Kelsey Outrage : An American Story

This a true account of love, abduction & murder. Set in rustic Huntington (Long Island), New York in 1872, Charles George Kelsey is enamored of young Julia Smith. The town gentry, led by Dr. George Burr Banks & Julia's grandmother, Charlotte Burr Oakley, disapprove. The stage is set to waylay Kelsey after the presidential election campaign speeches for Horace Greeley in Huntington on the evening of November 4, 1872. Charles Kelsey is abducted, tarred, feathered & murdered. Weighed with weights stolen from Crossman Brothers brick yard, he's taken, while alive, to Lloyd's Beach & dumped in Oyster Bay. Poets Kelsey & Walt Whitman, both from Huntington, were each tarred & feathered. The stinging humiliation of being violated never left accused sodomite Whitman. Newspaper accounts surrounding Kelsey's murder abound, which Whitman immortalizes in his poem, "Nay, tell me not to-day the publish'd shame:", published in the NEW YORK DAILY GRAPHIC onMarch 5, 1873. Kelsey's half corpse or "Legs" surface in Oyster Bay on August 29, 1873, igniting a Coroner's inquest, Judicial hearings & a reward by the Governor of the State of New York, John A. Dix, leading to the arrest & conviction of the murderers.Dolan, Anthony J. is the author of 'Kelsey Outrage : An American Story', published 1992 under ISBN 9780963323903 and ISBN 0963323903.