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

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Reading Time: 3 minutes [395 words]

Here is the translated text as follows:

584 X. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS,

The first wonder is that the child, though black, is not of the color of the mother, nor yet of the African—but strange to tell, of the most degenerate white.

The second wonder is that the greatest of these wonders, she remained, as the counsel for the Almshouse charitably testifies, a lady of virtue and unblemished credit!

I had heard of a sect that trusted more to faith than to good works. The counsel, it appears, is of that sect when he asks this honorable Court to put its hand and seal to three such miracles. I would rather be called ignorant and simple than too learned and perverse. But since I cannot believe in the metamorphoses of old, nor in the procreations of Jupiter Ammon, I am sour upon the belief of all other such heathenish stories.

Before I lose myself in the labyrinth through which I am to tread, that I may not die in the learned counsel's debt, I shall first answer all his observations. If I should miss my way, and never return to where I set out, my will is that all concerned shall mourn for me—the whites putting on black, and the blacks white, in token of affection. Item: the manuscript I hold in my hand to be deposited in the city library. Item: the fee which I receive in this cause, to enure to the benefit of the Almshouse.

The counsel says that the reasoning of my colleague has not convinced him. If it had, it would have been a fourth miracle; for certainly the counsel's business here was not to be convinced.

He triumphantly asks why we did not call the white man? And I answer, in all simplicity, because we had no need of him: besides, he is our rival, and carries pistols; and we disclaim all prying into what does not concern us, and all indiscreet meddling with family affairs.

All the justice we ask for our poor black swain is not to pay for a child he never got, nor be made a worker of miracles against his will. The thing of all things of which he thought the least, and of which he is the least ambitious.

Again, the counsel asks what motive could the woman have to charge the child to a black father, when she could have a...