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American State Trials, Volume 1

John D. Lawson

"A collection of the important and interesting criminal trials which have taken place in the United States from the beginning of our government to the present day".

To the general public this series will certainly appeal as the most interesting and instructive work which has been published in this country for many years. The trial of judicial causes has even more charms than biography and history, for it is a drama of real life. We enter the halls of justice, the judges and jurors are before us, the criminal is brought in, we behold him surrounded by an eager and excited populace; the whole scene passing before the mind's eye as a living and moving picture. There is nothing in the Grecian drama that surpasses, in touching pathos, scenes in the trials and prosecutions of these men and women, sometimes innocent and sometimes guilty, but always awaiting with trembling the verdict of the jury which is to send them back to their families and friends or to the scaffold or prison. Here are the poor and ignorant confronted with their accusers but relying upon their advocates; there the rich and powerful surrounded by a host of counsel and braving even the power of the government to convict them. Sometimes the mere report of the evidence in the case and the verdict gives a complete picture of the crime and criminal but in most cases the full dramatic effect cannot be shown in a narrative, but stands out broadly and as vividly as the actual trial when the witnesses, the counsel, the judge and the prisoner are suffered to speak for themselves. in many cases the great points of interest are the eloquent arguments at the bar by the advocates, and in this collection will be included all the great forensic efforts which have been made in trials in all the States by the orators and leaders of the American Bar from the beginning of American Courts down to the present time. When it is considered how prone our people are to litigation, what a vast number of causes are decided every year, how eagerly the public attention is directed to many of them, what an amount of learning and talent are centered in the legal profession, greater perhaps than in any other, how fond American people are of attending courts, and especially the magnitude of many causes that are tried, it is extraordinary that there should not have appeared up to this time in the country a series of American State Trials. - Summary from the Introduction