009 Page – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

Here is the translated text as follows:

### PREFACE TO VOLUME TEN

The trial of Edward D. Worrell, detailed on page 1, is notable for its striking and interesting features. However, it is the compelling speeches to the jury by Wright and Bay that justify dedicating over 150 pages of this volume to the case. This raises the question: why are speeches to the jury in significant criminal trials no longer given space in the columns of our daily newspapers or preserved for the public in some permanent form immediately after delivery?

In the past, when luminaries such as Rufus Choate or Daniel Webster spoke in Massachusetts, or Prentiss or Marshall in Kentucky, or Wright in Missouri, or Sampson or Brady in New York, their words reached far beyond the courtroom. Their orations were published almost verbatim in the press and later reported in pamphlet form, eagerly purchased in bookstores as avidly as today's best-selling fiction. For instance, when Daniel Webster delivered his renowned speech for the Commonwealth during the trial of the Knapps for murder in the small town of Salem (see 7 Am. St. Tr.), it not only appeared in full in local newspapers but was also published in book form in both Massachusetts and New York by at least half a dozen different publishers. This practice continued until around the end of the Civil War.

In England, the tradition persists; a speech to the jury by a leading barrister in an important criminal trial will appear in the newspapers the next day, almost word for word. What, then, accounts for this neglect by our press of the oratory of our bar? Is it that commercialism has killed eloquence, rendering it extinct like the dodo? Has our modern advocate lost the art of compelling speech?