The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1894-03-17
COL. BREoKINRIDGEs DEFENCE
May Try to Prove Miss Pollard Had
Rolafious. With ntIar MAN

May Try to Prove Miss Pollard Had
Relations With Other Men.
WASHINGTON, March II, 1894. What will
be the nature Of Colonel Breckinridge's de
fepcea The line of crossexamination pur-
sued by Miss Pollard's counsel has thus far
afforded no distinct clue as to what the
answer will be to the terribly distinct
and circunstantial evidence of the plaintiff,
acter impossible of impeachment. No
point in the defendants favor has yet been
established except the admission from
Miss Pollard that during her engagement
Tor contract as she insists it shall be called
with james G. Rodes and while her hason
with Colonel Breckenridge was going on,
she was engaged to be married to a young
man named Resell and was obliged to
break the engagement in order to get away
from Wesleyan Seminary to make arrange
ments for the birth of her first child. Each
sof the distinct allegations in the PLAINTIFFS
voluminous petition has been sustained by
proof more or less positive. Some OF
the witnesses, it will be remembered,
fail clearly to identity Miss Pollard as the
person who presented herself to them in her
difficulties under various assumed names,
but they testify that there was such per-
SON. and sustain the facts as set
out in the petition; and though, as
the counsel for the plaintiff said, in his
opening address, the seduction feature prac-
tically drops out of the case because there
is no law in the District of Columbia by
which poor girl of legal age, thus
wronged, can Obtain redress, yet the Incl
dental circumstantial confirmation of the
other portion of the PLAINTIFFS case of breach
of promise to marry afforded by the evil
dence on the first named point, will natur-
ally have its effect on the jury.
Tho dafouflauf in ia sworn answer denies
the seduction, denies his paternity Of the
plaintiffs children, and says the allegation
that he promised to marry the plaintiff at
the time she alleges is not true for the reason
that at the time ssuch marriage was inn
possible.A
The meaning of this last phrase in the
answer is now made clear by the produc-
tion of the certificate of the private
marriage of Col Breckenridge and Mrs.
Wing in New York on April 80, 1898,
two months before his public marriage to
the same lady in Kentucky. But lawyers
still fail to see how a marriage in April
can be pleaded against a promise OF
cording to the plaintiffs evidence,
and repeated in the presence OF Mrs
Julia G. Blackburn, widow of Gov. Luke
Blackburn, on the following Good Friday.
March 81 Mrs. Blackburn's remembrance
that it was on Good Friday the scene which
the date beyond possibility Of mis-
take. The secret marriage, it is held, only
affects the promise to marry, made in the
presence Of Major Moore chief of police,
and DIR. Lincoln, both of which took place
subsequent to April 20, 1898. The
almost general belief is, that the counsel
for Colonel Breckinredge will try to prove
that Miss Pollard had been led astray before
Colonel Breckenridge met her, that she
sustained Illicit relations with other men.
No evidence has appeared tending to
prove this insinuation. Efforts were
made in the close inquiry into the plaintiffs
lifein Lexington and elsewhere, to impli-
cate several prominent men, two of the m
well known authors, and another, Colonel
A. w. Swope, who was killed in
street duel, by Casius Clay Goodloe. These
attempts were not successful 1t was shown
that, while Colonel Swope boarded across the
street from the house occupied by Miss Pol
lard in lexington he had never once called
upon her; in fact, had never been seen to
speak to her.