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Show IB THREATENS GEORGIAGHRNOR ATTACK MADE UPON CHIEF EXECUTIVE'S EX-ECUTIVE'S HOME AND STATE MILITIA IS CALLED OUT. Governor Commutes Sentence of Leo M. Frank to Life Imprisonment and Incurs Enmity of Georgians Who Believe Frank Guilty. Atlanta, Ga. With several hundred men and boys clamoring to get into the front gates of his country home ci I'eachtree road, which had been barricaded with barbed wire entanglements, en-tanglements, and threatening to overpower over-power twenty country policemen armed with riot guns. Governor Slatoa called out the militia late Monday night for protection. The governor proclaimed martial law at exactly 11 o'clock and by midnight mid-night the crowd had virtually been dispersed. There was no firing. The assembling of the mob followed the action of Governor Slaton in commuting com-muting the sentence of Leo M. Frank, who had been condemned to death on June 22 for the alleged murder of Mary Phagan in the National pencil factory in Atlanta on April 26, 1913. The governor commuted Frank's sentence to life imprisonment, and Frank was taken to the state prison farm at Milledgeville, secretly and before the public had been made aware of the governor's action. At his home, Monday night, Governor Gov-ernor Slaton said: ' The mob can come and tear me to pieces." he said, "but I will know that I have done what should be done to follow the right course and uphold the honor of Georgia and the office I occupy. "The ones who are howling the loudest now are the very ones who six months from now will he the first to approve my action of today. I could not hang a man when there was a doubt as to his guilt. "I could not sit here like Pontius Pilate and turn Frank over to be executed. exe-cuted. I had to do -what was right. The whole thing is just this: "The people who are doing all the talking have not read the evidence in the Frank case." |
