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

Here is the translated text as follows:

PREFACE TO VOLUME TEN

xvii

The Leisler rebellion in New York (Jacob Leisler, p. 512) was the outgrowth of the anti-Catholic wave that swept over England and her colonies during the reign of James II. Leisler’s imagination greatly magnified the danger of a general religious war. He was no traitor to William of Orange; his effort was to hold the government for the Protestant cause. However, he possessed none of the qualities of a leader—a simple New York merchant, his education did not fit him for the trying emergencies in which he was placed. He was wrong in seizing the government, and this act made him many enemies, but his intentions were good. His execution after the danger had passed was a judicial mistake. He perished a victim to party malignity. The first to raise the standard of William and Mary, he was the first to suffer as a traitor. In later years, his estate was restored to his family, and an act of Parliament reversed his attainder. His violence and incompetency were forgotten in sympathy for the injustice of his death, and his friends became a successful party. One of his principal enemies was himself condemned as a rebel and a traitor.

The trial of Nicholas Bayard (p. 518) for High Treason in 1702 appropriately follows Jacob Leisler’s case in 1691. They explain each other and are both singularly illustrative of the condition of the Province at the periods when they occurred, distracted as it was by two rival factions who carried their dissensions to an excess which has no parallel in this country. The account is derived from standard historical works and from a full report of the trial, which appears to have been prepared by Bayard himself or some of his friends and which is contained in the fourteenth volume of Howell’s State Trials.