Excerpt from The Molly Maguires and the Detectives The governing idea in the mind of the author, while preparing this volume for the press, has been to give details connected with the Mollie Maguires, and follow strictly the truth concerning the adventures of the detectives during three years passed in their midst. He is aware that, in many places, the relation reads much like fiction, and that it will be accepted as romance by very many who are totally unacquainted with the country and the people attempted to be described. It has been the constant endeavor to adhere closely to facts, and if the incidents are, in a great degree, novel and absorbing, it is due to these facts, and they were worked out, through arduous labors, in sleepless nights and undivided attention to the ends to be gained. The coal regions of Pennsylvania are inhabited by a mixture of races, the ingredients perhaps more widely differing, in character and origin, than those of any other portion of the globe. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

A group of 20 Irish immigrants, suspected of comprising a secret terrorist organization called the "Molly Maguires", were executed in Pennsylvania in the 1870s for the murder of 16 men. This work offers a new interpretation of their dramatic story, tracing the origins of the Molly Maguires to Ireland and explaining the growth of a particular structure of meaning.