Killer Colt (22 page)
Authors: Harold Schechter
Presenting himself as a noble guardian of the public weal, Bennett concluded his piece with what amounted to a demand for John Colt’s blood. Without mentioning either Colt or his victim by name, Bennett nevertheless made it plain that, in his considered opinion, the killing of Samuel
Adams was not a case of manslaughter—as the defense clearly intended to argue—but an act of cold-blooded murder deserving of the full penalty of the law:
We refrain, as we have refrained in all similar cases, from saying aught that can prejudice public opinion upon cases still to be passed upon by Court and Jury; but we have a duty as well to the public as to individuals, and when we see that public likely to be poisoned by pernicious influences, it is proper for the press to guard the community from false opinions. As has been the case in similar instances, pains are being taken to impress upon the public a very false notion with respect to a case soon to be tried in our Courts. It is not true that the law presumes every case of killing to be a manslaughter unless an adequate motive for the commission of homicide be proved upon the accused. So far from this being the case, the law always presumes malice aforethought, express or implied in every case of homicide; and the prisoner is always bound to rebut that presumption by proof. The fact of the killing made out, the prisoner must prove the absence of malice if he would escape the penalty of murder.
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• • •
The intense public excitement stirred up by Bennett and his competitors was very much in evidence on the morning of Monday, November 1, 1841, when—after a one-month delay—John’s trial was scheduled to begin.
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By 9:00 a.m., a throng of curiosity seekers, “anxious to catch a view of the noted individual,” had gathered outside the courtroom. When the doors swung open promptly at 10:00, the crowd swarmed inside. Within two minutes, as one newspaper reported, “the large space allotted to the public was completely filled, and there was scarce standing room inside the railing.”
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A few moments later, the star attraction was led inside and seated at the end of a long table at the front of the room. For the past week, reports had circulated that John had been reduced to a physically pitiable condition by extreme “mental agonies and terrors of conscience.” Now, however, it became
clear to observers that those stories, like so many others concerning John and his family, were mere rumor. Apart from his jailhouse pallor, he seemed hardly changed at all. “Certainly,” one paper reported, “his appearance was not that of a haggard conscience-stricken man.”
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In the articles that appeared the following day, most papers emphasized John’s relaxed manner and refined appearance. He seemed “more calm, less agitated than on previous occasions,” noted the
Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer
, and was “very genteelly dressed in black, with the air of a gentleman.”
Seated not far from Colt, however, James Gordon Bennett saw things differently. To his eyes, Colt was “evidently laboring under great mental excitement, which he strongly endeavored to suppress. The skin over his cheek bones was suffused with blood, resembling a man of a strong nervous temperament after hard drinking; and his eye, which is peculiarly deep and penetrating, and has at times a wild, savage look, was incessantly in motion.” It was only when he caught sight of his brother Samuel, who entered the courtroom a few minutes after it opened and positioned himself in the rear, that John’s “savage” expression softened and a warm smile appeared on his face.
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As it happened, the day turned into a major disappointment for the spectators. No sooner had the proceedings gotten under way than Dudley Selden moved for a postponement. The trial, he argued, could not fairly be held “in the absence of a material witness”—namely, Colt’s mistress Caroline Henshaw, who was on the brink of giving birth and had returned to Philadelphia to be with friends for “the period of her confinement.”
District Attorney James Whiting countered by wondering why Caroline’s testimony could not be submitted in writing. “Suppose this woman should die under her accouchement,” he said. “If the gentlemen deem her testimony so important to them, why object to taking it by commission at once, so as not to be deprived of that evidence which they deem to them of so much value, in case of an event which is certainly within the range of possibility?” In the end, though, Whiting dropped his objection and agreed to a postponement.
Before he sat down, Selden directed a plea for journalistic restraint to the assembled newspapermen:
This case has been more commented upon by the press than almost any other I have known, and I think very unfairly. And I would suggest whether the prisoner is not entitled to have a suspension of further remarks at least until his trial. So much fiction has been blended with some little fact that it would be difficult for any—even unbiased minds—to come to a fair and impartial opinion of the case if this course be continued. And I say to those who have done this that I trust they will see the propriety of a cessation.
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Among other “utterly untrue and unfair” stories that had been circulated by the press, Selden singled out the widespread accusation that “we intend to raise insanity as a defense in this case. Most unjustly have we been charged with getting up this fraudulent scheme of defense, as it has been called, for the purpose of defeating the ends of justice. We have never said so—and we never intended it. None of the counsel ever thought of such a thing. Indeed, no plan of defense has been decided upon, other than what the real merits of the case may justify.”
A few minutes later, with Whiting’s agreement, Judge William Kent granted Selden’s motion, and the proceedings were adjourned—much to the audible disappointment of the spectators, who would now be forced to wait another few months before the big show reopened.
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• • •
Despite Selden’s plea for fairness, Bennett and his colleagues continued to report on the case with no pretense of impartiality. In his article on the day’s events, for example, the writer for the
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
dispensed entirely with such standard modifiers as
alleged, accused
, and
suspected
in his references to John. “The trial of Colt, the murderer of Adams,” he declared, as though the verdict had already been rendered, “has been postponed until the next term of the Court of Oyer and Terminer, which will not be until the first Monday in December.”
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THE GARB OF JUSTICE30
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ews of the postponement was slow to reach James Colt in St. Louis. Believing that the trial had proceeded as scheduled, he wrote to Sam on December 18, describing his state of “miserable suspense” as he awaited word of the outcome. “I never have doubted where the justice of this case lies,” James declared, reaffirming his faith in John’s innocence and referring to Samuel Adams’s death as “the accident.” “Of course,” he urged, “you will write me immediately after the disposal of the case and then give me explicitly and fully your views in relation to the matter.”
Receiving a prompt reply from Sam informing him of the delay, James immediately responded with a long and fervent letter, extolling Sam’s fraternal devotion and contrasting it bitterly with the callous indifference of their brother Christopher:
My Dear Brother
I cannot express the feelings of gratitude which your letter awakens in my bosom. But why should I dwell upon it. “Time the only healer when the heart hath bled” will unfold to you many years of joy and happiness which your present magnanimity will bring about … I will pledge my life on the assertion that before many years flash over your head you will look back upon your present conduct in relation to our unfortunate brother John and myself as the proudest period of your life. Would to God I could be with you. I should then be able to share with you the labor and
affliction of this dark hour. But do not think that because I am two thousand miles off my thoughts do not dwell upon the heart-rending scenes which are passing around you. The distance only adds to my afflictions. I try to dissipate my thoughts but it is impossible.
But do not think either the world discovers in me this. It does not. I am perfectly calm, for I know that if there is a God in heaven we shall be rewarded for our present sufferings.
Before this reaches you, John’s case will be disposed of but it will be a month nearly before I know the result. You will of course write me immediately and let me know everything. I think the jury will disagree but I merely guess at it from the exparte testimony. If they disagree, another trial will acquit him.
Whatever may be the result of John’s trial do not, I entreat you, let it have any more effect upon your mind than possible. Your conduct during the trial and the exertions you have made and suffering you have passed through will sooner or later be made known to the public … While the public will thus sympathize with the misfortunes of John, thus will they commend the magnanimousness of your own conduct … I forbear all comment upon Christopher’s comment. The end will prove which of the two brothers acted with most honor to themselves.
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• • •
With the trial still several weeks away and John’s legal team absorbed in their preparations, Sam busied himself with his harbor defense scheme. Armed with a letter of introduction from an influential acquaintance, Major William Gibbs McNeill of the U.S. Topographical Engineers, he had traveled to Washington, DC, in early November and secured a private interview with the new secretary of the navy, Abel Upshur. After learning the specifics of the submarine battery and satisfying himself of its feasibility, Upshur agreed to advance Sam six thousand dollars for a preliminary test—considerably
less than the sum Sam had previously been promised but enough for him to proceed.
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Back in Manhattan, Sam took a room in the South Tower of the New York University building on the east side of Washington Square, a massive Gothic Revival structure that, in its early years, “served as both college and lodging house. Artists, inventors, and literary figures not on the University staff, moved into the upper floors, supplementing the young institution’s slender financial resources.” It was around this time, as he turned his energies to the “procurement, insulation, and testing of the several thousand feet of rolled copper wire” necessary for his device, that Sam began collaborating with his neighbor, Samuel F. B. Morse.
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One of America’s finest painters, the fifty-year-old Morse was eking out a living as an instructor of arts and design at the nascent NYU (then known as the University of the City of New York), while working tirelessly to perfect and promote his recently patented invention, the electromagnetic telegraph. Still three years away from his triumphant demonstration in Washington, DC—when the coded message “What Hath God Wrought!” was carried across forty miles of wire strung between the old Supreme Court chamber in the U.S. Capitol and a train depot in Baltimore—Morse shared Sam Colt’s interest in developing “insulated cable that was capable of transmitting electrical current relatively undiminished for substantial distances.” In a note to his NYU neighbor, Colt offered to provide Morse with “some hints by which you may profit … before the materials for your Electro-Magnetic Telegraph are ordered.” It was the beginning of a long and mutually beneficial association between the two “pioneers of American galvanic technology.”
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