o get
rid of the sheriff, hang him--hang the sheriff!"

Public excitement died. Conviction seemed absolutely certain. Richardson
had been a public official and a popular one. Cora's action had been
cold-blooded and apparently without provocation. Nevertheless he had
remained undisturbed. He had retained one of the most brilliant lawyers
of the time, James McDougall. McDougall added to his staff the most able
of the younger lawyers of the city. Immense sums of money were
available. The source is not exactly known, but a certain Belle Cora, a
prostitute afterwards married by Cora, was advancing large amounts. A
man named James Casey, bound by some mysterious obligation, was active
in taking up general collections. Cora lived in great luxury at the
jail. He had long been a close personal friend of the sheriff and his
deputy, Mulligan. When the case came to trial, Cora escaped conviction
through the disagreement of the jury.

This fiasco, following King's editorials, had a profound effect on the
public mind. King took the outrage against justice as a fresh
starting-point for new attacks. He assailed bitterly and fearlessly the
countless abuses of the time, until at last he was recognized as a
dangerous opponent by the heretofore cynically amused higher criminals.
Many rumors of plots against King's life are to be found in the detailed
history of the day. Whether his final assassination was the result of
one of these plots, or simply the outcome of a burst of passion, matters
little. Ultimately it had its source in the ungoverned spirit of the
times.

Four months after the farce of the Cora trial, on May 14, King published
an attack on the appointment of a certain man to a position in the
federal custom house. The candidate had happened to be involved with
James P. Casey in a disgraceful election. Casey was at that time one of
the supervisors. Incidental to his attack on the candidate, King wrote
as follows: "It does not matter how bad a man Casey had been, or how
much benefit it might be to the public to have him out of the way, we
cannot accord to any one citizen the right to kill him or even beat him,
without justifiable provocation. The fact that Casey has been an inmate
of Sing Sing prison in New York is no offense against the laws of this
State; nor is the fact of his having stuffed himself through the ballot
box, as elected to the Board of Supervisors from a district where it is
said he was not even a candidate, an