Killer Colt (48 page)

5.
Edwards,
Colt’s Revolver
, p. 50; Evans,
They Made America
, p. 65.

6.
Edwards,
Colt’s Revolver
, p. 56; Houze,
Colt: Arms, Art, Invention
, p. 54; Rohan,
Yankee Arms Maker
, p. 91.

7.
Edwards,
Colt’s Revolver
, p. 62.

8.
Evans,
They Made America
, p. 65; Keating,
Flamboyant Mr. Colt
, p. 32; Hosley, “Guns, Gun Culture,” p. 62.

9.
Edwards,
Colt’s Revolver
, p. 70. Though it took some doing, Sam was ultimately able to wrest a replacement payment from the army.

10.
Ibid., p. 80.

11.
Keating,
Flamboyant Mr. Colt
, pp. 41–42.

12.
Ibid., p. 35; Edwards,
Colt’s Revolver
, p. 89.

1.
Edwards,
Colt’s Revolver
, pp. 60–61.

2.
Powell,
Authentic Life
, p. 52.

3.
Aaron,
Cincinnati
, p. 232. Also see Walter Sutton,
The Western Book Trade: Cincinnati as a Nineteenth-Century Publishing and Book-Trade Center
(Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1961), pp. 5–18, 67ff.

4.
Sutton,
Western Book Trade
, pp. 41, 175.

5.
Jay Ruby,
Secure the Shadow: Death and Photography in America
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), p. 44.

6.
Sutton,
Western Book Trade
, pp. 315, 341.

7.
Powell,
Authentic Life
, p. 53. In accordance with the then prevalent view that the double entry method originated with the fifteenth-century monk Luca Pacioli, author of the first published treatise on the subject, the first edition of Colt’s textbook bore the title
The Italian System of Double Entry Book-Keeping
. The word
Italian
was dropped in subsequent editions. Also see Grant I. Butterbaugh, “Dr. Stands for Debt,”
Accounting Review
, vol. 20, no. 3 (July 1945): pp. 341–42.

8.
Merchants’ Magazine and Commercial Review
, vol. 1 (July 1839): pp. 462–63.

9.
Jan R. Heier, “A Critical Look at the Thoughts and Theories of the Early Accounting Educator John C. Colt,”
Accounting, Business and Financial History
, vol. 3, no. 1 (1993): pp. 21–22.

10.
For an example of the first, see Previts and Merino,
History of Accountancy
, pp. 75–77.

1.
Located, according to contemporary city directories, at no. 15 Pearl Street, Cincinnati.

2.
Besides being close friends with Washington Irving, Delafield was the first president of the New York Philharmonic Society and a founder of New York University. His interest in the artifacts at the Western Museum is mentioned by M. H. Dunlop, “Curiosities Too Numerous to Mention: Early Regionalism and Cincinnati’s Western Museum,”
American Quarterly
, vol. 36, no 4 (Autumn 1984): p. 540.

3.
See the long, unsigned review-essay on Delafield’s book in the
New York Review
, vol. 5 (July 1839), pp. 200–222.

4.
See Burgess’s testimony at John Colt’s trial in Dunphy and Cummins,
Remarkable Trials
, p. 261.

5.
Powell,
Authentic Life
, p. 55.

6.
Ibid., p. 56.

7.
See the
Philadelphia North American
, January 1, 1842, p. 3;
Madison
(WI)
Express
, November 13, 1841, p. 3.

8.
See Lydia Maria Child,
Selected Letters, 1817–1880
, ed. Milton Meltzer and Patricia G. Holland (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982), p. 183.

9.
Powell,
Authentic Life
, p. 57; Dunphy and Cummins,
Remarkable Trials
, pp. 262–63.

1.
Rywell,
Man and Epoch
, p. 66; Edwards,
Colt’s Revolver
, pp. 126, 133; Hosley,
American Legend
, pp. 18–19.

2.
McLeod turned out to be nothing more than a “blustering braggart.” At his trial in October 1841, “it was conclusively shown that he was not even a member of the attacking party. The jury, after thirty minutes’ consultation, returned with a verdict of acquittal” and the threat of war with Great Britain instantly evaporated. See Frederic Bancroft,
The Life of William H. Seward
, vol. 1 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1900), pp. 111–13; John Charles Dent,
The Last Forty Years: Canada Since the Union of 1841
, vol. 1 (Toronto: George Virtue, 1881), p. 175; William Renwick Riddell, “An International Murder Trial,”
Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology
, vol. 10, no. 2 (August 1919): pp. 176–83.

3.
Houze,
Colt: Arms, Art, Invention
, p. 66. The definitive study of Colt’s harbor defense system is Lundeberg,
Submarine Battery
.

4.
Edwards,
Colt’s Revolver
, pp. 160–61; Lundeberg,
Submarine Battery
, pp. 17–18.

5.
Rosa Pendleton Chiles,
John Howard Payne: American Poet, Actor, Playwright, Consul and the Author of “Home, Sweet Home”
(Washington, DC: Columbia Historical Society, 1930), p. 44. Chiles’s book draws heavily on what remains the most comprehensive biography of Payne: Gabriel Harrison’s
John Howard Payne, Dramatist, Poet, Actor, and Author of Home, Sweet Home!
(Boston: Lippincott, 1885).

6.
See the news item “A Great Day for Paterson,”
New York Times
, July 5, 1892, p. 8.

7.
Edwards,
Colt’s Revolver
, p. 162; Lundeberg,
Submarine Battery
, p. 19.

PART THREE: THE SUBLIME OF HORROR

1.
Michael Schudson,
Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers
(New York: Basic Books, 1978), p. 15.

2.
John D. Stevens,
Sensationalism and the New York Press
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), p. 15.

3.
James L. Crouthamel,
Bennett’s New York Herald and the Rise of the Popular Press
(Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1989), p. 25.

4.
Stevens,
Sensationalism
, p. 43.

5.
New York Herald
, April 11, 1836.

6.
See Daniel Stashower,
The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe and the Invention of Murder
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), p. 94; Amy Gilman Srebnick,
The Mysterious Death of Mary Rogers: Sex and Culture in Nineteenth-Century New York
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 66.

7.
Despite overwhelming circumstantial evidence of his guilt, Robinson was ultimately acquitted. The definitive account of the case is Patricia Cline Cohen’s
The Murder of Helen Jewett: The Life and Death of a Prostitute in Nineteenth-Century New York
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998).

8.
Tucher,
Froth & Scum
, p. 149.

9.
Srebnick,
Mary Rogers
, pp. 4, 17.

10.
Stashower,
Beautiful Cigar Girl
, pp. 77–78.

11.
Ibid., pp. 15–17.

12.
Ibid., pp. 80–82;
New York Herald
, August 17, 1841, p. 2; Srebnick,
Mary Rogers
, pp. 18–19.

13.
Stashower,
Beautiful Cigar Girl
, pp. 89–90.

14.
Edgar Allan Poe, “The Mystery of Marie Roget,” reprinted in John Walsh,
Poe the Detective: The Curious Circumstances Behind “The Mystery of Marie Roget”
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1968), p. 100.

15.
Walsh,
Poe the Detective
, p. 26.

16.
Stashower,
Beautiful Cigar Girl
, p. 96.

17.
Ibid., p. 192.

18.
Ibid., p. 16; Walsh,
Poe the Detective
, p. 10.

19.
Walsh,
Poe the Detective
, p. 98.

20.
See Stashower,
Beautiful Cigar Girl
, pp. 91–92, 132–54.

21.
See Walsh,
Poe the Detective
, p. 34.

22.
Ibid., p.
33
. Though the case was never definitively solved, the most likely explanation was provided by Frederica Loss. In a deathbed confession made in the fall of 1842, the innkeeper claimed that on Sunday, July 25, 1841, Mary Rogers had come to her roadhouse from the city in the company of a young physician and had died at his hands during a botched abortion. Her body—with a strip of cloth wound around the neck to make it appear as if she had been assaulted and murdered—was then dumped in the river. Also see Srebnick,
Mary Rogers
, pp. 29–30.

1.
Copies of the
Literary Cadet and Rhode-Island Statesman
(which began life as a weekly called the
Literary Cadet, and Saturday Evening Bulletin)
are on file at the
Rhode Island Historical Society Library in Providence. Information on the firm of Smith & Parmenter can be found in Glenn H. Brown and Maude O. Brown,
A Directory of Printing, Publishing, Bookselling and Allied Trades in Rhode Island to 1865
(New York: New York Public Library, 1958), p. 156; Frederic Hudson,
Journalism in the United States, from 1690 to 1872
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1873), p. 337;
Printers and Printing in Providence 1762–1907
(Providence, RI: Providence Printing Company, 1907), pp. 27–28. For the scant facts about Samuel Adams’s early life, see the
New England Historical and Genealogical Register
, vol.
33
(Boston: New-England Historic, Genealogical Society, 1879), p. 104; Brown and Brown,
Directory
, p. 15.

2.
See Hudson,
Journalism in the United States
, p. 337. Also see Grant James Wilson and John Fiske,
Appleton’s Cyclopedia of American Biographies
, vol. 5 (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1900), p. 588. Interestingly, John Howard Payne worked as an editor for Smith’s
Sunday News
, which suggests the possibility that the famed author of “Home, Sweet Home” was not only a friend of both Colt brothers but an acquaintance of Samuel Adams.

3.
Unsigned notice in “Monthly Commentary” section,
American Monthly Magazine
, vol. 10 (December 1837): p. 596.

4.
See the testimony of Samuel Adams’s foreman, James Monahan, in Lawson,
American State Trials
, vol. 7, pp. 468–69. The panic of 1837 precipitated an economic depression that lasted seven years. Also see Howe,
What Hath God Wrought
, pp. 502–4.

5.
Ransom’s testimony appears in a handwritten deposition before District Attorney J. R. Whiting, dated November 17, 1841, in the file of the New York City Municipal Archives. Nicholas Conklin’s testimony is part of the trial transcript, reprinted in Dunphy and Cummins,
Remarkable Trials
, p. 253.

6.
New York Herald
, September 25, 1841, p. 2.

7.
Founded by a group of culture-minded business and professional men, the Apollo Association—which evolved after a few years into the American Art-Union—mounted public exhibitions of paintings and sculptures by the country’s leading artists. For an annual subscription of five dollars, members received free family admissions to the shows, an engraving published by the association from a painting by a contemporary American artist, and a lottery ticket for an original artwork from its collection. The definitive history of the organization is Mary Bartlett Cowdry,
American Academy of Fine Arts and American Art-Union: Introduction 1816–1852
(New York: New York Historical Society, 1953).

8.
Trial testimony indicates that Adams and Colt had known each other for three years at the time of the murder. See Lawson,
American State Trials
, p. 467.

1.
For information on the Granite Building and its tenants, see
Transactions of the Apollo Association for the Promotion of Fine Arts in the United States, for the Year 1841
, p. 3;
The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine
, vol. 17, no. 5 (May 1841): p. 445; Beaumont Newhall,
The Daguerreotype in America
(New York: Dover, 1975),
p. 25; John Flavel Mines,
A Tour Around New York and My Summer Acre: Being the Recreations of Mr. Felix Oldboy
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1893), pp. 60–61; Hugh Macatamney,
Cradle Days of New York: 1609–1825
(New York: Drew & Lewis, 1909), p. 191;
New York Times
, February 12, 1876, p. 8.

2.
As late as 1856, Wheeler’s blurb was still being used in ads for Colt’s textbook. For example, see the promotional appendix in P. A. Fitzgerald,
The Exhibition Speaker: Containing Farces, Dialogues, and Tableaux, with Exercises for Declamation in Prose and Verse
(New York: Sheldon, Lamport & Blakeman, 1856).

3.
Dunphy and Cummins,
Remarkable Trials
, p. 253.

4.
In his classic story “Bartleby, the Scrivener.”

5.
Colt’s threats to George Spencer and Mr. Howard are described in two letters—one anonymous, the other signed “H. W. Robinson”—sent to District Attorney J. R. Whiting, on file in the New York City Municipal Archives. For information on the Broadway bookseller Homer Franklin, see Ronald J. Zboray,
A Fictive People: Antebellum Economic Development and the American Reading Public
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 137–38.