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Is not absolutely correct, so far as it was possible for me to verify it by close scrutiny of all matter treated. And for this reason I ask the public to read its pages carefully, for in this way they will become acquainted with the inmost thoughts of one of the noblest characters of which history bears no record.
There is one man whose name and life was so intimately interwoven with one of the stirring periods of this country's history that that history could not be written if his name were omitted. That man is Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. His biographers record no act of his life with more praise than the magnanimous manner in which he treated the Rebel General, Lee, when the latter surrendered his sword to him. Suppose Grant had taken the proffered sword and stabbed his antagonist with it? There would have been no word too detestable to have attached to his name. Albert R. Parsons surrendered his sword to the wild mob of millionaires when he walked in the court and asked for a fair trial by a jury of his peers. Yet the proud state of Illinois murdered him under the guise of "Law and Order:" foully murdered this innocent man. And upon the heart of her then Governor (Oglesby), who completed the atrocity by ratifying the vile conspiracy conducted by the wild howls of the millionaire rabble, by signing the death warrants of men whom he, as a lawyer, knew were innocent, there is not "one damned spot," but five, to "out."
Thus it is that history repeats itself. In this case it was the old, old cry: "Away with them; they preach a strange doctrine! Crucify them!" But the grand cause for which they perished still lives.
THE AUTHOR.
Chicago February 22, 1889
"The working classes are ignorant because they are poor, and poor because they are robbed."
"The more you work the less you have, and the less you will have to do."
ALBERT R. PARSONS
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