Richard B. Connolly and other Conspirators against my Liberty.
In 1855, Richard B. Connolly said he would give me a clerkship in the County Clerk’s Office, if I would not expose his unnaturalized alienage. I declined his infamous proposition. He then got Alderman John Kelly to read a letter to the Board of Aldermen, declaring that he was born in Ireland, and first landed in Philadelphia, where he got naturalized in Independence Hall, and that he valued the frame that contained the evidences of his naturalization, more than any piece of furniture in his house, and invited all to call at his residence, and behold its graceful suspension on his parlor wall. I called, and his wife assured me that her husband was absent, and that his naturalization papers were in a trunk, and that he had got the key. Alderman John H. Briggs called, when Connolly was at home, but he was not permitted to see the evidences of his naturalization. Other citizens, and many of Connolly’s most intimate friends called and desired to see his naturalization papers, but he declined to show them. I then went to Philadelphia, and got certificates from the clerks of all the Courts, that Richard B. Connolly, of Ireland, was never naturalized in the Philadelphia Courts, and I returned, and published the results of my visit to Philadelphia in the New York Times, and other journals, and also stated that Connolly strove to bribe me not to expose his alienage. At the election of County Clerk, which followed these events, Connolly did not vote, and when taunted with his refusal to vote by his adversaries, he excused himself on the ground that he had bet largely on several candidates, and dared not vote. This was the very small aperture through which he crawled. And this is the scamp who is to impannel the jury by which I am soon to be tried for the alleged libel of Tiemann and Cooper and Connolly’s most sacred friend, Simeon Draper, with whom he was long a clerk, and with whom he has been connected in schemes of plunder and political villainy for nearly a quarter of a century. From Connolly’s notorious character as a sly and cunning and treacherous rascal, and Jury Packer, and ballot stuffer, and public robber, I have every reason to believe that he will pack the jury that will try me. And he has four powerful motives for packing my jury, and sending me to Blackwell’s Island: And firstly, to avenge my exposure of his perjured alienage, and secondly, to prove his fidelity to his old friend, Simeon Draper, and thirdly, to win the favor of Tiemann and Cooper, and secure their support of him as Comptroller, and fourthly, to incarcerate me while he seeks his nomination and election as Comptroller, so that I cannot expose his perjured alienage and nefarious crimes, during his efforts to obtain an office, which will enable him to steal millions from the Treasury, and thus rob the toiling millions of their bread and raiment and shelter from the pitiless elements, and drive many a lovely virgin, of sick and indigent parents, to the horrors of prostitution. In 1852, he was almost penniless, but now he is worth a million of dollars, which he has stolen directly from the pockets of the honest and laborious classes, for whom he professes exhaustless love. With the Mayor and nearly all the Executive Departments, and Connolly, Draper, Sickles, Hart, and the Herald, Times, and Tribune, and other journals, and Peter Cooper, and Ex-Mayor Kingsland, and other millionaires against me, it seems almost impossible to escape a sojourn at Blackwell’s Island, but I have confidence in God and truth and justice, and I defy all the powers of earth to vanquish my soul. And I most fervently thank the Great Disposer of Events, that if I am consigned to a felon’s cell, it will not be for robbing the friendless multitudes, like such thieves as Tiemann, Cooper, Draper, and Connolly, who may not be incarcerated and tortured for their deeds of villainy while living, although a terrible retribution awaits them beyond the grave. Stephen, of old, was stoned for his virtues, and Socrates poisoned, and the Saviour crucified, and a poor, humble, and friendless being like me, may be imprisoned, and forced to die in a dungeon, for exposing the public robbers of the present generation. But I will not murmur at the terrible ordeal through which I am about to pass. For my fidelity to the people, I may lose my liberty. Be it so. And when the public thieves have consigned me to a lonely and dreary cell, and my frail form slowly wastes away, and I am forever gone, my absent soul will only crave a humble mound, and the tears of the virtuous, to bless and fertilise the pretty flowers that prance over my grassy hillock, in the mild summer perfume.
Stephen H. Branch’s Alligator.
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JULY 31, 1858.
STEPHEN H. BRANCH’S “ALLIGATOR” CAN BE obtained at all hours, at wholesale and retail, at No. 114 Nassau Street, (Second Story), near Ann Street, New York.
