The Crime of the Century; Or, The Assassination of Dr. Patrick Henry CroninHunt, Henry M.
History
The Crime of the Century; Or, The Assassination of Dr. Patrick Henry Cronin
Hunt, Henry M.
Cronin, Patrick Henry, 1846-1889; Trials (Assassination) -- Illinois -- Chicago
But these vigorous measures, instead of crushing the opposition, served
only to give it new life and energy. An organization, antagonistic to
the Triangle, composed of men bitterly hostile to Sullivan, Boland,
Feeley and others high in power, was brought into existence, and
rapidly grew until it was equal in strength to the original
Clan-na-Gael. It had trusty spies and avowed adherents in the older
organization, and the bitter quarrel was also brought into other Irish
movements. Sullivan and his aids gradually dropped out of control, first
seeing to it, however, that they were to be replaced by men to whom
their word would be as law. Still Cronin and those with him kept up
their warfare. Numerous efforts were made to silence him, and twice in
1887 he was called as an expert witness in trumped up cases before two
Chicago police justices, in the hope that his persecutors, by putting
him on the rack of cross examination, might find some flaw in his life
that could be made use of in lessening his influence, or some
disgraceful scrape which might be held over his head, to make him heed
the behests of the man into whose possession the secrets had come. This
effort failed of its object, and the physician returned to the charge
with two new allegations. One was that the Triangle had allowed the
family of Lomasney to suffer for the necessaries of life, while funds
that had been appropriated by a local committee of the Clan-na-Gael,
which labored under the belief that the missing brother was in an
English dungeon, had been withheld, and another, that Sullivan had gone
to Paris, while Patrick Egan was an exile in the French capital, and
demanded the sum of $100,000 of Land League funds to carry out the aims
of the physical force men in America. According to this charge, the
money was demanded to meet certain expenditures that had been planned in
a convention of representative members of the Clan. Mr. Egan, so it was
claimed, after a good deal of consideration, refused to turn over the
money, and then Sullivan threatened to disrupt every Irish society in
America unless his demand was speedily complied with. He pointed to the
fact that there was a large and growing element among Irish-Americans
that was dissatisfied with the management of national affairs, and was
ready to revolt as soon as a leader turned up to direct them. A whole
week was consumed in discussing the demand of the American emissary, and
in the end Mr. Egan was convinced that it would be wiser to take counsel
with some of his confreres before rendering a final decision. He told
Mr. Sullivan plainly that he was opposed to granting so large a sum of
money for any purpose whatever, but he was willing to abide by the
decision of other men who had as close a knowledge as himself of the
needs of the order at home and abroad. He offered to submit Sullivan's
proposition to Sheridan, the famous No. 1 of the Phoenix Park
Invincibles, and the leader of the physical force men in Ireland. Mr.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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