and was perhaps stimulated by the disclosures made because of the failure of the Traders’ bank. The august meeting of the brotherhood was to be perturbed anew by the scandal, for Cronin resisted all pressure to cease and stood ready to renew the combat whicn he feared would cost him his life. Alexander Sullivan Lies in jail under the heavy accusation of having been a principal, an accessory, or of having guilty knowledge of the murder of Dr. Cronin. The crime is hideous, revolting. Against the deep damnation of Ct-on in’s taking off, accomplished as it was in secret by assassins and as the result of a horrible conspiracy, planned and persisted in with devilish ingenuity and firmness Of purpose, the killing of Hanford, done in open day in hot blood and under circumstances suggestive of self-defence, seems a trivial offense. If SuHivan is guilty he is damnably guilty. Coughlin was possibly a shallow knave, the iceman a fanatic. Woodruff a cheap mercenary, but the intelligence that planned, the hatred that persisted, the craft that inspired was, if the coroner’s jury is right, the intelligence, the hatred, the craft of Aliexander Sullivan. The

very enormity of the crime and its horrible circumstances stagger belief that Sullivan, who had everything to lose by discovery and nothingmuch to gain by accomplishment, is the awful malignant this accusation would make him out. That -any matr of even ordinary repute, happily married, . comfortably circumstanced, middle-aged, well acquainted with the sweeping character of the conspiracy law in Illinois, would deliberately incur the possibility of swift and ignominious death on the gallows and the pains of an eternity of torment, leaving a name infamous and accursed, is a monstrous supposition not to be accepted unless upon proofs. The Times has presented fully but will not make any present analysis of the testimony upon which the coroner’s jury acted. Happily the time-honored and wisely cherished maxim of the common law that an accused is innocent until his guilt is proved holds in our courts if it does not always guide popular expression. It remains for the state to prove its case. It remains for the state to prove its case before a petit jury with all the limitations upon testimony required by courts of record. It remains for the state legally to prove its case with the accused at the bar fighting for their lives. There, ought to be but one sentiment in the public mind, the sentiment of complete fairness expressed in the phrase, Let justice be done! Chicago Times. ;