Killer Colt (51 page)

An image of the original, albeit damaged, ballad sheet (two verses are missing between stanzas seven and eight) can be found online at the site American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera (
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/rbpehtml
).

7.
The image of Barnum published in the
Albany Evening Atlas
is reprinted in Philip B. Kunhardt, Jr., et al.,
P. T. Barnum: America’s Greatest Showman
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), p. 54. It does indeed bear a remarkable similarity to the portrait of Samuel Adams in the
Sun
pamphlet.

8.
P. T. Barnum,
The Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself
(New York: Redfield, 1855), pp. 356–57.

1.
See
New York Herald
, February 1, February 15, February 22, March 1, and March 2, 1842, p. 2.

2.
Charles Sutton,
The New York Tombs: Its Secrets and Its Mysteries
(New York: United States Publishing Company, 1874), p. 44. According to Sutton, the name evolved from
Kalchook
to the abbreviated
Kalch
, and then to
Callech, Colleck
, and, finally,
Collect
.

3.
Sutton,
New York Tombs
, p. 47; Berger, “The Tombs,” p. 23.

4.
Charles Dickens,
American Notes for General Circulation
(New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1863), p. 37.

5.
Berger, “The Tombs,” p. 22; Edward H. Smith, “New Scene Added to the Drama of the Tombs,”
New York Times
, November 14, 1926, p. 23.

6.
Berger, “The Tombs,” p. 23; Timothy Gilfoyle, “ ‘America’s Greatest Criminal Barracks’: The Tombs and the Experience of Criminal Justice in New York City, 1838–1897,”
Journal of Urban History
, vol. 29, no. 5 (July 2003): p. 528.

7.
Gilfoyle, “Tombs and Criminal Justice,” p. 530.

8.
Berger, “The Tombs,” p. 28.

9.
Ibid., pp. 24, 27; Gilfoyle, “Tombs and Criminal Justice,” p. 532.

10.
Life and Letters of John C. Colt
, letter 5, November 10, 1841.

11.
Quoted in Alfred Henry Lewis,
Nation-Famous New York Murders
(New York: G. W. Dillingham Company, 1914), pp. 232–34.

12.
John’s letters first appeared in the daily press (see the
Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer
, February 24, 1842, where they occupy all of pp. 1–2). In October 1842, they were published in pamphlet form as an
Extra Tattler
under the title
Life and Letters of John C. Colt, Condemned to Be Hung on the Eighteenth of November, 1842, for the Murder of Samuel Adams
. A selection of them was also printed as an appendix to later editions of the
Sun
pamphlet (see Tucher,
Froth & Scum
, p. 230, n. 4). The quoted passages in this chapter are taken from the letters dated November 10, 1841; February 6, 8, 10, 11, 15, and 22, 1842; March 15, 1842.

1.
Rogers’s handwritten report can be found on the microfilm edition of the William Henry Seward Papers, University of Rochester, River Campus Libraries, Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, reel 165, items 5894–5901.

1.
Edwards,
Colt’s Revolver
, p. 173.

2.
Lundeberg,
Submarine Battery
, p. 23.

3.
Leonard F. Guttridge,
Our Country, Right or Wrong: The Life of Stephen Decatur, the U.S. Navy’s Most Illustrious Commander
(New York: Forge Books, 2007), pp. 154–55.

4.
Lundeberg,
Submarine Battery
, p. 74; Edwards,
Colt’s Revolver
, p. 173. Sam’s notebook sketch of Halsey’s submersible—the only surviving image of the boat—can be found on Captain Brayton Harris’s website World Submarine History Timeline: 1580–2000 (
www.submarine-history.com/NOVAone.htm
).

5.
Edwards,
Colt’s Revolver
, pp. 173–74.

6.
Ibid., p. 174.

7.
Ibid.

8.
Ibid.; Lundeberg,
Submarine Battery
, p. 26; Rohan,
Yankee Arms Maker
, pp. 148–49; Keating,
Flamboyant Mr. Colt
, p. 59.

9.
Rohan,
Yankee Arms Maker
, p. 149.

1.
New York Herald
, May 7, 1842, p. 1.

2.
Ibid., May 13, 1842, p. 1.

3.
Edwin Burritt Smith and Ernest Hitchcock,
Reports of Cases Adjudged and Determined in the Supreme Court of Judicature and Court for the Trial of Impeachments and Correction of Errors of the State of New York
, book 15 (Newark, NY: The Lawyers’ Co-Operative Publishing Company, 1885), pp. 431–37.

1.
New York Herald
, September 28, 1842, p. 1; New York
Sun
, September 28, 1842, p. 2;
Hagerstown
(MD)
Mail
, October 7, 1842, p. 3.

2.
As John himself described it. See
Life and Letters of John C. Colt
, letter 19.

3.
Ibid.

4.
New York Herald
, September 28, 1842, p. 1.

1.
New York
Sun
, September 28, 1842, p. 2;
Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer
, October 28, 1842, p. 2;
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
, September 28, 1842, p. 2.

2.
Bennett ranked the murder of Adams with three other violent incidents that had riveted the city in recent years. In March 1838, U.S. Representative Jonathan Cilley of Maine was shot to death in a duel with a fellow congressman, William Graves of Kentucky, who had taken offense at a remark Cilley had made about Graves’s friend James Watson Webb, editor of the
Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer
. Four years later, Webb himself was badly wounded in a pistol duel with Kentucky congressman Thomas Marshall. Most savage of all was the September 1842 grudge match between prizefighters Thomas McCoy and Christopher Lilly that did not end until—after nearly three hours and 120 rounds—McCoy was beaten to death, “his face literally knocked to pieces.” For accounts of the Graves-Cilley and Marshall-Webb duels, see Don C. Seitz,
Famous American Duels
(New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1929), pp. 251–82, 283–309. The McCoy-Lilly fight is described in George N. Thomson,
Confessions, Trials and Biographical Sketches of the Most Cold-Blooded Murderers, Who Have Been Executed in the Country from Its First Settlement Down to the Present Time
(Hartford, CT: S. Andrus and Son, 1887), pp. 411–12.

3.
New York Herald
, September 28, 1842, p. 2.

1.
Tucher,
Froth & Scum
, p. 168.

2.
Powell,
Authentic Life
, pp. 6, 14, 23, 31, 49, 61.

3.
Life and Letters of John C. Colt
, p. 5.

4.
Ibid., p. 16.

1.
New York Times
, June 4, 1873, p. 8. The best and most complete account of the scandal is Geoffrey O’Brien,
The Fall of the House of Walworth
.

2.
For example, see Charles Edwards,
Pleasantries About Courts and Lawyers of the State of New York
(New York: Richardson & Company, 1867), p. 317.

3.
In his autobiography, Governor William Seward notes that John’s “counsel applied to me thirteen days only before the day of his execution.” See Frederick W. Seward,
William H. Seward: An Autobiography from 1801 to 1834: With a Memoir of His Life, and Selections from His Letters, 1831–1846
(New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1877), p. 629.

1.
Bancroft,
Life of William H. Seward
, p. 120.

2.
Ibid., pp. 122–23; Earl Conrad,
The Governor and His Lady: The Story of William Henry Seward and His Wife Frances
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1960), p. 238.

3.
Conrad,
Governor
, p. 247.

4.
Seward,
William H. Seward
, p. 629.

5.
Ibid.

6.
All quotes are taken from letters found on the microfilm edition of the William Henry Seward Papers, University of Rochester, River Campus Libraries, Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, reel 165, items 5894–5901.

7.
Seward,
William H. Seward
, p. 633. Seward would, in fact, become the victim of an assassination attempt—not, however, as a result of his decision in the Colt case. On the night of April 15, 1865—at the same time that Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth—Seward, then Lincoln’s secretary of state, was savagely attacked at home by Lewis Powell, one of Booth’s coconspirators in a plot to decapitate the Union government. Stabbed in the face with a bowie knife, Seward survived, though he bore disfiguring scars for the rest of his life.

8.
George Baker, ed.,
The Works of William H. Seward
, vol. 2 (New York: Redfield, 1853), pp. 648–61.

9.
New York
Sun
, November 14, 1842, p. 2.

1.
New York
Sun
, November 16, 1842, p. 2;
New-York Commercial Advertiser
, November 17, 1842, p. 2; Seward,
William H. Seward
, pp. 632–33; Lydia Maria Child,
Letters from New-York
, ed. Bruce Mills (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1998), p. 242, n. 4.

2.
Child,
Letters from New-York
, p. 241, n. 4; p. 137.

3.
Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas,
The Diary of George Templeton Strong: Young Man in New York 1835–1848
(New York: Macmillan, 1952), p. 189.

4.
Child,
Letters from New-York
, p. 137.

5.
Ibid. Also see “Everything Is Changed: The Old Salt Still Brooding Over Early New-York,”
New York Times
, May 16, 1886, p. 5.

6.
Nevins and Thomas,
George Templeton Strong
, pp. 188–90.

7.
Ibid., pp. 190–91;
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
, November 17, 1842, p. 2.

8.
New York Times
, May 16, 1886, p. 5.

9.
Nevins and Thomas,
George Templeton Strong
, p. 190.

1.
New York
Sun
, November 19, 1842, p. 2.

2.
Nevins and Thomas,
George Templeton Strong
, p. 190;
New York Herald
, November 18, 1842, p. 1.

3.
Child,
Letters from New-York
, pp. 137–38;
New York Times
, May 16, 1886, p. 5.

4.
New York Herald
, November 18, 1842, p. 1;
New-York Commercial Advertiser
, November 19, 1842, p. 2;
Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer
, November 19, 1842, p. 2.

5.
Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer
, November 19, 1842, p. 2.

6.
New-York Commercial Advertiser
, November 19, 1842, p. 2.

7.
Ibid.

8.
Child,
Letters from New-York
, p. 139.

9.
New York Herald
, November 18, 1842, p. 1;
New-York Commercial Advertiser
, November 19, 1842, p. 2.

10.
Sutton,
New York Tombs
, p. 76.

11.
New-York Commercial Advertiser
, November 19, 1842, p. 2.

12.
New York Herald
, November 18, 1842, p. 1.

13.
Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer
, November 22, 1842, p. 2.

14.
Sutton,
New York Tombs
, p. 77;
New York Herald
, November 18, 1842, p. 1.

15.
New York Herald
, November 18, 1842, p. 1.

16.
Ibid.;
New-York Commercial Advertiser
, November 19, 1842, p. 2.

17.
Nevins and Thomas,
George Templeton Strong
, p. 191.

18.
New York Herald
, November 18, 1842, p. 1.

19.
New-York Commercial Advertiser
, November 19, 1842, p. 2.

20.
Ibid.

21.
Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer
, November 19, 1842, p. 2.

22.
New York Herald
, November 18, 1842, p. 1;
New-York Commercial Advertiser
, November 19, 1842, p. 2.

23.
New York Times
, May 16, 1886, p. 5.

24.
New-York Commercial Advertiser
, November 19, 1842, p. 2.

25.
Nevins and Thomas,
George Templeton Strong
, p. 192.

26.
Abbott, “Mystery of the Tombs,” p. 690; Jan Seidler Ramirez,
Painting the Town: Cityscapes of New York
(New York: Museum of the City of New York, 2000), pp. 96–97.

27.
Child,
Letters from New-York
, pp. 242, 138.

1.
New York Herald
, November 17, 1842, p. 2.

2.
“A Crime of Forty Years Ago,”
New York Times
, December 18, 1880, p. 12.

3.
New-York Commercial Advertiser
, November 19, 1842, p. 2.

4.
Seward,
William H. Seward
, p. 635;
Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer
, November 19, 1842, p. 2.

5.
Abbott, “Mystery of the Tombs,” p. 690;
New York Herald
, November 18, 1842, p. 2.