Pinkerton’s Great Detective
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Another earlier murder was that of Alexander Rea in 1868. McParlan had previously heard that Manus Cull, alias Daniel Kelly or Kelly the Bum, had been involved. Cull was then serving a sentence in Pottsville jail, so in August 1876, Linden visited him four times within a week, each time bringing him whiskey, cigars, or other treats.52 Eventually, this generosity—or bribery—was rewarded, because in November Cull turned state’s evidence. In February 1877, almost a year after McParlan had fled Schuylkill County, Patrick Hester, Peter McHugh, and Patrick Tully went on trial in Bloomsburg, Columbia County, for Rea’s murder. Cull and Lawler were the primary witnesses, but McParlan took the stand to give evidence “of the character of the Order” and replay the basics from his earlier testimony.53 All three men were found guilty and were sentenced to hang.
The same week that the trial for Rea’s murder began, Bishop William O’Hara of Scranton finally followed the recommendations of Archbishop Wood and formally excommunicated the AOH in his parish, which included the Northern Field.54 This helped lead to swift decisions at the national convention of the AOH, held in New York City that spring. In a public address, the AOH leadership stated that “the Order does not recognize any connection . . . with that terrible band of misguided men that have committed such crimes in Pennsylvania,” and that it had decided “to cut off from all connections with our organization the Schuylkill, Carbon, Northumberland and Columbia County lodges,” despite the fact that “a good number of good men would suffer for the misdeeds of a few.”55 What few Molly Maguires remained out of jail were now on their own.
Eight months later, in November 1877, McParlan returned to the anthracite region for a final appearance in the trial of Bucky Donnelly, the former Lost Creek bodymaster accused of plotting the murders of Sanger and Uren. The detective again went over his well-worn facts about the AOH and the case, and implicated Donnelly based on a conversation in Danny Hughes’s saloon on the day of the habeas corpus hearing for Munley and McAllister. “Donnelly took me aside in the saloon and stated it did not make any difference about this habeas corpus hearing,” McParlan testified. “Said he, ‘In the arrest of McAllister they have got the wrong man anyhow, and so far as Munley is concerned I am going to swear that I was well acquainted with him, and that he was not there; of course, I know different, as I know all about it.’”56
Despite McParlan’s testimony, it was Butler and Dennis Canning—who turned state’s evidence in exchange for a pardon on his conviction for conspiracy in the attack on Thomas—who provided the most damaging evidence. The latter told of Donnelly’s boasts of arranging the killing and the former that the defendant had attempted it previously. The combination was too much for the defense, even with an alibi for the night before the murder and testimony that contradicted Butler.57 Donnelly was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to hang, completing the prosecution for the Sanger and Uren murders.58 It also ended McParlan’s time in the anthracite region. By the end of his testimony in a remarkable nineteenth trial appearance it had been more than four years since he had first stepped off the train in Port Clinton. Schuylkill County would never be the same—nor would James McParlan.
CHAPTER 11
AN ENDING AND A BEGINNING
Before McParlan took the stand for the final time in Pottsville, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania made its most forceful statement regarding the Molly Maguires. On June 21, 1877, in what became known as the Day of the Rope, ten of the convicted men were hanged. Six died at the Schuylkill County jail—Boyle, McGehan, Carroll, Roarity, and Duffy for the murder of Yost, and Munley for the killing of Sanger and Uren. Four others were hanged at the Carbon County jail in Mauch Chunk: Doyle and Kelly for the assassination of Jones, Donahue for Powell, and Campbell for his involvement in both murders. At the last moment, Kelly asked to see Mrs. Jones, to whom he said, “I have made your children fatherless, but I want you to forgive me.” Her response was simply, “I hope God will forgive you.”1
Eventually ten more supposed Molly Maguires were hanged. Hester, McHugh, and Tully met their ends in Bloomsburg on March 25, 1878, for murdering Rea, six days after Tully confessed to his lawyer that most of what Cull had said was true, and that all three were guilty.2 Four days later, Fisher was hanged in Mauch Chunk for his role in the Powell murder. And the next month, Donnelly died for ordering Sanger murdered. On December 18, after exhausting his appeals, Kehoe was hanged for killing Langdon.3 Four men were also hanged in 1879, having been convicted after McParlan left the region.4
Although some were appalled by the trials and subsequent hangings,5 the Commonwealth’s actions were generally supported in the press, and within a short period several books had appeared praising McParlan, Gowen, and others for their roles in suppressing a terrorist organization.6 Over the years, however, popular opinion has changed about the fairness of the trials, as has how people view the Molly Maguires.
Some have gone so far as to claim that the Molly Maguires never actually existed but were fabricated by Gowen, Bannan, Pinkerton, and others to destroy organized labor.7 However, the historical evidence simply does not support such arguments. It was not just the rail and mining companies and the newspapers that acknowledged the Molly Maguires existed—a whole realm of individuals and organizations did so, including: the Commonwealth’s officials; many average citizens, as shown by their testimonies; the juries; the families of the men killed; the Catholic Church; witnesses called for the defense; prosecution and defense lawyers; and men who had been a part of the organization, such as McParlan, Kerrigan, Butler, and Mulhearn.8 Even historian Kevin Kenny, one of the strongest advocates on behalf of the convicted men, has agreed that “the Molly Maguires did indeed exist as an organized conspiracy” and that “the Molly Maguires existed as a group of Irish immigrants who assassinated their enemies.”9
Another view is that the Molly Maguires were activists who formed the beginning of the labor movement, representing oppressed miners against big capital.10 This is intriguing, because the Molly Maguires did, in one sense, represent mine workers, but it was very much at the individual level and not as part of the larger class struggle that tends to be the modern focus on the growth of the labor movement. Many of the Molly Maguires’ actions—including the murders of Powell, Yost, Sanger, and Jones—were responses to personal grievances. This was a fundamentally different approach than that of the trade unionism of the WBA, the first true labor movement to unite workers in different mining trades and from different ethnic backgrounds.
In reality, closely linking the Molly Maguires and the WBA is difficult because of their distinct modes of organization, ideology, and strategy. The WBA was representative of a large, broad group in a manner that was indirect, peaceful, systematic, and gradual; the small, sectarian Molly Maguires believed in direct, violent, and immediate action. Rather than engaging in harmonious bargaining with owners and management, as the WBA did, the Molly Maguires chose to employ threats, property damage, and personal violence. This is why the WBA, and particularly John Siney, were fundamentally opposed to the Molly Maguires, and criticized their outrages time and again. Thus, although there were arguably common characteristics in their goals, and undoubtedly a small overlap in personnel, the contrast between the trade union and the Molly Maguires could not have been greater. And ironically, it is this same dubious linking of two distinct organizations, which some try to make today, that allowed Gowen to identify them as the same body and helped enable him to destroy both.11
Closely related to the notion that the Molly Maguires were labor leaders is the concept that the trials and executions were the results of a conspiracy to purge innocent religious, political, or labor leaders fighting oppression and injustice.12 Gowen has been a particular target of this theory, with claims that he was trying to eradicate Irish Catholic leadership due to its political opposition to the Reading. Although Gowen certainly wanted to control the southern anthracite region economically, and to establish a stable social order t
here,13 it is doubtful that he pursued the Molly Maguires for religious or political reasons. There is a lack of any serious evidence—from his correspondence, speeches, or accounts of those who knew him—that Gowen ever showed any anti-Catholic prejudice. On the contrary, he was closely associated with Archbishop Wood and found a powerful ally in the Catholic Church. Gowen also never expressed any desire to enter politics, as he believed he could control any relevant political forces in Harrisburg from his position with the Reading.
A more frequent argument is that the trials came about because Gowen, Parrish, and Packer wished to destroy the entire labor movement. While it is true that Gowen had previously attempted to damage the WBA by linking it to the Molly Maguires, the union had been crushed the year before the trials, during the Long Strike. So it makes no sense that he would launch a conspiracy to destroy an organization that had already collapsed. Moreover, if that had been the case, Gowen would not have brought criminal charges against the saloon owners and AOH members who were the key figures in the Molly Maguire trials, but would have concentrated on Siney and other prominent union men. Further, he would not have fallen back on McParlan’s evidence—he would have looked rather to those operatives who had infiltrated the union, such as P. M. Cummings and William McCowan.14
• • •
In recent years there has been much discussion of the Molly Maguire trials, and their legality and morality have been much debated. However, an objective assessment should not confuse these important but separate issues. A weakness of many recent appraisals of the trials is their historical inaccuracy. They do not take into account important facts, or ignore that while various practices might since have changed, they were common and acceptable at the time. The trials were not mockeries of the American and Pennsylvania legal systems of the time, as some claim, but representative of them. A case in point is the frequently criticized practice of using private prosecutors, which was long established not only in Pennsylvania but throughout the English-speaking world. Furthermore, the claim that juries were illegally stacked by eliminating Irish and Catholics is not only factually inaccurate—there were Catholics on them—but anachronistic, in that it does not take into account what was accepted legal practice at the time.15 Such arguments also ignore that due to the way potential jurors had long been chosen from the jury wheel, the Molly Maguire trials did not violate due process any more than any other trial in the region during that period.
Further, arguments suggesting that the trials were a vast conspiracy disregard the long trail of bodies before the hangings. There were crimes committed, including cold-blooded murders. This is particularly overlooked in arguments that Gowen was involved for political reasons. More than once during the trials Gowen held forth about his time as district attorney, and how he had encountered “a secret organization, banded together for the commission of crime, and for the purpose of securing the escape or acquittal of any of its members charged with the commission of an offense.”16 There can be little doubt that his inability as a young prosecutor to successfully punish murder, violence, and arson was a key reason for Gowen’s participation in the trials.
These brutal murders are also often ignored or conveniently forgotten by those who have espoused theories that the trial evidence was fabricated, perjured, or obtained by coercion. Such theories overlook the fact that at least two of the men who were executed confessed their guilt, one of them implicating those hanged with him. Certainly Kelly’s confession leaves little question that he and Doyle murdered Jones. What is disputed is whether they did so on Campbell’s orders because they were members of an organization that had decided upon the mine boss’s death. Yet what other possible reason could they have had to travel twenty-five miles to murder someone they had never met? There has been no good answer generated other than that they were carrying out orders, nor a reasonable alternative to Campbell as the man behind the decision. Even if there were another man behind the killing, that would not change the story of AOH members killing on demand, whether the murders be of Powell, Yost, Jones, or Sanger.
Much of the criticism of the overall format of the trials has been spearheaded by an oft-quoted assessment made four decades ago by Professor Harold Aurand: “The Molly Maguire investigation and trials was one of the most astounding surrenders of sovereignty in American history. A private corporation initiated the investigation through a private detective agency; a private police force arrested the alleged offenders; the coal company attorneys prosecuted them. The state provided only the Courtroom and the hangman.”17
The facts say otherwise, however. Although many of the arrests were made by Coal and Iron Police, that force had been brought into being by state legislation, and each member of it had officially been approved by the governor of the state, thereby making it quasi-official and responsible to higher authorities. The prisoners were held in county facilities under the care of publicly elected officials. The charges were brought by the elected county district attorney on behalf of the Commonwealth. Although attorneys affiliated with the rail and mining corporations were significant figures in the prosecution, the district attorney in each case participated in and fulfilled his legal obligations while—as had been common for a century—accepting the help of private lawyers. The district attorney carried out his role in each case for the habeas corpus hearing, the primary trial, and the appeal. The jury commissioners were public officers and the jurors were tax-paying citizens. The judges were publicly elected, and the appeals were sent to the Commonwealth’s highest judicial body, the Supreme Court. When those convicted sent further requests to the Pardon Board, they were decided upon by public officials, prior to the elected governor of Pennsylvania signing the death warrants. Thus, the counties and Commonwealth were fully involved in the chargings, prosecutions, and executions of the Molly Maguires.
That being said, there is no doubt that the trials were held at a time of high emotion and intolerance, when the frenzy stirred up by the press, combined with the remarkable oratorical powers of Gowen, Albright, and Hughes, allowed the prosecution to repeatedly insist that mere membership in the AOH was evidence of guilt by association. Despite precedents established by the trial of the Lincoln assassination conspirators, this was a highly unusual argument for the time, and it raises questions about McParlan’s testimony.
• • •
As early as April 1874, McParlan first reported that the bodymasters and a few other members of the AOH formed an inner circle that acted without the knowledge of the full membership in carrying out violent acts.18 He believed at the time that it was this inner circle, rather than the entirety of the AOH, that formed the Molly Maguires. Yet two years later, throughout the trials, McParlan testified that the AOH and the Molly Maguires were the very same organization.
It has been argued recently that only the most tenuous of links can be shown to connect the two groups.19 Yet in each case in court, the Commonwealth and its witnesses presented evidence not merely directly linking the two, but indicating that they were actually the same organization. This evidence was credible according to the juries, judges, courtroom reporters, and most other individuals who attended the trials. But what did McParlan actually think? For if there was an inner circle in the AOH, why did he testify that the two bodies were the same?
No definitive insight into McParlan’s private thoughts exists today. Perhaps he had become convinced that the organizations were identical and that there was no inner circle. This seems doubtful, however, because the concept of the inner circle became so implanted in his mind that he used a similar model in other cases later in his career, and if the hypothesis had been disproven in this case, he would have been unlikely to cling to it so tenaciously. Perhaps he just changed his testimony to fit Gowen’s plan. If so, this is not as damning as it initially sounds, because, as those familiar with modern prosecution techniques and police procedure know, it is what police and witnesses do throughout the Western world. The task of the p
olice as it relates to court appearances is to secure convictions, just as McParlan’s was as an investigating detective. This is not to say that police or other witnesses fabricate testimony, but it should not be surprising that they present the facts that best make their case, while suppressing those that do not.
So did McParlan modify his story about the inner circle simply in order to help the prosecution’s case? Under the circumstances, it seems unlikely that he changed basic facts but probable that he shifted his emphasis at points. He did this in an extremely impressive fashion, because there is no doubt that he was considered to be very credible and persuasive. He showed a remarkable memory for what he considered important, and through day after day of fierce cross-examination he avoided falling into traps set by the defense, and was never proven to have lied. That he could come through that many questions in nineteen different trials during a period of a year and a half without significant contradictions certainly suggests that most of what he said was the truth, because under intelligent, searching cross-examination it is very difficult to maintain an extended web of lies. Moreover, McParlan’s testimony was extensively supported by those of Kerrigan, McHugh, Butler, Mulhearn, Slattery, and Canning, the last of whom, for example, confirmed during the Donnelly trial the holding of the June 1 meeting in Mahanoy City at which it was decided to kill Bully Bill and the Major brothers.20