Full text of "Argument of William H. Seward, in defence of William Freeman, on his trial for murder, at Auburn, July 21st and 22nd, 1846. Reported by S. Blatchford"

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1 DEFENCE OF

their own house, in the night time, without any provocation, without
one moment's warning, se;it by the Murderer to join the Assembly of the
Just ; and even the laboring man, sojourning within their gates, received
the fatal blade into his breast, and survives through the mercy, not of
the murderer, but of God.

, For William Freeman, as a murderer, I have no commission to speak.
\ If he had silver and gold accumulated with the frugality of Crcesus, and
I should pour it all at m}' feet, I would not stand an hour between him
i and the Avenger. But for the innocent, it is my right, my duty to speak.
I If this sea of blood was innocently shed, then it is my duty to stand be-
'; side him until his steps lose their hold upon the scaffold.

" Thou shalt not kill," is a commandment addressed not to him alone,
but to me, to you, to the Court, and to the whole community. There
are no exceptions from that commandment, at least in civil life, save those
of self-defence, and capital punishment for crimes, in the due and just
administration of the law. There is not only a question then whether
the prisoner has shed the blood of his fellow man, but the question,
whether we shall unlawfully shed his blood. I should be guilty of mur-
der if, in my present relation, I saw the executioner waiting for an in-
sane man, and failed to say, or failed to do in his behalf, all that my
ability allowed. I think it has been proved of the Prisoner at the bar,
that, during all this long and tedious trial, he has had no sleepless nights,
and that even in the day time, when he retires from these halls to his
lonely cell, he sinks to rest like a wearied child, on the stone floor, and
quietly slumbers till roused by the constable with his staff to appear
again before the Jury, His Counsel enjoy no such repose. Their
thoughts by day and their dreams by night are filled with oppressive ap-
prehensions that, through their inability or neglect, he may be con-
demned.

I am arraigned before you for undue manifestations of zeal and excite-
ment. My answer to all such charges shall be brief. When this cause
shall have been committed to you, I shall be happy indeed if it shall ap-
pear that my only error has been, that I have felt too much, thought too
intensely, or acted too faithfully.

If my error would thus be criminal, how great would yours be if you
should render an unjust verdict ! Only four months have elapsed since
an outraged People, distrustful of judicial redress, doomed the prisoner
to immediate death. Some of you have confessed that you approved
that lawless sentence. All men now rejoice that the prisoner was saved
for this solemn trial. But this trial would be as criminal as that precipi-
tate sentence, if through any wilful fault or prejudice of yours, it should
prove but a mockery of justice. If any prejudice of witnesses, or the
imagination of Counsel, or any ill-timed jest shall at any time have di-

WILLIAM FREEMAN. O

verted your attention, or if any pre-judgment which you may have brought
into the Jury Box, or any cowardly fear of popular opinion shall have
operated to cause you to deny to the prisoner that dispassionate consid-
eration of his case which the laws of God and man exact of you, and if,
owing to sijch an error, this wretched man falls from among the living,
what will be your crime ? You will have violated the commandment,
" Thou shalt not kill." It is not the form or letter of the trial by Jury
that authorizes you to send your fellow man to his dread account, but it
is the spirit that sanctifies that glorious institution ; and if, through pride,
passion, timidity, weakness, or any cause, you deny the prisoner one iota
of all the defence to which he is entitled by the law of the land, you
yourselves, whatever his guilt may be, will have broken the command-
ment, '* Thou shalt do no murder."

There is not a corrupt or prejudiced witness, there is ngt a thoughtless
or heedless witness, who has testified what was not true in spirit, or what
was not wholly true, or who has suppressed any truth, who has not of-
fended against the same injunction.

Nor is the Court itself above that commandment. If these Judges
have been influenced by the excitement which has brought this vast as-
semblage here, and under such influence, or under any other influence,
have committed voluntary error, and have denied to the prisoner or shall
hereafter deny to him the benefit of any fact or any principle of law, then
this Court will have to answer for the deep transgression, at that bar at
which we all shall meet again. When we appear there, none of us can
plead that we were insane and knew not what we did ; and by just so
much as our ability and knowledge exceed those of this wretch, whom
the world regards as a fiend in human shape, will our guilt exceed his if
we be guilty.

I plead not for a Murderer. I have no inducement, no motive to do so.
I have addressed my fellow citi;zens in many various relations, when
rewards of wealth and fame awaited me. I have been cheered on other
occasions by manifestations of popular approbation and sympathy ; and
where there was no such encouragement, I had at least the gratitude of
him whose cause I defended. But I speak now in the hearing of a Peo-
ple who have prejudged the prisoner, and condemned me for pleading in
his behalf. He is a convict, a pauper, a negro, without intellect, sense,
or emotion. My child, with an affectionate smile, disarms my care-worn
face of its frown whenever I cross my threshold. The beggar in the
street obliges me to give, because he says " God bless you," as I pass.
My dog caresses me with fondness if I will but smile on him. My horse
recognizes me when I fill his manger. But what reward, what gratitude,
what sympathy and affection can I expect here ? There the prisoner sits.
Look at him. Look at the assemblage around you. Listen to their ill-

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ARGUMENT

WILLIAM H. SEWAKD.

DEFENCE OF WILLIAM FREEMAN,

TRIAL FOR MURDER,

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ARGUMENT

WILLIAM E SEWARD.

DEFENCE OF WILLIAM FREEMAN,

OK BIS

TRIAL FOR MURDER,

AT AUBURN,

JUI^Y 2l8t and 22nd, 1846.

REPORTED BY S. BLATCHFORD

FOURTH EDITION.

AUBURN, N.Y.:

J. C. DEKBY & CO , PUBLISHERa
1846.

HENKT OLIPHANT. PKINTBR,
Book and Job Oflice, Auburn.

ARGUMENT.

May it Please the Court,

Gentlemen of the Jury :

" Thou shalt not Kill," and, ♦• Whoso sheddeth Man's blood by
Man shall his blood be shed," are laws found in the code of that
People who, although dispersed and distracted, trace their history to
the creation ; a history which records that Murder was the first of Hu-
man Crimes.

The first of these precepts constitutes a tenth part of the Jurispru-
dence which God saw fit to establish, at an early period, for the govern-
ment of all mankind, throughout all generations. The latter, of less
universal obligation, is still retained in our system, although other States,
as intelligent and refined, as secure and peaceful, have substituted for it
the more benign principle that Good shall be returned for Evil. I yield
implicit submission to this law, and acknowledge the justice of its pen-
alty, and the duty of Courts and Juries to give it effect.

In this case, if the prisoner be guilty of Murder, I do not ask remis-
sion of punishment. If he be guilty, never was Murderer more guilty.
]Efe has murdered not only John G. Van Nest, but his hands are reek-
ing with the blood of other and numerous, and even more pitiable vic-
tims. The slaying of Van Nest, if a crime at all, was the cowardly
crime of assassination.- John G. Van Nest was a just, upright, virtuous
man, of middle age, of grave and modest demeanor, distinguished by
especial marks of the respect and esteem of his fellow citizens. On his
arm leaned a confiding wife, and they supported, on the one side, chil-
dren to whom they had given being, and, on the other, aged and venera-
ble parents, from whom they had derived existence. The assassination
of such a man was an atrocious crime, but the Murderer, with more
than savage refinement, immolated on the same altar, in the same hour,
a venerable and virtuous matron of more than three-score years, and her
daughter, the wife of Van Nest, mother of an unborn infant. Nor
was this all. Providence, which, for its own mysterious purposes, per-
mitted these dreadful crimes, in mercy suffered the same arm to be raised
against the sleeping orphan child of the butchered parents and received
it into Heaven. A whole family, just, gentle, and pure, were thus, in

M203819

4 DEFENCE OF

their own house, in the night time, without any provocation, without
one moment's warning, sent by the Murderer to join the Assembly of the
Just ; and even the laboring man, sojourning within their gates, received
the fatal blade into his breast, and survives through the mercy, not of
the murderer, but of God.

/ For William Freeman, as a murderer, I have no commission to speak.

\ If he had silver and gold accumulated with the frugality of Croesus, and
should pour it all at my feet, I would not stand an hour between him

I and the Avenger. But for the innocent, it is my right, my duty to speak.

I If this sea of blood was innocently shed, then it is my duty to stand be-

- side him until his steps lose their hold upon the scaffold.

" Thou shalt not kill," is a commandment addressed not to him alone,
but to me, to you, to the Court, and to the whole community. There
are no exceptions from that commandment, at least in civil life, save those
of self-defence, and capital punishment for crimes, in the due and just
administration of the law. There is not only a question then whether
the prisoner has shed the blood of his fellow man, but the question,
whether we shall unlawfully shed his blood. I should be guilty of mur-
der if, in my present relation, I saw the executioner waiting for an in-
sane man, and failed to say, or failed to do in his behalf, all that my
ability allowed. I think it has been proved of the Prisoner at the bar,
that, during all this long and tedious trial, he has had no sleepless nights,
and that even in the day time, when he retires from these halls to his
lonely cell, he sinks to rest like a wearied child, on the stone floor, and
quietly slumbers till roused by the constable with his staff to appear
again before the Jury. His Counsel enjoy no such repose. Their
thoughts by day and their dreams by night are filled with oppressive ap-
prehensions that, through their inability or neglect, he may be con-
demned.

WILLIAM FREEMAN. O

verted your attention, or if any pre-judgment which you may have brought
into the Jury Box, or any cowardly fear of popular opinion shall have
operated to cause you to deny to the prisoner that dispassionate consid-
eration of his case which the laws of God and man exact of you, and if,
owing to sijph an error, this wretched man falls from among the living,
what will be your crime ? You will have violated the commandment,
" Thou shalt not kill." It is not the form or letter of the trial by Jury
that authorizes you to send your fellow man to his dread account, but it
is the spirit that sanctifies that glorious institution ; and if, through pride,
passion, timidity, weakness, or any cause, you deny the prisoner one iota
of all the defence to which he is entitled by the law of the land, you
yourselves, whatever his guilt may be, will have broken the command-
ment, ** Thou shalt do no murder."

I plead not for a Murderer. I have no inducement, no motive to do so.
I have addressed my fellow citizens in many various relations, when
rewards of wealth and fame awaited me. I have been cheered on other
occasions by manifestations of popular approbation and sympathy ; and
where there was no such encouragement, I had at least the gratitude of
him whose cause I defended. But I speak now in the hearing of a Peo-
ple who have prejudged the prisoner, and condemned me for pleading in
his behalf. He is a convict, a pauper, a negro, without intellect, sense,
or emotion. My child, with an affectionate smile, disarms my care-worn
face of its frown whenever I cross my threshold. The beggar in the
street obliges me to give, because he says " God bless you," as I pass.
My dog caresses me with fondness if I will but smile on him. My horse
recognizes me when I fill his manger. But what reward, what gratitude,
what sympathy and affection can I expect here ? There the prisoner sits.
Look at him. Look at the assemblage around you. Listen to their ill-

0 DEFENCE OF

suppressed censures and their excited fears, and tell me where among
my neighbors or my fellow men, where even in his heart, I can expect to
find the sentiment, the thought, not to say of reward or of acknowledg-
ment, but even of recognition. I sat here two weeks during the prelimi-
nary trial. I stood here between the prisoner and the Jury nine hours,
and pleaded for the wretch that he was insane and did not even know he
was on trial : and when all was done, the Jury thought, at least eleven
of them thought, that I had been deceiving them, or was self -deceived,
jlliey read signs of intelligence in his idiotic smile, and of cunning and
;;malice in his stolid insensibility. They rendered a verdict that he was
ssane enough to be tried, a contemptible compromise verdict in a capital
case ; and then they looked on, with what emotions God and they only
know, upon his arraignment. The District Attorney, speaking in his
adder ear, bade him rise, and reading to him one indictment, asked him
whether he wanted a trial, and the poor fool answered. No. Have you
Counsel ? No. And they went through the same mockery, the prisoner
I giving the same answers, until a third indictment was thundered in his
ears, and he stood before the Court, silent, motionless, and bewildered.
Gentlemen, you may think of this evidence what you please, bring in
what verdict you can, but I asseverate before Heaven and you, that, to
the best of my knowledge and belief, the prisoner at the bar does not at
this moment know why it is that my shadow falls on you instead of his
own.

I speak with all sincerity and earnestness ; not because I expect my
opinion to have Aveight, but I would disarm the injurious impression that

1 am speaking, merely as a lawyer speaks for his client. I am not the
prisoner's lawyer, I am indeed a volunteer in his behalf ; but Society
and Mankind have the deepest interests at stake. I am the lawyer for
Society, for Mankind, shocked beyond the power of expression, at the
scene I have witnessed here of trying a Maniac as a Malefactor. In this,
almost the first of such causes I have ever seen, the last I hope that I
shall ever see, I wish that I could perform my duty with more effect. If
I suffered myself to look at the volumes of testimony through which I
have to pass, to remember my entire want of preparation, the pressure of
time, and my wasted strength and energies, I should despair of acquitting
myself as you and all good men will hereafter desire that I should have
performed so sacred a duty. But in the cause of humanity we are en-
couraged to hope for Divine assistance where human powers are weak.
As you all know, I provided for my way through these trials, neither
gold nor silver in my purse, nor scrip ; and when I could not think be-
forehand what I should say, I remembered that it was said to those who
had a beneficent commission, that they should take no thought what they
should say when brought before the magistrate, for in that same hour it

WILLIAM FREEMAN. 7

should be given them what they should say, and it should not be they
who should speak, but the spirit of their Father speaking in them.

You have promised. Gentlemen, to be impartial. You will find it more
difficult than you have supposed. Our minds are liable to be swayed by
temporary influences, and above all, by the influences of masses around us.
At every stage of this trial, your attention has been diverted, as it will be
hereafter, from the only question which it involves, by the eloquence of
the Counsel for the People reminding you of the slaughter of that help-
less and innocent family, and of the danger to which society is exposed
by relaxing the rigor of the laws. Indignation against crime, and appre-
hensions of its recurrence, are elements on which public justice relies
for the execution of the law. You must indulge that indignation. You
cannot dismiss such apprehensions. You will in common with your fel-
low citizens deplore the destruction of so many precious lives, and sym-
pathize with mourning relations and friends. Such sentiments cannot be
censured when operating upon the community at large, but they are
deeply to be deplored whey they are manifested in the Jury Box.

Then again a portion of this issue has been tried, imperfectly tried, un-
justly tried, already. A jury of twelve men, you are told, have already
rendered their verdict that the prisoner is now sane. The deference
which right-minded men yield to the opinions of others, the timidity
which weak men feel in dissenting from others, may tempt you to sur-
render your own independence. I warn you that that verdict is a reed
which will pierce you through and through. That Jury was selected
without peremptory challenge. Many of the Jurors entered the panel
with settled opinions that the prisoner was not only guilty of the homi-
cide, but sane, and all might have entertained such opinions for all that
the prisoner could do. It was a verdict founded on such evidence as
could be hastily collected in a community where it required moral cour-
age to testify for the accused. Testimony was excluded upon frivolous
and unjust pretences. The cause was submitted to the Jury on the
Fourth 6f July, and under circumstances calculated to convey a mulicious
and unjust spirit into the Jury Box. It was a strange celebration. The
dawn of the Day of Independence was not greeted with cannon or bells.
No lengthened procession was seen in our streets, nor were the voices of
orators heard in our public halls. An intense excitement brought a vast
multitude here, complaining of the delay and the expense of what was
deemed an unnecessary trial, and demanding the sacrifice of a victim,
who had been spared too long already. For hours that assemblage was
roused and excited by denunciations of the prisoner, and ridicule of his
deafness, his ignorance, and his imbecility. . Before the Jury retired, the
Court was informed that they were ready toj:ender the verdict required.
One Juror, however, hesitated. The next day was the Sabbath. The

DEFENCE OF

Jury were called and the Court remonstrated,with the dissentient, and
pressed the necessity of a verdict. That Juror gave way at last, and the
bell which summoned our citizens to Church for the evening service, was
the signal for the discharge of the Jury, because they had agreed. Even
thus a legal verdict could not be extorted. The eleven Jurors, doubtless
under an intimation from the Court, compromised with the twelfth, and q,
verdict was rendered, not in the language of the law, that the prisoner
was ** not insane," but that he was " suiSciently sane, in mind and
memory, to distinguish between right and wrong " ; a verdict which im-
plied that the prisoner was at least partially insane, was diseased in other
faculties beside the memory, and partially diseased in that, and that, al-
though he had mind and memory to distinguish between right and wrong
in the abstract, he had not reason and understanding and will to regulate
his conduct according to that distinction ; in short, a verdict by which
the Jury unworthily evaded the question submitted to them, and cast
upon the Court a responsibility which it had no right to assume, but
which it did nevertheless assume, in violation of the law. That twelfth
Juror was afterwards drawn as a Juror in this cause, and was challenged
by the Counsel for the People for partiality to the prisoner, and the chal-
lenge was sustained by the Court, because, although he had, as the Court
Bay, pronounced by his verdict that the prisoner was sane, he then de-
clared that he believed the prisoner insane, aud would die in the Jury
Box before he would render a verdict that he was sane. Last and chief
of all objections to that verdict now, it has been neither pleaded nor
proved here, and therefore is not in evidence before you. I trust then
that you will dismiss to the contempt of mankind that Jury and their ver-
dict, thus equivocating upon Law and Science, Health and Disease, Crime
and Innocence.

Again. An inferior standard of intelligence has been set up here as
the standard of the Negro race, and a false one as the standard of the
Asiatic race. This Prisoner traces a divided lineage. On the paternal
eide his ancestry is lost among the tiger hunters on the Gold Coast of
Africa, while his mother constitutes a portion of the small remnant of
the Narragansett tribe. Hence it is held that the prisoner's intellect is to
be compared with the depreciating standard of the African, and his pas-
sions with the violent and ferocious character erroneously imputed to the
Aborigines. Indications of manifest derangement, or at least of imbe-
cility, approaching to Idiocy, are therefore set aside, on the ground that
they harmonize with the legitimate but degraded characteristics of the
races from which he is descended. You, gentlemen, have, or ought to
have, lifted up your souls above the bondage of prejudices so narrow
and so mean as these. The color of the prisoner's skin, and the form of
his features, are not impressed upon the spiritual, immortal mind which

WILLIAM FREEMAN.

works beneath. In spite of human pride, he is still your brother, and
mine, in form and color accepted and approved by his Father, and yours,
and mine, and bears equally with us the proudest inheritance of our race
— the image of our Maker. Hold him then to be a Man. Exact of
him all the responsibilities which should be exacted under like circum-
stances if he belonged to the Anglo-Saxon race, and make for him all
the allowances, and deal with him with all the tenderness which, under
like circumstances, you would expect for yourselves.

The Prisoner was obliged — no, his Counsel were obliged, by law, to
accept the plea of Not Guilty, which the Court directed to be entered
in his behalf. That plea denies the homicide. If the law had al-
lowed it, we would gladly have admitted all the murders of which the
prisoner was accused, and have admitted them to be as unprovoked as they
were cruel, and have gone directly before you on the only defence upon
which we have insisted, or shall insist, or could insist — that he is irre-
sponsible, because he was and is insane.

We labor, not only under these difficulties, biU under the further em-
barrassment that the plea of Insanity is universally suspected. It is the
last subterfuge of the guilty, and so is too often abused. But however
obnoxious to suspicion this defence is, there have been cases where it
was true ; and when true, it is of all pleas the most perfect and complete
defence that can be offered in any human tribunal. Our Savior forgave
his Judges because "they knew not what they did." The insane man who
has committed a crime, knew not what he did. If this being, dyed with
human blood, be insane, you and I, and even the children of our affec-
tions, are not more guiltless than he.

. Is there reason to indulge a suspicion of fraud here ? Look at this
stupid, senseless fool, almost as inanimate as the clay moulded in the
brick-yard, and say, if you dare, that you are afraid of being deceived
by him. Look at me. You all know me Am I a man to engage in a
conspiracy to deceive you, and defraud justice ? Look on us all, for al-
though I began the defence of this cause alone, thanks to the generosity,
to the magnanimity of an enlightened profession, I come out strong in
the assistance of Counsel never before attached to me in any relation,
but strongly grappled to me now, by these new and endearing ties. Is
any one of us a man to be suspected ? The testimony is closed. Look
through it all. Can suspicion or malice find in it any ground to accuse
us of a plot to set up a false and fabricated defence ? 1 will give you.
Gentlemen, a key to every case where Insanity has been wrongfully,,
and yet successfully maintained. Gold, influence, popular favor, popular
sympathy, raise that defence, and make it impregnable. But you have
never seen a poor, worthless, spiritless, degraded negro like this, acquit-
ted wrongfully. I wish this trial may prove that such an one can

10 DEFENCE OF

be acquitted rightfully. The danger lies here. There is not a white
man or white woman who would not have been dismiss^ed long since
from the perils of such a prosecution, if it had only been proved that the
offender was so ignorant and so brutalized as not to understand that the
defence of insanity had been interposed.

If he feign, who has trained the idiot to perform this highest and most
difficult of all intellectual achievements ? Is it I ? Shakspeare and Cer-
vantes only, of all mankind, have conceived and perfected a counterfeit
of insanity. Is it I ? Why is not the imposition exposed, to my dis-
comfiture and the prisoner's ruin ? Where was it done ? Was it in
public, here ? Was it in secret, in the jail ? His deafened ears could
not hear me there unless I were also overheard by other prisoners, by jail-
ers, constables, the Sheriff, and a cloud of witnesses. Who has the
keys of the jail ? Have I ? You have had Sheriif, Jailer, and the whole
Police upon the stand. Could none of these witnesses reveal our plot ?
Were there none to watch and report the abuse ? When they tell you,
or insinuate. Gentlemen, that this man has been taught to feign i.isanity,
they discredit themselves, as did the Roman sentinels, who, appointed to
guard the sepulchre of our Savior, said, in excuse of the broken seal,
that while they slept, men came and rolled away the stone.

I advance towards the merits of the cause. The law which it involves
will be found in the case of Kleim, tried for murder in 1844, before Judge
Edmonds, of the first circuit, in the city of New York, reported in the
Journal of Insanity for January, 1846, at page 261. I read from the re-
port of the Judge's charge.

" He told the Jury that there was no doubt that Kleim had been guilty
of the killing imputed to him, and that under circumstances of atrocity
and deliberation which were calculated to excite in their minds strong
feelings of indignation against him. But they must beware how they
permitted such feelings to influence their judgment. They must bear in
mind that the object of punishment was not vengeance, but reformation ;
not to extort from a man an atonement for the life which he cannot give,
but by the terror of the example, to deter others from the like offences,
and that nothing was so likely to destroy the public confidence in the
administration of criminal justice, as the infliction of its pains upon one
whom Heaven has already afflicted with the awful malady of Insanity."

These words deserve to be written in letters of gold upon tablets of
marble. Their reason and philosophy are apparent. If you send the
lunatic to the gallows, society will be shocked by your inhumanity, and
the advocates for the abolition of capital punishment will find their most
effective argument in the fact that a Jury of the country, through igno-
rance or passion, or prejudice, have mistaken a madman for a criminal.

The report of Judge Edmonds' charge proceeds : " It was true that the

WILLIAM FREEMAN. H

plea of insanity was sometimes adopted as a cloak for crime, yet it was
unfortunately equally true, that many more persons were unjustly con-
victed, to whom their unquestioned insanity ought to have been an un-
failing protection."

This judicial answer to the argument that jurors are too likely to be
swayed by the plea of insanity, is perfect and complete.

Judge Edmonds further charged the Jury, " that it was by no means
an easy matter to discover or define the line of demarkation where sanity
ended and insanity began," and that it was often " difficult for those
most expert in the disease to detect or explain its beginning, extent, or
duration," " that the classifications of the disease were in a great measure"
arbitrary, and the jury were not obliged to bring the case of the prisoner
within any one of the classes, because the symptoms of the different
kinds were continually mingling with each other."

The application of this rule will render the present case perfectly clear,
because it appears from the evidence that the prisoner is laboring under
a combination of mania or excited madness, with dementia or decay of
the mind.

Judge Edmonds furnishes you with a balance to weigh the testimony
iu the case, in these words :

•' It was important that the jury should understand how much weight
was to be given to the opinions of medical witnesses. The opinions of
men who had devoted themselves to the study of insanity as a distinct
department of medical science, and studied recent improvements and dis-
coveries, especially when to that knowledge they added the experience
of personal care of the insane, could never be safely disregarded by
Courts and Juries ; and on the other hand, the opinions of physicians
Viiio had not devoted their particular attention to the disease, were not of
any more value than the opinions of common persons."

This charge of Judge Edmonds furnishes a lamp to guide your feet,
and throws a blazing light on your path. He acknowledges, in the first
place, with distinguished independence for a Judge and a Lawyer, that
•' the law, in its slow and cautious progress, still lags far behind the ad-
vance of true knowledge." " An insane person is one who, at the time
of committing the act, labored under such a defect of reason as not to
know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or if he did know
it, did not know he was doing what was wrong ; and the question is not
whether the accused knew the difference between right and wrong gene-
rally, but whether he knew the difference between right and wrong in re-
gard to the very act with which he is charged J' " If some controlling dis-
ease was in truth, the acting power within him, which he could not resist,
or if he had not a sufficient use of his reason to control the passions
which prompted him, he is not responsible. But it must be an absolute

12 DEFENCE OP

dispossession of the free and natural agency of the hufnan mind. In the
glowing but just language of Erskine, it is not necessary that Reason
should "be hurled from her seat, it is enough that Distraction sits down
beside her, holds her trembling in her place, and frightens her from her
propriety."

Judge Edmonds proceeded : ** And it must be borne in mind that the
moral as well as the intellectual faculties may be so disordered by the
disease as to deprive the mind of its controling and directing pow'er.

*' In order then to establish a crime, a man must have memory and
intelligence to know that the act he is about to commit is wrong ; to
remember and understand, that if he commit the act, he will be subject
to punishment ; and reason and will to enable him to compare and choose
between the supposed advantage or gratification to be obtained by the
criminal act, and the immunity from punishment whicn he will secure
by abstaining from it.

" If, on the other hand, he have not intelligence enough to have a
criminal intent and purpose ; and if his moral or intellectual powers are
either so deficient that he has not sufficient will, conscience, or control-
ling mental power ; or if through the overwhelming violence of mental
disease his intellectual power is for the time obliterated, he is not a re-
sponsible moral agent."

The learned Judge recommended to the Jury, " as aids to a just con-
clusion, to consider the extraordinary and unaccountable alteration in
the prisoner's whole mode of life ; the inadequacy between the slight-
ness of the cause and the magnitude of the offence ; the recluse and as-
cetic life which he had led ; his invincible repugnance to all intercourse
with his fellow creatures ; his behavior and conduct at the time the act
was done, and subsequently during his confinem'^nt ; and the stolid iji-
difference which he alone had manifiested during the whole progress of
a trial upon which his life or death depended."

Kleim was acquitted and sent, according to law, to the State Lunatic
Asylum at Utica. The Superintendent of the Asylum, in a note to this
report, states that Kleim is uniformly mild and pleasant ; has not asked
a question, or spoken or learned the name of any one ; seems very im-
perfectly to recollect the murder or the trial ; says he was put in Prison ;
does not know what for; and was taken to the court, but had no trial ;
that his bodily health is good, but that his mind is nearly gone — quite
demented.

You cannot fail, Gentlemen of the Jury, to remark the extraordinary
similarity between the case of Kleim, as indicated in the charge of Judge
Eflmonds, and that of the prisoner at the bar. If I were sure you would
receive such a charge, and be guided by it, I might rest here, and defy
the eloquence of the Attorney General. The proof of insanity in this

WILLIAM FREEMAN. 13

case is of the same nature, and the disease in the same form as in the
case of Kleim. The only difference is, that the evidence here is a thou-
sand times more conclusive. But Judge Edmonds does not preside here.
Kleim was a white man, Freeman is a negro: Kleim set fire to a house,
to burn only a poor, obscure woman and her child. Here the madman de-
stroyed a whole family, rich, powerful, honored, respected and beloved.
Kleim was tried in the city of New York; and the community engaged
in their multiplied avocations, and heedless of a crime not infrequent
there, and occurring in humble life, did not overawe and intimidate the
Court, the Jury, or the witnesses. Here a panic has paralyzed human-
ity. No man or woman feels safe until the maniac shall be extirpated
from the face of the earth. Kleim had the sympathies of men and wo-
men, willing witnesses, advocates sustained and encouraged by popular.
favor and an impartial Jury. Freeman is already condemned by the tri-
bunal of public opinion, and has reluctant and timorous witnesses, Coun-
sel laboring under embarrassments plainly to be seen, and a Jury whose
impartiality is yet to be proved.

The might that slumbered in this maniac's arm was exhausted in the
paroxysm which impelled him to his dreadful deeds. Yet an excited
community, whose terror has not yet culminated, declare, that whether
sane or insane, he must be executed, to give safety to your dwellings
and theirs. I must needs then tell you the law, which will disarm such
cowardly fear. If you acquit the prisoner, he cannot go at large, but
must be committed to jail, to be tried by another Jury, for a second mur-
der. Your dwellings therefore will be safe. If such a Jury find him
sane, he will then be sent to his fearful account, and your dwellings
will be safe. If acquitted, he will be remanded to jail, to await a third
trial, and your dwellings will be safe. If that Jury convict, he will then
be executed, and your dwellings will be safe. If they acquit he will still
be detained, to answer for a fourth murder, and youi dwellings will be safe.
Whether the fourth Jury acquit or convict, your dwellings will still be
safe; for if they convict, he will then be cut oiT, and if they acquit, he
must, according to the law of the land, be sent to the Lunatic Asylum,
there to be confined for life. You may not slay him then, for the pub-
lic security, because the public security does not demand the sacri-
fice. No security for home or hearth can be obtained by judicial mur-
der. God will abandon him, who, through cowardly fear, becomes such
a murderer. I also stand for the security of the homes and hearths of
my fellow citizens, and have as deep an interest, and as deep a slake as
any one of them. There are my home and hearth, exposed to every
danger that can threaten theirs ; but I know that security cannot exist for
any, if feeble man undertakes to correct the decrees of Providence.

The Counsel for the People admit in the ab.stract that insanity excuses

DEFENCE OF

crime, but they insist on rules for the regulation of insanity, to which
that disease can never conform itself. Dr. Fosgate testified that the
prisoner was insane. He was asked by the Attorney General, " What
if the law, nevertheless, hold to be criminal that same state of mind
which you pronounce insanity ?" He answered with high intelligence
and great moral firmness, " The law cannot alter the constitution of man,
as it was given him by his Maker."

Insanity such as the Counsel for the People would tolerate, never did
and never will exist. They bring its definition from Coke, Blackstone
and Hale, and it requires that by reason either of natural infirmity or of
disease, the wretched subject shall be unable to count twenty, shall not
know his father or mother, and shall have no more reason or thought
than a brute beast.

According to the testimony of Dr. Spencer, and the claim of the At-
torney General, an individual is not insane if you find any traces or
glimmerings of the several faculties of the human mind, or of the more
important ones. Dr. Spencer has found in the prisoner, memory of
his wrongs and sufferings, choice between bread and animal food, hunger
to be appeased, thirst to be quenched, love of combat, imperfect know-
ledge of money, anger and malice. All of Dr. Spencer's questions to
the accused show, that in looking for insanity, he demands an entire ob-
literation of- all conception, attention, imagination, association, memory,
understanding and reason, and every thing else. There never was an
idiot so low, never a diseased man so demented.

You might as well expect to find a man born without eyes, ears,- nose,
mouth, hands and feet, or deprived of them all by disease, and yet sur-
viving, as to find such an idiot, or such a lunatic, as the Counsel for
the People would hold irresponsible. The reason is, that the human
mind is not capable, while life remains, of such complete obliteration.
What is the human mind ? It is immaterial, spiritual, immortal ; an em-
anation of the Divine Intelligence, and if the frame in which it dwells
had preserved its just and natural proportions, and perfect adaptation,
it would bea pure and heavenly existence. But that frame is marred and
disordered in its best estate. The spirit has communication wit h the world
without, and acquires imperfect knowledge only through the half-opened
gates of the senses. If, from original defects , or from accidental causes, the
structure be such as to cramp or restrain the mind, it becomes or appears
to be weak, diseased, vicious and wicked. I know one who was born
without sight, without hearing, and without speech, retaining the faculties
of feeling and smell. That child was, and would have continued to be
an idiot, incapable of receiving or communicating thoughts, feelings, or
affections ; but tenderness unexampled, and skill and assiduity unparal-
leled, have opened avenues to the benighted mind of Laura Bridgman,

WILLIAM FREEMAN. 15

and developed it into a perfect and complete human spirit, conscious-
ly allied to all its kindred, and aspiring to Heaven. Such is the mind
of every idiot, and of every lunatic, if you can only open the gates, and
restore the avenues of the senses ; and such is the human soul when de-
ranged and disordered by disease, imprisoned, confounded, benighted.
That disease is insanity.

Doth not the idiot eat } Doth not the idiot drink ? Doth not the idiot
know his father and his mother ? He does all this because he is a man.
Doth he not smile and weep ? and think you he smiles and weeps for
nothing ? He smiles and weeps because he is moved by human joys
and sorrows, and exercises his reason, however imperfectly. Hath not
the idiot anger, rage, revenge .' Take from him his food, and he will
stamp his feet and throw his chains in your face. Think you he doth
this for nothing ? He does it all because he is a man, and because, how-
ever imperfectly, he exercises his reason. The lunatic does all this, and,
if not quite demented, all things else that man, in the highest pride of
intellect, does or can do. He only does them in a different way. You
may pass laws for his government. Will he conform ? Can he conform ?
What cares he for your laws .' He will not even plead ; he cannot plead
his disease in excuse. You must interpose the plea for him, and if you al-
low it, he, when redeemed from his mental bondage, will plead for you,
when he returns to your Judge and his. If you deny his plea, he goes all
the sooner, freed from imperfection, and with energies restored, into the
presence of that Judge. You must meet him there, and then, no longer
bewildered, stricken and dumb, he will have become as perfect, clear
and bright, as those who reviled him in his degradation, and triumphed
in his ruin.

And now what is insanity ? Many learned men have defined it for
us, but I prefer to convey my idea of it in the simplest manner. Insan-
ity is a disease of the body, and I doubt not of the brain. The world is
astonished to find it so. They thought for almost six thousand years,
that it was an affection of the mind only. Is it strange that the discovery
should have been made so late ? You know that it is easier to move a
burthen upon two smooth rails on a level surface, than over the rugged
ground. It has taken almost six thousand years to learn that. But mor-
alists argue that insanity shall not be admitted as a physical disease, be-
cause it would tend to exempt the sufferer from responsibility, and be-
cause it would expose society to danger. But who shall know, better
than the Almighty, the ways of human safety, and the bonds of human
responsibility ?

And is it strange that the brain should be diseased.^ What organ,
member, bone, muscle, sinew, vessel or nerve is not subject to disease ?
What is physical man, but a frail, perishing body, that begins to decay

16 DEFENCE OP

as soon as it begins to exist ? What is there of aniihal existence here
on earth, exempt from disease, and decay ? Nothing. The world is full
of disease, and that is the great agent of change, renovation and health.

And what wrong or error can there be in supposing that the mind
may be so affected by disease of the body as to relieve man from respon-
sibility .' You will answer, it would not be safe. But who has assured
you of safety ? Is not the way of life through dangers lurking on every
side, and though you escape ten thousand perils, must you not fall at last ?
Human life is not safe, or intended to be safe, against the elements.
Neither is it safe, or intended to be safe, against the moral elements of
man's nature. It is not safe against pestilence, or against war, against
the thunderbolt of Heaven, or against the blow of the maniac. But com-
parative safety can be secured, if you will be wise. You can guard
against war, if you will cultivate peace. You can guard against the light-
- ning if you will learn the laws of electricity, and raise the protecting
rod. You will be safe against the maniac, if you will watch the causes
of madness, and remove them. Yet after all there will be danger enough
from all these causes to remind you that on earth you are not immortal.

Although my definition would not perhaps be strictly accurate, I should
pronounce Insanity to be a derangement of the mind, character and con-
duct, resulting from bodily disease. I take this word derangement, because
it is one in common every day use. We all understand what is meant
when it is said that any thing is ranged or arranged. The houses on a
street are ranged, if built upon a straight line. The fences on your farms
are ranged. A single object too may be ranged. A tower if justly built,
is ranged ; that is, it is ranged by the plummet. It rises in a perpendic-
ular range from the earth. A file of men marching in a straight line are
in range. " Range yourselves, men," though not exactly artistical, is not
an uncommon word of command. Now what do we mean when we use
the word "deranged " ? Manifestly that a thing is not irnged, is not ar-
ranged, is out of range. If the houses on the street be built irregularly,
they are deranged. If the fences be inclined to the right or left, they
arc deranged. If there be an unequal pressure on cither side, the tow-
er will lean, that is, it will be deranged. If the file of men btcome ir-
regular, the line is deranged. So if a man be insane. There was a regu-
lar line which he was pursuing ; not the same line, which you or I fol-
low, for all men pursue different lines, and every sane man has his
own peculiar path. All these paths arc straight, and all are ranged,
though all divergent. It is easy enough to discover when the street, the
fence, the tower, or the martial procession is deranged. But it is quite
another thing to determine when the course of an individual life has be-
come deranged. We deal not then with geometrical or material lines,
but with an imaginary line. We have no phj sical objects for land marks.

WILLIAM FREEMAN.

We trace the line backward by the light of imperfect and unsatisfactory-
evidence, which leaves it a matter almost of speculation whether there
has been a departure or not. In some cases, indeed, the task is easy.
If the fond mother becomes the murderer of her offspring, it is easy to
see that she is deranged. If the pious man, whose steps were firm and
whose pathway led straight to Heaven, sinks without temptation into
criminal debasement, it is easy to see that he is deranged. But in cases
where no natural instinct or elevated principle throws its light upon our
research, it is often the most difficult and delicate of all human investi-
gations to determine when a person is deranged.

We have two tests. First, to compare the individual after the sup-
posed derangement with himself as he was before. Second, to compare
his course with those ordinary lines of human life which we expect sane
persons, of equal intelligence, and similarly situated, to pursue.

If derangement, which is insanity, mean only what we have assumed,
how absurd is it to be looking to detect whether memory, hope, joy,
fear, hunger, thirst, reason, understanding, wit, and other faculties re-
main ! So long as life lasts they never cease to abide with man, whether
he pursue his straight and natural way, or the crooked and unnatural
course of the lunatic. If he be diseased, his faculties will not cease to "7
act. They will only act differently. It is contended here that the pri-
soner is not deranged because he performed his daily task in the State
Prison, and his occasional labor afterwards ; because he grinds his knives,
fits his weapons, and handles the file, the axe, and the saw, as he was
instructed, and as he was wont to do. Now the Lunatic Asylum at Uti-
ca has not an idle person in it, except the victims of absolute and incu-
rable dementia, the last and worst stage of all insanity. Lunatics are
almost the busiest people in the world. They have their prototypes only
in children. One lunatic will make a garden, another drive the plough,
another gather flower*. One writes poetry, another essays, another ora-
tions. In short, lunatics eat, drink, sleep, work, fear, love, hate, laugh,
weep, mourn, die. They do all things that sane men do, but do them in
some peculiar way. It is said, however, that this prisoner has hatred
and anger, that he has remembered his wrongs, and nursed and cherished
revenge ; wherefore, he cannot be insane. Cowper, a moralist who had
tasted the bitter cup of Insanity, reasoned otherwise :

" But violence can never longer sleep
Than Humaa Passions please. In cv'ry heart
Are sown lh« sparks thai kindle fi'ry war ;
Occasion needs but fan them and they blaxe,
The saeds of murder in the breast of man."

Melancholy springs oflenest from recalling and brooding over wrong
and suffering. Melancholy is the first stage of madness, and it is
only recently that the less accurate name of monomania has been substi-
2

18 DEFENCE OF

tuted in the place of melancholy. Melancholy is the foster-mother
of anger and revenge. Until 1830 our statutory definition of lunatics
was in the terms " disorderly persons, who, if left at large, might endan-
ger the lives of others/' Our law? now regard them as merely disorder-
ly and dangerous, and society acquiesces, unless madness rise so high
that the madman slay his imaginary enemy, and then he is pronounced
Bane.

The prisoner lived with Nathaniel Lynch, at the age of eight or nine,
and labored occasionally for him during the last winter. Lynch visited
him in the jail, and asked him if he remembered him, and remembered
living with him. The prisoner answered, yes. Lynch asked the pri-
soner whether he was whipped while there, and by whom, and why.
From his answers it appeared that he had been whipped by his mistress
for playing truant, and that he climbed a rough board fence in his night-
clothes and fled to his mother. Upon this evidence, the learned profes-
sor from Geneva College, Dr. Spencer, builds an argument that the pri-
soner has conception, sensation, memory, imagination, and association,
and is most competent for the scaffold. Now here are some verses to
which I would invite the Doctor's attention :

" Shut up ill dreary gloom, like convicts are,

In companJ*of murderers ! Oh, wretched fate !

If pity e'er extended through the frame,

Or sympathy's sweet cordial touched the heart,

Pity the wretched maniac who knows no blame,

Abicrbed in sorrow, where darkness, poverty, and every curse impart."

Here is evidence not merely of memory and other faculties, but of
what we call genius. Yet these verses are a sad effusion of Thomas
Lloyd, a man-slaying maniac in Bedlam.

The first question of fact here. Gentlemen, as in every case where in-
sanity is gravely insisted upon, is this :

Is THE Prisoner feigning or counterfeiting Insanity ?

What kind of man is he ? A youth of twenty-three, without learning,
education, or experience. Dr. Spencer raises him just above the brute;
Dr. Bigelow exalts him no higher ; and Dr. Dimon thinks that he has
intellectual capacity not exceeding that of a child of ten years, with the
knowledge of one of two or three. These are the people's witnesses.
All the witnesses concur in these estimates of his mind.

Can you conceive of such a creature comprehending such a plot, and
standing up in his cell in the jail, hour after hour, day after day, week
after week, and month after month, carrying on such a fraud ; and all
the while pouring freely into the ears of inquisitors curious, inquisitors
friendly, and inquisitors hostile, without discrimination or alarm, or ap-
parent hesitation or suspicion, with " child-like simplicity, " as our wit-
nesses describe it, and with " entire docility," as it is described by the
witnesses for the People, confessions of crime, which, if they fail to be

WILLIAM FREEMAN. V9

received as evidences of insanity, must constitute an insurmountable
barrier to his acquittal ?

I am ashamed for men who, without evidence of the prisoner's dissimu-
lation, and in opposition to the unanimous testimony of all the witnesses,
that he is sincere, still think that this poor fool may deceive them. If
he could feign, and were feigning, would he not want some counsel, some
friend, if not to advise and assist, at least to inform him of the probable
success of the fraud? And yet no one of his counsel or witnesses has
ever conversed with him, but in a crowd of adverse witnesses ; and for
myself, I have not spoken with him in almost two months, and during
the same period have never looked upon him elsewhere than here, in the
presence of the Court and of the multitude.

Would a sane man hold nothing back ? admit every tiling ? to every
body ? affect no ignorance ? no forgetfulness ? no bewilderment ^ no con-
fusion ? no excitement ? no delirium ?

Dr. Ray, in his Treatise on the Medical Jurisprudence of Insanity (p.
333) gives us very different ideas from all this, of those who can feign,
and of the manner of counterfeiting :

*' A person who has not made the insane a subject of study, cannot
simulate madness, so as to deceive a physician well acquainted with the
disease. Mr. Haslam declares, that ' to sustain the character of a pa-
roxysm of active insanity, would require a continuity of exertion beyond
the power of a sane person.' Dr. Conolly affirms that he can hardly
imagine a case which would be pioof against an efficient system of ob-
servation.

" The grand fault committed by impostors is, that they overdo the
character they assume.

** The really mad, except in the acute stage of the disease, are, gene-
rally speaking, not readily recognized as such by a stranger, and they
retain so much of the rational as to require an effort to detect the impair-
ment of their faculties.

" Generally speaking, after the acute stage has passed off, a maniac
has no difficulty in remembering his friends and acquaintances, the places
he has been accustomed to frequent, names, dates, and events, and the
occurrences of his life. The ordinary relations of things are, with some
exceptions, as easily and clearly perceived as ever, and his discrimina-
tion of character seems to be marked by his usual shrewdness. *

* * * A person simulating mania will frequently deny all
knowledge of men and things with whom he has always been familiar."

And now, Gentlemen, I will give you a proof of the difference between
this real science and the empiricism upon which the Counsel for the Peo-
ple rely, in this cause. Jean Pierre was brought before the Court of
Assizes in Paris, in 1824, accused of forgery, swindling, and incendia-

20 DEFENCE OP

rism. He feigned insanity. A commission of eminent physicians ex-
amined him, and detected his imposture by his pretended forgetfulness,
and confusion in answermg interrogatories concerning his life and his-
tory. The most prominent of these questions are set down in the books.
{Ray, p. 338.) I submitted these questions and answers, with a state-
ment of Jean Pierre's case, to Dr. Spencer, and he, governed by the
rules which have controled him in the present cause, pronounced the
impostor's answers to be evidence of insanity, because they showed a
decay of memory.

Again, Gentlemen, look at the various catechisms in which this pri-
soner has been exercised for two months, as a test of his sanity. Would
any sane man have propounded a solitary one of all those questions to
any person whom he believed to be of sound mind ? Take an instance.
On one occasion, Dr. Willard, a witness for the People, having ex-
hausted the idiot's store of knowledge and emotion, expressed a wish to
discover whether the passion of fear had burned out, and employing Mr.
Morgan's voice, addressed the prisoner thus : " Bill, they're going to take
you out to kill you. They're going to lake you out to kill you. Bill."
The poor creature answerd nothing. "What do you think of it, Bill ?"
Answer ; *' I don't think about it — I don't believe it." " Bill," continues
the inquisitor, with louder and more terrific vociferation, " they're going
to kill you, and the doctors want your bones ; what do you think of it.
Bill ?" The prisoner answers ; " I don't think about it — I don't believe
it." The Doctor's case was almost complete, but he thought that per-
haps the prisoner's stupidity might arise from inability to understand the
question. Therefore, lifting his voice still higher, he continues : " Did
you ever see the Doctors have any bones ? Did you ever see the Doctors
have any bones. Bill ?" The fool answers ; •' I have." " Then where
did you see them. Bill ?" " In Dr. Pitney's office." And thus, by this
dialogue, the sanity of the accused is, in the judgment of Dr. Willard,
completely established. It is no matter that if the prisoner had believed
the threat, his belief would have proved him sane ; if he had been terri-
fied, his fears would have sent him to the gallows ; if he had forgotton
the fleshless skeleton he had seen, he would have been convicted of
falsehood, and of course have been sane. Of such staple as this are all
the questions which have been put to the prisoner by all the witnesses.
There is not an interrogatory which any one of you would have put to
a child twelve years old.

Does the prisoner feign insanity ? One hundred and eight witnesses
have been examined, of whom seventy-two appeared on behalf of the
people. No one of them has expressed a belief that he was simulating.
On the contrary, every witness to whom the inquiry has been addressed,
answers that the sincerity of the prisoner is beyond question. .

WILLIAM FREEMAN. 21

Mr. John R. Hopkins says : " I watched him sharply to discover any
simulation, but I couldn't. There was no deception. If there had been
I should have detected it."

Ethan A. Warden, President of the village of Auburn, with whom
the prisoner had the most extended conversation, says : *' I suppose he
thought he spoke the truth."

Ira Curtis, Esq., testifies : " It did occur to me whether the prisoner,
with his appearance of sincerity, was attempting to play off a game of
imposture. The thought vanished in a moment. There was too much
before me. I have no doubt of his sincerity. I don't believe it is in the
power of all in this room to teach him to carry on a piece of deception
for fifteen minutes, because he would forget what he set about."

Dr. Hkrmance says : " He spoke with so much sincerity."

The Rev. John M. Austin says : " He did not dissemble. I should
suppose him the shrewdest man in the world if he did dissemble. I have
not the slightest doubt that there was no attempt to dissemble."

The tenor of the testimony of all the witnesses for the prisoner, leaxned
and unlearned, is the same.

The witnesses for the people, learned and unlearned, concur.

Dr. BiGELOW says : " He has betrayed no suspicion of me. He has
manifested entire docility to me."

Dr. Spen<;er describes the manner of the witness ift giving all his an-
swers, as •* entirely frank."

Dr. Clary concludes the question of sincerity against all doubt. He
says : " It seemed to me that he either thought he was reading or that
he meant to deceive, and I don't think the latter, for he always seemed
to be very frank."

It being thus absolutely settled. Gentlemen, that the prisoner does not
simulate insanity, I pass to the seco«d proposition in this defence, which
is, that -

It is proved that the prisoner is changed.

I shall first ask you to compare him now with himself in the earlier
and happier period of his life.

Nathaniel Hersey, a witness for the people, a colored man, knew
the prisoner seven years ago, and says : " He was a lively, smart boy,
laughed, played, and was good natured ; understood as well as any
body ; could tell a story right off; talked like other folks."

This is the testimony of an associate of the prisoner at the age of
sixteen.

John Depuy is a brother-in-law of the accused, and has known him
more than twelve years. This witness says ; the prisoner " was an ac-
tive, smart boy, lively as any other you could find, a good boy to work ;
set him to work any where, and he would do it ; sociable and understood

22 DEFENCE OP

himself, and had some learning ; could read in the spelling book pretty
well; could read oif simple reading lessons in the spelling book, smooth
and decent."

David Winner, a colored man, was the friend and companion of the
parents of the prisoner. He says : When this boy was twelve or thir-
teen years old, he was a pretty sprightly lad, sensible, very lively. I saw
no difference between him and any other boy of sense, at that time."

Nathaniel Lynch, a witness for the people, in whose house the pri-
soner was an inmate at the age of eight years, says : " He was a lively,
playful boy, almost always smiling and laughing, and appeared to be a
lively, laughing, playful boy."

Daniel Andrus, a witness for the people, testifies that he employed
the prisoner eight years ago, and talked with him then as he would with
any other laboring man.

Mary Ann Newark has known the prisoner from childhood, and
says : '♦ He was a lively, smart boy."

Honest Adam Gray was a friend of the prisoner's parents, and says :
*' He waf a smart boy, was very active ; always thought him a pretty
cunning kind of a boy."

Dr. Briggs knew him twelve years ago, as " a lad of ordinary intelli-
gence for boys of his condition."

Robert Freeman was a fellow servant with the prisoner, at the Amer-
ican Hotel, eight years ago, and though he never entered into any argu-
ment with the prisoner to find out his mother-wit, he says: '*He was
playful betimes, seemed to understand every thing, and very active."

Dr. Van Epps knew the prisoner in his early infancy, and says: "He
then appeared as bright and intelligent as children generally are at that
age."

Thomas F. Munroe, a witness for the people, certainly not partial to
the prisoner, says: " In his youth he was quick and active, and not much
different from other black boys."

A. A. Vanderheyden, a witness for the people, represents the pri-
soner as " active and intelligent" in his youth.

Aretas a. Sabin, a witness for the people, knew the prisoner fifteen
or sixteen years ago, and says that he was no more or less playful than
other boys, and that he wept on entering the State Prison, at the age of
sixteen.

Jefferson Wellington, a hostile witness, testifies that the prisoner
was sociable and talked freely upon general subjects at the age of six-
teen.

Lewis Markham has known the prisoner from childhood, and declares
that " he was a smart boy, pretty active, quick, sprightly, shrewd, at-
tentive and faithful, without any lack of conversational powers."

WILLIAM FEEEMAN. 23

Ethan A. Warden received the prisoner into his family fifteen or
sixteen years ago, " as a bright boy, and took him for the reason that he
was so," and now declares that " he was then a lad of good understand-
ing, and of kind and gentle disposition."

Sally Freeman, the prisoner's mother, gives this simple account of
him : *' When he was young, he was a very smart child, before he went
to the State Prison, He was always very playful and good natured.
About understanding things he was the same as other children."

Finally. Deborah Depuy, vfho is of the same age with the prisoner,
of the same caste, amd moves in the same humble sphere, testifies that
she " knew him before he went to the State Prison, in childhood and
youth;" that " his manners, action, and-mind, were very good — as good
as other boys;" that she " associated with him ; he was as bright as any
body else ; he was very cheerful ;" she had " been with him to balls
and rides : he acted very smart on such occasions ;" she had talked with
him often, and never discovered any lack of intelligence."

Such, Gentlemen, is a complete picture of the childhood and youth of
the prisoner at the bar. Its truthfulness and fidelity are unquestioned,
for all the witnesses on both sides have drawn it for you.

Look on that picture and then on the one I shall now present, and,
fiince I must speak of a class Jowly and despised,

"Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their humble joys and clestmy obscure:
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful anile
The short and simple aanals of the poor."

You have seen that the prisoner wept, as well he might, when he en-
tered the State Prison at the age of sixteen. It was the last manifesta-
tion he has ever given of a rational mind.

Eehan A. Warden says: ** I saw the prisoner in the Slate Prison.
He appeared stupid and different from what he used to be, and from what
I expected he would be. I cannot describe the difference ; it was so
peculiar. I said to him, " Bill, are you here .' and repeated the question
two or three times; at first he did not understand, but at last said, ' Yes.'
He appeared changed."

. John Depuy saw the prisoner in the State Prison at five different times,
but was not allowed to speak with him. Depuy says the prisoner " was
carrying something on his back like a knapsack, and walking back and
forth in the yard. He did not appear as he did before he went to Pri-
son. He appeared stupid, took no notice of anything. ' He did not know
me, and took no notice of me. I saw him at other times when at work
and when idle, and then thought there was something the matter with
him. I thought he was not in his right mind."

WiLLFAM P. Smith was a foreman of one of the shops in the Stale

34 DEFENCE OF

Prison during the third year of the prisoner's confinement there, and had
charge of him. He describes him as *• passionate, sullen-, and stupid."
This witness relates that the prisoner had oiled his shoes neatly and set
them upon a wood pile, that a convict accidentally disturbed the shoes,
and that the prsioner struck the convict with a billet of wood -with great
violence, for which offence he was punished ; that at another time, with
as little provocation, he attacked another convict with great fury, for
displacing some yarn on a reel. The witness says : '* When I sent him
on an errand, he required repeated and very particular instructions. I
considered his intellect at the time very low indeed. He knew very lit-
tle, not much more than a brute or beast."

Theron R. Green, who was a keeper in the prison and had charge
of the prisoner, declares that he "had very little mind, was a half -day
man, was slow, awkward, dull, downcast, and would have frequent
freaks of laughing, without any observable cause of laughter'" The
witness tried to instruct him in his cell on Sundays, but he could learn
nothing." Mr. Green says : " He was irritable, malicious, and of bad
temper ; often violated rules, for which I did not punish him, because I
thought him irresponsible. I think that he had as much capacity as a
brute beast. I dont know as he had more. If more, there was none to
spare. I remarked when he left the shop, that he ought not to go at
large."

HoRACc HoTCHKiss was a teacher in the Sunday School, at the State
Prison, and says that the prisoner " was dismissed from the School be-
cause he could not be taught to read."

Such is the imperfect history of the prisoner at the bar, while he was
shut up from the observation of men, and deprived by the discipline of
the State Prison of the use of speech and of the privilege of complaint.

He was discharged from prison on the twentieth of last September.

Alonzo Wood, the new Chaplain of the State Prison, visited him in
his cell there twice during the last month of his confinement, and asked
him questions, which the prisoner noticed only by inclining his head.
The Chaplain expressed a hope to him on the day of his discharge
that he might be able to keep out of prison thereafter, and inquired
whether he wanted a Bible. " I understood him to say," says the wit-
ness, that it would be of no use — that he conldn't read. At the Clerk's
office he received the usual gratuity of two dollars, for which he was
required to sign a voucher. He answered, ' I have been in Prison
five years unjustly, and ain't going to settle so.' " The officers, including
the Reverend Chaplain, laughed heaitily at what they thought gross ig-
norance.

The prisoner's faithful brother-in-law, John Deput, was waiting in
the hall to conduct him homeward. His narrative is simple and affect-

WILLIAM FREEMAN. 25

mg. *' I sat down," says Deput, " on the long chair in the hall. He
came out and passed me as if he didn't know me. I went up and
touched him, and asked him if he knew me, and he kind o' laughed.
We came along to Applcgate's, where I stopped to assist to raise a new
building. He sat down on a pile of boards. He sat there and acted
very stupid and dull and said nothing. They asked me what damned
fool I had with me sitting there ?

" He didn't know the value of his money. He had received four half
dollars, and thought they were quarters. We went to the hatter's for a
cap — found one worth half a dollar ; he threw down two halves. I
handed one back to him and told him to come out. After he came
out, he insisted that he had paid only half enough for the cap, and that
they would make a fuss about it." All the leisure hours of that day and
the next were spent by the prisoner, according to Depuy's account, in
giving relations of the injustice and cruelty he had suffered in the Prison.
He was very deaf, and assigned as the cause of it, that Tyler, one of the
keepers in the Prison, had struck him across the ears with a board, and
had knocked his hearing off so he couldn't hear, and his hearing had
never come back. " I asked him," says the witness, " if they had done
anything for his deafness. He said, ' Yes, they put salt in my ear, Mit
it didn't do any good, for my hearing was gone and all knocked off' "

Again. The prisoner told Depuy that while eating, he had broken
his dinner knife in the Prison, and the keepers had threatened to put him
back five years for that ; and says Depuy, *' he asked me if they could
do it." He complained to Depuy, as we shall have occasion to see here-
after, that he had been wrongfully imprisoned, and wanted to find the
people who had done him such injustice, for the purpose of getting pay
from them.

Such was the change which had come over the prisoner. The bright,
lively, social, active youth of sixteen, had become a drivelling, simple
fool.

The prisoner remained with Depuy some two or three months. He
asked for Esquires, to get warrants for the people who put him in the
State Prison ; at one time said the justices refused to give him war-
rants ; at another time, that " he had got it all fixed," and he wanted
Depuy to go down and see that he got his pay right ; at another, said
that " he couldn't do nothing with them — they cheated him all the time,
and he couldn't live so." He followed Depuy seven miles, to Skaneate-
les, and brought him back to Auburn, to help the prisoner in a dispute
with Mr. Conklin, the harness-maker, about sawing some wood, for
which he claimed thirty-seven and a half cents, and Conklin refused to
pay him more than twenty-five cents. Depuy, dealing with the prisoner
as Dr. Brigham would, made peace by paying him the difference, and

26 DEFENCE OP

settled in the same way a difference between the prisoner and Mr. Mur-
fey, the merchant.

The prisoner's mind was very unsteady during the winter. Dbput
continues : " He did not know half the time what he was doing ; he-
would go up the street and then turn and run violently in th3 other di-
rection. He never commenced any conversation with any body, never
asked a question ; smiled without cause ; got up out of his bed at
night many times, some times two or three times in the same night,
and on such cccasions would sing irregularly, dance and spar, as if with
a combatant ; saying sometimes : ' By God ! I'll see you out ;' sometimes
he would take a book and mumble words as if reading, but there was
no sense in the words. When asked afterwards what he got up nights
for, he answered that he didn't know." The prisoner never talked with
any body after coming out of prison unless to answer, in the simplest
way, questions put to him.

Many persons remember the negro, with his saw, deaf, sad and sullen,
seeking occupation about the wood-yards, during the half year of his
enlargement. Few stopped to converse with him, but the reports of all
confirm what has been testified by Depuy. Those who knew" the pris-
oner at all, were chiefly persons of his own caste.

Mary Ann Newark says that she saw him after he came out of Pris-
on, and he resided with her several days before the homicide. He did
not recognize her in the street. *« He sat still and silent when in the
house, asked no questions, and answered quick and short-like. His
manner of acting was queer-like, he never mentioned any name or spoke
of any body."

Nathaniel Hersey, the prisoner's old friend, found him changed,
had to speak loud to him, " he appeared to be quite stupid." Hersey
asked him what ailed him, " he said he was deaf, that they rapped him
over the head at the Prison."

Robert Freeman discovered that he appeared downcast when he
first came out of Prison. He spoke to the prisoner, who took no notice.
Robert took hold of his hand and asked him how he did. The wit-
ness says " he appeared more dull and downcast, and I could not tell
what the matter was ; could never establish any communication with
him."

Old Adam Gray, who knew him as a " pretty cunning kind of a boy,"
testifies: " I think there is a change in him. It doesn't seem to me that
he knows as much as he did before he went to Prison. He doesn't seem
to talk as much, to have so much life, nor does he seem so sensible.
Last winter he boarded with me two months. He would get up nights,
take his saw and go out as if he was going to work, and come back
again and go to bed. On such occasions he would try to sing, but I

WILLIAM FREEMAN. 27

couldn't understand what he said. He made a noise appearing as if he
was dancing."

Some three weeks before the homicide, the prisoner was boarding at
Laura Willard's. The truthful and simple-minded David Winner, seems
to have been led by Providence to visit the house at that time. He says,
*' I saw him first at his' uncle Luke Freeman's. He then appeared to be
a foolish man. I asked if that was Sally's son. I did not know him.
They told me it was. I said, he is very much altered. They said, he
has just come out of State Prison. He had altered very much in his
looks and behavior. He was sitting down in a chair in the corner sniv-
elling, snickering and laughing, and having a kind of simple look. I
spoke to him ; he didn't speak ; I saw nothing for him to laugh at. I
staid three days and three nights at Laura Willard's and slept with Wil-
liam in the same bed. At night he got up and talked to himself ; I
couldn't understand what he said. He appeared to be foolish. I gave
him a dollar to go down to Bartlett's to get a quarter of a pound of tea
and two pounds of sugar, and to the market and get a beef steak. He
went to market and got it all in beef steak. He got a dollar's worth of
beef steak. When I asked what that was for, he said nothing, but
laughed at me. He got up nights two or three times, and I felt cold and
told Laura I wouldn't sleep with him any more, and I went and slept in
the other room. I got afraid of him, and I wouldn't sleep with him any
more. He sung when he got up nights, but you couldn't understand
what he sung. There was no meaning in what he sung."

Deborah Depuy says, " After he came out of Prison, there was a
change. If I talked to him very loud he would talk, say very little only
to answer me. He didn't act cheerful, but very stupid ; never said any
thing until I talked to him. He never talked to me as he did before he
went to Prison. He had a strange smile. He would laugh very hearty
without any thing to laugh at. He would'nt know what he was laugh-
ing at. He would knock at the door, and I would let him in, and he
would sit down and laugh. I would ask what he was laughing at ; he
said, he didn't know. When I asked questions, he would either answer
yes, or no, or don't know I asked him how his hearing was hurt. He
said they struck him on the head with a board and it seemed as if the
sound went down his throat. I have asked him why he was so stupid.
I don't think he is in his right mind now, nor that he has been since he
came out. The reason is that he never used to act so silly, and sit and
laugh so, before he went to Prison."

His mother, Sally Freeman, describes the change which had come
over her child, in language simple and touching : " I never knew he was
foolish or dumpish before he went to Prison. After he came out of
Prison, he didn't act like the same child. He was chansred and didn't

28 DEFENCE OP

appear to know anything. As to being lively after he came out, I didn't
Bee any cheerfulness about him. He was either sitting or standing when
I afterwards saw him, and when I asked him a question he would an-
swer, but that is all he would say. He appeared very dull. He never
asked me any questions after he came out, only thje first time he saw me
he asked me if I was well. From that time to this he has never asked
me a question at all. He didn't come to see me more than half a dozen
times. When he came, perhaps he would ask me how I did, and then
sit down and laugh. What he laughed at was more than I could tell.
He laughed as he does now. There was no reason why he should laugh.
He was laughing to himself. He didn't speak of any thing when he
laughed. I never inquired what he laughed at. I didn't think he was
hardly right, and he was so deaf I didn't want to. I asked him how he
got deaf, and he told me his ear had fell down, or some such foolish an-
swer he gave me. He would stay an hour or so. He generally sat still.
I went to see him in the jail after he killed the Van Nest family, on the
first day of the trial. He laughed when I went in, and said he was well.
I talked to him. I asked him if he knew what he had been doing. He
stood and laughed. I asked him how he came there. He didn't say
much of anything, but stood and laughed. When I went away he
didn't bid me good-bye nor ask me to come again. I have never been
to see him since, and have never received any message from him of any
kind since he has been in jail. I don't know that he noticed me when I
was on examination before. I don't think he is in his right mind, or
that he has been since he came out of Prison. The reason is that he
acts very foolish, and don't seem as though he had any senses."

You will remember that we have seen the prisoner a smart, bright,
lively, cheerful, and playful youth, attending Deborah Depuy at balls,
parties, and rides ; for negroes enjoy such festivities as much and even
more than white men. Deborah says he no longer attends. But from
the testimony of John Depuy we find him at a dance in the house of
Laura Willard, on (he night before the slaughter of the Van Nest family.
The scene was the same as before. There was music, and gallantry,
and revelry, and merriment, and laughing, and dancing. But while all
others were thus occupied, where was the prisoner, and how was he en-
gaged .' He was leaning against the wall, sullen, gloomy, silent, morose ;
pressing with his hand the knife concealed in his bosom, and waiting
his opportunity to strike to the heart his brother-in-law and benefactor.

This is the change which had come over the prisoner when he emerged
from the State Prison, as observed by the few of his kindred and caste,
who had known him intimately before. How many white men who
knew him in his better days, have we heard confirm this testimony, by
saying that they lost sight of him when he went to Prison ; that they

WILLIAM FREEMAN. 29

met him in the street afterwards, downcast and sullen, with his saw in
his hand, seeking; casual occupation ; that they spoke to him but he did
not hear or did not answer, and they passed on ! Only two or three such
persons stopped to enquire concerning his misfortunes, or to sympathise
with him.

William P. Smith says : " The first time I saw him after he came
out of Prison, was in November. I asked him how he did. He made
no answer. A little black boy with him told me he was deaf. I spoke
to him to try and induce conversation, and finally gave it up ; I couldn't
make him understand. He appeared different from what I had known
him before ; appeared dumpish ; didn't say much, and seemed to stand
around. I met him once or- twice in the street — merely met him — he
noticed nothing."

Doctor Hermance did not know him before he went to prison. His
peculiarities attracted the Doctor's attention, and he inquired the cause.
The prisoner answered that he had been five years in the State Prison,
and he wasn't guilty, and they wouldn't pay him The Doctor says :
'* I discovered that he was very deaf, and inquired the cause of his deaf-
ness. He stated that his ears dropped. I thought his manners very sin-
gular and strange ; and what he said about pay very singular and strange.
He spoke in a very gloomy, despondent state of mind. There appeared
to be a sincerity in his manner. The lone of his voice was a dull and
monotonous tone. I thought at the time that he w^as deranged."

To complete this demonstration of the change, I have only to give you
the character of the negro now, as he is described by several of the wit-
nesses, as well on the part of the people as of the prisoner, who have
seen him in prison, and as he is admitted to be.

Warren T. Worden, Esq., an astute and experienced member of the
bar, visited him in his cell in the jail, and says : " I formed an opinion
then, that he knew nothing, and I expressed it. I do not believe him
sane. I don't believe he understands what is going on around him. He
would laugh upon the gallows as readily and as freely as he did in his
cell. He would probably know as much as a dumb beast who was ta-
ken to the slaughter house, as to what was to be done with him. If
that state of mind and knowledge constitute insanity, then he is insane."

Doctor FosGATE, one of the soundest and most enlightened men in our
community, who was his physician in the jail, and dressed his wounded
hand, describes him as " insensible to pain, ignorant of his condition,
and of course indifferent to his fate ; grinning constantly idiotic smiles,
without any perceptible cause, and rapidly sinking into idiocy."

Ira Curtis, who knew him in his youth, and has now carefully ex-
amined him in the jail, says : *' He is incapable of understanding ; he is
part fool, bordering on idiocy; crazy and an idiot both, and crazy and

30 DEFENCE OF

insane both. If all the Doctors in the world should say he was not a
fool, I shouldn't believe them."

Doctor Briggs, who, it will be recollected, knew him at the age of
eight or nine, examined him in the jail and says : " my opinion is and
was, that he has less mind than when I knew him before — that his mind
has become impaired."

William P. Smith, who knew him before he went to the State Prison
and while there, patiently examined him in the jail, and says : " There
was a change, a sensible change in the man. He didn't appear to know
as much, to have as many ideas ^bout him, as many looks of intelligence.
I don't know as I could describe it very well. There was a slowness, a
dullness ; I thought what little intellect he had seemed to sink lower down,
from some cause or other. His physical strength and vigor were good in
the Prison. He appeared active, strong and energetic. Now, his manner
appears more dull, stupid and inattentive."

Dr. Van Epps says : " Now he apptars to have the intellect of a child
five years old." "

Ethan A. Warden, the prisoner's earliest and fastest friend, says:
" I look at him now and when he lived with me. He appears different.
I could not get any thing that appeared like sorrow for what he had
done, or feeling for the crime. I don't think him much above a brute."

John R. Hopkims says : " I think him in intelligence but little above
the brute."

I need not pursue the parallel further. There is no dispute as to his
present ignorance and debasement.

Dr. DiMON, a witness for the People, although he pronounces the pri-
soner sane, says he should think " he has not as much intellect as a
child of fourteen years of age ; is in some respects hardly equal to a
child of three or four," and in regard to knowledge compares him with
•• a child two or three years old, who knows his A, B, C, and can't count
twenty-eight "

Dr. Bjgelow, a leading witness for the people, declares : " I believe
him to be a dull, stupid, moody, morose, depraved, degraded negro, but
not insane ;" and Dr. Spencer, swearing to the same conclusion, says:
" He is but little above the brute, yet not insane."

1 submit to you. Gentlemen of the Jury, that by comparing the prisoner
with himself, as he was in his earlier, and as he is in his later history, I
have proved to you conclusively that he is visibly changed and altered in
mind, manner, conversation and action, and that all his faculties have be-
come disturbed, impaired, degraded and debased. I submit also that it is
proved : Jirst, that this change occurred between the sixteenth and the
eighteenth years of his life, in the State Prison, and that fherefore the
change, thus palpable was not, as the Attorney General contends, effected

WILLIAM FREEMAN. 31

by mere lapse of time and increase of years, nor by the natural develope-
ment of latent dispositions : Secondly, that inasmuch as the convicts in
the State Prison are absolutely abstemious from intoxicating drinks, the
change was not, as the Attorney General supposes, produced by intem-
perance.

I have thus arrived at the third proposition in this case, which is,
that

The Prisoner at the Bar is Insane.

This I shall demonstrate, ^r5^ by the fact already so fully established,
that the prisoner is changed ; Secondly, by referring to the predisposing
causes which might be expected to produce. Insanity ; Thirdly, by the
incoherence and extravagance of the prisoner's conduct and conversation,
and the delusions under which he has labored.

And now as to predisposing causes. The prisoner was born in this
village, twenty-three years ago, of parents recently emerged from slavery.
His mother was a woman of violent passions, severe discipline, and ad-
dicted to intemperance. His father died of delirium tremens, leaving his
children to the neglect of the world, from which he had learned nothing
but its vices.

Hereditary insanity was added to the prisoner's misfortunes, already
sufficiently complicated. His aunt, Jane Brown, died a lunatic. His
uncle, Sidney Freeman, is an acknowledged lunatic.

All writers agree, what it needs not writers should teach, that neglect
of education is a fruitful cause of Insanity. If neglect of education pro-
duces crime, it equally produces Insanity. Here was a bright, cheerful,
happy child, destined to become a member of the social state, entitled by
the principles of our Government to equal advantages for perfecting him-
self in intelligence, and even in political rights, with each of the three
millions of our citizens, and blessed by our religion with equal hopes.
Without his being taught to read, his mother, who lives by menial ser-
vice, sends him forth at the age of eight or nine years to like employment.
Reproaches are cast on his mother, on JVIr. Warden, and on Mr. Lynch,
for not sending him to school, but these reproaches are all unjust. How
could she, poor degraded Negress and Indian as she was, send her child
to school ? And where was the school to which Warden and Lynch
'should have sent him ? There was no school for him. His few and
wretched years date back to the beginning of my acquaintance here, and
during all that time, with unimportant exceptions, there has been no
school here for children of his caste. A school for colored children was
never established here, and all the common schools were closed against
them. Money would always procure instruction for my children, and
relieve me from the responsibility. But the colored children, who have
from time to time been confided to my charge, have been cast upon ray

32 DEFENCE OP

own care for education. When I sent them to school with my own
children, they were sent back to me with a message that they must be
withdrawn because they were black, or the school would cease. Here
are the fruits of this unmanly and criminal prejudice. A whole family
is cut offin the midst of usefulness and honors by the hand of an assas-
sin. You may avenge the crime, but whether the prisoner be insane or
criminal, there is a tribunal where this neglect will plead powerfully in
his excuse, and trumpet-tongued against the *' deep damnation" of his
" taking off."

Again. The prisoner was subjected, in tender years, to severe and
undeserved oppression. Whipped at Lynch's ; severely and unlawfully
beaten by Wellington, for the venial offence of forgetting to return a
borrowed umbrella ; hunted by the Police on charges of petty offences,
of which he was proved innocent; finally, convicted, upon constructive
and probably perjured evidence, qf a crime, of which it is now univer-
sally admitted he was guiltless, he was plunged into the State Prison at
the age of sixteen, instead of being committed to a House of Refuge.

Mere imprisonment is often a cause of Insanity. Four insane persons
have, on this trial, been mentioned as residing among us, all of whom
became insane in the State Prison. Authentic statistics show that there
are never less than thirty iiksane persons in each of our two great peni-
tentiaries. In the State Prison the prisoner was subjected to severe cor-
poreal punishment, by keepers, who mistook a decay of mind and mor-
bid melancholy, for idleness, obstinacy and malice. Beaten, as he was,
until the orgajns of his hearing ceased to perform their functions, who
shall say that other and more important organs connected with the action
of his mind did not become diseased through sympathy ? Such a life, so
filled with neglect, injustice and severity, with anxiety, pain, disappoint-
ment, solicitude, and grief, would liave its fitting conclusion in a mad-
house. If it be true, as the wisest of inspired writers hath said, " Verily
oppression maketh a wise man mad," what may we not expect it to do
with a foolish, ignorant, illiterate man ! Thus it is explained why, when
he came out of prison, he was so dull, stupid, morose ; excited to anger
by petty troubles, small in our view, but mountains in his way ; filled
in his waking hours with moody recollections, and rising at midnight to
sing incoherent songs, dance without music, read unintelligible jargon,
and combat with imaginary enemies.

How otherwise than on the score of madness can you explain the stu-
pidity which caused him to be taken for a fool at Applegate's, on his
way from the prison to his home ? How else the ignorance which made
him incapable of distinguishing the coin which he offered at the hatters
shop ? How else his ludicrous apprehensions of being recommitted to
the State Prison for five years, for the offence of breaking his dinner

WILLIAM FREEMAN. 33

knife ? How else his odd and strange manner of accounting for his deaf-
ness, by expressions, all absurd and senseless, and varying with each
interrogator : as to John Depuy, " that Tyler struck him across the ears
with a plank, and knocked his hearing off, and that it never came back ;
that they put salt in his ear, but it didn't do any good, for his hearing
was gone- all knocked off""'; to the Rev. John M. Austin, " the stones
dropped down my ears, or the stones of my ears dropped down " ; to
Ethan A. Warden, " got stone in my ear ; got it out ; thought I heard
better when I got it out" ; to Dr. Hermance, " that his ears dropped" ;
and to the same witness on another occasion, " that the hearing of his
ears fell down " ; to his mother, " that his ear had fell down " ; to Debo-
rah Depuy, " that Tyler struck him on the head with a board, and it
seemed as if the sound went down his throat " ; to Dr. Brigham, " that
he was hurt when young, it made him deaf in the right ear"; also,
*« that in the prison he was struck with a board by a man, which made
him deaf" ; and also, " that a stone was knocked into, or out of his ear" ?
It is now perfectly certain, from the testimony of Mr. Van Arsdale
and Helen Holmes, that the prisoner first stabbed Mrs. Van Nest, in
the back yard, and then entered the house and stabbed Mr. Van Nest,
who fell lifeless at the instant of the blow. And yet, sincerely trying
to give an account of the dreadful scenes, exactly as they passed, the
prisoner has invariably stated, in his answers to every witness, that he
entered the house, stabbed Van Nest, went into the yard, and then, and
not before, killed Mrs. Van Nest. It was in this order that he related
the transaction to Warren T. Worden, to John M. Austin, to Ira
Curtis, to Ethan A. Warden, to William P. Smith, to Dr. Van Epps,
to James H. Bostwick, to Dr. Brigham, to Nathaniel Lynch, to Dr.
Willard, to Dr. Bigelow, and to Dr. Spencer. How else than on the
score of madness can you explain this confusion of memory ? and if the
prisoner was sane, and telling a falsehood, what was the motive .'

How else than on the score of a demented mind will you explain the
fact, that he is without human curiosity ; that he has never, since he
came out of prison, learned a fact, or asked a question ? He has been
visited by hundreds in his cell, by faces become familiar, and by stran-
gers, by fellow prisoners, by jailers, by sheriff", by counsel, by physician,
by friends, by enemies, and by relations, and they unanimously bear
witness that he has never asked a question. The oyster, shut up within
its limestone walls, is as inquisitive as he.

How else will you explain the mystery that he, who seven years ago
had the capacity to relate connectively any narrative, however extended,
and however complex in its details, is now unable to continue any rela-
tion of the most recent events, without the prompting of perpetual inter-
rogatories, always leading him by known landmarks ; and that when

34 DEFENCE OF

under sucVdiscipline he answers, he employs generally only the easiest
forms, '♦ Yes," " No," " Don't know" ?

Then mark the confusion of his memory, mar- V ' ' ^v -*-'>*rotiictory
replies to the same question. Warren T. Worden asked him: " Did
you go in at the front door ? Yes. Did you go in at the back door ?
Yes. Were you in the hall when your hand was cut ? Yes. Was
your hand cut at the gate ? Yes. Did you stab Mrs. Wyckoff in the
hall ? Yes. Did you stab Mrs. WyckofF at the gate ? Yes. Did you
go out at the back door ? Yes. Did you go out at the front door ? Yes.'*

Ethan A. Warden asked him, " What made you kill the child ?'*
" Don't know any thing about that." At another time he answered, " I
don't think about il ; 1 didn't know it was a child." And again, on an-
other occasion, "Thought — feel it more;" and to Dr. Bigelow% and
other witnesses, who put the question, whether he was not sorry he had
killed the child, he replied, " It did look hard — T rather it was bigger."
When the ignorance, simplicity, and sincerity of the prisoner are admit-
ted, how otherwise than on the ground of insanity, can you explain such
inconsistencies as these ?

The testimony of Van Arsdale and Helen Holmes, proves that no
words could have passed between the prisoner and Van Nest, except
these , " What do you want here in the house ?" spoken by Van Nest,
before the fatal blow w^as struck. Yet when inquired of by Warren T.
Worden what Van Nest said to him when he entered the house, the
prisoner said, after being pressed for an answer, that Van Nest said to
him, " If you eat my liver, I'll eat yours " ; and he at various times re-
peated to the witness the same absurd expression. To the Rev. John
M. Austin he made the same statement, that Van Nest said, " If you eat
my liver, I'll eat your liver " ; to Ira Curtis the same ; to Ethan A.
Warden the same ; to Lansingh Briggs the same ; and the same to al-
most every other witness. An expression so absurd under the circum-
stances, could never have been made by the victim. How otherwise can
It be explained than as the vagary of a mind shattered and crazed ?

The prosecution, confounded with this evidence, appealed to Dr. Spen-
cer for relief. He, in the plenitude of his learning, says, that he has
read of an ancient and barbarous Pebple, who used to feast upon the
livers of their enemies, that the prisoner has not imagination enough to
have invented such an idea, and that he must have somewhere heard the
tradition. But when did this demented wretch, who reads " woman "
for "admirable," and "cook" for "Thompson," read Livy or Tytler,
and in what classical circle has he learned the customsnof the ancients?
Or, what perhaps is more pertinent, who were that ancient and barbarous
People, and who was their Historian ?

Consider now the prisoner's earnest and well-attested sincerity in be-

WILLIAM FREEMAN. 35

lieving that he could read, when either he never had acquired, or else
had lost, the power of reading. The Rev. Mr. Austin, visited him in
jail, at an early day, asked him whether he could read, and being an-
swered that he could, gave him a Testament. In frequent visits after-
wards, when the prisoner was asked whether he had read his Testament,
he answered, " Yes," and it was not until after the lapse of two months
that it was discovered that he was unable to spell a monosyllable.

Ira Curtis says : " I asked him if he could read, he said, * Yes,' and
commenced reading, that is he pretended to, but he didn't read what was
there. He read, ' Ok ! Lord — mercy — Moses' — and other words mixed
up in that way. The words were not in the place where he seemed to
be reading, and it was no reading at all, and some words he had over I
had never heard before. I took the book from him, saying, * You don't
read right.' He said, * Yes, I do.' I said, ' William, you can't read.'
He said, ' I can.' I gave him a paper, pointed him to the word • admira-
ble ' — he pronounced it ' woman.' I pointed to the word ' Thompson ' —
he read it * cook.' He knew his letters, and called them accurately, but
could not combine them. I asked him to count. He commenced and
counted from one up to twenty, hesitated there some time, and finally
counted up to twenty-eight, and then jumped to eighty. Then I started
him at twenty, and he said * one.' I told him to say ' twenty-one ' ; but
he seemed to have difficulty in saying * twenty-one.' He tried to go on.
He did count up to twenty regularly, by hesitating ; but never went
higher than twenty-eight correctly. I asked him how much two times
four was, — he said ' eighty." How much two times three was — he said,
' sixty or sixty-four.' " Many other witnesses on both sides of this cause,
Mr. Austin, Mr. Hopkins, Mr. Hotchkiss, Mr. Worden, Mr. Smith,
Dr. Van Epps, Dr. Brigham, Dr. McCall, Dr. Coventry, Dr. Willard,
Dr. BiGELOw, Dr. Clary and Dr. Spencer, have with varied ingenuity,
sought to detect a fraud in this extreme ignorance and simplicity, and
have unanimously testified to you that the simpleton sincerely believes
he reads accurately, and as honestly thinks he counts above twenty-eight
correctly, while in truth he cannot advance beyond that number in count j
ing, and cannot read at all. Yet he must, at least, have learned in the
Sunday School that he could not read, and the Keepers of the Prison
show that he put up his daily manufacture of rings and of skeins of
thread, in quantities accurately counted, to the number of several dozea

I think you will agree with Doctor Hun, that there is not a sane man
twenty-three years of age, brought up in this country, who does not
know whether he can read, and who cannot count twenty-nine.

Mark his indifference and stupidity as to his situation. Ethan A.
Warden asked him, " do you expect to be hung .' * Don't think about
it.' Do you like to be in jail ? ' Pretty well.' Is it a good place ?

36 DEFENCE OF

* Yes.' Do you sleep well ? • Yes.' Do you think of what" you've
done ? ' No.' "

William P. Smith asked him in the jail if he knew whether he waa
in jail or in the Prison. He hesitated some time, and finally thought he*
was in the jail, but wasn't sure. " Do you know what you are confined
here for r" " No."

Dr. Van Epps asked him what he was put in jail for. " Don't
know." Afterwards he seemed to recollect himself and said, •* horse"

Dr. Brigham says, " I tried in various ways to ascertain if he knew
what he was to be tried for. I tried repeatedly and never could get a
distinct answer. It was often • I don't know,' and sometimes ' a horse.*
I asked him at one time, what his defence would be. Shall we say that
you did not kill ? He answered very quickly, looking up, ' No.' But
may we not say so ? ' No, that would be wrong ; I did do it.' Some
one asked him when others were there. May we say you are crazy ? * I
can't go so far as that.' I asked him if he had employed any body to
defend him, and said, Mr. Seward is now here, you had better employ
him and tell him what to say. Here is Mr. Seward, ask him. He said
in a reading tone, • Governor Seward, I want you to defend me,' repeat-
ing the words I had told him to use."

When on trial for stealing a horse, six years ago, he had counsel of
his own choice, and was treated and tried as a man who understood and
knew his rights, as indeed it is proved that he did. Here, his life is at
stake. He does not know even the name of a witness for or against
him, although his memory recalls the names of those who testified against
him on his trial for stealing the horse, and the very eflfect'of their testi-
mony.

Dr. Brigham says, " I asked him what he could prove in his defence.
He replied, ' the jury can prove that I was in prison five years for steal-
ing a horse, and didn't steal it.' "

When asked if he is not sorry for crimes so atrocious, he answers
always, either, "No," or *' Don't know."

On the very day when he was to be arraigned, he had no counsel ; and,
as Mr. Austin testifies, was made to understand, with difficulty, enough
to repeat like a parrot a consent that I should defend him. The Attor-
ney General says, the prisoner " knew he was guilty, and that counsel
could do nothing for him. If he was as wise and as intelligent as Bacon
himself, he could give no instructions to counsel that would help him."
Aye, but is he as wise and as intelligent as Bacon ? No, Gentlemen, no
man ever heard of a sane murderer in whose bosom the love of life and
the fear of death were alike extinguished.

The accused sat here in court, and saw Dr. Bigelow on the stand,
swearing away his life, upon confessions already taken. Dr. Bigelow

WILLIAM FREEMAN. 3T

followed him from the court to his cell, and there the prisoner, with
child-like meekness, sat down on his bench and confessed further for
hours, all the while holding the lamp by whose light Dr. Bigexow re-
corded the testimony, obtained for the purpose of sealing his fale beyond
a possible deliverance.

He was asked about the Judges here, was ignorant where they sat,
and could only remember that there was a good looking man on the ele-
vated stage, which he was told was the bench. He was asked what they
say in court, and he says " They talk, but I hear nothing"; what or
whom they are talking about, and he says " Don't know" ; whom he ha«
seen here, and he recalls not his Judges, the Jury, the Witnesses or the
Counsel, but only the man who gave him tobacco.

From his answers to Mr. Hopkins, Mr. Austin, Mr. Smith, and others,
as well as from the more reliable testimony of his mother, of his brother-
in-law, of Mr. Lynch, Mr. Warden, Mr. Hotchkiss, and others, we
learn that in his childhood, and in State Prison, he attended Sunday
School and Divine Worship. Yet we find him at the age of twenty-three,
after repeated religious instructions, having no other idea of a Supreme
Being and of a future state than that Heaven was a place above, and God
was above, but that God was no more than a man or an animal. And
when asked by Mr. Hopkins what he knew about Jesus Christ, he an-
swered that he once came to Sunday School in the State Prison. What
did he do there ? " Don't know." Did he take a class there ? *' Don't
know." Did he preach .' Don't know." Did he talk ? Don't know."
The prisoner gave the same answers to the Rev. Mr. Austin, to Mr.
Hopkins, his Sunday School teacher, and to Dr. Brigham.

Mr. Horace Hotchkiss says : " I asked him in the jail, If you shall
be convicted and executed, what will become of you ? He answered,
* Go to Heaven.' I asked him why, and he replied, * Because I am
good.'" Dr. Brigham inquired: "Do you know any thing of Jesus
Christ ?" " I saw him once." " Did you kill him at Van Nest's ?" The
poor fool (as if laboring with some confused and inexplicable idea) said,
"Dont know." I think, Gentlemen, that you will agree with Dr. Hun,
Dr. Brigham, and the other intelligent witnesses, who say that, in their
opinion, there is no sane man of the age of twenty-three, who has been
brought up in church-going families, and been sent to Sunday School,
whose religious sentiments would, under such circumstances, be so con-
fused and so absurd as these.

To the Rev. Mr. Austin, he said after his arrest, " li they will let me
go this time, I will try and do better." And well did that witness re-
maik, that such a statement evinced a want of all rational appreciation
of the nature and enormity of his acts, for no man twenty-three years
old, possessing a sound mind, and guilty of four-fold murders, could sup-

88 DEFENCE OF

pose that he would be allowed to escape all punishment by simply pro-
mising, like a petulant child, that he would " do better."

Mark his insensibility to corporeal pain and suffering. In the conflict
with Mrs. Wykoff, he received a blow which divided a sinew in his
wrist, and penetrated to the bone. The physicians found him in the jail
with this wound, his legs chained, and heavy irons depending une-
qually from his knees. Yet he manifested absolute insensibility. Insane
men are generally very insensible to pain. The reason is, that the ner-
vous system is diseased, and the senses do not convey to the mind ac-
curate ideas of injuries sustained. Nevertheless, this passes for nothing
with Dr. Spencer, because there was an ancient sect of philosophers who
triumphed, or affected to triumph, over the weakness of our common na-
ture, and because there are modern heroes who die without a groan on
the field of battle. But in what school of philosophy, or in what army,
or in what battle-ship was this idiot trained, that he has become insen-
sible ta pain, and reckless of death ?

I proposed, Gentlemen, at the close of the testimony, that you should
examine the prisoner for yourselves. I regret that the offer was rejected.
You can obtain only very imperfect knowledge from testimony in which
the answers of the prisoner are given with the freedom and volubility of
the interrogators. We often judge more justly from the tone, man-
ner, and spirit of those with whom we converse, than from the language
they use. All the witnesses agree that the prisoner's tone and modula-
tion are slow, indistinct, and monotonous. His utterance, in fact, is that
oi an idiot, but on paper it is as distinct as that of Cicero.

I have thus shown you. Gentlemen, the difficulties which attend you in
this investigation, the law concerning insanity, the nature and character-
istics of that disease, the great change which the prisoner has undergone,
and some of those marked extravagances which denote lunacy. More
conclusive evidence yet remains ; and first, the delusion by which the
prisoner was overpowered, and under whose fearful spell his crimes
were committed.

Delusion does not always attend insanity, but when found, it is the
most unequivocal of all proofs. I have already observed that melancholy
is the first stage of madness, and long furnished the name for insanity.
In the case of Hatfield, who fired at the King in Drury-Lane Theatre,
Lord Erskine, his Counsel, demonstrated that insanity did not consist in
the absence of any of the intellectual faculties, but in delusion ; and that
an offender was irresponsible, if his criminal acts were the immediate,
unqualified offspring of such delusion. Erskine there defined a delusion
to consist in deductions from the immovable assumption of matters as re-
alities, either without any foundation whatever, or so distorted and dis-
figured by fancy as to be nearly the same thing as their creation.

WILLIAM FREEMAN. 39

The learned men here have given us many illustrations of such delu-
sions; as that of the man who believes that his legs are of glass,
and therefore refuses to move, for fear they will break ; of the man who
fancies himself the King of the French ; or of him who conjfides to you
the precious secret, that he is Emperor of the world. These are palpa-
ble delusions, but there are others equally, or even more fatal in their
effects, which have their foundation in some original fact, and are thus
described by Dr. Ray, at page 210 of his work :

*' In another class of cases, the exciting cause of homicidal insanity is
of a moral nature, operating upon some peculiarphysical pre-disposition,
and sometimes followed by more or less physical disturbance. Instead
of being urged by a sudden imperious impulse to kill, the subjects of
this form of the affection, after suffering for a certain period much gloom
of mind and depression of spirits, feel as if bound by a sense of neces-
sity to destroy life, and proceed to the fulfilment of their destiny, with
the utmost calmness and deliberation. So reluctant have courts and ju-
ries usually been to receive the plea of insanity in defence of crime, de-
liberately planned and executed by a mind in which no derangement of
intellect has ever been perceived, that it is of the greatest importance
that the nature of these cases should not be misunderstood."

Our learned witnesses have given us various definitions of a delusion.
Dr. Hun's is perhaps as clear and accurate as any ; " It is a cherished
opinion opposed by the sense and judgment of a.11 mankind." In simple
speech, it is what is called the predominance of one idea, by which rea-
son is subverted. I shall now show you such a predominance of one
idea, as will elucidate the progress of this maniac, from the first disturb-
ance of his mind, to the dreadful catastrophe on the shore of the Owasco
lake. That delusion is a star to guide your judgments to an infallible
conclusion, that the prisoner is insane. *rf you mistake its course, and
consign him to a scaffold, it will rest over his grave, indicating him as
a martyr, and you as erring or unjust judges.

In April, 1840, Mrs. Godfrey, who resides in the town of Sennett,
on the middle road, four miles north-east of Auburn, lost a horse. One
Jack Furman, a hardened offender, stole the horse. For some purpose,
not now known, he put him into the care of the prisoner, who was seen
with him. Both Furman and Freeman were arrested. The former was
the real thief and Freeman constructively guilty. Freeman was arrested
by Vanderheyden, taken into an upper chamber, and there declared his
innocence of the crime. He was nevertheless committed to jail. All the
police, and the most prejudiced of the witnesses for the people, have tes-
tified their entire conviction that the prisoner was innocent. Furman
was selected by favor as a witness for the people. Freeman, while in
jail, comprehending his danger, and conscious of his innocence, dwelt

46 DEFENCE OF

upon the injustice, until, having no other hope, he broke prison and es-
caped. Being re-taken, he assigned as the reason for his flight, that Jack'
Furman stole the horse, and was going to swear him into the State Prison.
The result was as he apprehended. He was convicted by the perjury of
Furman, and sentenced to the State Prison for five years. This was the
first act in the awful tragedy, of which he is the hero. Let Judges and
Jurors take warning from its fatal consequences. How deeply this in-
justice sank into his mind, may be seen from the testimony of Aretas
A. Sabin, the keeper, who said to him on the day he entered the Prison^
" I am sorry to see you come here so young." The prisoner wepl.
Well would it have been, if this, the last occasion on which the prisoner
yielded to that infirmity, had, ominous as it was of such fatal mischief,
been understood and heeded.

A year passed away ; and he is found in the Prison, neglecting his al-
lotted labor, sullen, and morose.

James E. Tyler, the keeper, says : " I had talked to him, and found
it did no good. I called him up t© punish him — told him I was going to
punish him for not doing more work, and should do so repeatedly until
he should do more work. When I talked with him about doing more
work, he gave as an excuse, * that he was there wrongfully, and ought
not to work.'" The excuse aggravated the severity of his castigation.
Such was Penitentiary cure for insipient insanity.

Van Kuren, a foreman in one of the shops at the Prison, represents
the prisoner as sullen, intractable, and insolent. He caused him to be
punished, although he then discovered, on all occasions, that idiotic
laugh, without cause or motive, which marks the maniac.

Siij\s E. Baker remarked the same idiotic laugh when the prisoner
was at his work, in his cell, and in the Chapel.

William P. Smith, a foreman in the Prison, remarked his peculiari-
ties, but unfortunately was not then led to their true cause.

Theron R. Green, as has been already seen, discovered the same pe-
culiarities, divined their cause, held him irresponsible, and gave an un-
heeded warning against his enlargement.

The discipline of the Prison forbids conversation between convict and
convict, and between keepers and prisoners. The iron that had entered
the prisoner*s soul was necessarily concealed, but Depuy, and Warden,
and Green, who thought him changed then, as well as Smith, Van Ku-
ren, Baker, and Tyler, who regarded him only as ignorant and obsti-
nate, give conclusive evidence that the ruin of his mind was betrayed, in
a visible change of his appearance, conduct and character.

The time at length arrived, when the secret could no longer be sup-
pressed. The new Chaplain, the Rev. Alonzo Wood, was in the Agent's
office when the prisoner was discharged. Two dollars, the usual gratu-

WILLIAM FilUfiMAN. 41

ity, was offered liim, and he was asked to sign a receipt. " laintgoing
to settle so." For five years, until it became the ruling thought of his
life, the idea had been impressed upon his mind, that he had been impri-
soned wrongfully, and would, therefore, be entitled to payment, on his
liberation. This idea was opposed " by the judgment and sense of aU
mankind." The court that convicted him, pronounced him guilty, and
spoke the sense and judgment of mankind. But still he remained uncon-
vinced. The keepers who flogged him, pronounced his claim unjust and
unfounded, and they were exponents of the *' sense and judgment of all
mankind." But imprisonment, bonds and stripes, could not remove the
one inflexible idea. The Agent, the Keepers, the Clerk, the spectators,
and even the Reverend Chaplain, laughed at the simplicity and absurdity
of the claim of the discharged convict, when he said, " I've worked Jive
years for the State, and aint going to settle so." Alas ! little did tht-y
know that they were deriding the delusion of a maniac. Had they been
wise, they would have known that

" So foul a sky clears not without a storm."

The peals of their laughter were the warning voice of Nature, for the
safety of the family of Van Nest.

Thus closes the second act of the sad drama.

The maniac reaches his home, sinks sullenly to his seat, and hour af-
ter hour, relates to John Depuy the story of his wrongful imprisonment,
and of the cruel and inhuman treatment which he had suffered, enquires
for the persons who had caused him to be unjustly convicted, learns their
names, and goes about drooping, melancholy and sad, dwelling continu-
ally upon his wrongs, and studying intensely in his bewildered mind how
to obtain redress. Many passed him, marking his altered countenance
and carriage, without stopping to enquire the cause. Doctor Hermance
alone sought an explanation : " I met him about the first of December
last ; I thought his manner very singular and strange. I enquired the
cause. He told me that he had been in the Prison for five years, and
that he wasn't guilty, and that they would'nt pay him. I met him after-
wards in the street, again remarked his peculiarities and enquired the
cause. He answered as before, that he had been in State Prison five
years wrongfully, and they wouldn't pay him."

The one idea disturbs him in his dreams and forces him from his bed ;
he complains that he can make no gain and can't live so : he dances to
his own wild music, and encounters visionary combatants.

Time passes on until February. He visits Mrs. Godfrey at her house
in Sennett. He enters the house, deaf, and stands mute. " I gave him
a chair," says Mrs. Godfrey, '* he sat down. I asked which way he
was travelling. He wanted to know if that was the place where a wo-

42 DEFENCE OF

man had a horse stole, five years before. I told him it was. He said
he had been to Prison for stealing the horse, and didn't steal it neither.
I told him I knew nothing about that, whether it was he, or not. He
said he'd been to Prison for stealing a horse, and didn't steal it, and he
wanted a settlement. Johnson, who was there, asked him if he should
know the horse if he should see it. ' No.' ' Do you want the horse .'*
* No. Are you the man who took me up ? Where is the man who
kept the tavern across the way and helped catch me ?' * He is gone.*
I asked him if he was hungry. He said, he didn't know but he was.
I gave him some cakes, and he sat and ate them."

Here were exhibited at once the wildness of the maniac, and the imbe-
cility of the demented man. His delusion was opposed to " the sense
and judgment of all mankind." Mrs. Godfrey and Mr. Johnson exposed
its fallacy. But still the one idea remained, unconquered and uncon-
querable. The maniac who came to demand pay for five years unjust
imprisonment, was appeased with a morsel of cake.

He was next seen at Mr. Seward's ofiice, a week or ten days before
the murder. He asked if that was a 'Squire's office, and said he wanted
a warrant. Mr. Parsons, the clerk, says : " I didn't understand, until
he had asked once or twice. I asked him what he wanted a warrant for.
He said, for the man who had been getting him into Prison, and he want-
ed to get damages. I told him the Justices' offices were up street, and
he went away."

Next we find him at the office of Lyman Paine, Esq., Justice, on the
Saturday preceding the death of Van Nest. Mr. Paine says : •* He open-
ed the door, came in a few feet, and stood nearly a minute with his head
down, so. He looked up and said : 'Sir, I want a warrant.' * What
for.' He stood a little time, and then said again : ' Sir, I want a war-
rant.' ' What do you want a warrant for ?' He stood a minute, started
and came up close to me, and spoke very loud : 'Sir, I want a warrant.
I am very deaf and can't hear very well.' I asked him in a louder voice,
what he wanted a warrant for, ' For a man who put me to State Pris-
on.' ' What is your name r ' William Freeman ; and I want a war-
rant for the man who put me to Prison.' I said : ' If you've been to
Prison, you have undoubtedly been tried for some offence.' ' I have ; it
was for stealing a horse, but I didn't steal it. Pve been there five years.'
' I asked who he wanted a warrant for. He told some name — I think
it was Mr. Doty." [You will remember, gentlemen, that Mr. Doty,
Mr. Hail, and Mrs. Godfrey, all of Sennett, and Jack Furman, of this
town, were the witnesses against him.] " I told him if he wanted a
warrant, it must be for perjury — he must give me the facts and I would
j*ee. He stood two or three minutes and then said : '-S/r, I want a war-
rant.* I asked further information. He stood a little while longer, took

WILLIAM FREEMAN. 43

out a quarter of a dollar, threw it on the table, and said : *Sir, I demand
a warrant' — appeared in a passion, and soon after went out. He return-
ed in the afternoon, said he would have a warrant, and gave the names
of Mr. Doty and Mrs. Godfrey."

Mr. Paine saw, in all this, evidence of stupidity, ignorance, and mal-
ice, only, but not of Insanity. But, Gentlemen, if he could have looked
back to the origin of the prisoner's infatuation, and forward to the dread-
ful catastrophe on the shore of the Owasco Lake, as we now see it, who
can doubt that he would then have pronounced the prisoner a maniac,
and have granted, not the warrant he asked, but an order for his com-
mitment to the County Jail, or to the Lunatic Asylum }

Denied the process, to which he thought himself entitled, he proceed-
ed a day or two later to the office of James H. Bostwick, Esq., another
Justice. " I saw him," says this witness, " a day or two before the mur-
der. He came, and said he wanted a warrant. I asked for whom. He
replied ; ^for those that got me to Prison.. I was sent wrongfallij. /,
want pay.' I asked him who the persons were. He mentioned a wid-
ow and two men. He mentioned Mrs. Godfrey as the widow woman
Jack Furman and David W. Simpson as the two men." (Simpson was
the constable by whom he was arrested the second time for stealing the
horse.) Mr. Bostwick declined issuing the warrant, and informed him
there was no remedy, and again expounded to him the " sense and
judgment of all mankind," in opposition to his delusion.

According to the testimony of John Depuy, the prisoner was agitated
by alternate hope and despair in regard to his redress. At one time he
told Depuy, that he'd got it all fixed, and wanted him to go down to the
Justice's office and see that he was paid right. At another, he told De-
puy that the •• 'Squires wouldn't do.nothing about it; that he could get
no warrant, nor pay, and he couldn't live so."

Then it was that the one idea completely overthrew what remained of
mind, conscience and reason. If you believe Hersey, Freeman, about
a week before the murder, showed him several butcher knives; told him
he meant to kill Depuy, his brother-in-law, for trivial reasons, which he
assigned, and said that he had found the folks that put him in Prison,
and meant to kill them. Hersey says : " I asked him who they were.
He said, they were Mr. Van Nest, and said no more about them. He
didn't say where they lived, and nothing about any other man, woman,
or widow." This witness admits that he suppressed this fact on the
preliminary examination.

If you reject this testimony, then there is no evidence that he ever had
any forethought of slaying Van Nest. If you receive it, it proves the
complete subversion of his understanding ; for John G. Van Nest, and
all the persons slain, resided not in Sennett, nor in Auburn, but four

44 DEFENCE OP

miles south of the latter place, and eight miles from the house of Mrs.
Godfrey. The prisoner, within a week before the crime, named to the'
magistrates every person who was concerned in his previous conviction.
We have shown that neither John G. Van Nest, nor any of his family
or kindred, nor any person connected with him, was, or could have been,
a party, a magistrate, a witness, a constable, a sheriff, a grand juror, attor-
ney, petit juror, or judge in that prosecution, or ever knew or heard of the
prosecution, or ever heard or knew that any such larceny had been com-
mitted, or that such a being as the prisoner existed. Mrs. Godfrey and
the witnesses on the former occasion, became known to the remaining
family and relatives of Van Nest, here in court, for the first time, during
these trials.

^ You will remember that Erskine's test of a delusion that takes away
, responsibility is — that the criminal act must be the immediate, unqualijied
offspring of the delusion. I shall now prooceed to shew, that such is
the fact in the present case.

The first witness to whom the prisoner spoke concerning the deeds
which he had committed was George B. Parker. This was at Phenix,
Oswego county, immediately after his arrest, within twenty hours after
the perpetration of the crime. *' I pushed very hard for the reasons,"
says the witness ; " what he had against Van Nest. * I suppose you know
I've been in State Prison Jive years,' he replied. ' I was put- there inno-
cently I've been whipped and knocked and abused, and made deaf, and
there wont any body pay me for it.' "

Vanderheyden arrived soon afterwards. He says : *' I called the
the prisoner aside, and said to him ; ' Now we're alone, and you may as
well tell me how you came to commit this.' He says to me : ' You know
there is no law for me.' I asked him what he meant by that * no law.'
He said, 'they ought to pay me."*

Ethan A. Warden followed him into his cell in the jail, and asked
him, •' When you started from home what did you go up there for ? —
'I must go.' Why must you go .' '/ must begin my work.' What made
you do it ? ' They brought me up so.' Who brought you up so ? * The
State.' They didn't tell you to kill, did they ? 'Don't know — won't pay
me.' Did you know these folks before you went to Prison .' * No.' —
Was you there a few days before to get work .' « Yes.* Did they say
anything to offend you or make you angry? 'No.' What made you
kill them ; what did you do it for ? ' I must begiti my work.' Didn't
you expect to be killed .' * Didn't know but I should.' If you expected
• to be killed what made you go ; did you go to get money .' ' No.' Did
you expect to get money ? * No.' Did you intend to get the horse ^ —
' No.' How did you come to take him .' ' Broke my things, (meaning
knives) — hand was cut — came into my mind — take the horse — go — and —

WILLIAM FREEMAN. 45

get so — could do mere work.* If you had not broke your things, what
would you have done ? * Kept to work.' Did you mean to keep right
on ? ' / meant to keep to work.' Would you have killed me if you had
met me ? * Spose I should.* What made you begin at that house ? —
' Stopped two or three jjlaces, thought it wasn't far out enough to begin.*
Are you not sorry you killed so many ? * Don't think any thing about
it.* "

The prisoner has invariably given similar answers to every person
who has asked him the motive for his crime.

Warren T. Worden, Esq., says, '* I asked him why he took the
horse ? He answered, *My hand ivas hurt, and I couldn't Icill any more.*
I asked him why he killed them ? and he answered, 'Why did they send
me to State Prison when I wasn't guilty.' And in making this reply he
trembled, and I thought he was going to weep. I told him they would
hang him now ; he showed no feeling."

Dr. FosGATE says that Dr. Hurd asked him what he killed those folks
for ? He replied, " They put me in Prison."

John R. Hopkins says, " I turned his attention to the idea of pay— if
he had got his pay for his time in prison ? That question raised him up
and he looked comparatively intelligent, and brightened up his whole
countenance. He said * No.' Who ought to pay you ? *All of them.*
Ought I .' He looked up with a flash of intelligence, said nothing, but
looked intently at me, and the answer was conveyed by the look, I ask-
ed if this man, (pointing to Hotchkiss) ought to pay him .' He looked
at him, as at me, and said, ' Do what's right,' or * we'll do what's right.'
We then spoke about his trial, and he was stupid and dull again."

The Rev. J. M. Austin, says : " I put questions to find his motive
for killing that family. His answers were very broken and incoherent,
but invariably referred to his being in prison innocently. Had the per-
sons you killed, anything to do with putting you into prison .' * No.'
Did you know their names ? ' No.' Why did you kill that particular
family ? No direct answer but something about being put in prison
wrongfully. Do you think it right to kill people who had no hand in
putting you in prison ? He gave an incoherent reply. Igathered, ' shall
do something to get my pay.' How much pay ought you to have ?
* Don't know.' Was it right to kill those innocent persons for what had
been done by others ? • They put me in prison.' Who did — The Van
Nest family ? * No.' Why then did you kill them ? Did you think it
right to kill that innocent child ? I understood from his gestures in reply,
that he was in a labyrinth, from which he was incapable of extricating
himself. How did you happen to go that particular night ? • The time
had come.' Why did you enter that particular house ? * I went along
out and thought I might begin there* I asked if he ever called on Mrs.

46 DEFENCE OF

Godfrey. He said, * I went to Mrs. Godfrey to get pay, and she wouldn't
pay me. I went to Esquires Bostwick and Paine and they wouldn't dcr
nothing about it"

Mr. Ira Curtis, says : " I asked him how he came up there. ' I went
up south a piece.' How far ? ' Stopped at the house beyond there.'
What for ? ' To get a drink of water.' What did you go into Van
Nest's house for ? ' Don't know.' Did you go in to murder or kill
them? 'Don't know.' Was it for money ? ' Didn't know as they had any.'
Did you kill the child ? ' They said I killed one, but I didn't. What
did you kill them for ? ' You know I had my work to do,' Had you
anything against these people ? 'Don't know.' Why didn't you com-
mence at the other place .' ' Thought it wasn't time yet.' He said they
wouldn't pay him. He had been imprisoned and they wouldn't pay him.' "

Dr. Hermance says : *' Doctor Pitney asked him how he happened
to go up." ♦ It rained and I thought it would be a good time ' Why
did you go to Van Nest's, and not to some other family ,' No answer.
Why didn't you come and kill me .' He smiled but gave no answer.
Don't you think you ought to be hung for killing Van Nest and his fam-
ily ? The same question was repeated authoritatively, and he replied :

• Sent to prison for nothing — ought I to be hung?' Suppose you had
found some other person, would you have killed any other as well as Van
Nest ? ' Yes.' I asked why did you kill Van Nest and his family ?
' For that horse.' What do you mean by killing 'for that horse ?' ' They
sent me to prison and they won't pay me.' Had Van Nest anything to do
with sending you to prison ? * No.' "

Dr. Briggs says : '* When I repeated the question, why did you
kill Van Nest ? he replied, ' Why was I put in prison five years T "

William P. Smith, asked : " Why did you kill those people ? * I'va
been to prison wrongfully five years. They wouldn't pay me Who .'

* The people, so I thought I'd kill somebody.' Did you mean to kill one,
more than another? 'No' Why did you go so far out of town?

* Stopped at one place this side; wouldn't go in — couldn't see to fight, 'twas
dark, looked up street, saw a light in next house, thought I'd go there,
could see to fight.' Don't you know you've done wrong ? * No.^
Don't you think 'twas wrong to kill the child ? After some hesitation,
he said, ' Well — that looks kind o'h-a-r-d.' Why did you think it was
right ? ' I've been in prison five years for stealing a horse, and I didn't
do it; and the people, wont pay me — made up my mind, ought to kill
somebody.' Are you not sorry ? ' No.' How much pay do you want ?
' Don't know — good deal.' If I count you out a hundred dollars, would
that be enough ? He thought it wouldn't. How much would be right ?

• Don't know.' He brightened up, and finally sziid he thought • about a
Hiousand dollars uoidd be about right.' "

WILLIAM FREEMAN. 47

It would be tedious to gather all the evidence of similar import. Let
it suffice, that the witnesses who have conversed with the prisoner, as
well those for the people as those for him, concur fully in the same state-
ment of facts, as to his reasons and motives for the murders. We have
thus not merely established the existence of an insane delusion, but have
traced directly to that overpowering delusion, the crimes which the pri-
soner has committed.

How powerful that delusion must have been, may be inferred from
the fact that the prisoner, when disabled, desisted from his work, and
made his retreat to his friends in Oswego county, not to escape from
punishment for the murders ; but, as he told Mr. E. A. Warden, to wait
till his wounded hand should be restored, that he might resume his
dreadful butchery; and, as he told Dr. Bigelow, because he couldn't
" handle his hand." The intenseness of this delusion exceeds that under
which Hatfield assailed the King ; that which compelled Henriettk
Corkier to dissever the head of the child entrusted to her care ; and
that of Rabello, the Portuguese, who cut to pieces with his axe, the
child who trod upon his fe§t.

The next feature in the cause, which will claim your attention. Gen-
tlemen of the Jury, is the manner and circumstances or the act it-
self.

In Ray's Medical Jurisprudence, at page 224, are given several tests
by which to distinguish between the homicidal Maniac and the Murder-
er.

We shall best consider the present case by comparing it with those
tests :

I. " There is the irresistible motiveless impulse to destroy life." Never
was homicide more motiveless, or the impulse more completely irresisti-
ble, than in the present case, as we have learned from the testimony al-
ready cited.

II. " In nearly all cases the criminal act has been preceded, either by
some well marked disturbance of the health, or by an irritable, gloomy,
dejected, or melancholy state ; in short, by many of the symptoms of the
incubation of mania." How truly does this language describe the con-

' dilion of the prisoner during the brief period of his enlargement !

III. " The impulse to destroy is powerfully excited by the sight of
murderous weapons — by favorable opportunities of accomplishing the
act — by contradiction, disgust, or some other equally trivial and even im-
aginary circumstance."

While we learn from Hersey's testimony, that the prisoner kept a
store of knives fit for such a deed, we find in the denial of his demands
for settlement, for pay, and for process, by Mrs. Godfrey, and the ma-
5I strates, the contradiction and causes of disgust here described.

48 DEFENCE OP

IV. *^ The victims of the homicidal monomaniac are either entirely un-
known or indifferent to him, or they are amongst his most loved and cher-
ished objects."

Freeman passed by his supposed oppressors and persecutors, and fell
upon a family absolutely indifferent, and almost unknown to him, while
he reserved the final stroke for his nearest and best friend, and brother-
in-law.

V. "The monomaniac sometimes diligently conceals and sometimes
avows his purpose, and forms schemes for putting it into execution, tes-
tifying no sentiment of grief."

The prisoner concealed his purpose from all but Hersey. He pur-
chased the knife which he used, in open day, at a blacksmith's shop, in
the presence of persons to whom he was well known, and ground it to
its double edge before unsuspecting witnesses, as coolly and delibe-
rately as if it were to be employed in the shambles. He applied at
another black-smith's shop where he was equally well known, to have
another instrument made. He shaped the pattern in a carpenter's shop,
carried it to the smith, disagreed about the price, and left the pattern,
upon the forge, in open sight, never thinking to reclaim it, and it
lay there until it was taken by the smith before the coroner's inquest ,
as an evidence of his design. So strange was his conduct, and so mys-
terious the form of the knife which he required, that Morris, the smith,
suspected him, and told him that he was going to kill somebody ; to which
he answered with the nonchalance of the butcher, " that's nothing to
you if you get your pay for the knife" On the two days immediately
preceding the murder, he is found sharpening and adjusting his knives at
a turner's shop, next door to his own dwelling, in the presence of per-
sons to whom he is well known, manifesting no apprehension, and af-
fecting no concealment.

The trivial concerns of his finance and occupation are as carefully
attended to, as if the murder he was contemplating had been an ordinary
and lawful transaction. Hyatt demands three shillings for the knife.
The prisoner cheapens until the price is reduced to eighteen pence, with
the further advantages that it should be sharpened, and fitted to a han-
dle. Hyatt demands six pence for putting a rivet into his knife.
He compromises, and agrees to divide the labor and pay half the price.
He deliberately takes out his wallet and lays down three cents for Simp-
son the turner, for the use of the grindstone. On the very day of the
murder, he begs some grease at the Soap Factory to soften his shoes,
and tells Aaron Demun that he is going into the country to live in peace.
At four o'clock in the afternoon he buys soap at the merchant's for Ma-
rt Ann Newark, the poor woman at whose house he lived. He then
goes cautiously to his room, takes the knives from the place of their

WILLIAM FREEMAN. 49

concealment under his bed, throws them out of the window, to avoid ex-
posure to her observation, and when the night has come, and the bells
are ringing for church, and all is ready, he stops to ask the woman wheth-
er there is any chore to be done. She tells him, none, but to fill the tub
with snow. He does it, as carefully as if there were no commotion in
liis mind, and then sallies forth, takes up his instruments, and proceeds
on his errand of death. He reconnoiters the house on the north of Van
Nest's, Van Nest's house, and Brooks' house on the south, and finally
decides upon the middle one as the place of assault. It does not affect
his purpose that he meets Mr. Cox and Mr. Patten, under a broad bright
moonlight. He waits his opportunity, until Williamson, the visitor, has
departed, and Van Arsdale, the laboring man, has retired to rest. With
an energy and boldness that no sane man, with such a purpose, could
possess, he mortally stabs four persons, and dangerously wounds a fifth,
in the incredibly shorP- space of five minutes. Disabled, and therefore
desisting from further destruction, he enters the stable, takes the first
horse he finds, mounts him without a saddle, and guiding him by a hal-
ter, dashes towards the town. He overtakes and passes Williamson, the
visitor, within the distance of three-fourths of a mile from the house
which he had left in supposed security. Pressing on, the jaded beast,
worn out with age, stumbles and brings him to the ground. He plunges
his knife into the breast of the horse, abandons him, scours forward
through the town, across the bridge and on the middle road to Burring-
ton's ; there seizes another horse, mounts him, and urges forward, until
he arrives among his relations, the Depuys, at Schroeppel, thirty miles
distant. They, 'suspecting him to have stolen the horse, refuse to enter-
tain him. He proceeds to the adjoining village, rests from his flight,
offers the horse for sale, and when his title to the horse is questioned,
announces his true name and residence, and refers to the Depuys, who
had just cast him off, forj)roof of his good character and conduct. When
arrested and charged with the murder, he denies the act.

Now the SIXTH test given by Ray is, that " while most maniacs having
gratified their propensity to kill, voluntarily confess the act,, and quietly
give themselves up to the proper authorities, a very few only, and those
to an intelligent observer show the strongest indications of insanity, fly,
and persist in denying the act."

Vn. " Murder is never criminally committed without some motive ad-
equate to the purpose in the mind that is actuated by it, while the insane
man commits the crime without any motive whatever, strictly deserving
the name."

VHI. " The criminal never sheds more blood than is necessary for
he attainment of his object. The monomaniac often sacrifices all within
his reach, to the cravings of his murderous propensity."

ft0 DEFENCE OF

IX. The criminal either denies or confesses his guilt ; if the latter, he
sues for mercy, or glories in his crimes. On the contrary, the maniac '
after gratifying his bloody desires, testifies neither remorse, repentance,
nor satisfaction."

X. " The criminal has accomplices, the maniac has none.**

XI. " The murderer never conceives a design to murder without pro-
jecting a plan for concealing his victim, effecting his escape, and baffling
pursuit. The maniac prepares the means of committing the crime with
calmness and deliberation, but never dreams of the necessity of conceal-
ing it when done, or of escape, until his victim lies at his feet."

Dr. BiGELOw and others state that the prisoner told them, as obviously
was the case, that he sought no plunder, that he thought not of escape
or flight, until his things were broken, and his hand was cut, so that he
could not continue his work. He seized the nearest and the most worth-
less horse in the stable, leaving,two fleet animals remaining in their stalls.
He thought only of taking Burrington's horse, when the first failed : all
he cared for was to get out of the county, there to rest, until his hand
was cured, so that he could come back and do more work. He rested
from flight within thirty miles from the scene of his crimes, and in sell-
ing his horse, was depriving himself of the only means of making his
escape successful. When the person of Van Nest was examined, his
watch, pocket-book, money, and trinkets were found all undisturbed.
Not an article in the house had been removed, and when the prisoner
was searched upon his arrest, there was found in his pockets nothing
but one copper coin, the one hundredth part of a dollar.

Without further detail, the parallel between the prisoner and the tests
of madness established by Medical Jurisprudence, is complete.

It remains. Gentlemen, to conclude the demonstration of the prisoner's
insanity, by referring to the testimony of the witnesses who have given
their opinions on that question. Cornelius Van Arsdale and Helen
Holmes, the survivors of the dreadful scene at Van Nest's house, did not
think the prisoner insane. The latter had only seen him for a moment,
during the previous week, when he called there and asked for work. —
The former had never seen him before that fatal night. Both saw him
there, only for a moment, and under circumstances exhibiting him as a
ruthless murderer.

Williamson thinks he was not insane, but he saw the prisoner only
when he swept past him, fleeing from his crime.

James Amos, Alonzo Taylor, George Burrington, and George B.

Parker, say they read no indications of insanity in his conduct when

arrested ; but neither of them ever saw him before, or has seen him since.

BoBERT Simpson, the turner, George W. Hyatt, and Joseph Morris,

the blacksmiths, did not suspect him to be insane, when he purchased

WILLIAM FREEMAN. 51

and sharpened his knives. Neither of them ever knew him before or has
known him since.

Nathaniel Lynch, though he furnishes abundant evidence of the
prisoner's insanity, is himself unconvinced.

Aaron Demun, a colored man, does not think him insane, but stands
alone, of all who knew him in his youth.

Israel G. Wood and Stephen S. Austin' do not think him insane.
They were his jailers six years ago, but they have not examined him
since his arrest.

Vanderheyden and Monroe think him sane, but each testifies under
feelings which disqualify him for impartiality.

Jonas Brown thinks him not insane, but never saw him, except when
he was buying a pound of soap at his store.

John P. Hujlbert, and Benjamin F. Hall, had brief conversations
with him in the jail, after his arrest, but made no examination concern-
ing his delusion.

Lewis Markham and Daniel Andrus think him not insane, but they
have made no examination of the subject ; while both give evidence that
he was once as- bright, active, and cheerful, as he is now stupid, sense-
less, and imbecile.

Benj. Vankeuren, Aretas a. Sarin, Silas E. Baker and, James E.
Tyler, all keepers in the State Prison, and Alonzo Wood, the Chap-
lain, did not suspect him of insanity in the State Prison. Their conduct
towards him while there, proves their sincerity; but his history under
their treatment will enable you to correct their erroneous judgments. It
was their business, not to detect and cure insanity, but to prescribe his
daily task, and to compel him by stripes to perform it in silence.

Michael S. Myers, the former District Attorney, who prosecuted the
prisoner lor stealing the horse, looks at him now, and can see no change
in his personal appearance ; but he has never thought the subject wor-
thy of an examination, and has not in six years spoken with, or thought
of the accused.

Lyman Paine and James H. Bostwick, to whom he applied for pro-
cess, continue now as well convinced of the prisoner's sanity, as they
were when he applied to them for warrants, which it was absurd for him
to ask. Neither of them has examined him since his arrest, or stopped
to compare his conduct in the murder with his application for a warranty
or with the strange delusion which brought him before them.

Such and so feeble is the testimony as to the prisoner's sanity, given
by others than the medical witnesses. Nor is the testimony of the medi-
cal witnesses on the part of the People entitled to more respect.

Dr. GiLMORE pronounces a confident opinion that the prisoner is sane ;
but the witness is without experience, or any considerable learning on

59 DEFENCE OF

that subject, and his opinion is grounded upon the fact, that the accused
had intellect enough to prepare for his crime, and sense enough to make
his escape, in the manner so often described. I read to the Doctor the
accounts of several cases in Bedlam, and without exception be pronounced
the sufferers, sane criminals.

Dr. Hyde visited the prisoner twice in his cell, perhaps thirty minutes
each time, and as the result of those visits, says he was rather of the
opinion that he was sane. Dr. Hyde expressly disavows any learning
or experience on the subject of insanity, and does not give the details of
his examination.

Dr. David Dimon visited the prisoner several times in jail, but could
not discover anything that he could call insanity. He thinks there can
he no insane delusion in this case, because he thinks that an insane de-
lusion is the thorough conviction of the reality of a thing, which is op-
posed by the evidence of the sufferer's senses. The Doctor claims nei-
ther study nor experience ; pronounces the prisoner to be of a grade of
intellect rather small for a negro ; thinks he has not as much intellect as
a child of fourteen years of age, and in regard to knowledge, would com-
pare him with a child two or three years old, who knows his A. B. C.
but cannot count twenty- eight. Those who seek the extreme vengeance
of the law, will, if successful, need all the consolation to be derived from
the sanity of the accused, if, at the age of twenty-three, he be thus im-
becile in mind and barren in knowledge.

Dr. Jedediah Darrow has read nothing on the subject of insanity for
forty years, and has never had any experience. He declares that his
conclusion is not to be regarded as a professional opinion. He talked
with the prisoner once in jail, to ascertain his sanity and thought it im-
portant to avoid all allusion to the crimes he had committed, their motives
causes, and circumstances. He now thinks that it would have been wise,
where monomania was suspected, to examine into the alleged delusion.
He contents himself with saying, he did not discover insanity.

Dr. Joseph L. Clary visited the prisoner in jail : cannot give a decided
opinion ; his prevaf/mg impression is, that the prisoner is not insane, but
he has not had opportunities enough to form a correct opinion. He has
never seen a case of Dementia, and knows it only from definitions in
books, which he has never tested.

Dr. BiGELow, Physician to the Prison, discovered nothing in his ex-
aminations which led him to suspect insanity. The Doctor has a salary
of Five Hundred Dollars per annum ; his chief labor in regard to insanity
is to detect counterfeits in the Prison; and although he admits that the
prisoner has answered him freely, and unsuspectingly, and fully, he ac-
counts for the condition of his mind, by saying that he regards him *' as an
ignorant, dull, stupid, degraded, debased and morose, but not insane person.'

WILLIAM FREEMAN. 53

Dr. Sylvester Willard, without particular experience or learning in
this branch, concurs in these opinions.

Dr. Thomas C. Spencer, Professor in the Medical College at Geneva,
brings up the rear of the People's witnesses. I complain of his testimo-
ny, that it was covered by a masked battery. The District Attorney
opened the cause with denunciations of scientific men, said that too
much learning made men mad, and warned you therefore against the edu-
cated men who might testify for the prisoner. I thought at the time that
these were extraordinary opinions. I had read

"A little learning ia a dangerous thing,
Drink deep or taste not the Pierian Spring :
These shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
But drinking largely sobers us again."

What was my surprise to find that all these denunciations against
learning and experience, made by the Counsel for the People, were only
a cover for Dr. Spencer.

He heralds himself as accustomed to teach, and informs u^ that he has
visited the principal Hospitals for the Insane in London, Paris, and other
European capitals. How unfortunate it was that on his cross-examina-
tion, he could not give the name or location of any Asylum in either of
those cities ! Even the names and locations of the " Charenton '* and
" Bicetre " had escaped his memory.

But it is no matter. The doctor overwhelms us with learning, uni-
versal and incomprehensible. Here is his map* of the mental faculties,
in which twenty-eight separate powers of mind are described in odd and
even numbers.

The arrows show the course of ideas through the mind. They b^in
with the motives in the region of the highest odd numbers in the south-
west corner of the mind, marked A-, and go perpendicularly north-
ward, through Thirst and Hunger to Sensation, marked B. ; then turn to
the right, and go eastward, through Conception, to Attention, marked C,
and then descend southward, through Perception, Memory, Understand-
ing, Comparison, Combination, Reason, Invention, and Judgment, wheel
to the left under the Will, marked D., and pass through Conscience, and
then to v., the unascertained center of Sensation, Volition, and Will.
This is the natural turnpike road for the ideas when we are awake and
sane. But here is an open shun-pike X. Y. Z., on which Ideas, when
we are asleep or insane, start off and pass by Conscience, and so avoid
paying toll to that inflexible gate-keeper. Now all this is very well,
but I call on the doctor to show how the fugitive idea reached the will
at D., after going to the end of the shun-pike. It appeared there was
no other way but to dart back again, over the shun-pike, or else to go
cringing, at last through the iron gate of Conscience.

*See next paga.

i4 DEFENCE OP

SPENCER'S INTELLECTUAL CHART.

THE BRAIN, LITTLE BRAIN, SPINAL MARROW. AND NERVES.

Are the Instruments or Media connecting the Mind with Material Things,

and are the seat of Disease in Insanity.

THREE CLASSES— THIRTY-SIX FACULTIES.
I. Involuntary Faculties, II. Intermediate III. Voluntary

Actions or Feelings of Mind. Faculties. Faculties.

t|B

1 Sensation. -+• 31 Conception. -+

2 Attention.

3Hu

nger.

5 Thirst.

7
9
11
13
15
17
19
21
23
2&
27

I I

32 Imagination.

I I

•*- P

4 Perception

SO(

nation. 6 Memory.

>(^

r/j

*-<

rt)

£-

X H-

WILLIAM FREEMAN. 94

EXPLANATIONS OF THE FOREGOING CHART.

7 Love of society.

8 Understanding.

9 " children.

10 Comparison.

11 " money.

12 Combination.

13 " combat.

14 Reason.

15 " fame.

16 Invention.

17 " Nature's laws.

IS Judgment.

19 " Divine things.

20 Sense of justice.

21 Revenge, \

22 Pleasure in right.

23 Anger, f And other passions,

, propen-

24 Horror of wrong acts.

as Joy, Hope, \ sities and molircs.

26 Intention, co-ordination.

27 Fear. )

2S Other volitions, mental and moral.

V. Unascertained centre ofThought, Sensation,

V. A. B. C. D. Unio.i of all the Mental Facul

and Volition.

ties, as if by Electric Wires, as one whole

X. T. Z. Dreaming or Insane road of

Thought

around Conscience and Will.

Then there was another difficulty. The doctor forgot the most impor-
tant point on his own map, and could not tell from memory, where he
had located ** the unascertained centra."

The doctor pronounces the Prisoner sane because he has the chief in-
tellectual faculties, sensation, Conception, Attention, Imagination, and
Association. Now here is a delicate piece of wooden cutlery, fabricated
by an inmate of the Lunatic Asylum at Utica, who was acquitted of mur-
der on the ground of insanity. He who fabricated it evinced in the man-
ufacture. Conception, Perception, Memory, Comparison, Attention,
Adaptation, Co-ordination, Kindness, Gratitude, Mechanical Skill, In-
vention, and Pride. It is well for him that Dr. Spincee did not testify
on his trial.

Opposed to these vague and unsatisfactory opinions is the evidence of
Sally Freeman, the prisoner's mother, who knew him better than any
other one ; of John Depuy, his brother-in-law and intimate friend ; of
Ethan A. Warden, his employer in early youth ; of Deborah Depuy,
his associate in happier days : of Adam Gray, who knew him in child-
hood, and sheltered him on \^is discharge from the State Prison ; of Ira
Curtis, in whose family he resided seven years ago ; of David Winner,
the friend of his parents : of Robert Freeman, his ancient fellow ser-
vant at the American Hotel ; of John R. Hopkins, an intelligent and
practical man, who examined him in the jail ; of Theron R. Green, who
discovered his insanity in the State Prison ; of the Rev. John M. Aus-
tin, the one good Samaritan who deemed it a pastoral duty to visit even
a supposed murderer in Prison ; of William P. Smith, who has correct-
ed now the error or his Judgment while in the State Prison ; of Philo H.
Perry, a candid and enlightened observer, and of Warren T. Worden,
Esq., a Lawyer of great shrewdness and sagacity.

Then there is an overwhelming preponderance of medical testimony.
The witnesses are. Dr. Van Epps, who has followed the accused from
his cradle to the present hour, with the interest of a humane and sincere
friend ; Dr. Fosgate, who attended him in the jail, for the cure of his

56 DEFENCE OF

disabled limb ; Dr. Briggs, equal in public honors to Dr. Bigelow, and
greatly his superior in candor as well as learning, and who compares the
prisoner now with what he was in better days ; Dr. McNaughton, of
Albany, and Dr. Hun, of the same place, gentlemen known throughout
the whole country for eminence in their profession ; Dr. McCall, of
Utica, President of the Medical Society of the State of New York ; Dr.
Coventry, Professor of Medical Jurisprudence in Geneva College, and
one of the Managers of the State Lunatic Asylum at Utica, and Dr.
Brigham, the experienced and distinguished Superintendent of that Insti-
tution. This last gentleman, after reviewing the whole case, declares
that he has no doubt that the prisoner is now insane, and was so when
his crimes were committed : that he should have received hira as a pa-
tient then, on the evidence given here, independently of the crime, and
should now receive him upon all the evidence which has been submit-
ted to you.

Dr. Brigham pronounces the prisoner to be a Monomaniac laboring
under the overwhelming progress of the delusion I have described, which
had its paroxysm in the murders of which he is accused ; and declares
that since that time he has sunk into a deep and incurable Dementia, the
counter-part of Idiocy. In these opinions, and in the reasons for them,
so luminously assigned by him, all the other medical gentlemen concur.

You may be told, Gentlemen, that Dr. Hun and Dr. McNaughton tes-
tified from mere observation of the prisoner without personal examina-
tion. Yes ! I will thank the Attorney General for saying so. It will
recall the strangest passages of all, in this the strangest of all trials. This
is a trial for murder. A verdict of guilty will draw after it a sentence
of death. The only defence is Insanity. Insanity is to be teste! by
examining the prisoner as he now is, and comparing him with what he
teas when the crime was commmitted, and 4uring all the intervening pe-
riod, and through all his previous life. Dr. Hun and Dr. McNaughton
were served with subpoenas, requiring them to attend here. They
came, proceeded to the jail, and examined the prisoner on Wednesday
night during the trial. Early on Thursday morning they proceeded
again to the jail to resume their examination, and were then denied ac-
cess. It is proved that the Attorney General instructed the Sheriff to
close the doors against them, and the Attorney General admits it. Dr.
Hun and Dr McNaughton are called to testify, and are ready to testify
that the examination they did make, satisfied them that the prisoner is
insane, and that he was insane when he committed the homicide. The
Attorney General objects, and the Court overrules the evidence, and de-
cides that these eminent physicians shall testify only from mere exter-
nal observation of the prisoner, in court, and shall expressly forget and
lay aside their examinations of the prisoner, made in jail, by conversa-

"WILLIAM FRBEMAV-

tions with him. Nor was the process by which the Court effected this
exclusion less remarkable than the decision itself. The Court had ob-
tained a verdict on the sixth of July, on the preliminary issue, that the
prisoner was sufficiently sane to distinguish right from wrong. That
verdict has been neither pleaded nor proved on this trial, and if it had
been, it would have been of no legal value. Yet the Court founds
upon it a Judicial Statute of Limitations, and denies us all opportunity
to prove the prisoner insane, after the sixth of July. I tremble for the
jury that is to respond to the popular clamor under such restraints as
these. I pray God that these Judges may never experience the conse-
quences which must follow such an adjudication. But, Gentlemen, Dr.
Hun and Dr. McNaughton bear, nevertheless, the strongest testimony
that the prisoner is an idiot, as appears by observation, and that the evi-
dence, as submitted to them, confirms this conviction.

There is proof. Gentlemen, stronger than all this. It is silent, yet .
speaking. It is that idiotic smile which plays continually on the face of i
the maniac. It took its seat there while he was in the State Prison. In \
his solitary cell, under the pressure of his severe tasks and trials in the
work-shop, and during the solemnities of public worship in the chapel,
it appealed, although in vain, to his task masters and his teachers. It is
a smile, never rising into laughter, without motive or cause — the smile
of vacuity. His mother saw it when he came out of Prison, and it broke
her heart . John Depuy saw it and knew his brother was demented.
Deborah Depuy observed it and knew him for a fool. David Winner
read in it the ruin of his friend, Sally's son. It has never forsaken him
in his later trials. He laughed in the face of Parker, while on con-^
fession at Baldwinsville. He laughed involuntarily in the faces of War-
den, and Curtis, and Worden, and Austin, and Bigelow, and Smith,
and Brigham, and Spencer. He laughs perpetually here. Even when
Van Arsdale showed the scarred traces of the assassin's knife, and
when Helen Holmes related the dreadful story of the murder of her
patrons and friends, he laughed. He laughs while I am pleading his
griefs. He laughs when the Attorney General's bolts would seem to
rive his heart. He will laugh when you declare him guilty. When the
Judge shall proceed to the last fatal ceremony, and demand what he has
to say why the Sentence of the Law should not be pronounced upon \
him, although there should not be an unmoistened eye in this vast as- i
sembly, and the stern voice addressing him should tremble with emotion, ;
he will even then look up in the face of the Court and laugh, from the ;•
irresistible emotions of a shattered mind, delighted and lost in the con-
fused memory of absurd and ridiculous associations. Follow him to the
scaffold. The executioner cannot disturb the calmness of the idiot. He \
will laugh in the agony of death. Do you not know the significance of j

do DBFENCH OF

this strange and unnatural risibility ? It is a proof that God does not
forsake even the poor wretch whom we pity or despise. There are in
every human memory, a well of joys and a fountain of sorrows. Dis-
ease opens wide the one, and seals up the other, forever.

You have been told, Gentlemen, that this smile is hereditary and ac-
customed. Do you think that ever ancestor or parent of the prisoner, or
, even the poor idiot himself, was in such straits as these ? How then
ican you think that this smile was ever before recognized by these wU-
iing witnesses ? That chaotic smile is the external derangement which
signifies that the strings of the harp are disordered and broken, the su-
perficial mark which God has set upon the tabernacle, to signify that its
immortal tenant is disturbed by a divine and mysterious commandment.
If you cannot see it, take heed that the obstruction of your vision be not
produced by the mote in your own eye, which you are commanded to
remove before you consider the beam in your brother's eye. If you are
bent on rejecting the testimony of those who know, by experience and
by science, the deep affliction of the prisoner, beware how you misinter-
pret the hand writing of the Almighty.

I have waited until now. Gentlemen, to notice some animadversions
oi the counsel for the People. They say that drunkenness will explain
the conduct of the prisoner. It is true that John Depuy discovered that
those who retailed poisonous liquors were furnishing the prisoner with
this, the worst of food for his madness. But the most laborious inves-
tigation has resulted in showing, by the testimony of "'^Adam Gray, that
he once saw the prisoner intoxicated, and that he, with some other per-
son, drank spirits in not immoderate quantity, on the day when Van Nest
was slain. There is no other evidence that the prisoner was ever intox-
icated. John Depuy and Ada'm Gray testify that except that one time
he was always sober. David Winner proves he was sober ail the time
he witness lived at Willard's, and Mary Ann Newark says he was en-
tirely sober when he sallied forth on his fatal enterprise. The only val-
ue of the fact of his drunkenness, if it existed, would be to account for
his disturbed nights at Depuy's, at Gray's, and at Willard's. It is
clearly proved that his mind was not beclouded, nor his frame excited,
by any such cause on any of those occasions ; and Doctor Brigham truly
tells you that while the maniac goes quietly to his bed, and is driven
from it by the dreams of a disturbed imagination, the drunkard completes
his revels and his orgies before he sinks to rest, and then lies stupid and
besotted until nature restores his wasted energies with return of day.

Several of the prisoner's witnesses liave fallen under the displeasure of
the Counsel for the People. John Depuy was asked on the trial of the
preliminary issue, whether he had not said, when the prisoner was
arrested, that he was no more crazy than himself. He answered.

WILLIAM FREEMAN. 59

that he had not said "in those words," and asked leave to explain
by stating what he had said. The Court denied him the right and
obliged him to answer, Yes or No, and of course he answered No. On
this trial he makes the explanation, that after the murder of Van Nest,
being informed that the prisoner had threatened his life he said, " Bill
would do well enough if they wouldn't give him liquor ; he was bad
enough at any time, and liquor made him worse." By a forced construc-
tion, this declaration, which substantially agrees with what he is proved
by other witnesses to have said, is brought in conflict with his narrow
denial, made on the former trial. It has been intimated on this trial, that
the Counsel for the Prosecution would contend that John Depuy was an
accomplice of the Prisoner and the instigator of his crimes. This cruel
and unfeeling charge has no ground, even in imagination, except that
t^relve years Eigo Depuy labored for six weeks on the farm of the late
Mr. Van Nest, then belonging to his Father-in-law, P^ter Wyckoff, that
a misunderstanding arose between them, which they adjusted by arbitra-
tion and that they were friends always afterwards. The elder Mr. Wyc-
koff died six years ag«. It does not appear that the late Mr. Van Nest
was even married at that time. John Depuy is a colored man, of vig-
orous frame, and strong mind, with good education. His testimony, con-
clusive in this cause, was intelligently given. He claims your respect as
a representative of his people, rising to that equality to which it is the
tendency of our institutions to bring them. I have heard the greatest of
American Orators. I have heard Daniel O'Connell and Sir Robert Peel,
but I heard John Depuy make a speech excelling them all in eloquence :
" They have made William Freeman what he is, a brute beast ; they
don't make any thing else of any of our people but brute beasts ; but when
we violate their laws, then they want to punish us as if we were men."
I hope the Attorney General may press his charge ; I like to see per-
secution carried to such a length ; for the strongest bow when bent too
far, will break.

Deborah Depuy is also assailed as unworthy of credit. She calls her-
self the wife of Hiram Depuy with whom she has lived ostensibly in
that relation for seven years, in, I believe, unquestioned fidelity to him
and her children. But it appears that she has not been married with the
pioper legal solemnities. If she were a white woman, I should regard
her testimony with caution, but the securities of marriage are denied to
the African race over more than half of this country. It is within our
own memory that the master's cupidity could divorce husband and wife
within this state, and sell their clildren into perpetual bondage. Since
the Act of Emancipation here, what has been done by the white man to
lift up the race from the debasement into which he had plunged it ? Let
us impart to negroes the knowledge and spirit of Christianity, and share

60 DEFENCE OP

with them the privileges, dignity and hopes of citizens and Christians,
hefore we expect of them purity and self respect.

But, Gentlemen, even in a slave state, the testimony of this witness
would receive credit in such a cause, for negroes may be witnesses there,
for and against persons of their own caste. It is only when the life,
liberty or property of the white man is invaded, that the negro is dis-
qualified. Let us not be too severe. There was once upon the earth a
Divine Teacher who shall come again to judge the world in righteous-
ness. They brought to him a woman taken in adultery, and said to him
that the law of Moses directed that such should be stoned to death, and
he answered : *• Let him that is without sin cast the first stone."

The testimony of Sally Freeman, the mother of the prisoner, is ques-
tioned. She utters the voice of nature. She is the guardian whom God
assigned to study, to watch, to learn, to know what the prisoner was,
and is, and to cherish the memory of it forever. She could not forget it
if she would. There is not a blemish on the person of any one of us,
born with us or coming from disease or accident, nor have we committed
a right or wrong action, that has not been treasured up in the memory
of a mother. Juror ! roll up the sleeve from your manly arm, and you
will find a scar there of which you know nothing. Your mother will
give you the detail of every day's progress of the preventive disease. —
Sally Freeman has the mingled blood of the African and Indian races.
She is nevertheless a woman, and a mother, and nature bears witness in
every climate and in every country, to the singleness and uniformity of
those characters. I have known and proved them in the hovel of the
slave, and in the wigwam of the Chippewa. But Sally Freeman has
been intemperate. The white man enslaved her ancestors of the one race,
exiled and destroyed those of the other, and debased them all by corrupt-
ing their natural and healthful appetites. She comes honestly by her only
vice. Yet when she comes here to testify for a life that is dearer to her
than her own, to say she knows her own son, the white man says she
is a drunkard ! May Heaven forgive the white man for adding this last,
this cruel injury to the wrongs of such a mother ! Fortunately, Gentle-
men, her character and conduct are before you. No woman ever ap-
peared with more decency, modesty, and propriety, than she has ex-
hibited here. No witness has dared to say or think that Sally Free-
man is not a woman of truth. Dr. Clary, a witness for the prosecution,
who knows her well, says, that with all her infirmities of temper and of hab-
it, Sally *• was always a truthful woman." The Roman Cornelia could
not have claimed more. Let then the stricken mother testify for her son.

" I ask not, I care not, if guilt 's in that heart,
I know that I love thee, wiiatover thou art."

The learned gentlemen who conduct this prosecution have attempted

WILLIAM FREEMAN. 61

to show that the prisoner attended the trial of Henry Wyatt, whom I de-
fended against an indictment for murder, in this Court, in February last ;
that he listened to me on that occasion, in regard to the impurity of crime,
and that he went out a ripe and complete scholar. So far as these re-
flections affect me alone, they are unworthy of an answer. I pleaded
for Wyatt then, as it was my right and my duty to do. Let the Counsel
for the People prove the words I spoke, before they charge me with
Freeman's crimes. I am not unwilling those words should be re-
called. I am not unwilling that any words I ever spoke in any re-
sponsible relation should be remembered. Since they will not recall
those words, I will do so for them. They were words like those I
speak now, demanding cautious and impartial justice ; words appealing
to the reason, to the consciences, to the humanity of my fellow men ;
words calculated to make mankind know and love each other better, and
adopt the benign principles of Christianity, instead of the long cherish-
ed maxims of retaliation and revenge. The creed of Mahomet was pro-
mulgated at a time when paper was of inestimable value, and the Koran
teaches that every scrap of paper which the believer has saved during
his life, will gather itself under his feet, to protect them from the burn-
ing iron which he must pass over, while entering into Paradise. Re-
gardless as I have been of the unkind construction of my words and ac-
tions by my contemporaries, I can say in all humility of spirit, that they
are freely left to the ultimate, impartial consideration of mankind. But,
Gentlemen, how gross is the credulity implied by this charge ! This
stupid idioti who cannot take into his ears, deaf as death, the words
which I am speaking to you, though I stand within three feet of him,
and who'even now is exchanging smiles with his and my accusers, re-
gardless of the deep anxiety depicted in your countenances, was stand-
ing at yonder post, sixty feet distant from me, when he was here, if he
was here at all, on the trial of Henry Wyatt. The voice of the District
Attornej'^reverberates through this dome, while mine is lost almost with-
in the circle of the bar. It does not appear that it was not that voice
that beguiled the maniac, instead of mine ; and certain it is that, since
the prisoner does not comprehend the object of his attendance here now,
he could not have understood anything that occurred on the trial of Wy-
att.

Gentleman, my responsibilities in this cause are discharged. In the
earnestness and seriousness with which I have pleaded, you will find
the reason for the firmness with which I have resisted the popular pas-
sions around me. I am in some degree responsible like every other citi-
zen, for the conduct of the community in which I live. They may not
inflict on a Maniac the punishment of a Malefactor, without involving
me in blame, if I do not remonstrate. I cannot afford to be in error,

62 DEFENCE OP

abroad, and in future times. If I were capable of a sentiment so cruel
and so base, I ought to hope for the conviction of the accused ; for then
the vindictive passions, now so highly excited, would subside, the con-
sciences of the wise and the humane would be awakened, and in a few
months, the invectives which have so long pursued jne, would be hurled
against the Jury and the Court.

You have now the fate of this lunatic in your hands. To him as to
me, so far as we can judge, it is comparatively indifferent what be the
issue. The wisest of modern men has left us a saying, that " the hour
of death is more fortunate than the hour of birth," a saying which he
signalized by bestowing a gratuity twice as great upon the place where
he died as upon the hamlet where he was born. For aught that we can
judge, the prisoner is unconscious of danger and would be insensible to
suffering, let it come when it might. A verdict can only hasten, by a
few months or years, the time when his bruised, diseased, wandering
and benighted spirit shall return to Him who sent it forth on its sad and
dreary pilgrimage.

The circumstances under which this trial closes are peculiar. I have
seen capital cases where the parents, brothers, sisters, friends of the ac-
cused surrounded him, eagerly hanging upon the lips of his advocate, and
watching, in the countenances of the court and jury, every smile andfrown
which might seem to indicate his fate. But there is no such scene
here. The prisoner, though in the greenness of youth, is withered,, de-
cayed, senseless, almost lifeless. He has no father here. The descen-
dant of slaves, that father died a victim to the vices of a superior race.
There is no mother here, for her child is stained and polluted with the
blood of mothers and of a sleeping infant ; and " he looks and laughs
80 that she cannot bear to look upon him." There is no brother, or sis-
ter,, or friend here. Popular rage against the accused has driven them
hence, and scattered his kindred and people. On the other side I notice
the aged and venerable parents of Van Nest and his surviving^ children,
and all around are mourning and sympathizing friends. I know not at
whose instance they have come. I dare not say they ought not to be
here. But I must say to you that we live in a christian and not in a sav-
age state, and that the affliction which has fallen upon these mourners
and us, was sent to teach them and us mercy and not retaliation ; that
although we may send this maniac to the scaffold, it will not recall to
life the manly form of Van Nest, nor reanimate the exhausted frame of
that aged matrom, nor restore to life, and grace, and beauty, the murder-
ed mother, nor call back the infant boy from the arms of his Savior. —
Such a verdict can do no good to the living, and carry no joy to the dead.
If your judgment shall be swayed at all by sympathies so wrong, al-
though so natural, you will find the saddest hour of your life to be that

WILLIAM FREEMAN. 63

in which you will look down upon the grave of your victim, and "mourn
with compunctious sorrow" that you should have done so great injustice
to the " poor handful of earth that will lie moulderin'g before you."

I have been long and tedious. I remember that it is the harvest moon,
and that every hour is precious while you are detained from your yellow
fields. But if you shall have bestowed patient attention throughout this
deeply interesting investigation, and shall in the end have discharged
your duties in the fear of God and in the love of truth justly and inde-
pendently, you will have laid up a store of blessed recollections for all
your future days, imperishable and inexhaustible.

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Full text of "Argument of William H. Seward, in defence of William Freeman, on his trial for murder, at Auburn, July 21st and 22nd, 1846. Reported by S. Blatchford"

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