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

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Reading Time: 4 minutes [500 words]

Here is the translated text as follows:

Mr. Nickolas presented an affidavit made by the prisoner and moved for a continuance. The affidavit alleged that the following persons are material witnesses in his defense: William Gardner of Portsmouth; Tench Coxe of Philadelphia; Judge Bee of South Carolina; Timothy Pickering, late of Philadelphia; William B. Giles of the County of Amelia; and Gen. Blackburn of the County of Bath.

He expects to prove by William Gardner that he was the Commissioner of Loans for the State of New Hampshire under the government of the United States and that he was removed from the said office because he, Gardner, refused to subscribe to an address circulated in the town of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. This address was presented to the President of the United States in 1798 at the instance of several inhabitants of the said town, expressing unequivocal approbation of the President's conduct in the administration of the United States.

He expects to prove by the evidence of Tench Coxe that in 1798, Coxe held an important office, namely, Commissioner of the Revenue, from which he was ejected by the current President of the United States because he did not approve of the measures of the President’s administration or the principles on which it was conducted.

He verily expects to prove by Judge Bee that he received a letter from the President of the United States in 1799, advising and requesting Judge Bee, then acting in his judicial capacity, to deliver Jonathan Robbins, alias Thomas Nash, to the Consul of the British nation in Charleston. Robbins had been apprehended and brought before Judge Bee on a charge of murder committed on the high seas aboard the British frigate Hermione.

He shall be able to prove by the evidence of Timothy Pickering that the President of the United States was in possession of dispatches from Mr. Vans Murray, the American Minister in Holland. These dispatches contained assurances from the French Republic that ambassadors from the United States would be received in a manner satisfactory to the people and government of the United States. The President withheld this information from Congress for many weeks while Congress was in session.

He believes he shall be able to prove by the evidence of Stephen Thompson Mason and William B. Giles that John Adams, President of the United States, has unequivocally avowed in conversation with them principles utterly incompatible with the principles of the present Constitution of the United States. These principles could not be carried into operation under any political institution without establishing a direct, powerful, and dangerous aristocracy. Adams declared, in express terms to Stephen Thompson Mason, that he had no more idea that the present Federal Constitution could, for any length of time, control the people of the United States than that it could control the motion of the planets. He also declared to Mason that he had no more idea that a political society could exist without a distinction of ranks than that an army could exist without officers.