ding from him. Addicks refused to pay.
Friends and associates urged him to settle. While yet refusing, he
agreed to meet this man at one of the leading hotels in the presence of
counsel and lieutenants. The interview was a hot one. Addicks surprised
all by his absolute fearlessness in the face of a savage attack, which
culminated in the production of a document signed by certain
Massachusetts legislators, wherein they receipted for the bribe money
Addicks had paid for their votes. The man who claimed he was being
cheated threatened this would be laid before the Grand Jury the
following day. All the witnesses were dumfounded at the situation and in
concert begged Addicks to hush the matter up by paying what was claimed.
"Gentlemen," said this great financier, "my honor, my business and my
personal honor, has been assailed, and rather than submit to this
outrage I would die! I now ask you all to bear witness that under no
circumstances will I pay to this man a single dollar!" And he
indignantly left the meeting.

While his counsel and associates were appalled at what might be the
outcome, they admired Addicks' manly pluck, and asked themselves if they
had not, after all, been mistaken in their estimates of his courage and
principle. In the middle of the same night, the man with the document
was surprised by a telegram reading: "Meet me in Jersey City to-morrow
sure with paper; keep absolutely secret." Next day in Jersey they met,
and Addicks simply said: "There is the full amount. Give me the paper.
You don't suppose I would compound a felony in the State in which it was
committed, and before witnesses, do you?"

In the national election of 1896 J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks was a
candidate for the United States Senate in Delaware, and for a variety of
reasons was anxious to secure a Republican victory. Within the State,
however, the real contest was not over national issues, but to obtain
control of the Legislature which in the following January had to elect a
United States Senator. There were three factions, the Democrats and two
wings of the Republicans, the Addicks and anti-Addicks parties, the
latter calling themselves "regulars." On Election Day Addicks used an
even $100,000 buying votes, and that evening Delaware was safe for
McKinley--both the "regulars" and the men whom Addicks' money bought
having voted for a Republican President. But it was early bruited around
that if the vote of Sussex County (there are three