860 Sheet – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

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Reading Time: 4 minutes [540 words]

Here is the translated text as follows:

The same system of persecution has been extended all over the continent. Every person holding an office must either quit it or think and vote exactly with Mr. Adams. Adams and Washington have since been shaping a series of these paper jobbers into judges and ambassadors, as their whole courage lies in a lack of shame. These poltroons, without risking a manly and intelligible defense of their own measures, raise an affected yelp against the corruption of the French Directory, as if any corruption could be more venal, more notorious, or more execrated than their own.

The object with Mr. Adams was to recommend a French war, professedly for the sake of supporting American commerce, but in reality for the sake of yoking us into an alliance with the British tyrant. While such numbers of the effective agents of the revolution languish in obscurity or shiver in want, ask Mr. Adams whether it was proper to heap so many myriads of dollars upon William Smith, a paper jobber who, next to Hamilton and himself, is perhaps the most detested character on the continent.

You will then make your choice between innocence and guilt, between freedom and slavery, between paradise and perdition. You will choose between the man who has deserted and reversed all his principles and that man whose own example strengthens all his laws, that man whose predictions, like those of Henry, have been converted into history. You will choose between that man whose life is unspotted by crime and that man whose hands are reeking with the blood of the poor, friendless Connecticut sailor. I see the tear of indignation starting on your cheeks! You anticipate the name of John Adams.

Every feature in the conduct of Mr. Adams forms a distinct and additional evidence that he was determined at all events to embroil this country with France. Mr. Adams has only completed the scene of ignominy which Mr. Washington began. This last presidential felony will be buried by Congress in the same criminal silence as its predecessors. Foremost in whatever is detestable, Mr. Adams feels anxiety to curb the frontier population. He was a professed aristocrat; he had proved faithful and serviceable to the British interest.

Thus, we see the genuine character of the President. When in a secondary station, he censured the funding system; when at the head of affairs, he reversed all his former principles. He exerts himself to plunge his country into the most expensive and ruinous establishments. In the first two years of his presidency, he has contrived pretenses to double the annual expense of government by useless fleets, armies, sinecures, and jobs of every possible description.

By sending these ambassadors to Paris, Mr. Adams and his British faction designed to do nothing but mischief. In that paper, with all the cowardly insolence arising from his assurance of personal safety, with all the fury but without the propriety or sublimity of Homer's Achilles, this hoary-headed incendiary, this libeler of the governor of Virginia, bawls out to arms! Then to arms! It was floating upon the same bladder of popularity that Mr. Adams threatened to make this city the central point of a bonfire.

"Reader, dost thou envy that unfortunate old man with his..."

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