LI E) R.AR.Y
OF THL
UNIVLRSITY
Of ILLINOIS
A Bequest from
Marion D. Pratt
iu.i,.:3 !'';rrCRY survey
UBRhRt
Vv
THE GREAT RAILROAD CONSPIRACY
Charles Hirschfeld
The Great
Railroad
Conspiracy
THE SOCIAL HISTORY
OF A RAILROAD WAR
The Michigan State College Press
1953
Copyright, 1953, by
The Michigan State College Press
i:
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
AT THE LAKESIDE PRESS
R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS COMPANY, CHICAGO
AND CRAWFORDSVILLE, INDIANA
/^/, 73
'^' 'y PREFACE
This is a tale of war, a railroad war, such as flared up in the United
States in many places during the nineteenth century, when rail-
roads were new and fearsome things. The field of battle was the
young state of Michigan about one hundred years ago, and the
combatants were farmers and the biggest railroad in the state.
Violence, arson, intrigue, money, and public opinion were the
weapons; life, liberty, and property were the goals that drove men
on in this dramatic conflict that stirred the state from lake to lake.
The great railroad conspiracy, as this war came to be known
locally, has never been truly celebrated in story. The extant ac-
counts are partial in every sense of the word and, with few excep-
tions, give only the official version. The story is worth retelling, if
only the more firmly to establish the facts and present a more rea-
sonable approximation of the truth.
The purpose of this book, however, goes beyond historical ac-
curacy and dramatic interest. If only these had been the aims, they
could have been realized in much fewer words. The story has been
told, rather, in a large way in order to give a picture of an im-
portant phase of American life, of a young and rapidly growing
community of the West of the 1850's, but one remove from the
frontier. The bare outlines have been filled in, the thread of the
conflict has been followed into its social, political, and economic
ramifications. The narrative of events has been used as a vehicle
for presenting something of the social history of a community
Tj which was certainly not unique in the development of this country.
7^ The result, it is hoped, is a broad and vivid account of what
^ Americans were like in the long process of becoming what they are.
On one level, this is a study of the behavior and feelings of Amer-
"^ icans, at home, in business, at the crossroads tavern, in court, and
^ in politics. It is a case history of democracy, illustrating the strains
of our political development at the grass roots. Its themes are
^j-^merican frontier individualism exploding into violence and
[V]
agrarian enterprise clashing with an expanding business dynamic.
The flavor of the era is sustained by using as far as possible the
spoken language of the time and place, from the salty vernacular
to polished prose. Here, in short, is a snapshot of mid-nineteenth
century America when it was not posing for a textbook illustration
against a backdrop of quaint propriety.
More particularly, the book spells out in one state the conflict of
the farmers and the railroads years before the Granger agitation
roiled the Midwest scene. It is a good example of a pre-Civil War
antirailroad movement, a phenomenon often neglected by Amer-
ican historians. These early struggles may have been only the
inchoate stirrings of agrarian sentiment against the new public
carriers, but they formed the tradition out of which the agitation
of the 'seventies grew. Also involved were all the complications of
intrastate and sectional rivalries, with Michigan businessmen and
eastern capitalists lining up on both sides of the local conflict.
As a study in railroad and business history, the book also deals
with the problems of construction and operation in the salad days
of railroading. It throws light on the career of John W. Brooks, an
outstanding American railroad builder and enterpreneur who was
foremost in the making of the Michigan Central Railroad and
other lines further west.
Seen thus in proper focus, the great railroad conspiracy emerges
as more than a ruckus at Michigan Centre in Jackson County,
Michigan. Its story rises above the level of melodramatic insig-
nificance and becomes, I believe, an addition to our understanding
of the American past.
Specific acknowledgements of help in the preparation of this
work are listed in the first footnote, which, like all the others, may
be found at the end of the text.* Here, I wish to take the oppor-
tunity of thanking Dr. Lewis Beeson, editor of Michigan History,
for permission to use material which first appeared in that peri-
odical; and lastly, Amanda, for whom, after all, this book was
written.
Charles Hirschfeld
East Lansing, Michigan
Spring 1953.
[vi]
PART
ONE
Th
.HE STORY of the great railroad conspiraq^ goes back to 1846 when
the state of Michigan sold its railroads to private chartered cor-
porations. The state had built and operated two railroads since
1837 as part of a broad program of internal improvements designed
at once to build up the interior of Michigan and advance the com-
mercial interests of its cities, particularly Detroit. By 1845 the rail-
roads had not reached Lake Michigan from their eastern terminals
as required by law, and further public construction and operation
seemed to run into an impasse of financial difficulties and not al-
together disinterested prejudice. The Central Railroad, which had
reached Kalamazoo from Detroit, was the farther advanced in con-
struction and the more profitable of the two roads. It was this road
that attracted the attention of John W. Brooks, a civil engineer
who had helped build and operate railroads in New York and New
England, and James F. Joy, a transplanted Yankee who had won a
position for himself at the Detroit bar. These two young men, am-
bitious and shrewd, saw the immense moneymaking possibilities
in a completed transpeninsular railroad that would tap the ex-
panding western hinterland and link it with the eastern seaboard.
Brooks used his eastern connections to interest a group of New
York and Boston capitalists, and Joy worked on the Michigan leg-
islature; and in 1846, the Michigan Central Railroad Company
received a charter and possession of the railroad from Detroit to
Kalamazoo for the sum of two million dollars. At the same time,
the other railroad, running through the southern counties from
Monroe to Hillsdale, ^vas knocked down to the newly chartered
Michigan Southern Railroad Company.^
Taking over the Central road in the fall of 1846, Brooks, as su-
perintendent of the new company, and Joy, as legal counsel, started
immediately to improve their investment and realize their golden
vision. Money and men were poured into a concerted drive to reach
the lake at New Buffalo. Tracks were laid with sixty-pound T-rails
and the latest model engines and rolling stock put into operation.
The old line of the road east of Kalamazoo was improved with new
grades and bridges and the old worn strap rails were replaced with
the heavier T-rails, By April, 1849, the Michigan Central spanned
the peninsula, was paying eight and nine percent dividends on
net earnings of almost $200,000 a year, and the trains were running
at thirty miles an hour.^
The drive for efficiency and profits soon brought the company
into conflict with the farmers along the line of the road. The right
of way was largely unfenced, and the cattle of the farmers through
whose land the tracks ran were easy marks for the heavier and
speedier trains. What incensed the farmers was not only the killing
of great numbers of cows, sheep, and hogs, but the fact that the
company refused to pay what they considered fair damages. Much
livestock had, indeed, been destroyed when the railroad had been
owned by the state, but the Board of Internal Improvements, the
state's operating agency, had not dared to antagonize the electors
by paying less than their claims. One official of the board had com-
plained in 1845 'h^t the damages paid for cattle maimed and killed
had reached extravagant proportions and suggested that in cases
where no negligence on the part of the engineers could be proven,
the farmers should be made to bear half the loss.^ This impolitic
suggestion had, of course, never been adopted. Superintendent
Brooks, however, with no concern for the electorate and respon-
sible only to the directors and stockholders, was determined to pay
as little as he could and make the farmers share the risks. He
claimed that the cattle were trespassers; that the negligence and
cupidity of the owners were contributory factors; and hinted
strongly that the farmers were seeking a ready market at each cross-
ing. Brooks denied any legal liability for damages at all, but of-
fered, as a measure of expedience, to pay half of the appraised
value. The aggrieved farmers took this offer as an admission of
liability and demanded full damages.
When these were not forthcoming, the issue was fully joined.
Excitement flared up all along the line of the road from Ann Arbor
to Niles in the spring of 1849. Near Niles, where the state had
never operated the railroad and where it was reported that one
hundred sixty pieces of livestock had been killed in the twelve-mile
stretch between Niles and Dowagiac, the farmers retaliated for the
half-pay offer by committing serious depredations, going so far as
[4]
to derail an engine by opening a switch. One infuriated citizen
threatened publicly to tie up traffic entirely. West of Kalamazoo,
the farmers, under cover of darkness, greased the tracks on the up-
grades with lard and tallow salvaged by their wives from the car-
casses, to the great annoyance of the train crews who had to get out
and sand the tracks before they could proceed. Further east, near
Ann Arbor, the tracks were actually torn up, presumably by those
who had had cattle killed.^
At Marshall, few evening trains passed without being delayed by
turned switches or shot at. The violent outbursts there were broad-
cast and justified by one of the village's leading citizens, John D.
Pierce, in a series of letters to the local Democratic newspaper.
Pierce, Michigan's first state superintendent of public instruction,
a member of the legislatures of 1847 ^^^ 1848, and a clergyman by
training, had recently had some sheep of his own killed on the
tracks and now took up the cudgels for the farmers in the area. He
denounced the destruction of livestock and the company's dis-
claimer of liability and refusal of fair damages. "The road," he de-
clared in June, 1849, "has been for a long time one gore of blood.
No heathen altar ever smoked more continually with the blood
of its victims." And the company dared to charge that the owners
of cattle were the trespassers. Resort to legal action cost more than
the cattle were worth. The railroad's "reckless policy" had created
"an embittered state of feeling along the whole line" and was re-
sponsible for the fact that the injured persons resorted to violence
"because they know no other way." Pierce warned the company of
the consequences of its policy, even though he had "little hope that
any reason or argument which was not addressed to its cupidity
would induce a moneyed corporation to change its course." Accord-
ing to one account, the choleric preacher proved his point. When
he championed the cause of a poor widow who had a yoke of oxen
killed, and Superintendent Brooks contemptuously sent word back
to Marshall to "Tell that parson out there he'd better stick to
preaching," Pierce replied that if the company did not pay the
woman, he himself would see to it that every mile of track in Cal-
houn County was torn up. The parson's triumph was complete and
biblical, if momentary, when Brooks paid up in that one case.
Pierce concluded as follows:
Something must be done, the honor of the state,— its good name . . .
[5]
demand it. The road must be fenced— in the meantime something near
the value of the property destroyed must be paid. It is an outrage, and
evidences utter recklessness of life and limb of both man and beast that
the company should run trains over an unfenced road, where all cattle
are by law free commoners, at the rate of thirty miles per hour.®
Neither at Niles nor Marshall nor anywhere else in the state was
the opposition to the Michigan Central Railroad so intensive and
so sustained as in the few miles along the line of the road between
Grass Lake and Michigan Centre in the eastern part of Jackson
County. It was here that collective protest first brought the offer of
half pay from Superintendent Brooks, and here that destructive
reprisals continued for almost two years to disrupt the railroad's
operations. Precisely why it was so seems difficult to ascertain at
this distance in time. Perhaps more cattle were killed in Leoni and
Grass Lake townships than elsewhere, although the evidence is
not conclusive on this point. Perhaps it was that here the farmers
found leaders, veritable tribunes of the people, in two men with a
stubborn determination to see that justice was done, Abel F. Fitch
of Michigan Centre and Benjamin F. Burnett of Grass Lake. Per-
haps it was the deliberate choice by Superintendent Brooks of these
two townships as the arena in which to break the back of the op-
position to the railroad that brought the most violent reaction in
the state.^
The losses between Grass Lake and Michigan Centre, while sub-
stantial, do not seem to have been unusually heavy. One estimate
was that forty head of cattle had been killed near the village of
Leoni. According to a later estimate, damages to the amount of
|8oo had been inflicted on the farmers of the vicinity.''' The editor
of a Jackson paper offered the following explanation of the im-
broglio some fifty years after the events: East of Michigan Centre,
the railroad track crossed a muskeg or sunken lake, "The Dry
Marsh" as it was known in the locality, and the cattle in the area,
which had previously skirted the marsh, began to use the tracks as
a convenient bridge, with disastrous results to themselves. The rail-
road, moreover, then brought its own appraisers out from Detroit,
and the amount of the damages fixed by a company appraiser who
saw the animals after they had been dead for several days was not
such as to satisfy the owners.^
In any case, by the spring of 1 849, the increasing destruction of
[6]
livestock and the company's refusal to pay the damages claimed
aroused the farmers in the vicinity to action. At a number of public
meetings— railroad meetings, they were called— they collectively
requested Superintendent Brooks to modify his policy, to direct the
engineers to run their trains more carefully, and, until the right
of way was fenced, to pay full damages. At one of the meetings,
Abel F. Fitch, Benjamin F. Burnett, and one James Courier were
chosen as a committee to represent the group's views to the rail-
road's superintendent in Detroit. The three accordingly wrote
Brooks a letter informing him of the great excitement among the
farmers of the region and suggesting the consequences of further
inflammation of the popular mind by a policy that was not "more
humane." Brooks, in reply, completely denied the validity of the
committee's representations. The company, he countered, was not
legally liable at all for damages to property along the right of way;
he would, however, pay one half of the appraised value of all cattle
killed. Meanwhile, he suggested, the company and one of the in-
jured parties could take a test case to the Supreme Court of the
state to decide the question of liability, with all costs and fees up
to $50 to be borne by the company. If the court decided that the
company were liable, he would thereafter pay in full the damages
incurred by the farmers. Brooks, at the same time, professed to see
an implied threat in the committee's letter and went on to add
that he would hold Fitch, Burnett, and Courier morally if not
criminally responsible for any injury done the railroad in any at-
tempts to coerce it.^
Brooks' proposal, which was published in the Jackson news-
papers, was never seriously entertained. Abel F. Fitch dismissed it
on the steps of the American Hotel in Jackson as a "perfect hum-
bug." The farmers followed his lead and ignored it and then struck
back in the readiest way at hand— by placing obstructions on the
tracks, stoning the trains, and even shooting at the engines as they
passed in the night. As Fitch, now become their spokesman, argued,
the people had had their cattle killed and could not get redress any
other way. When someone suggested going to court, Fitch denied
that the people could get their rights that way, and went on to
attack the whole judicial system in a cynical diatribe of a man who
knew the political game. He stated bluntly that every man had his
price and that a judge could be bought as well as any other man;
[7]
that he had no more confidence in the judges o£ the Supreme Court
than in those of the lower courts— they knew enough law but could
be bought as well as others, though in ordinary cases they were well
enough; and that he based his opinions on a certain county judge
whom he named. He denounced the railroad company as an aris-
tocracy whose influence and money would prevent justice from
being obtained in any court. When it was argued that endangering
the lives of innocent passengers was not the way to attain the object
in view, Fitch heatedly countered that persons who would support
such a company ought to be injured.
Fitch's stand was echoed by William Corwin, a teamster at Mich-
igan Centre, who was a young and irresponsible fellow. One morn-
ing at the end of May, Corwin was approached by a neighbor,
Abram Henry, who mentioned that he had heard some shots fired
as the train passed the night before. He asked Corwin if they were
firing at the train last night. Corwin casually replied, "Yes, I sup-
pose so." Henry asked if anyone was killed. Corwin said, "No."
When Henry then pointed out that by and by they would kill
somebody, Corwin burst out: "Damn 'em, if they don't want to be
shot let 'em pay for the cattle they have killed." Henry told him
that it was a bad idea, for they would kill innocent people who
paid theit money for riding over the road. Corwin closed the con-
versation angrily: "Damn 'em, they need not ride over the road
if they don't want to be killed."
Not long after, the violent agitation brought the attorney gen-
eral of Michigan, George V. N. Lothrop, to the scene. He came to
Jackson from Detroit to investigate the trouble and try to allay the
unrest. On his arrival, he was met by the committee of three who
presented the aggrieved farmers' case substantially as they had
done to Brooks. When Lothrop suggested a remedy at law, they re-
plied that a poor man would have no chance in a law suit with the
company. Fitch and Burnett argued with some warmth that the
railroad was to blame for the excitement and lawlessness; that as
long as it would not pay fair value for cattle killed, it might expect
trouble on the road; and that the people were justified in taking
matters into their own hands, for it was the only means they had
of bringing the company to terms. Fitch even threatened to send
handbills to New York, Buffalo, and Chicago, warning the public
that it was dangerous to pass over the Michigan Central. Lothrop
[8]
returned to Detroit and presented the committee's views to Super-
intendent Brooks. He then wrote the committee that Brooks in-
sisted that his proposal was a just and hberal one and an earnest
of the company's solicitude. Brooks gave them every assurance that
any engineer found wantonly destroying cattle would be dis-
charged. Furthermore, it had always been the practice of the com-
pany to pay full value for cattle killed when the owner was too poor
to bear the loss. For himself, Lothrop condemned the outrages and
promised that the offenders, who were no better than "pirates and
wholesale murderers," would be severely punished. Fie then
warned the three spokesmen that unless they themselves exerted
an active influence to prevent such conduct, they "must expect to
be held, in no slight degree, responsible . . ." And like a good poli-
tician, Lothrop closed on the note of the necessity of compromise.
Matters remained, however, at an impasse. The verbal exchanges
proved to be only preludes to a violent and embittered battle. As
the summer of 1849 advanced and as mutual suspicion and hatred
mounted, more cattle were killed and further depredations were
committed against the railroad. When Orlando D. Williams, a
mason at Leoni, had his cow killed, the company offered him half
price for it three or four times. He refused the offers and demanded
$25 or nothing. He told his neighbor it would be a dear cow for
them. Andrew J. (Jack) Freeland, a successful farmer at Michigan
Centre, complained he had a number of sheep killed, five or seven,
and the company offered him half price for them, but if they did
not pay him full price they would be dear sheep. He slyly said that
the cars were getting rather skittish about running through Leoni
Township, and "damn 'em, they'd better pay up for cattle if they
did not want trouble."
The railroad did not pay up and it got the trouble. That summer
and fall passenger and freight trains were frequently stoned, shot
at, obstructed, and derailed in the ten-mile stretch between Grass
Lake and Jackson. The assailants would hide in the undergrowth
along the right of way during the night and throw stones, bricks,
and bottles and discharge pistols at the passing trains. Sometimes
they would sally forth to lay rails and logs across the track or throw
switches. Once the passenger train was stoned a little east of Leoni
village and the conductor heard a woman scream and went back
into the cars and a lady handed him a stone which had lodged in
[9]
her lap. A man in the next car was badly hurt by a stone which
hit him in the breast. The conductor went on to find stones in every
car and many windows broken. One night, an engineer later re-
called, his passenger train was stoned three times, twice near Fitch's
house, which stood beside the tracks at Michigan Centre, and once
west of Leoni. On investigation, he found the mark of a brick five
inches long on the tank and a big dent on his boiler. Another night
that summer, the same engineer was shot at as he approached Mich-
igan Centre. He saw a flash of guns, some four or five of them, from
about thirty or forty feet from the tracks and later found the marks
of a ball on one of the engine's feed pipes. This engineer had no
taste for these extra hazards of railroading and soon left his job
with the Michigan Central for one in another state. Another engi-
neer later admitted that he sometimes cowered behind the driving
wheel guards as he rode through the badlands at Michigan
Centre.io
The attacks were varied by placing rails, old ties, and the dis-
carded strap iron rails across the tracks or jamming them in be-
tween the joints of the rails and in the switches. The company
had to run a hand car ahead of the trains between Grass Lake and
Jackson, but the determined assailants would simply hide along-
side the track and then, after the hand car had passed, run out and
do their mischief. Traffic was greatly slowed up and the train
schedules were knocked awry, for each obstruction meant stopping
the train and getting out and clearing the tracks. The run from
Grass Lake to Jackson, which normally took forty-five minutes,
sometimes took as long as an hour and twenty-five minutes. The
crawling pace through the disaffected areas was indeed a necessity
if the trains were not to be run off with great loss of life and
property.
Once that summer, the locomotive Dexter was drawing a rack
train loaded with timber going west in the late afternoon. The con-
ductor, Harmon Spaulding, was in the cab with the engineer and
the fireman. The train slowed down after reaching Leoni but then
speeded up in order to make way for the eastbound passenger train
expected at that time. About a half mile east of Michigan Centre,
as the engine rounded a curve running along the Dry Marsh,
Spaulding sighted a stick of timber lying across the track. The
engineer reversed the engine and then both he and the fireman
[ lO]
jumped for their lives. Spaulding stayed on as the wheels hit the
log, cut it in two, and ground to a stop near the crossing at Mich-
igan Centre. A group of men came up to the stalled engine, among
whom Spaulding recognized Abel Fitch and Ammi Filley, pro-
prietor of the tavern at the Centre. Fitch asked, "Spaulding, what's
the trouble?" Spaulding pointedly told him that "some damned
hyenas" had put a timber on the track and tried to run the train
off. Someone in the crowd shouted they wished they had run it
off. To this, Spaulding replied, "I don't see what you have against
me, as I have not been running on the road for some time." Filley
here chimed in with the remark that they did not care who they
killed and would as lief kill him as any one else. Spaulding then
asked Fitch what their object was and the latter replied that there
had been cattle killed that had not been paid for. Fitch continued,
shouting, "Spaulding, by God, the company can never run this
road in safety until they come out and pay us our price for killing
cattle and damages done to other property." Spaulding then
argued that he couldn't see why the obstruction was put on at
that time, unless it was intended to catch the passenger train, as
they did not know this timber train was coming along. Somebody
ans^vered to the effect that the men who put it there knew their
business. Spaulding, his temper rising, warned the men that if it
had got to that pass that the company could not do business on
the road, he for one Avas ready to come out and defend the road
with arms if necessary. Fitch threw the threat right back and said
they might come on if that was the game— he had two double-
barreled guns and some loaded pistols ready for business and men
enough to use them. At this point, Spaulding judiciously decided
that matters had gone far enough for the moment; the temper of the
crowd seemed to be ugly and a strategic withdrawal was in order.
The train moved on only to find more obstructions ahead, several
bars of strap rail and the skin of a dead cow, and it was Spaulding
who went ahead on foot to remove them.
Yet another form of vicious bedevilment was to set fire to the
piles of company lumber stacked along the right of way for the use
of the locomotives. Late one night in the fall of 1849, three of the
more law-abiding citizens of Leoni were returning from Jackson on
foot along the tracks. They came upon two woodpiles burning
about a mile west of Michigan Centre, and went to work to put
[ 11 ]
the fires out. As the train passed, they stopped it and asked for help,
but got only an unceremonious damning from the jittery, distrust-
ful train crew. As day broke, the little group, still hard at work
putting out the fires, was accosted by three friends somewhat less
concerned with the preservation of the property of the railroad.
They were Fitch, Filley, and Erastus Champlin, a farmer at the
Centre, who explained that they had been hailed by the train crew
back at the Centre and told that the woodpiles were on fire. The
newcomers were content to stand there, taunting and reviling the
fire fighters. Champlin sneered that the train crew was perfectly
right in damning them, they ought to be damned, and damn those
who didn't damn them. Fitch, with wry humor, told them that they
ought to be burnt up with the wood, then the company would pay
their wives half price for the ashes. When one of the conscientious
ones remonstrated that he thought it was his duty to try and save
property when it was being destroyed. Fitch answered that he had
never put anything on the track and would not take anything off
if he saw the cars coming with Brooks and the whole company in
them and "it knocked them all to hell." The fires presumably were
put out, but certainly without the help of the vindictive Michigan
Centreites. At another time. Fitch refused a request for help in
putting out a blazing culvert, saying, "You will have to go out of
this town to get help to put it out."
Not all the mishaps that afflicted the railroad in the summer and
fall of 1849 could be attributed, directly or circumstantially, to the
lawless citizens of Michigan Centre, Leoni, and Grass Lake. Some
were simply accidents due to the rather primitive railroading oper-
ations. Several engines and trains were derailed after running into
cattle grazing on the track, which must have seemed like divine
retribution to Fitch and his friends. The negligence of track crews
doubtless accounted for a number of accidents. Nor had attacks on
the trains disappeared elsewhere along the line of the road. East
and west of Niles and between Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor, occasional
depredations continued to make travel on the Michigan Central a
hazardous venture.^^
Superintendent Brooks was soon convinced of the need for
strong measures to eliminate the threat to the road's operations.
Business during 1849 was none too good in any case, what with the
poor crop, an outbreak of cholera in the state, and the continued
[ 12]
strong competition of the lake boats that took passengers to Chi-
cago around Michigan via the lakes. The attacks by those whom
Brooks could only recognize as marauding felons were driving
passengers to travel around the lakes rather than risk life and limb
on the Michigan Central. ^^
Brooks' first step was to station company police or watchmen
along the track in the troubled area. He then offered a reward of
$500 for the detection and conviction of the criminals who had ob-
structed or would obstruct the railroad, and circulated printed
handbills to that effect along the line. The reward circulars singled
out for special consideration those "sundry evil minded persons,
in and about the village of Leoni," but also extended its terms to
"similar offenders on any part of the road."
These measvires did not prove effective. Not a single offender
was caught nor a single attack discovered in time. If anything, the
presence of the police only put the "sundry evil minded persons"
on their guard and led them to resort to devious maneuver; they
were easily able to spot and outwit the special watch. Once in
August, Brooks and Joy, who directed the legal action, thought
they had cornered their game and were ready to make an example
that would forestall further attacks, but found they had only
caught a tartar. One of the special police, Elwood Cook, went to
the grand jury of Jackson County and made out an information
against one James A. Lester, charging him with obstructing the
railroad. Attorney General Lothrop came out to Jackson from De-
troit and prodded the grand jury into issuing an indictment
against Lester.i^ It seemed as though the law were at last ready to
step in and strike down the enemies of the railroad.
The law, however, reckoned without the determination of Fitch
and Burnett. As soon as Lester was arrested, these two came to his
defense. They unearthed evidence and brought witnesses to show
that it was Cook who had obstructed the railroad and then laid the
crime to Lester in the hope of gaining the $500 reward. Fitch and
Burnett presented these findings to the not wholly unsympathetic
citizens of the Jackson County Grand Jury, which then found a
true bill against Cook for perjury four days after it had indicted
Lester. With the tables thus turned, Joy had to come to Cook's
defense. Neither case, however, came to trial; both were eventually
nolle prossed.i^
[ 13]
This legal defeat convinced Brooks and Joy that they were using
the wrong tactics. They realized that they were not facing a num-
ber of lawless individuals but a body of citizens united in hatred of
the railroad and belief in the justice of their cause. Public senti-
ment in Jackson County was largely ranged against the Michigan
Central and convictions by local juries would be difficult if not
impossible to obtain. Detection of the guilty by ordinary police
methods had proven ineffective. Action against relatively unim-
portant individuals, moreover, would not halt the attacks. The
company faced the necessity of resorting to extraordinary methods
to gain evidence against its enemies and then, of striking at the
head and heart of the opposition, at its leaders, at Fitch, Burnett,
and the more active of their followers. Brooks and Joy set their
sights accordingly.
Fitch had without doubt emerged as the leader of the road's op-
ponents. His position in the community and his opinions had led to
his choice on the committee of three that acted for the citizens as-
sembled in public protest; he had probably been active in organiz-
ing the meetings in the first place. Subsequently, his leadership
was reinforced by the promptings of his conscience, by a self-
imposed trust as advocate of the cause of his friends and neighbors.
It was expressed in his activities on behalf of Lester and his public
defense of the attacks on the railroad and denunciation of the com-
pany's policies. And Superintendent Brooks could only have con-
cluded that Fitch was his nemesis, the gadfly of the opposition,
when in the fall of 1849 he received a letter from him complaining
of the fact that the trains were not stopping at Michigan Centre
to pick up passengers who were giving the usual signal. "Now if
this policy," Fitch warned in closing, "comes from you or your
legal advisers, as did the insulting half pay proposition for killing
cattle, if serious accidents do occur on the road, on your head, and
yours alone, must rest the responsibility." Brooks promptly an-
swered the letter with maddening politeness, if none too helpfully,
by enclosing a handbill with a schedule of train stops. "If any
train has passed your station, which according to it, should stop
there," he explained, "I would be quite obliged for any informa-
tion that will point to a specific train, when I can correct it." With
that reply, the incident was closed; it was in itself not of great
moment, but served to aggravate ill feeling and convince Brooks
[ H]
that Fitch was the instigator of all the company's many troubles.
Abel F. Fitch was an amalgam of shrewdness and idealism that
in most other men happily serves or is made to serve their own ag-
grandizement. In his case, the two ingredients clashed and eventu-
ally led to his downfall. He had come to Michigan with his wife
from his native Connecticut in 1832 and located on the Clinton
Road near Jackson where he opened a tavern which was soon
widely known as the old "Fitch stand." Turning from whiskey to
real estate, he took a profitable part in the speculative orgy of the
middle 1830's. He invested some of his gains in the stock of the
Jackson County Bank and was implicated in the collapse of that
wildcat institution and made the target of several indictments for
conspiracy in 1838. Like most of the businessmen in that frontier
community, he emerged unscathed and unmoved and went on to
become a leading public figure. When Michigan was admitted as a
state in 1837, Fitch, now living in Michigan Centre, a community
he had helped develop to his own profit, was a delegate to the
convention which met to organize the Democratic Party in Jackson
County. He enlarged his public services by organizing a squadron
of cavalry, the Barry Horse Guards, in the state militia in 1843 and
was commissioned its captain. Tenders of political trust by his
neighbors made him Inspector of Elections in Leoni Township and
local representative on the Board of County Canvassers in 1850
and 1851. On April 7, 1851, he was elected Supervisor of Leoni
Township on the Democratic ticket. He lived in style at Michigan
Centre, in a spacious home complete with verandahs and shade
trees, on an estate valued at $8,000 with more than five hundred
acres of orchards, pastures, gardens, a lake, and a deer park, as well
as productive fields. Gifted with a happy family of wife and two
adopted children, numerous friends, and a sense of humor, enjoy-
ing his books, pictures and music— he played the clarionet— this
prosperous country squire, the richest man in the township, could
have proudly and thankfully rested on his laurels as he looked
back at his full forty-three years. ^^
If only he had rested content to be as others in his station— solid
law-abiding citizens, members of respectable churches, and vocal
but realistic exponents of the ideals of justice and right. But Fitch
possessed something of the Yankee conscience that held him to
strict account and would take no tittle of compromise, that made
[ 15]
him a come-outer when silence would have been safer and deeds
could have been dismissed as unnecessary and ineffective. In re-
ligion, he was, according to Burnett who knew him well, a Uni-
versalist, that rather broad humane American sect that was out-
side the pale of organized churchdom and orthodox doctrine. His
belief in God was strong and real as was his faith in His goodness,
though he spoke lightly of His conventional representatives on
earth. Once, defending the men of Leoni, Fitch jokingly laid the
shootings to a local Baptist clergyman, and to a Congregational di-
vine in Jackson whom he called "Priest" Foster, and told how he
had remonstrated with them to no avail, such hardened evil-doers
were they. On the greatest moral question of the day, slavery. Fitch
was on the side of freedom. According to one promoter of the Un-
derground Railroad in Michigan, Fitch was its agent in Michigan
Centre. When he was elected county supervisor, he was sneeringly
classified as a free soil loco by the opposition Whig sheet. And
when "Priest" Foster, the Reverend Gustavus L. Foster of the Con-
gregational Church in Jackson, delivered a sermon denouncing
the Fugitive Slave Law and counselling disobedience, he must have
risen greatly in Fitch's esteem. For when Fitch was arrested and his
person was searched, the only incriminating evidence found on
him was a reprint of the Reverend Foster's "higher law" sermon.
And his subsequent notoriety brought him the dubious acclaim of
eastern newspapers as one of Michigan's most prominent aboli-
tionists.i^
Such was the man who had come forward as the advocate of the
people's rights in the eastern part of Jackson County— a pillar of
society, a shrewd but amiable country squire, and withal, a man of
unorthodox bent, with principles, who did not fear to express and
act on them. And when he spoke out against Brooks' policies, he
was also moved by disinterested principle. "They done wrong," he
later explained, "when they took the poor man's last cow without
remuneration." His only crime was that he had the "indipendance
to tell them [that] to their faces." There is no evidence that Fitch's
own interests were at stake or in any way affected or that he stood
to gain anything personally by his actions. "If money making was
my object," (and Fitch knew well how to achieve that mercenary
end), he wrote his wife, "I could sell myself to them for a great
price, they have already made advances, but they have waked up
[16]
the wrong passenger." Nor is there any evidence, as was later al-
leged by the press, that Fitch was satisfying an old grudge against
the railroad arising from a dispute over payment for a parcel of
his land.^'^
Fitch did not, however, abandon all caution. Defending and
abetting his followers, he never himself took part in any of the at-
tacks. Publicly and before outsiders, he did not even approve,
though he might extenuate the acts of violence that endangered
the lives of innocent people. He preferred himself to fight the
railroad where his influence could be most effective: in the courts,
in the legislature, among his friends in the East whom he asked
to discourage travel on the Michigan Central. And when Lothrop,
now in the service of the railroad, saw Fitch helping in the legisla-
tive fight against the road in Lansing in 1851, the latter was sure
that the former attorney general "had rather see the evel (sic) one
than to have seen me . . . here." ^^
Fitch's adjutant in the campaign against the Michigan Central
was Benjamin F. Burnett, the vocal lawyer from Grass Lake, hon-
orifically known as Judge Burnett. The "Judge" was no more than
a village lawyer, probably self-trained, a litigant as often as he was
counsel, who had garnered neither laurels nor lucre in his profes-
sion. A man of some education and ability, he had also tried his
hand at surveying, but by 1850, his total assets did not exceed
|8oo. His motives in working and clamoring for those who came to
be known as the "railroad conspirators" are not clear. He may
have been something of a maverick, having unsuccessfully run for
county surveyor in 1848 as a Free Soiler. Ambitious, contentious,
and not always scrupulous of legal and conventional niceties, he
may have been fishing in troubled waters when he adopted the
cause of the people. Once having made his choice, however, he
stuck to it through abuse and imprisonment. His later journalistic
crusade on behalf of the "conspirators," in and out of jail, helped
keep the issue "before the people" until a measure of justice was
realized.i^
The third in the village triumvirate was Ammi Filley, brother-
in-law of Fitch and owner of the tavern at Michigan Centre, next
to the tracks, across the road from Fitch's house. His relation to
Fitch, his comparative wealth, and above all, his control of seem-
ingly unlimited supplies of whiskey gave him some standing among
[ 17 ]
the farmers of the locality, if it tarnished his name in the county at
large. He had come to Michigan from Connecticut in 1833, and
after unsuccessful business ventures in and around Jackson and
some notoriety as the father of "The Lost Boy," William Filley,
who disappeared among the Indians, had established himself as
the tavern keeper of Michigan Centre. He was not poor: his prop-
erty was valued at $4,200 and he employed as many as twelve men
on his lands, from which he sent fish and game to the Detroit
market. Angered by the railroad's policy in some altercation over
the building of fences, he nursed his hurt into vindictiveness and
unrestrainedly denounced the road, prodded his friends and em-
ployees to violent attacks, and even personally put his hand to
stoning the trains and obstructing the tracks.^o
It was Filley's tavern that served as the natural headquarters
where discontent was expressed, allayed, and fortified over the bar
or at the card table or the nine-pin alley outside. Here grievances
were loudly aired and anger fanned and the escapades hatched,
more often than not under the influence of the liquor which Filley
had ordered his bartenders to dispense so freely. "They generally
drank by platoons," one observer reported of the almost nightly
gatherings at Filley's. And if this popular rendezvous by the tracks
was later denominated a "low country tavern," it certainly was the
poor man's club in Leoni Township.21
Here Orlando Williams, the stone mason, bibulously boasted of
his feats, imaginary and real, in getting back at the railroad. Here
Bill Corwin, the shiftless teamster and occasional barkeep, who
took his pay in liquid kind, got up his bravado for destructive
sorties. Here the Price boys, Eben and Richard, blacksmiths by
trade, joined in the roistering that sometimes led to drunken
brawls and sometimes to alcoholic feats of derring-do. Here Eras-
tus Champlin, farmer, and his two sons, Lyman and Willard,
damned the railroad and swore vengeance. And here, too, came
the railroad agents to gather their evidence of crimes committed
and planned. Sometimes, too, the boys would journey to the tavern
at Leoni village for a "ball" or to some "grocery" or hotel at Jack-
son where the usual round of quaffing, boasts, threats, and forays
would be repeated.
During the long winter of 1849-1850 or, in railroad parlance,
after the close of the season, activity and talk abated with the cold
[ 18]
weather. Once the lakes were frozen, through traffic fell off greatly
if not completely, and the occasions and targets for depredations
did not present themselves. But once the thaws came and the trains
began to run again, the battle was renewed by both sides with in-
creased vigor.22
During the spring, summer, and fall of 1850, resentment over
more cattle killed and Superintendent Brooks' half-pay policy
seemed to grow and intensify. Resentment was soon translated into
threats and threats into violence. The burden of complaint was
the old one: the company would never run over the road in safety
until it paid up for property destroyed; if they could not get their
revenge in one way, they would get it in another; they would let
the company know there was "a. God in Israel; the company would
be glad bye and bye to pay up for cattle or if they did not they
would catch hell." Lyman Champlin angrily threatened that if
they did not pay for the old gray mare they killed, he would keep
the railroad wood and fences on fire. In June, Burnett had a cow
killed at Grass Lake and when a neighbor joked him for not com-
mencing suit and getting pay for it, he declared he would have
full pay or full satisfaction before he receipted for the critter. Bill
Corwin, in the course of a conversation with a neighbor, pulled out
of his pocket a printed pamphlet called "The Railroad Dream"
and read aloud of a poor man's cow being killed and how he had
sued the company and got nothing. "By Jesus," Corwin exclaimed,
"is the people going to stand this? No, by Jesus, they'll catch it
before long."
Sometimes, tongues loosened by alcohol talked in a kind of des-
perate confidence of a great coup or some ingenious plan to destroy
the road at one blow. Jack Freeland once freely and openly de-
scribed a plan for placing powder on the rails with a fuse running
from it, so timed as to explode when the trains passed. Another
time, Ebenezer Farnham, a dentist in Jackson who was as much
given to drink as to the practice of his profession and who sympa-
thized with the plight of the Leonians, emerged from a "grocery"
in that town, collared a passing friend, pulled him into an alley,
and said, "I want to tell you something for I believe you to be a
pretty damned good fellow." The friend thought the doctor was
pretty well corned as he went on: "The railroad— hell and damna-
tion, the railroad will all be blown up in less than a month. . ."
[ 19]
The happy dentist gloated in drunken glee, "5 10,000 all gone to
hell in one minute and I've got the tools to do it," and hung on to
his listener for dear life. Orlando Williams promised the assem-
bled company at Morrison's grocery in Jackson that he would tear
up the track from Michigan Centre to Leoni to make the com-
pany pay for cattle killed. At Hadden's grocery in Jackson, ^Vil-
liams confidentially offered a fellow barfly a chance to make $500
by burning the railroad company's steamers, the Mayflower and
the Atlantic, and bringing them to the water's edge. At Filley's
one day, between drinks, Williams boasted that the company
would be glad to eat salt out of their hands in a few days and that
it should be made to pay double value for cattle killed. Bill Cor-
win almost matched Williams' big talk about what he was going
to do to the company. Once in Jackson, he had swapped horses
with Caleb Loud, dealer in "Loud's Celebrated Ointment" for
horses, and the two were riding around the sheds by the railroad
depot. Loud remarked that a fire there would sweep the whole
lower town. Corwin put his hand on Loud's arm and said, "Just
remember my word, there will be one here before long." Corwin
also felt impelled to seek new recruits in back of Morrison's gro-
cery to tear up the track and burn the depot at Jackson, promising
large sums of money.
None of these grandiose plans for destroying the railroad ever
materialized. But attacks similar to those of the season of 1849 con-
tinued to harass the operation of trains between Grass Lake and
Jackson. The summer and fall of 1850 were punctuated with the
familiar shootings, stonings, obstructions, and burnings.
More than one evening, as a bunch of the boys were gathered at
Filley's, someone would suggest that they go and give them a few
stones or "give them hell again tonight," and a group would sally
out to stone the trains amidst the startled cries of the passengers.
One dark night in August, Filley, Jacob Wolliver, his devil or
handyman, and the two Price boys got an ax and went out to
throw the cars off. About three-quarters of a mile west of Leoni,
where the tracks crossed a culvert over a six-foot bank, they broke
the chairs that held the rails in place and moved them to one side.
They then went off forty or sixty rods and lay down and waited.
An eastbound train, pulled by the locomotive Gazelle came along
and ran into the open track. The Gazelle ran off and capsized and
[20]
the train crews worked many hours getting her back on. Filley later
described the incident as good clean sport: how when they went
out cooning, the road was the best ground to go on; the Gazelle
was a big coon they caught the other night but they had lost its
tail, "but damn 'em," they will have that soon; it had taken a good
many men to get the coon on the track again, and he did not want
anything better than an ax and a crow bar to shoot a coon with.
Fitch, too, indulged in his characteristic humor when he told how
the Gazelle had got dry and, having no pump aboard, was forced
to go down into the marsh for water.
During the state fair at Ann Arbor in September, 1850, a conduc-
tor later recalled, it seemed almost impossible to get through Leoni
and Michigan Centre at night without some trouble. This was de-
spite the fact that all train crews had been warned to proceed
slowly and with great caution through these places. One night dur-
ing the fair, this conductor was running a train west and at Grass
Lake told the engineer he could run to Michigan Centre at normal
speed. Soon a passenger asked him why they were running faster
than usual and the conductor explained: "There is no danger; we
have the head devils on board, and the gang will not hurt them."
And he pointed down the car to where Fitch and Filley were
sitting, on their way back from a visit to the fair. 23
That same month, a group from the Centre had gone to Leoni
village to help Ephraim Barrett in his law suit against the railroad
company for damages for a cow that had been killed. Barrett had
been offered $15 and would have liked to accept that sum, but his
neighbors urged him not to. The suit at Leoni was fruitless, and
the men returned to Michigan Centre embittered. After their re-
turn, Filley and Wolliver went out and stuck a tie into the culvert
west of Fitch's house so that it would strike the lamp on the next
engine that came along. They also put a mudsill across the track
nearby, and then retired from the scene. The freight train was duly
halted and Fitch and Filley came up and innocently inquired what
the matter was. Receiving no enlightenment from one member of
the train crew, which was busy removing the obstructions, they re-
peated their question to another, and got only abuse in reply. "You
damned hounds," the train hand cursed, "every one of you should
be hung up." Now riled. Fitch and Filley went around to the rear
of the train and put on the brakes. The two then went up the track
[21 ]
a way and hugely enjoyed watching the sparks fly from the wheels
as the train struggled up a grade.
In October, the engine Rocket ran off at Michigan Centre after
it had hit an open switch. Although the engine tore up the side
track it was not upset, but it took about seven hours to get it back
on the tracks. With each successful attack on the road, Filley took
great delight in giving the company credit in some imaginary
ledger against the unpaid balance for cattle killed— $i for each
stoning and proportionately greater amounts for more substantial
losses. Fitch, too, made estimates of losses the company had suffered
and reckoned that the cattle killed between Grass Lake and Jack-
son had already cost the company about I400 per head. These
vengeful calculations also included mishaps on the Michigan Cen-
tral with which the boys from the Centre had nothing to do, al-
though they were later charged with them. Two such accidents
must be laid entirely to chance or negligence. In June, 1850, a bag-
gage car carrying United States mail took fire and was destroyed a
little east of Jackson. Again, a train was thrown off the track at
Leoni because a track crew had removed some of the rail at that
point and the engineer had not seen their signal in time to stop.^^
Fitch, except for the time when he had reversed the brakes on
the stalled train, continued to confine his activities to those of
public advocate. In Michigan Centre and in Jackson, he made no
secret of his unyielding opposition to the railroad's policy and of
his opinion that the trouble the road was having was fully de-
served; that it was the only means of bringing the company to
terms; that the depredations would divert travel from the road and
"bring them to their milk." He justified the actions of his friends
with an illustration: suppose a man owned a large tract of land
near the town and the village cattle troubled him, he could dig
pits and get the cattle into them— the land being his own, they
could not help themselves— the owners of the cattle, however, had
a right to take the law into their own hands and that would be
their only remedy. Fitch's analogy is pertinent only if one remem-
bers that cattle in that sparsely settled and unfenced country were
regarded at law as free commoners and allowed to run at large.^s
At times. Fitch not altogether jokingly laid the violence to the
railroad police, adding that he would like to catch the spies on his
land and "fix 'em out." In the same breath, he admitted that ston-
[22]
ing was "mild means" his friends were using and boasted that "the
company was nearly used up now and had gone down with only
fifteen passengers on one train." When someone accused Fitch him-
self of stoning the cars as they passed his house, he replied with
brazen humor that it was "a damned lie" as he was upstairs looking
out of the window at the attack.
To his respectable friends. Fitch talked with more caution and
some hypocrisy. That fall, Alonzo Bennett, a merchant of Jackson,
warned Fitch that the boys had already gone far enough and that
a few words from him or a little labor would stop the depredations.
Fitch replied that he knew that what the boys w^ere doing was
wrong and that they must look out. But, he went on, he had also
told them to get pay for their cattle if they could, and if they could
not, they must lay their plans so as not to get caught at it. He con-
cluded piously that if the company would only pay full value,
"they would have God almighty on their side and be prosperous."
About the same time, when the Jackson American Citizen edi-
torially condemned both the company for not paying full value
and the residents of Leoni for taking the law into their own hands,
Fitch personally assured the editor, Charles V. De Land, of his
"perfect sympathy" with those sentiments.-^
Fitch's advocacy of their cause and the failure of the company
to catch any of the offenders gave the Leonians a feeling of con-
fidence. Bound together by their grievances and sense of wrong,
they were further united in a community of interest by the un-
hampered successes of their campaign of retaliation and by the
conviction that in Fitch they had a protector and influential inter-
cessor with the powers that be. They knew that Fitch was on their
side, that he had friends in high political place, that he had a
"long head." They were certain "he would stick by them as long
as he had any blood left in his body." Too, they were sure that they
themselves would stick by one another and find shelter from the
law in their common fraternity. They bragged of standing by one
another "to swear any hostile witnesses to hell." As Bill Corwin
put it: "They could prove that [a] horse was a blacksmith shop
and every hair on him a candle if necessary." They counted on
their ability to get witnesses of their own to clear them of any
criminal complicity. They felt certain that no jury in Jackson
County would ever convict them for any act against the railroad.
[23]
All these acts and declarations did not, however, add up to a
conspiracy within the legal meaning of the term, as was later
charged by the state. There was no organized gang with consti-
tuted leadership that deliberately planned attacks on the railroad
for a clearly conceived common end. The opposition to the Michi-
gan Central in Jackson County was rather a loose and informal
affair, with an open and reckless impulsiveness, entirely lacking in
secrecy, compounded of common resentment, illegal intent, alco-
holic spontaneity, and criminal acts. It verged on conspiracy but
never quite jelled into the necessary consistency of purpose,
method, and execution.
This communal hostility to the railroad also had its roots in com-
plaints other than those over the destruction of livestock. The ad-
ditional sources of friction did not loom so large in the minds of
those who frequented Filley's tavern or went out to stone the trains
from Fitch's peach orchard. But elsewhere in Jackson County and
in the state at large, they created strong resentment against the
railroad, which together with the ill will engendered by the killing
of cattle, was the basis of a broad antirailroad movement that
sought publicly and legally to regulate and curb the powers of the
offending corporation.
Inevitable sources of friction were the condemnation proceed-
ings for lands taken over for the right of way, stations, warehouses
and shops, as well as the contract jobs for the construction of fences
along the line of the road. Farmers invariably found the company's
offers too low and the resultant court proceedings only served as
irritants. Fences remained unbuilt or in some cases were even torn
down. Even the man of God at Marshall, John D. Pierce, refused to
build fence at the company's price of 5i-75 per one hundred rails.
In the mind of one young farm laborer, the chief subject of dis-
cussion at Michigan Centre during the many months he worked
there was the company's wage policies. He remembered that there
was something said about the railroad being a monopoly, and that
a feeling was getting up against them because they hired help very
cheap, did not pay wages enough, and had a tendency to render
wages low. Once Fitch, elaborating on the complaints against the
company, catalogued the whole list of its sins. He reiterated his
charge that it was "a damned monopoly." He said he thought "the
road was damned poorly managed and that a boy ten years old
[24]
would manage it better than Superintendent Brooks." He thought
the chief engineer in charge of construction would be a better
superintendent than Brooks, for he thought the company ought to
pay for cattle killed. Fitch said the road carried produce from Niles
as cheap as it did from Jackson, and that it had fixed the price
of men at I500, referring to the amount paid to the widow of a
man who had been killed by a train the year before at Galesburg.^^
It was the charges of unfair freight rates and monopoly practices
that were taken up most widely in the state. Jackson County ship-
pers had complained of high rates back in 1846 when the state had
owned the railroad. Then, in 1848, some shippers in Kalamazoo
had protested to Superintendent Brooks against what they thought
was unfair discrimination in the rates for carrying their produce to
Detroit: the rates from Niles to Detroit were less than those from
Kalamazoo to Detroit, a shorter haul by some fifty miles. Brooks, in
a published pamphlet, justified the cheaper long-haul rate by the
necessity of meeting water-shipping competition at Niles, which
had access to Lake Michigan via the St. Joseph River. The cheaper
rates and hence the greater volume of business from Niles, he
argued, actually enabled the company to charge lower rates from
Kalamazoo than would otherwise have been possible. In 1849, after
the railroad had been finished to New Buffalo on the lake, the
Whig American Citizen of Jackson, with no desire to ignore a pop-
ular issue, took up the hue and cry. Its editor fulminated against
the "dastardly course" the railroad had pursued in charging the
citizens of the interior of the state nearly double the price charged
those of other states for half the distance. Brooks evidently was
fighting the lake shipping companies for the Chicago and Mil-
waukee trade with the weapon of cheaper long hauls. But the
Jackson editor could only see the "enormous charges" of the "Cen-
tral railroad monopoly" which in his mind were responsible for
the lower prices that local products brought and the bad state of
business in general in Jackson County. He denounced the road as
a "shameful monopoly" and a "humbug concern," and repeatedly
urged the necessity of a connecting line from Jackson to the Mich-
igan Southern Railroad at Adrian to give Jackson shippers another
outlet to the east, at Monroe on Lake Erie, and thus break the
monopoly of the Michigan Central.^s
The accumulated grievances snowballed into a strong anti-
[ 25 ]
monopoly sentiment. Again and again, in the press, in the legis-
lature, at meetings of citizens, and in Filley's tavern, the railroad
was attacked as a corporate monopoly whose greed would not be
satisfied until it had gobbled up the wealth of the state and the
freedom of the people. Fitch and his friends, as we have seen, did
not hide their feelings about the absolute corruption of this abso-
lute economic power; one of the company's spies, in order to gain
their confidence, found it advisable to talk "against the Road" and
call it a monopoly. An angr)' citizen wTote a letter to the American
Citizen, which, echoing the editorial opinion of the paper, rang
the changes on the theme and demanded to know how long the
people would suffer the railroad to dominate them. At Coldwater
and at Napoleon, the citizens met to protest against the monopoly
of the Michigan Central Railroad. In the legislature at Lansing,
the drift of public opinion was crystallized in the warning that
"the Michigan Central Railroad Company may possibly, sooner
or later, discover that they did not make the State of Michigan,
but that the State of Michigan made the company." -^
Opposition to the Michigan Central's privileged position must
have been strengthened by a decision of the Supreme Court of
Michigan in July, 1851. A farmer in Wayne County had brought
suit for damages against the company for horses that had been
killed by a train. The county court sent the case up to the Supreme
Court for adjudication, possibly as part of the same plan Super-
intendent Brooks had offered to the citizens of Jackson County.
The court decided. Judge Abner Pratt of Marshall writing the
opinion, that the railroad was not bound by its charter or the
common law to fence the right of way for the protection of other
persons' domestic animals, and that inasmuch as the operation of
trains was entirely lawful, it could not be held liable for accidental
damage to property where no negligence on its part was proven.
On the face of it, this decision seemed to bear out all of Fitch's
accusations against the company and the courts. As one citizen ex-
pressed it in a letter to the newspaper: "Railroad gold bought
[the] decision." And even the Democratic paper in Jackson,
though accepting the court's decision, felt moved to criticize the
company for not going beyond the law and paying fair value for
cattle killed in a newly settled state where the farmers could not
possibly have enclosed pasturages for their livestock.^^
[26 ]
Judge Pratt, in denying the validity of one contention of the
plaintiffs, suggested a method of redress. He held that the broader
argument that the Michigan Central's charter "contains powers
and privileges which were improvidently granted by the legisla-
ture . . ." had no bearing on the case at hand. In thus limiting the
competence of the court, he was suggesting that what the law-
makers had given, only the lawmakers could take away. This con-
clusion, which the opponents of the road had more than sensed
heretofore, was now driven convincingly home. Their future
course of action was ineluctably fixed— a campaign to amend or
even annul the railroad's charter, and in the name of justice, free-
dom, and competition open the way for the general incorporation
of all railroads under a system of public regulation. ^^
The charter that the legislature had granted, or more precisely
sold, to the Michigan Central Railroad in 1846 had indeed con-
ferred monopoly power in perpetuity on the corporation. Though
not without protest on democratic grounds against the lordly
grant, on the one hand, and powerful financial pressures for it,
on the other, the legislature had to a degree acted under the influ-
ence of an older conception in creating a corporation with
monopoly privileges. It had enfranchised a body politic to act for
a desirable public end where the state had been unable to achieve
that end. The corporation was, in theory certainly, an arm of the
state, not yet wholly a mere business form, and as such entitled
to the fullest measure of power and protection to enable it to
realize its specific corporate aims. The rapid development of eco-
nomic forces, the American conception of equality of opportunity
for all, and the instinct that the state had no interests aside from
those of the people soon brought this mercantilistic conception of
the corporation under attack. Monopoly was reviled as oppres-
sive and destructive of the rights of freeborn citizens; it stifled the
development of a new country; only regulation by the people and
competition through the multiplication of corporations were con-
sonant with the ideals of this new-found land of liberty.^-
John D. Pierce was voicing this point of view in 1849 when he
coupled his attack on the railroad's policies with the contention
that the legislature had no authority to confer on a corporation
"rights, the exercise of which would bring them into daily collision
and conflict with [the] citizens." In other words, he was arguing
[27]
that the actions of the company since its incorporation had been
such as to invalidate its franchise. The next year, Pierce carried his
fight from the newspapers to the constitutional convention where
he served as a delegate from Calhoun County. He introduced the
resolution which was later written into the article on corporations
of the revised constitution, making possible the formation of cor-
porations under general laws and forbidding the legislature to pass
any individual acts of incorporation except municipal. This pro-
vision, while not affecting those special charters already granted,
was designed to prevent the issuance of corporate charters with
special or monopoly privileges usually wrung from the legislature
by political and financial pressures. It was also prompted by dis-
gust with the dogfights of opjDOsing lobbies which besieged the
legislature at each session, requesting new or protecting old char-
ters, amidst loud charges of corruption. Thus, by constitutional
action, the status of the corporation in Michigan was transformed
from that of a privileged arm of the state to an ordinary business
form accessible to all qualified applicants. While the state thereby
lost its power of directing economic enterprise to desirable ends,
it retained, in principle, its power to regulate business in the
name of the public welfare.^^
The new constitution as adopted also forbade the renewal or
extension of corporate charters previously granted and removed
the thirty year period of grace within which these charters could
not be amended. With no success, Delegate Pierce tried to make a
general incorporation law for all business enterprise part of the
constitution in order to give positive effect to the mandatory pro-
vision. And he fought generally, though in vain, to curb the powers
of the corporate monopolies. He insisted on holding up the public
interest as the supreme criterion of the right to a corporate exist-
ence. "When a charter becomes detrimental to the public interest,"
he asserted in the constitutional debates, "it ceases to answer the
professed end of its creator, and may and ought to be repealed. . .
Those vested rights, created by charters, must yield, when they
come in conflict with the supreme law— the public good." Re-
membering his own and others' losses of cattle. Pierce also intro-
duced a resolution providing that "In all cases where damage is
done by any corporation to private property, the corporation shall
pay to the full amount of such damage." When this resolution was
[28]
buried in committee, Pierce later offered an amendment to the
article on corporations to the same effect, but that too failed of
adoption.^-i
The railroad interests were also able to fend off regulatory at-
tacks in the legislatures of 1850 and 1851. These attacks were led
by Michael Shoemaker, who owned a flour mill in Michigan Centre
and represented Jackson County in the state senate. As chairman
pro tem of the senate and chairman of its committee on incorpora-
tions, he was a figure of some importance in Democratic councils.
Twice, in 1850 and in 1851, he introduced a bill to provide for
police regulations along the line of the railroads, requiring the
companies to fence their roads, build cattle guards at crossings
and maintain warning signs there, and put bells on the locomo-
tives. Shoemaker stated that the object of his bill was to "protect
our farmers from the loss of their cattle by being run over by
trains of cars." The opponents of the bill necessarily approved of
this worthy aim but insisted that it infringed on vested rights, de-
spite the opinion of the attorney general to the contrary. The bill
passed the senate twice but was twice defeated in the lower house
by the influence of the railroad lobbyists.^^
Fitch, too, spent two or three weeks in Lansing in 1851 as self-
appointed lobbyist for the people, using whatever influence he had
to support any measures that would put pressure on the Michigan
Central. He undoubtedly worked hard to get Shoemaker's bill
passed. He joined forces with those who were trying to get a rail-
road built from Jackson to Adrian to give Jackson an alternate
outlet for its products. The completion of this railroad, which had
been chartered in 1836 as the Palmyra and Jacksonburg and had
been built only to Tecumseh, had been required of the Michigan
Southern by the terms of its original charter. The Southern, how-
ever, had done nothing, and the Jackson interests, led by Amos
Root, merchant, now in 1851 exerted themselves to get it to carry
out this part of its charter. For its part, the Southern had no par-
ticular interest in the Jackson Branch, as the projected road was
known. But it was now engaged in a race with the Michigan Cen-
tral to push through to Chicago, and the two rival roads were
fighting each other in the legislatures of Michigan, Indiana, and
Illinois. John Stryker, chief of the Southern Railroad lobby, ac-
cordingly held out the bait of the Jackson Branch to the Jackson
[29]
County people to get their support for his own bill to allow the
Southern to leave the state of Michigan on the road to Chicago.
Root, Fitch, and the others were not loath to give Stryker this sup-
port and use the Southern Railroad as a cudgel in their own fight
with the Michigan Central. ^s
Stryker was not able to muster the necessary two-thirds majority
for his amendment to the Southern's charter. He then shifted his
strategy and backed a general railroad incorporation law requiring
only an ordinary majority vote, planning to get the connection
with Indiana under such a law. The Jackson foes of the Michigan
Central wholeheartedly supported this move, it being entirely in
accord with their own plans too. Shoemaker of Jackson reported
out such a bill from his committee, but here too, the Central forces
under the leadership of James F. Joy were able to defeat it.^^
The Michigan Central Railroad, it seems, had much greater suc-
cess in coping with its opponents in Lansing than with those in
Jackson County who were determined to bring it to terms by vio-
lence. The summer of 1850 had come and almost gone and Super-
intendent Brooks had not as yet been able to apprehend any of the
criminals. The situation became, if not desperate, measurably ag-
gravated as the railroad's troubles were bruited about in the East
and began to drive travel to the lake steamers. The whole task of
ferreting out the depredators and collecting enough evidence to
convict them required more attention than Brooks could spare
from his large duties. Different and more thorough methods would
be necessary to breach the protective community-consciousness of
the men of Michigan Centre, Leoni, and Grass Lake.
Brooks' first step was to hire, some time in the summer of 1850,
Darius Clark of Marshall to undertake the job of catching the
felons. Clark was an experienced business man, a member of the
firm of Nash and Clark of Marshall, contractors who had done
construction work for the railroad in western Michigan. He was a
quiet, likable man, not hitherto mixed up in the controversy, and
unknown to the "conspirators." He got to work in August and
hired a number of agents who were to operate secretly at Michigan
Centre. Some were friends or employees of his from Marshall who
went to the Centre and worked there in one fictitious capacity or
another. Others were men from Jackson and vicinity who were put
to watching the tracks at two dollars a night in the troubled area.
[30]
Still others went to the Centre on a full-time basis and lived and
worked there, watching, talking, listening, drinking, and making
reports. Clark also used the railroad's money, men, and facilities
to seek out persons who had lived in or near Michigan Centre
during the trouble and had since moved away, in order to get them
to tell what they knew.^^
In a short time, Clark was directing a small organization of secret
agents or spies, or "colonists," as John Murray Forbes, president of
the railroad, liked to call them, who met their chief at intervals in
Jackson, Marshall, or Detroit and made reports and affidavits as to
their findings. Clark reported on his progress directly to Brooks in
Detroit, sometimes in person and sometimes by messenger. His
written reports show that he worked slowly and cautiously but
determinedly. "Time and deliberation will surely do it," he ad-
vised Brooks. "There is nothing gained in pushing this thing fast,"
he assured his anxious superior, and kept stressing the need for
absolute secrecy on the part of all concerned.^^
Not being a lawyer, Clark got the judge of the Circuit Court of
Jackson County and ipso facto a member of the Supreme Court of
Michigan, Abner Pratt, of Marshall, to help him to evaluate the
evidence. Pratt, who was to write the Supreme Court decision ab-
solving the railroad of liability for property damage little more
than a year hence, took hold of the matter "with his usual energy."
By the middle of August, he was assuring Clark that he had enough
evidence for a strong case, with the latter insisting cautiously that
it was not enough. Soon Pratt was saying— with what degree of
judicial impartiality is difficult to surmise— that "if it is all right he
will guarantee a conviction." Clark still demurred: "I am not so
confident yet." By the end of August, as the evidence kept coming
in, the judge told Clark that conspiracy charges were the best
method of attack and actually drew up the form of an indictment
for conspiracy against Fitch and the others, and sent it to the
prosecuting attorney of Jackson County to be used before the
grand jury at the proper time. By November, Clark was "in hopes"
that he had sufficient evidence to spring the trap, and halt the in-
creasing number of accidents that now plagued the trains in the
vicinity of Michigan Centre. First, however, he wrote Brooks that
he would like to show him what evidence he had so far, as though
to have Brooks dispel whatever doubts he, Clark, might have,
[31 ]
adding that he expected more "would be brought out on a trial." ^^
Clark's instinctive caution got the upper hand and no arrests
were made at the time. A new and unlocked for contingency, the
destruction by fire of the freight depot in Detroit, changed the
whole aspect of the case and demanded further and more thorough
investigation. In any case, a large part of the evidence thus far ob-
tained was indirect, consisting of admissions by Fitch and his
friends to the agents, and hence highly vulnerable in court. The
amount of direct proof was understandably small, in view of the
secrecy in which the road's enemies cloaked their operations. The
entire investigation, moreover, was greatly hampered when one of
Clark's chief agents was early discovered and exposed as a spy.
All the other agents were then sooner or later compromised as the
Centreites came to suspect anybody and everybody who had not for
years been a resident of the community. And the doubled caution
of Fitch and his fellows made the procurement of further direct
evidence by other spies commensurately difficult. Fitch, undoubt-
edly the brains of the group, became exceedingly cautious, "know-
ing as [he] did that large rewards had been ofEered for [his] convic-
tion and that secret spyes were laying in wait for [him]."^i
It was at this point that William D. Wescott, the exposed spy,
greatly aided Clark by making available new sources of informa-
tion. Wescott was one of the first agents that Clark hired and at
the time, in August, 1850, was a clerk in a hotel in Jackson, about
to take a job as a guard in the state prison there. He had behind
him a nondescript career as barkeep and unsuccessful business man
in Nankin, Wayne County, and up north at Mackinac, where he
had been under indictment for forgery. Of shrewd though limited
intelligence, he had probably been referred to Clark by the rail-
road officials in Jackson because he had lived in Michigan Centre
in the spring of the year and still went there on Sundays to see his
wife who boarded with her father.
Clark first had to get Wescott temporarily released from his
prison job. Brooks wrote Justus Goodwin, superintendent of the
prison, asking for Wescott's services for the railroad "for a couple
of weeks or so" without revealing the purpose beyond the assur-
ance that "he would be of most essential service to us, and prob-
ably to the public, in the furtherance of some matters of public
interest as well as of the interest of the company." Goodwin oblig-
[32 ]
ingly released Wescott, pointedly informing Brooks that the
"scoundrels" in Leoni Township had aroused nothing but indig-
nation in Jackson. Clark thereupon put Wescott on the payroll
as a secret agent at S40 a month, even though he could not alto-
gether overcome his distrust of the man. He had not been too well
impressed in talking to him and doubted his integrity. He sus-
pected him of "playing a double game" and did not like the fact
that Wescott "call[ed] for money the first thing." ^2
Wescott went to Michigan Centre on August 19 to live with his
father-in-law. He spent his days talking and drinking with the boys
and "laying out at nights" in Fitch's and Filley's yards, along the
track, or eavesdropping under Fitch's windows. He let it be known
that he was taking a long rest at Michigan Centre because he was
tired of tending bar and "it was too hard for him to be up so much
nights." At the tavern, he talked against the railroad, called it a
monopoly, and advertised his hard feelings in order to gain his
listeners' confidence. Fitch called him "one of the boys" and the
accolade was confirmed by a drink on the part of all present. Wes-
cott was soon on quite intimate terms with Fitch; the latter invited
him to his parlor to eat fruit and drink cherry whiskey and brandy
and confided all that had been done and all that was planned
against the railroad. He had so far advanced in the good graces of
Fitch that the latter actually proposed to him to take over and run
Filley's tavern. Fitch assured him he would make money and said
it would accommodate him and his friends to have it kept up bet-
ter than Filley kept it.
Wescott was thus in a position to gather much information for
his employer on the sentiments expressed, the crimes committed,
and those planned at the Centre. He must have greatly endeared
himself to Clark and Brooks when he warned of a projected "grand
smash" at the time of the state fair in Ann Arbor in September,
1850. He reported to Clark that Fitch had told him that he and the
boys were determined to bring the company to terms before the
state fair was over; that he. Fitch, meant to show the people of
Michigan that the feeling against the company did not exist alone
in Leoni by throwing off the cars all the way from west of Jackson
to east of Grass Lake; that they hoped to kill 100 to 150 passengers
during the fair and if that failed, to burn the railroad depots at
Detroit, Ann Arbor, Jackson, and Niles. He further revealed that
[33 ]
Filley planned to throw off a train at the Dry Marsh where the
dead passengers would be buried so deep in the mud that there
would be no need of coffins or sexton. The whole murderous plan,
according to Wescott, was to be climaxed by a demand of $100,000
blackmail from the company to call off the attack. Wescott's hor-
rendous report led to immediate action. A special train was sent
out before the fair began and nearly a hundred special watchmen
were stationed along the track at the threatened points. Clark and
Brooks were certain that this timely action forced the conspirators
to give up their evil design and credited Wescott with saving the
railroad from destruction.
It was not long before Wescott's real purpose at the Centre was
discovered. Once or twice he had narrowly escaped being caught
on his nightly prowls, but his luck ran out after he had been at the
Centre not more than a few weeks. One evening early in Septem-
ber, Benjamin Gleason, who was a friend of Fitch and who worked
at the state prison, came down to the Centre to see him. Fitch,
Filley, Wescott, and a fourth were playing euchre in the parlor.
Gleason called Fitch out of the room and told him that he had
seen a letter at the prison in which Brooks asked for Wescott's
services and that he was probably a railroad spy. Fitch went back
and called Filley into consulation. Wescott sensed that something
was up. When Fitch and Filley returned the game was resumed, but
there was a coolness in the air and they did not play euchre much
longer that night.
A few days later, Gleason came down once more and this time
produced Brooks' letter to Goodwin. It was not certain proof of
Wescott's treachery but showed that he was working for the rail-
road in some capacity. Gleason summarily accused Wescott of
being "a damned railroad spy" who ought to have his throat cut.
Filley confronted the suspect the next day with Gleason's evidence
but he coolly denied he was a spy. Fitch called Wescott to his house
and asked him if Brooks had employed him as a spy. When he
denied the accusation. Fitch asked him to explain away the letter.
Wescott, thinking fast, answered that Brooks had hired him to
trace a trunk that one of the railroad's patrons claimed had been
lost. Fitch was incredulous and said the company had bigger busi-
ness to look after and that the letter was proof enough for him
that he, Wescott, was a spy. The latter then suggested, with more
[34]
audacity than cunning, that Fitch go to Detroit and check the
matter with Brooks.
Knowledge of Brooks' letter sufficed to convince most of the
patrons of Filley's that Wescott was a spy. They avoided him but
did not fail to let him know in one way or another what they would
do to spies in general and him in particular if he were ever to
testify against them. Fitch threatened to shoot him on the stand
and if he couldn't do it himself, "by God, he had friends enough
that would do it." The boys added their own threats to Fitch's
and declared that they would shoot a spy as quick as they would a
dog. Later, they discussed a plan to bludgeon Wescott to death and
made sure that Joshua Wells, Wescott's brother-in-law, overheard
them. Wells, as expected, carried the news to Wescott and the lat-
ter immediately informed his employers that his life was in danger.
He even told Clark that he himself had crawled under the floor of
Filley's tavern and heard his life auctioned off for $100. Clark,
realizing that the man's usefulness was at an end, gave him a job
in the depot at Detroit. This did not prevent Wescott from carry-
ing on officiously as a self-styled detective, but by March, 1851,
even Clark had had enough of him. He asked that Wescott be
given something to do that would "keep him off the railroad en-
tirely," giving as his reasons that the fellow just could not get
along with the other men working on the case. A little later, Clark
kept the irrespressible Wescott from making a trip east in search
of information because he felt that his lack of discretion might
harm the whole investigation.^^
Before Wescott had left the Centre, he had been able to do a
great service for his employers. He persuaded two young men of the
place to come out and tell all they knew on the promise of good
jobs with the company. In September, he got Horace Caswell, a
young laborer who had never had more than odd jobs at the Centre,
to go to work at the railroad depot in Detroit. Two months later,
Caswell was making out affidavits to help build up the company's
case against the conspirators. In November, Wescott told his young
brother-in-law, Joshua Wells, of his own work with the railroad
and promised him he should have a good situation if he would
come out and be a man. Wells accepted the offer and was also
placed in the Detroit depot, and soon thereafter began to provide
Clark with valuable evidence. Both he and Caswell were able to
[35]
incriminate Fitch himself by telling how he had given them his
pistols to use in shooting at a train, although they never had ac-
tually discharged them.
One other young resident of the Centre, however, proved not so
pliable as Wells and Caswell and was to suffer for his obduracy.
Miner Lay cock, scarcely twenty-one years old, also jumped at the
opportunity to go to work for the railroad in Detroit, but when he
found out it meant betraying his friends at Michigan Centre, re-
fused to talk and was summarily dismissed. He later was arrested
with the other "railroad conspirators" and spent six months in jail.
Of all those to turn state's evidence, Jacob Wolliver delivered
the most damaging blows to Fitch and company. Wolliver had
lived at Leoni during the summer of 1850 and worked for Filley
most of the time, tending bar, trapping pigeons, fishing for pickerel,
and doing odd jobs. Filley called him his "devil" and had always
found him ready to go out and tear up a piece of track or stone
the trains, especially after he had been fortified by some of Filley's
whiskey, to which he had free access with no questions asked. Along
about the fall of the year, Wolliver succumbed to the blandish-
ments of the railroad and accepted a job at Albion. As he was about
to leave, he found himself at odds with his employer, Filley, over
the amount of his wages, claiming that he was not being paid
enough and that he was being charged for more whiskey than he
had consumed. The two finally compromised on a deduction of
six to eight dollars for a barrel of whiskey, but Wolliver left dis-
satisfied, even after Fitch himself had called him in and tried to
mollify him, realizing that Wolliver knew too much to leave the
Centre with any ill will. From Albion, word soon came to Filley
that Wolliver was going to testify against his former employer and
friends. Filley was not too concerned over the prospect of Wolliver's
betrayal for he was sure that they "could swear him to hell." He
went to Albion, nevertheless, to caution him not to talk, for he
felt that a little caution "went a damned ways" sometimes. Filley
reinforced his warning vnth a threat, but Wolliver had made up
his mind to reveal all and was able to give Clark some direct first-
hand evidence of attacks on the road by himself in company with
the boys.
The defection of their own kind and the exposure of Wescott
embittered the boys to the point of overweening suspicion. They
[36 ]
reiterated with vigor their threats against spies and ranted of the
murderous means they would use to stop the mouths of informers.
At times, the more volatile of them, in the heat of argument or in
their cups, even let their hatred and suspicion explode into brutal
violence against someone they distrusted or merely disliked.
One of the strangers in their midst they soon figured to be a spy,
and correctly so, was Harvey Dixon, who came from Marshall and
posed as a wheat buyer for a Detroit firm. Dixon stupidly gave
himself away by paying too much for his purchases and had to leave
after a brief and unfruitful stay at the Centre. The morning he
left. Jack Freeland sent him off with a bitter tirade.
There's that damned wheat buyer— you didn't buy my wheat did you?
God damn you I didn't mean you should. I thought you was feeding soft
soap, and I eat a good deal of that before I came to this country. I didn't
speak to you did I? I didn't mean to, for I didn't like your looks.
Even an innocent like Hiram Dexter, who came to the Centre to
build the ball alley outside Filley's tavern, was suspected of spying
for the railroad and was warned that he had better be careful and
not offend any of the boys lest they knock him over. And when old
Alonzo Holmes, who boarded the track hands at his house, of-
fended Orlando Williams, that hothead brutally assaulted the help-
less old man. There had been some talk of Holmes and his wife
being spies and it was proposed to tar and feather the couple. Su-
spicion had somewhat abated, when, one day in August, 1850,
Williams accused Holmes once more. Holmes was sitting on the
steps at Filley's chatting, when Williams came up, pulled the old
man off the steps and shouted, "They do say you are a railroad
spy." Holmes coolly replied, "It's nobody's business if I am." Sub-
sequently, inside the tavern, at the bar, Williams picked up a bottle
and yelled at Holmes, "You are a damned pusillanimous." (This
can only be the court reporter's substitution for profanity, a la
Hemingway.) When Holmes replied, "You are a ditto," Williams
threw the bottle at his head and broke the old man's jaw, knocking
him unconscious. Williams later boasted in Morrison's grocery at
Jackson that he had "nearly laid out one damned spy and wished
to God he had killed him." He added he would kill a railroad spy
quicker that he would a "massasauger." Another time, Williams'
nasty temper brought him to blows with William Dobbs, whom he
did not like because he had refused to join the boys in an attempt
[37 ]
to nail a plank on the track. Even Fitch had afterward sneeringly
asked Dobbs if he were going to engage with the company the
next season. It was at Warner's grocery in Jackson that Williams
and Dobbs got into an argument over the comparative sizes of a
gold dollar and a five-cent piece. Williams flared up and dared
Dobbs into the back room to fight, calling him a "damned scoun-
drel" and telling him he would whip any man engaged with the
railroad company. This time, Williams himself was "whaled
slightly" and may thereby have had his suspicions of Dobbs dis-
pelled.
One of the spies, Hiram Sherman, was with great cunning able
to parry the distrust of the Centreites and neatly turn the tables
on them, trapping two of them in a criminal act. Sherman was a
longtime resident of Leoni village and was hired by Clark early
in October at a wage of I25 a month. He went to the village to
work for one of the farmers there and was duly suspected of being
a spy. One day, at Filley's, he spoke of quitting his job on the farm
and Bill Corwin taunted him, "I suppose you think you can make
more by laying out at nights." Sherman's chance to return to grace
came not long afterward. He was present at the ball alley outside
the tavern when Corwin got into an argument with John Palmer.
The two began twitting each other and finally had a clinch, with
Palmer backing Corwin against the wall. Sherman stepped in be-
tween the two and held Palmer off. After the fight had been broken
up, Sherman and his new friend, Corwin, went out to an old rail-
road car standing on the track nearby and made up in a burst of
mutual confidence. As Sherman later described their conversation:
I told him I knew he thought I was watching for the railroad, told him I
was watching for the road, but that whatever he said to me, he need not
fear me going to the road with it, that he knew me well enough for that . . .
that I could watch on his side as well as for Mr. Clark and the road, and
could tell him what the company was doing . . . told him I watched for
money and did not care anything for the road more than to get their
money . . . told him I would do anything I could for them.
Corwin was completely won over by this frank confession. He said
all he wanted was that Sherman should let them know what the
company was doing and be on their side and didn't care how much
money he got out of the company. Sherman then cleverly warned
Corwin not to give his game away to Clark for then he would be
[38]
discharged and would not be paid for what he had already done.
Corwin assured him he would tell no one but Fitch.
Early that November, Sherman's new loyalties were put to the
test. As he later told the story, Corwin approached him in Jackson
and asked him to help steal some barrels of flour that night from
the freight cars sidetracked at the Centre. The plan was to set fire
to a pile of lumber as a diversion, and, while the railroad police
were busy with the fire, steal the flour. Corwin added that if
Sherman did not join him, he must keep still, but that he and Eben
Price were going ahead with the plan anyway. Sherman agreed to
join the two. Before he returned to Michigan Centre, however, he
revealed the plan to the railroad officials in Jackson.
According to Sherman's account, the three met that night in the
tavern at the Centre and imbibed some liquid courage. Filley asked
them if they were going fishing and Corwin in reply merely asked
him if he had an old ax and then went and got it. Price then com-
plained that he hadn't "the first damned thing to fight with" in
case of trouble so Filley gave him a knife. As the three left, Filley
wished them good luck and told them if they wanted anything after
they got back, there was the bottle. On the way to the lumber pile,
Corwin suggested turning the switch but realized they had no tools
for that task and Price cautioned, "One thing at a time; we will burn
the wood tonight." When the little group arrived at the woodpile,
they reconnoitered the area a bit. Price nervously suggested, "If
any one comes we will run to the woods." Corwin replied he would
"be damned if he'd run" and told Price he'd better stick by him
and fight it out. As they set the fire, Sherman kept looking around
nervously for the police he expected to be on hand. He soon saw
what he was looking for— several men crawling along the ground
nearby. Relieved, he rejoined Price and Corwin, and a moment
later, the three were arrested and taken to the jail in Jackson.
At long last, it seemed that Clark had the best kind of evidence
against at least two of the road's enemies and would be able to send
them to jail. The grand jury, after some "higgling," brought an
indictment against the three. Corwin and Price pleaded not guilty.
Bail was fixed at $1,000 each and loyal Ammi Filley promptly gave
bond for his two friends. Sherman, too, was released on bail offered
by a railroad official. The trial was set for the March term of
court.^*
[39]
Pending the trial, Sherman returned to the Centre but did not
stay long for his treachery was known. Fitch pointed him out one
day to a group at the tavern and said, "There is one of the damned
railroad spies, just such men as they get to watch the road and bum
the company's wood." Turning to Corwin and Price, Fitch sardon-
ically continued:
Boys, I should think you would remember Sherman in your prayers, if
you don't go to bed till late. I should, if he had been in company with
me and had turned traitor. If he had turned traitor to me, I should like
to finger my knife around his ribs.
Sherman left soon after for the safety of a job in the railroad
warehouse at Marshall at one dollar a day. At the Centre, mean-
while, alibis were being prepared and public opinion was being
educated. Sherman was described as a tool of the railroad who
under orders had entrapped innocent men and instigated the
whole venture; he had gotten Corwin so drunk that he had had to
lead him to the lumber pile and then set fire to it himself. Corwin
told Caleb Loud, the dealer in horse medicine, that they never
would bring him to trial for burning the wood; if they did, they
could not convict him, as they had witnesses enough to swear him
clear. He asked Loud to use his influence for him by talking among
the farmers south of Jackson before the trial.
As the day of the trial approached, Clark became convinced that
it had better be postponed. He preferred not to "stir up the ire of
Michigan Centre" just yet. He had come to share the belief of his
new legal adviser whom he had hired in December, John Van
Arman, the astute criminal lawyer from Marshall, that these men
could never be convicted in Jackson County. James F. Joy, the
company's chief counsel, did not share Clark's hesitation and
wished to bring the men to trial as scheduled, hoping to draw out
information in the course of the trial of the two that could be
effectively used against the rest of the group. Clark insisted that
nothing new could thus be uncovered that he could not get from
his secret agents. He did join Joy, nevertheless, in a bold plan to
get the case removed from the jurisdiction of the judge of the
Jackson County court. Legislation to effect this change of venue
was necessary, and Clark and Joy went to work to get it, the former
in his new capacity as member of the house of representatives from
Calhoun County. With the aid of the state attorney general and the
[40]
prosecuting attorney for Jackson County, they pushed through a
bill in the 1851 session of the legislature which provided for the
removal of criminal cases from the county courts to the circuit
courts at the option of the prosecuting attorney as well as that of
the defendants.^^
Despite this legislative victory, the case of Corwin and Price
never was brought to trial. Clark really had bigger fish to fry. His
comparative indifEerence to the case of the two who had set fire
to some railroad lumber was prompted by his greater interest in a
bigger charge of arson which he hoped to pin on the whole cabal
at Michigan Centre. As he explained to Brooks in March, 1851,
"I think these [two] fellows had better be kept along and come in
with the others, it will be less trouble and expense and in making
the main thing more sure." ^^
The "main thing" referred to the destruction of the freight
depot in Detroit less than two weeks after Corwin and Price were
arrested. Early on the morning of November 19, 1850, the Mich-
igan Central freight house in Detroit, built less than a year before,
burned to the ground with all its stores of flour, wheat, and corn.
The loss to the company was estimated at $40,000 which was not
covered by insurance, and the value of the stored freight was more
than $100,000. One Detroit newspaper said the next day that, gen-
erally, the cause of the fire remained a matter of conjecture. The
report added, however, that
the more generally prevalent opinion of those employed about the build-
ing-s seemed to be that it took from the friction of the elevators, which
theory is somewhat strengthened by the locaHty at which the fire burst
out. Suggestions have been made that the fire was the work of incen-
diaries, but that opinion is not general nor is it materially substantiated
by the facts.
Van Arman later contended for the company that this report to
the press had been deliberately falsified and that the depot hands
knew full well that the fire was incendiary in origin, the contrary
opinion having been circulated in order to allay the suspicion of
the criminals. This stratagem may explain, too, the failure of Su-
perintendent Brooks publicly to offer a reward for the apprehen-
sion of those who burned the depot. The feeling will not down,
nevertheless, that the fire may have been an accident and was con-
sidered such by the railroad officials until some months later when
[41 ]
a new recruit to the staff of spies produced evidence to the con-
trary.*'^
At any rate, Clark's investigations for several months after the
fire do not seem to have yielded any information on the origins of
the holocaust. Then, in January, 1851, he was put in touch with
Henry Phelps, hired him as a secret agent for the railroad, and in
the next two months was supplied with enough evidence to link
Fitch and his friends with the burning of the depot in Detroit.
Phelps was a man of high intelligence, clever to the point of
cunning, who was reduced to living by his wits. He had come to
Michigan from New York in 1836 at the age of twenty-two with his
family. He worked on the family farm in Oakland County near
Detroit and then in his brother's distillery. He struck out on his
own in 1840 when he went to Michigan Centre and rented a dis-
tillery. This venture failed after six months when a draft he had
offered to cover the rent proved to be worthless. A second attempt
to go into business nearer home also failed. He then moved to
Sharon, west of Ann Arbor, took up farming, and to supplement
his income, pettifogged in the local justice courts. He also dabbled
in politics, served as town clerk, and won a commission as captain
of dragoons in the state militia. This budding career was nipped in
1844 when he was tried for horse-stealing and sentenced to five
years in the state prison in Jackson. Pardoned in April, 1849, six
months before his term expired, he returned to his farm, and after
a profitless year or more, went to work in December, 1850 as a stool
pigeon for the United States District Attorney for Michigan,
George C. Bates. Phelps' task, at $1.25 per day plus expenses, was
to bring to book the numerous counterfeiters who plagued this
wild west of the 1850's with their bogus coin. His good working
knowledge of the law from both sides of the fence, combined with
an unscrupulous boldness in digging up evidence, soon won him
the confidence of his employer.
Not long after he had begun to work for Bates, Phelps reported
that he had established contact with the leader of a big counter-
feiting ring in Jackson County, Abel F. Fitch of Michigan Centre.
He further revealed that in the course of his association with Fitch,
he had learned of the latter's connection with the burning of the
freight depot in Detroit. Bates undoubtedly relayed this infor-
mation to the railroad officials, and Phelps' promotion to Clark's
[42]
corps of secret agents with a salary of forty dollars a month fol-
lowed almost immediately.
In his new capacity, Phelps went to the Centre to follow up the
lead he had uncovered as a federal informer. He spent as much
time as he could at Filley's tavern renewing acquaintances and
worming his way into the confidence of its patrons. He made a
special effort to be with Fitch and talk to him, pretending that he
wished to buy his prize twin oxen, and dogging his footsteps at
Michigan Centre as well as in Lansing and Detroit. In a short time,
Phelps was able to report to Clark that he knew who had burned
the freight depot. It was an old friend of his, George Washington
Gay, of Detroit, once known as the "Whig Bully of City Hall,"
possessor of a long police record, and now the proprietor of a
brothel in the lower city. Gay had admitted to him, Phelps, that
he had set fire to the depot and that he had been hired by Fitch and
his friends to do it. The latter had also furnished Gay with the
"match" that ignited the building. This match was an ingenious
machine, a cylindrical block of wood with holes bored lengthwise
and transversely and filled with cotton and camphene (a turpen-
tine derivative then used as an illuminant), which would bum
slowly for several hours and then flare up into a blaze. Gay had ad-
mitted that he had received the match from someone at Michigan
Centre, ignited it and secretly placed it in the cupola of the freight
house about eight o'clock on the evening of November 18. The
match had flared up about two o'clock the morning of the nine-
teenth and the resulting fire had destroyed the building and its
contents. For his work. Gay said he had received $150, which sum
had been made up by Fitch, Filley, Corwin, Williams, and others
at the Centre. The latter, according to Phelps, had also admitted
to him their participation in the crime substantially as related by
Gay and had even boasted of how much each had contributed to
the purse of arson.
If Clark and his legal adviser. Van Arman, were amazed at these
revelations, Phelps was prepared to prove them fully. He invited
his employers to visit Gay's brothel and see and hear for them-
selves. Accordingly, early in April, 1851, the two visited Gay several
times in Phelps' company, disguising themselves in rough dress and
posing as fellow criminals. To win Gay's confidence, they boasted
of their past exploits, flashed counterfeit bills, and said diey were
[43]
interested in working out a scheme to free Old Sile Doty, the
famous criminal, who was then serving a long sentence in the Hills-
dale jail. In the course of the conversation, Gay freely admitted
that he had burned the depot in November and told just how much
he had been paid and who had paid him. Gay also allowed his two
new friends to see the match he had in an upstairs room, similar
to the one he had used in the old depot and which he was going to
use to burn the new one which had been built on the same site. He
assured them that he could make more money by burning depots
on the railroad than any other way and could get $50 more from
Fitch and his friends for burning the new depot than he had re-
ceived for the old one. After agreeing upon some future criminal
ventures, Clark and Van Arman left with Phelps, fully satisfied
that their agent was telling the truth and had given them the
means to break up the conspiracy at the Centre.
Phelps clinched the case against Fitch and company when he
informed Clark that they planned to burn the depot at Niles and
had asked him, Phelps, to do it. They had offered to supply him
with a match and pay him $200 for the job. When he had balked
at the risks involved, they had assured him that the match had
worked perfectly in Detroit, and that if he were caught, they could
easily swear him clear. Phelps then, with the full knowledge of his
railroad superiors, agreed after some delay to carry out the task,
and set the time. Clark arranged for another agent to be at Filley's
tavern on the appointed night when Phelps was to be "fixed out"
for the trip to Niles.
The night of April 11, 1851, Phelps went to the tavern at the
Centre. He had with him Heman Lake, a contemporary inmate
of the state prison, whom he had persuaded Clark to hire as his
assistant and who had fully corroborated all of his reports. After
some general talk. Bill Corwin went to a small room in the tavern,
unlocked it, and brought out a box with the match in it, and then
carried it outside to Phelps' waiting buggy. Falkner, the railroad
agent who was present all the time, and had been told to watch
for the delivery of a box to Phelps, confirmed all that the latter
reported. He had heard only snatches of the conversation between
Phelps and Fitch and the others, but had seen Corwin take the box
out and put it in the buggy.
Leaving the tavern, Phelps and Lake drove to Grass Lake where
[44]
they showed the box and the match to Clark and then started off
for Niles. There, Phelps placed the ignited match in the depot,
and the railroad men, fully aware of the plot, hastened to extin-
guish it before any harm was done.
Clark was now ready to act. Phelps had proved to his satisfaction
that Gay had burned the Detroit depot, that Fitch and others had
hired Gay to burn the depot, and that he, Phelps himself, had
been hired to burn the Niles depot in a similar manner. Back in
February, Clark had reported to Brooks that "the burning of the
building [would] be proven beyond a doubt." He was now more
than ever certain of his ground. And when he had seen Fitch in
March lobbying in Lansing, he could not help gloating: "I think
[Fitch] had better save his strength as he has a good deal of labor
to do for the state within the next five or ten years without going
so far from home. If this does not prove so I am no prophet." Once
the Niles trap had been sprung and all the accumulated evidence
carefully prepared, Clark was ready to move and make the arrests.^^
[45 ]
PART
TWO
JDY APRIL 19, 1851, four months to the day after the depot fire,
all the arrangements for the roundup of the railroad's enemies were
completed. A warrant was issued on the complaint of Phelps for
the arrest of forty-four men, charging them with the burning of the
depot as part of a general conspiracy to destroy the property of
the Michigan Central Railroad and with a number of other crimes.
The list of accused included Fitch, Burnett, Filley, and almost
two score of their friends, anybody in Michigan Centre or Jackson,
apparently, who had ever expressed any hostility to the railroad.
Also named in the warrant were George W. Gay and his Detroit
accomplice, Erastus Smith, as well as a number of known counter-
feiters whose inclusion lent substance to the allegations of general
villainy. On the afternoon of April 19, one special train started
from Niles for Jackson with the sheriff of Berrien County and his
deputies aboard, while another left from Detroit and headed west-
ward carrying the sheriff of Wayne County and about a hundred
deputized railroad hands. As the trains passed through the dis-
affected areas a little after midnight, squads of three or four officers
were dispatched at intervals, each to get its man. The two trains
met near Jackson and waited for the haul. The Wayne County
sheriff accompanied by Clark and Van Arman brought in the prize
prisoner. Fitch himself. In three hours more than thirty others
were routed out of bed and brought aboard. Day had already
broken when the trains started on the slow journey back to Detroit
with the triumphant posse and its bewildered prey.^^
Late Saturday afternoon, the prisoners were marched from the
cars through the city streets to the jail in a long column of twos,
each man guarded by a deputy. Fitch, at the head of the column,
was struck by the wry humor of the scene.
I being a captain [in the militia] they placed me in front, of course,
and we made quite an imposing appearance giving the Detroit folks a
good opportunity to take a fair view of us. It looks like a Connecticut
general training and must have been great satisfaction to the RR folks.
In jail, the small mob joined Gay and Smith, who had been ar-
[49]
rested in the city that morning. Burnett, who had not been at home
when the posse called, hearing that there was a warrant out for
his arrest, took a train to Detroit and gave himself up to join his
friends in jail. In the course of the next week, additional prisoners
were brought in from Jackson, Niles, and elsewhere.^*^
The law began to move with illegal haste. None of the prisoners
was brought for examination before the police justice who had
issued the warrant, as required by law. After they were in jail, the
grand jury was hurriedly convened, without the required six days
notice, and returned five joint bills of indictment against the ac-
cused. The first indictment, under which they were later tried,
charged them all with burning the depot and specified that Gay
had actually set the fire and had been hired by the others to com-
mit the crime. The railroad's officials, at the same time, brought
civil suit against the prisoners for $150,000 damages and had them
held in $50,000 bail each. In time, they were also indicted in
Berrien and Calhoun counties for conspiring to burn the depots
in Niles and Marshall, and finally, by a Federal grand jury for
counterfeiting and for burning the United States mails.^^
Staggering under this massed legal assault, the prisoners were
arraigned before Judge Benjamin F. H. Witherell in Wayne
County Court on April 29. They pleaded not guilty to all the in-
dictments. The prosecution announced that it was ready to go to
trial on the first indictment and wished to do so quickly. Counsel
for the defense, after vain attempts to have the indictments quashed
and a mistrial called on technical grounds, held out for a month's
delay. When the court refused to grant this motion, the defendants
took advantage of their legal option and elected to be tried in the
circuit court, which would not sit for two weeks.^2
Primarily, the defendants desperately sought delay to slow down
the judicial mills which were surely grinding them to their doom
in jail. Their counsel, neither able nor distinguished, needed time
to prepare the case, seek out witnesses, study the evidence, and
work out the defense. Representing the accused in court that day
were Nehemiah H. Joy of Jackson, and Henry Frink, but lately
removed to Chicago from Jackson, two village lawyers who had
come forward to help their friends in need. They were aided by
Henry H. Wells and William A. Cook, two Detroit lawyers of no
great reputation at the bar. Another obscure Detroit lawyer, L. H.
[50]
Hewitt, appeared for Gay and Smith. Opposing them was a battery
of the city's legal lights who had been retained by the Michigan
Central to assist David Stuart, the county prosecuting attorney.
On behalf of the people, Stuart was joined by James F. Joy and
John Van Arman and such outstanding members of the Detroit
bar as James A. Van Dyke, Jacob M. Howard, Alexander D. Frazer,
Daniel Goodwin, and William Gray. Other law)'ers of reputation
were, moreover, interdicted by the hostility of public opinion from
taking the case of the "conspirators"; only one of them, William
A. Howard, showed his independence and volunteered his services
to the defendants, justifying his action by explaining that "there
was more real danger to the community from allowing a heartless
monied corporation to crush at their will any number of men in
the manner pursued than by any depredations of the prisoners."
For his act, Howard was charged with treason to law and order and
the welfare of the people among whom he lived. His gesture was
more spirited than effective, for he was noted as a good business
counsellor rather than as a trial lawyer.^^
The case was called up for trial on May 14 before Judge Warner
Wing in the Wayne County Circuit Court. The defense continued
to spar desperately for time, fearful of the massed power of the
state and its wealthiest corporation. Fitch, undoubtedly the main-
spring of defense strategy, vowed he would not be forced to trial
until he was fully prepared. First, his lawyers filed a motion for
separate trials for him and four other defendants, a stratagem of
delay and obstruction. Then, on behalf of Fitch alone, a motion
was made for a change of venue to a neighboring county on the
ground that the public had been so prejudiced against the defend-
ants that a fair trial in Detroit was impossible. In support, counsel
submitted affidavits containing extracts from the three Detroit
daily newspapers. Judge Wing denied this motion on the technical
giound that if Fitch were tried in another county under this indict-
ment, the rest of the defendants could never be tried, as there was
no provision for the return of the indictment to Wayne County.
The next day, the defense filed a new motion for a continuance to
the November term of court so that three absent witnesses could
be procured. When the prosecution showed that this request was
unreasonable and factitious, the judge denied it, but relented
enough to grant an adjournment until May 28.^^
[51 ]
UNIVERSITY OF
ILLINOIS LIBRARIO
Meanwhile, the case was being tried in the court of public opin-
ion, to the great detriment of the accused. From the moment of
the triumphal procession through the streets and the first press re-
ports of the mass arrests, great excitement gripped the city. One of
Fitch's close friends barely escaped a drubbing in a public bar
when he defended the prisoners against vicious abuse. The news-
papers played on the fears of the people. They accepted the charges
as true and proven and added a few of their own. In reporting the
arrests, they alluded to the "gang of desperadoes" and hinted
darkly at the existence of a diabolical criminal organization op-
erating in several states and possessed of an infernal machine for
blowing up trains. The Advertiser added blackmail to the official
charges and referred to Jackson County as the home of drunks,
counterfeiters, and other criminals. The Free Press maintained a
correct attitude for more than a month, but then attacked the de-
fendants as an "organized band of desperadoes— congregated
around a drunken rum-hole in Jackson County." When the in-
dictments were issued, the Tribune called for suspended judgment
and went on to print a story, probably supplied by one of the rail-
road's spies, of a secret meeting of the "gang of ruffians" to auction
off Wescott's life to the highest bidder— all of which proved "the
depths to which [the accused] were ready to sink themselves in
crime and depravity." Assuring its readers that the prisoners could
expect full justice in Wayne County and that it would not even
publish the indictment lest it create prejudice, the Daily Tribune
pilloried the defendants as "a lawless gang of monsters in human
shape" and called on Mayor Zachariah Chandler to provide the
city with additional police protection against the dangers threat-
ened by those of the criminals still at large. It gave prominence to
reports of fires in different parts of the city and cautioned the police
to be on the alert against the incendiaries. Finally, it revealed for
the benefit of the public, which it counseled to withhold judg-
ment, that the accused had a long history of criminal activity and
that Fitch in particular had long meditated lawless vengeance
against the railroad."^
Other newspapers in the state and elsewhere, took up the hue
and cry and descanted with horror on what they regarded "as
evidence of the universal demoralization in Michigan; and de-
manded immediate punishment of the accused" as well as the
[52 ]
restoration of capital punishment in the state. The press alarm
moved one terror-stricken Presbyterian clergyman in New York
City to claim that he and other passengers had had their drinking
water poisoned while traveling through the state on the Michigan
Central Railroad.^^
Fitch protested this campaign of calumny to one of the Free Press
reporters who visited him in jail but apparently to no effect. "Such
false and wicked statements," he wrote his wife, "as was published
in the newspapers is enough to craze anyone." Burnett struck back
in a long letter to the Ypsilanti Sentinel, which the editor printed
with the explanation that "as a portion of the press has been very
free, to say the least, in pronouncing judgment in the case," com-
mon justice dictated that the other side be given a hearing. Writing
from jail, Burnett gave his story of the highhanded proceedings
and protested against the "unwarrantable statements [that] have
been made . . . concerning us, contrary to the just rights of free-
men." The Jackson American Citizen reprinted Burnett's letter
and editorially commented on the extravagant tone of the Detroit
and eastern neAvspapers, whose published disclosures it felt, "have
proved too much for the gullibility of any acquainted with the
matter." ^^
In time, the excitement died down as the press showed proper
restraint in reporting the trial. But irreparable harm had been
done the cause of the defendants. They had been branded as
criminals who had wished to destroy "our young and beauteous
city" and the presumption of their guilt had been fixed in the
minds of the citizens. The effects of the public hysteria had been
compounded when the city fathers, responding to the fearful agita-
tion, had called out a large night watch to protect the city from
destruction by fire and assigned additional guards to each business
block. Echoes of the civic "great fear" had resounded in Federal
Judge Ross Wilkins' charge to the grand jury of the United States
District Court: the judge, in presenting the case against the alleged
counterfeiters including Fitch, Filley, and six of their friends,
pointedly referred to that "malignant spirit" and "depravity of
heart" of these enemies of society. The officials of the Michigan
Central, taking advantage of the excitement and adding to it in
their own way, put a twenty-four hour guard in and around the
county jail at their own expense. Fitch thought they did this merely
[53]
"to make a great display." This action seemed to him, besides, a
vicious and unfair form of harassment. He protested.
And now how in the name of common sense can we ever prepare for
trial that is a fair and impartial one when all such we say or do is carried
to our enimies and they allowed to use it as they please, besides it seems
to me an unheard of procedure that a party complainant should have
persons arrested at their instigation and then treat them in such an in-
solent manner as they do us.™
When court convened again on May 28, William A. Howard
announced that he had been east and had retained Senator
William H. Seward of New York for the defense. He himself and
Cook, Howard explained, had been ill and unable to take hold of
the case properly. Howard did not, however, touch on the decisive
reason for procuring more eminent counsel. Undoubtedly, it was
Fitch's determination to get the very best lawyers to defend himself
and his friends and oppose the legal array of the prosecution. He
had been depressed by the way things had been going for the
defendants, reviled everywhere, stymied in court again and again,
and confined in jail without bail. And while he believed Frink and
the others were doing the best they could, he strongly felt, as he
wrote his wife, that 'Sve have a hard enimy to fight" and need "to
get good counsel." It was not strange that in his plight he should
turn to Seward for succor. The senator had but recently uttered
his "higher law" sentiments and become the idol of the antislavery
people everywhere. The repute of his efforts as a criminal lawyer
on behalf of the lowly could not have been lost on the astute Fitch,
Seward, appealed to in the name of the common man against a
powerful corporation which had bought up the best legal talent in
the state, and offered on Fitch's behalf a fee of $2,000, agreed to
come west and take the case. Attempts by influential eastern friends
of the railroad to dissuade him failed, for he believed that as an
American lawyer, he had to assist those who most needed assistance.
When word came to Fitch that Sew^ard had agreed to come to
Detroit and take the case, his spirits rose greatly. He assured his
wife, and himself, "He is a big gun no mistake." ^^
Unfortunately, Sew^ard could not arrange his affairs to arrive in
Detroit until June 5. Would the court, pleaded Howard, postpone
the case until then, particularly since the defendants now withdrew
their requests for separate trials. Judge Wing refused to grant the
[54]
postponement without good legal reason. Opposing counsel, how-
ever, finally did agree to a compromise, whereby the defendants
would be tried jointly, a jury would be empaneled, two or three
witnesses examined on a specific point, and then the case allowed
to rest until Seward's arrival.
The trial got under way the next day, May 29. The number of
defendants had been reduced to thirty-seven; some had been dis-
charged for lack of evidence, some not arrested for the same reason,
and one had died in jail. The deceased was none other than Gay,
who was charged with burning the depot at the behest of the
others. He had died on May 8 of what Fitch described as a "loath-
some and disgusting" disease. When the ofl&cials accused one of the
prisoners, who was a doctor by profession, of poisoning Gay, a
charge soon dispelled by a post-mortem. Fitch winced as though
lashed.60
First, a jury was chosen in short order. The twelve men, selected
from a panel of names taken from the tax assessment rolls of the
city, were representative of the substantial and respectable portion
of the community. They included such outstanding political and
business figures as Levi Cook, Horace Hallock, Alexander C. Mc-
Graw, Buckminster Wight, and Silas A. Bagg. The others on the
jury were relatively unknown, but most had served as minor mu-
nicipal functionaries. Fitch thought it was a "good jury" and did
not consider the possibility that it might be swayed by the civic
interests so closely bound up with those of the city's great com-
mercial outlet, the Michigan Central Railroad.^i
Van Arman then opened the case for the prosecution. He said
the state would prove that Gay had burned the depot and that the
defendants had paid him $150 to do it and furnished the "match."
Henry Phelps was the first witness called and told how Gay had
confessed his crime to him and incriminated the men from Mich-
igan Centre. Darius Clark and Van Arman then took the stand in
turn and told of their visits to Gay's house, where the latter had
repeated his confessions, thus substantiating Phelps' testimony in
this respect. After hearing these witnesses, the court adjourned, as
agreed, for one week until June 5.
All this while, the defendants were languishing in the crowded
Wayne County jail, spied on by the railroad guards, prevented
from taking any effective action in their own defense, fearful and
[55]
hopeful by turns of the outcome. Fitch, in particular, was subject
to these emotional fluctuations, as may be clearly seen in a series
of letters he wrote his wife, Amanda, from jail. His first reaction
to arrest and imprisonment was one of incredulity and indignation
buoyed by hope. The day after his arrival in jail, he wrote, almost
lightly, "This is the first time I ever addressed you from such a
place and I hope to God it will be the last." The next day, he was
somewhat chagrined at having to write from the same place, but
repeatedly asserted his innocence and assured his wife: "We know
that the truth is mighty and believe will prevale, RR influence
and money to the contrary notwithstanding . . . We shall all of us
be delivered in due time unharmed from the hands of our enimies,
false swearing bribery and corruption to the contrary notwith-
standing." He and his fellow prisoners felt "injured and abused,
insulted and wronged" but were quite sure that all would end well.
"I feel to (sic) indignant to feel meloncholly," he concluded his
second letter from jail, "I shall be home before long." All the same,
he was bewildered by the vindictiveness of the railroad officials,
though he was inclined to think that they were deceived by
Phelps, Wescott, and the other spies, "who gather round them for
the purpose of getting their money and they care not how." He
vented his spleen against these spies, accusing them of concocting
a monstrous plot. "When they found they could not draw me by
any pretext what ever in to any of their scheems," he explained,
"they finally pitched upon this depot scheem made by themselves
so far as I am concerned out of whole clothe and now seek to con-
vict me and others." But, he was sure, they "will be worse con-
founded than those who undertook to build the tower of babel,"
and called "Divine vengeance" down upon them.^^
After two weeks of uninterrupted confinement, of writhing un-
der the lash of public condemnation, the note of defiant hope be-
gan to fade. Fitch now found his quarters "very uncomfortable"
and began to worry about his health and what would happen to
him if he came down with his old stomach ailment. He was soon
writing, "It does not seem as though I could stand it here much
longer." Gloomily expecting the worst, he told Amanda that he
would send for her if he had an attack, as he did not think he could
live through one without her "kind attention." He had been so
much troubled with "Dispepshi," he was afraid he could not sur-
[56]
vive long with the best of care, and after a month in jail, concluded
hopelessly that "no man can long enjoy health in this uncomfi table
place." ^3
Gloom deepened into despair as he felt the full force of legal
pressure and hatred. Only occasional flashes of desperate hope lit-
up the murk of his cell and then were followed by a sense of
martyrdom. On May ii, he reflected sadly, "I have always been
taught that money is power but I never felt it so sensibly as I do
now." Three days later, he cried out to Amanda,
I am still in jail and how long I am to be kept here I know not, but if
nothing but the pound of flesh nearest my heart will satisfy my enimies
and they seem to be determined not to be satisfied with anything less,
I dont know but with their power and influence they will compell me
to yeald it to them ... I fear that many of us will be obliged to sacrifice
our lives to appease the wrath of this soulless corporation.
In another two weeks. Fitch was prepared for martyrdom. He could
not understand how innocence could be so wronged, but "if they
can with all their cunning devise such damnable scheems and carry
them through and convict us, why it is time that their power was
known and guarded against, for no mans liberty is safe." And then,
in a sentimental vision, he returned to his dear Amanda, his com-
panion of twenty years.
This is a fine May morning and although my boddy is surrounded by
bars and bolts yet my spirit, thank God, is left free to roam and hold
sweet communion with those I hold near and dear here on earth, and
were I permitted to be with you and sis in person as heretofore to take
strawberry walks and roam over fields and landscape, as we were wont
to do at this delightful season, what untold pleasures might we not injoy.
But this may be ordered for some wise purpose, for God in his providence
does all things well, we should not know how to appreciate and injoy
happiness did we not occasionally taste of misery.**
Above all. Fitch fumed because he and his friends could not get
free on bail. Efforts to do so ran up against the negligence of court
officials and the huge sums set at the behest of railroad counsel.
The good citizens of Detroit and perhaps even the railroad officials
really feared to let the criminals described by their newspapers
loose in their midst. Fitch raged helplessly as week passed week in
crippling confinement. He wanted to go home and organize his
defense. He knew he could raise any reasonable amount of bail.
Indignant and bewildered, he could not understand why the rail-
[57 ]
road showed such a "fiendish disposition" toward him and accused
the authorities of lacking one spark of humanity and trampHng
"on all laws, constitutions and justice." He was soon convinced
that they fully intended to keep him from preparing adequately
for the trial, "that our enimies would be glad to keep us here untill
our enigies were all impaired or weakened so that we would fall
an easy prey." Finally, as June 5 and Seward's arrival neared, and
Judge Wing announced he would set bail for the criminal pro-
ceedings. Fitch took heart. He asked Amanda to tell his friends to
come to Detroit to stand bail for him. He explained somewhat
optimistically that "they feel ashamed to think that they have acted
so heretofore" and openly expressed his fears, now happily dis-
sipated, that if he had had to be in court days and in jail nights,
it would have killed him. He was sure his bail would not be set
very high because public opinion had changed in his favor. He
noted that King Strang's Mormons had been arrested for treason
and that their bail had been set at only $2,000 each. His own bail
would, of course, be higher, "so you see that treason against the
RR is a much greater crime than treason against the government."
But, he was certain, "the day of retributive justice is at hand. This
company will yet learn that they cannot trample upon the dearest
rights of Freemen without bringing down on their heads retribu-
tive justice." ^^
Fitch was wrong. On the resumption of the trial on June 5,
with Seward leading the defense, he soon found out how wrong
he was. Without delay, Frink requested that bail be set for Fitch
and Burnett. Prosecuting Attorney Stuart demanded that the
amount of bail be fixed at $15,000 for the indictment being tried
and half as much in each of the four other indictments, a total of
$45,000 for each defendant. Frink's objections that these amounts
were excessive were brushed aside. The presecution dwelt on the
enormity of the offenses charged and threw up to the defendants
their boasts that they could give bail in the sum of $100,000, if
necessary. Here, Seward, speaking for the first time, said that al-
though he knew little of the merits of the case, he considered the
amounts requested excessive, and vehemently declared that if he
were the defendants, "he would rot in jail . . . before he would
submit to such persecution and oppression." Counsel for the state
then explained with amazing frankness that bail was deliberately
[58]
set high to prevent the prisoners from being bailed at all, for if
one of them absconded, the whole trial would be halted and all
proceedings would be voided. The railroad officials, it seems, had
at last got their hands on their enemies and were not going to re-
lease them even for a moment on a legal nicety until they had all
been duly disposed of. As Stuart declared, "There were insuperable
objections to allowing bail" at all, for the prisoners were liable
to be arrested under the other indictments and taken to another
county to be tried. Seward in turn insisted on the constitutional
rights of his clients: "This was a court of justice and . . . these de-
fendants were prisoners at the bar and . . . the constitution of the
country was not a fiction ..." The prisoners were entitled to rea-
sonable bail and $45,000 for each of thirty-seven defendants, or a
total of nearly two million dollars, was plainly exorbitant. After
further argument, during which Seward called the attention of the
court to the higher law, "a proper sense of its obligations to God
and humanity, and love of liberty for the oppressed under all cir-
cumstances," Judge Wing announced his compromise figure—
$20,000 for Fitch and $10,000 for Burnett. The sureties for each,
friends and neighbors from Jackson County, then stepped forward
and answered as to their ability to stand bail.
The prisoners were not however to be released. Stuart reminded
the court that they were also being held in $50,000 bail in the civil
suit of the company against them for damages. The defense tried
to have the capias by which they were held in the civil suit quashed
in open court, but to no avail. And except for brief interludes for
selected defendants, the prisoners were to remain in jail during the
whole length of the trial, "held fast," as Seward later put it, "as
in a cage of iron." ^e
With the matter of bail disposed of, the trial really got under
way. For three months, through the blazing heat of a midwest sum-
mer, the court heard the testimony of nearly five hundred wit-
nesses. Judge Wing's minutes of the evidence covered five hundred
ten closely written pages of legal foolscap and the printed report
of the testimony fills more than five hundred fifty octavo pages in
small type. It had been expected that the trial would be over in a
few days, but by the end of June, all were resigned to a long-drawn
battle. When one of the witnesses was asked if he knew when the
case had begun. Judge Wing sardonically interjected, "Can you
[59]
tell when it will end?" and laughter greeted the sally. By the mid-
dle of July, there were demands for longer sessions. The prosecu-
tion suggested evening sessions and the jury asked that proceedings
begin an hour earlier in the morning. The judge did nothing, but
declared the matter was a serious one and impressed counsel with
the necessity "of urging this trial through to an ending."
It was not until September 2 that the parade of witnesses came
to a halt. Each side had taken more than a month to present its
case, and the prosecution then had called additional witnesses in
rebuttal. Of the elapsed time, however, only some forty-seven days
had been used in the actual taking of testimony. At least one month
had been wasted when one or another of the defendants and
jurors was stricken by disease in that stifling summer heat and
could not make an appearance in court. At first, opposing counsel
had agreed to let the proceedings continue without prejudice to
either side. But by the end of July, the defense lawyers, stung by
repeated adverse decisions of the court, stubbornly refused to enter
into any further stipulations to waive their clients' rights. Court
had therefore to adjourn from day to day until the absent defend-
ant or juror was able to return. Almost two weeks were thus lost
at the end of July when two of the prisoners came down with
diarrhea, and two more in August when two others succumbed to
the heat and filth of the crowded jail and died of dysentery. The
long delays wearied the survivors and frayed the professional court-
room courtesy of the lawyers, who began snapping at each other
in their heated legal wrangles. Not until September 4 did counsel
begin their closing arguments to the jury and then for three weeks
matched the heat of Indian summer with their perfervid oratory.
These addresses were concluded on September 25 when the case
went to the jury— an issue welcomed by the judge on behalf of all
with joyous relief.
The prosecution in presenting its case first established the corpus
delicti, namely, that a crime had been committed, that the depot
fire had not been an accident but had been deliberately set. Several
witnesses, most of them employees of the railroad company, stated
that the fire could not have resulted from the overheating of the
machinery used to elevate wheat and other freight to storage bins
on the second story. They also declared that they had first seen the
flames in the cupola of the building, high above the stored freight,
[60]
where Gay was alleged to have secreted the ignited "match." The
cross-examination of these witnesses by the defense brought out the
possible accidental causes of the fire, particularly the fact that work
in the depot continued until midnight and that ordinary tallow
candles in sconces fixed to posts throughout the building and over
the wooden storage bins had been used for illumination. Seward
and Frink insisted that the corpus delicti had not been proven by
any means.
The prosecution then brought its secret agents and informers to
the stand to describe the hostility of the defendants to the com-
pany, their secret meetings in Filley's tavern, and their criminal
attacks on railroad property in Jackson County. The defense im-
mediately offered strong objections to the admission of such evi-
dence. Frink argued that the indictment was for a single offense and
that the state could not seek to prove other offenses or go beyond
proof of the agreement to hire Gay to burn the depot. Van Dyke,
in reply, admitted that the indictment before the court was for
the single offense of burning the depot in Detroit, but asserted that
it was proper to introduce evidence tending to show the existence
of a conspiracy generally to destroy the property of the railroad
and embracing within it the design to burn the depot as charged.
The crimes in Jackson County, he explained, were part of a grand
scheme culminating in arson in Detroit. Seward countered by in-
sisting that the defendants were being tried for one crime and one
crime only, not for conspiracy, or treason, or larceny, but for arson;
because they may have committed other crimes elsewhere and at
other times did not prove that they burned the depot. After hear-
ing both sides argue at length. Judge Wing decided in favor of the
prosecution, ruling as admissible the testimony to prove all acts
done under the general combination against the railroad. He did
not think the introduction of such evidence would prejudice the
defendants' case. As he later explained to the jury, the evidence
thus received was not for the purpose of showing the defendants
capable of committing the crime as charged; as such, it was in-
admissible and irrelevant. "It was admitted," he made clear, "to
show the original combination between the defendants, having
in view the ultimate, though contingent, burning of the depot at
Detroit; to show that as defendants were still working out their
original plan, they had not abandoned it up to the period when the
[61]
depot was burned, and thus show— or raise a presumption— that
their scheme was in full force when the depot was burned." That
the jury of laymen could always appreciate the legal distinction
and not allow themselves to be impressed by the guilt of the de-
fendants in committing crimes in another jurisdiction for which
they were not being tried was open to question. And the lawyers
for the defense continued to take exception to the ruling of the
court admitting such and similar evidence.
The prosecution had, without doubt, won an important victory:
all the evidence so carefully gathered by Clark and his agents for
many months in Jackson County could now be used against the
defendants. Witnesses were paraded before the court who detailed
every expression of hostility, pointed or implicit, uttered by the
defendants, drunk or sober, against the railroad and its policies.
Every mishap along the line of the road between Grass Lake and
Jackson was minutely recounted and by imputation fastened on
the "conspirators." The meetings at Filley's tavern were blown up
into "secret conclaves" of a deep conspiratorial nature. The wit-
nesses emphasized the strong mutual loyalty of the defendants,
their repeated boasts of how they would stand by each other and
swear each other clear if any fell afoul of the law. And guiding
them all, encouraging all, the state contended, was Fitch, shrewd
and unscrupulous, hating the railroad and Brooks, and using his
friends in his own personal war with the monster corporation,
while he kept his own hands clean.
On cross-examination, the defense pointedly brought out the
casual and public nature of the meetings in a tavern open to all.
It tried to discredit those witnesses who were in the pay of the
company by suggesting that their motives were mercenary and that
their wages were dependent on their providing the desired infor-
mation. Some of the witnesses were also brought to admit that they
had sometimes been accomplices and participants in attacks on
railroad property.
Wescott was one of the key witnesses for the prosecution. Under
the skillful guidance of Van Arman, he related what he had heard
and seen during the four months he had been at Michigan Centre
as a spy. He underlined the testimony of previous witnesses about
the determination and cohesion of the defendants in their hostility
to the railroad. They had said many times in his presence, "Yes, we
[62]
are banded together and will stick together," and, "So long as we
stick together all hell can't convict us." He told of his intimacy
with Fitch and how the latter had confided in him and told him
of the exploits of the boys at the Centre. He clearly pictured Fitch
as the mastermind of the conspiracy, who with Filley had actually
paid off the boys for each criminal task assigned. Wescott carried
the state's case a great step fonvard by telling how Fitch had re-
vealed to him his plan to climax the attacks on the railroad by
burning the depots at Detroit, Ann Arbor, Jackson, and Niles,
off ering $ 1 ,000 to anyone who would bum all four, or $250 for any
one of them. Fitch, he said, had actually tried to get him to burn
the Detroit depot. Conspiracy, motives, methods, intent— Wescott
happily supplied all the ingredients necessary for a conviction. He
also for the first time linked Fitch with Gay and told how in dis-
guise, he had trailed Fitch and Joe Dows, a notorious criminal,
to Gay's house in Detroit in February, 1851.
Frink and Seward could not shake Wescott's testimony on cross-
examination. All they could do was to try and impeach his credi-
bility by bringing out that he had once been indicted for forgery
and again by suggesting that he had a direct financial stake in the
case, that he expected a 1 1,000 reward if the defendants were con-
victed by his testimony.
The star witness for the prosecution was, of course, Henry
Phelps. For a day and a half, under Van Arman's questioning,
he cleverly and coolly wove a net of guilt around the defendants.
He brought home the crime of arson to them. He revealed how
they had hired him to burn the depot in Niles and "fixed him out"
for the expedition in arson on the night of April 11, 1851, at
Filley's tavern. They had supplied him that night with a "match"
similar to the one they had given Gay to burn the depot in Detroit.
Fitch, Filley, Price, Corwin, Williams, and Freeland had severally
admitted to him that they had contributed to the purse raised for
Gay. Gay on his part had confessed to him, Phelps, that he had been
furnished the match by the men from the Centre and that on the
night of the fire he had placed the ignited match in the cupola of
the depot and that the boys had paid him for the job. Phelps
further confirmed by personal knowledge that Fitch had been ac-
quainted with Gay.
Phelps was subjected to a severe probing cross-examination by
[63]
Frink and Seward for another day and a half. They tried in vain
to get him to contradict himself, for he stuck to his story and
parried all thrusts with great finesse. Defense counsel had to resort
again to bringing out the details of his unsavory past, his business
defaults, and his five year term in the state prison for horse-stealing.
They impugned Phelps' motives by trying to show that he hated
Fitch and wished to take revenge on him, but the witness denied
any such feelings and insisted that Fitch had been one of his best
friends. Phelps denied any and all villainies that the defense im-
puted to him.
Following Phelps on the stand, Heman Lake confirmed substan-
tially all the testimony of his mentor. When counsel tried to im-
peach his character, they incidentally revealed the main lines of
the defense and offered too an amusing little byplay. Frink asked
Lake where he had been lodging during the trial. Lake answered
that he had boarded with Wescott most of the time he had been in
Detroit but had also spent some time at the home of Gay's widow.
When Frink followed this up by asking whether he had slept at the
brothel, Stuart objected for the prosecution that the question was
immaterial. Seward contended that the question was very much to
the point, inasmuch as Lake was one of the state's chief witnesses
and the defense was entitled to investigate him thoroughly. He
added that his clients were charged with conspiracy, but he in-
tended to prove that they were themselves the victims of a con-
spiracy hatched by Phelps, Lake, and others in Gay's house; it was
highly important, therefore, to show the conduct of one of the
principals in such an atrocious plot. Van Dyke then pointed out
that Lake had the privilege of refusing to answer the question if
his reply tended to incriminate or degrade him. The judge upheld
the point and Lake accordingly refused to answer. He was then
asked: "Have you not since the death of Gay been in the constant
practice of sleeping with the widow Gay?" Again the question was
objected to on the ground that it involved a crime and could not
be asked any more than a witness could be asked if he had com-
mitted a murder. The court again upheld the objection and Lake
did not answer.
He did admit under further questioning, however, that he had
taken Mrs. Gay to Marshall and then to Royal Oak to keep her
from being called as a witness for the defense. Prosecuting Attorney
[64]
Stuart later admitted that Lake had done so at his suggestion. He
explained that some of the lawyers for the defense had been "in the
nightly practice of visiting and making improper approaches to this
woman" and hoped to get her to testify for them, and that the
prosecution therefore had taken measures to protect her from de-
fense counsel so that "she might not be induced to become a witness
in this case for the purpose of defeating the ends of public justice."
Lake accordingly had been instructed to escort Mrs. Gay out of
town.
Strangely enough, the defense did not then rise to object to the
ethics of the prosecution in spiriting away such a material witness.
Seward resented, rather, the implication that he, as one of the law-
yers for the defendants, had been the one who had frequently
visited Mrs. Gay at the bawdy house. Van Dyke said he would
freely exonerate Mr. Seward from the charge. William A. Howard
also proclaimed his innocence. Hewitt finally came out and ad-
mitted that he was the lawyer referred to, but assured the court
that he had visited the widow purely in a professional capacity,
believing that she knew something about the case. He had good
reason, he explained, to believe from what Gay, his client, had told
him before his death in jail, that Phelps and Lake had schemed
with Gay to charge the defendants with the crime of arson and
divide a $1,000 reward between them, and that Mrs. Gay was aware
of the plot. He had therefore visited her several times to elicit this
information from her but had been balked in his efforts by the
presence of railroad agents.
The prosecution completed its case on July 8 and rested. Frink
immediately announced that he would present a motion, under the
common law as well as the statute, to discharge twenty-four defend-
ants against whom no criminal evidence had been adduced. On
the advice of the court, however, he waited almost two weeks, and
then after the defense had begun to present its case, asked the
court to discharge or direct the jury to render a verdict in favor of
six minor defendants against whom there was slight or no evidence.
After lengthy arguments, the judge instructed the jury to find a
verdict of "not guilty" for three, but decided to hold the rest for
continued trial. The purpose of the defense, in making this move,
was, no doubt, to gain a point with the jury by forcing it to realize
the weakness of the prosecution's case. More important, they hoped
[65]
to get many of the defendants discharged at this stage so that they
could serve as witnesses for the defense: while they were defendants
they could not be called to the stand to testify, according to Mich-
igan law. The purpose of the common law ruling allowing de-
fendants to be freed before a trial was over was to prevent the
prosecution from including in the indictment important witnesses
against whom there was no real evidence in order to deprive the
defense of their testimony. Fitch suspected that this was precisely
so in the present case. "They have taken," he wrote his wife, "many
these folks prisoners to exclude their testimony in my trial so I
could not prove where I was so that their lying devils would not
be detected in their false swearing ..." And though Van Dyke
now argued that there was sufficient evidence against these defend-
ants to hold them and the court agreed, it is noteworthy that at
the end of the trial, he did not even ask for the conviction of twenty
of the defendants originally named in the indictment.^'^
With most of Fitch's and Filley's neighbors and friends thus dis-
qualified from testifying, the defense found it almost impossible to
dispute the incriminating evidence of Wescott, Phelps, and Lake.
It had to try to catch up the hostile witnesses on circumstantial con-
tradictions in their own testimony. Above all, as Fitch put it, "our
whole effort must be made to impeach Phelps." But even this plan
of defense was beset with unusual difficulties. Counsel felt ham-
pered in their conduct of the defense by the difficulty of private
access to their imprisoned clients. The latter, confined to jail and
laid low by disease, could do almost nothing in their own behalf.
Fitch, the target and the leader, could only call on his wife and his
free friends to come to his aid. Money was needed to pay the
lawyers and round up witnesses, and it was Fitch who raised the
necessary sums, borrowing on mortgages, selling equipment, call-
ing in a note, even giving a mortgage on his land, and eventually
bankrupting his estate. At the very beginning of the defense's case,
Frink and Howard had to write Superintendent Brooks asking for
passes on the railroad for witnesses they wished to bring to Detroit,
in the same manner as the prosecution witnesses had been "passed"
over the road. "The defendants," they explained, "with one or two
exceptions are too poor to pay for procuring the witnesses necessary
to their defense." ®^
Despite all these difficulties, the defense was able to produce a
[66]
great number of witnesses and present a strong case. Some witnesses
from Jackson and Washtenaw counties, having read about the case
in the newspapers or heard it discussed, recalled pertinent informa-
tion and came forward voluntarily, out of sympathy for the de-
fendants or dislike for Phelps and the railroad. Most of them,
however, were rounded up by Fitch's devoted friends: Anson Dela-
mater, Henry S. Holcomb, Edward Higby, and Isaac D. Toll, farm-
ers and merchants of Jackson, Michigan Centre, and vicinity.
These men did the field work, tracking down leads, interviewing
prospective witnesses, taking down their depositions, and bring-
ing them to Detroit to court.
In opening the case for the defense, William A. Howard tried
to surmount another great handicap with which the prosecution
had hobbled its opponents. He referred to the "ingenious at-
tempts" to prejudice the jury by the introduction of evidence
that the defendants had boasted that no jury would ever convict
them, that they could bring any number of witnesses to swear
them clear. The prosecution, Howard charged, wished the jury
to look "with a jealous eye" on all defense witnesses. He said that
"the prosecution reminded him of the invention of a pair of yellow
glass spectacles which caused lard to look like butter. They viewed
everything through colored glass and the acts of all the prisoners
looked bilious in their visions."
Howard's counterattack may have helped the defense in over-
coming the stigma of premeditated perjury, but it eventually
proved futile when one of the defense witnesses broke down and
confessed to that very crime. John Hawley of Indiana testified on
July 15 that Phelps had in the previous September come to see him
and offered him $50 to burn the Detroit depot and swear it on to
some men who lived on the railroad and thus share the reward that
the company would offer. If true, Hawley's testimony would have
gone a long way toward destroying Phelps' credibility and raised
the presumption that it was he who was guilty of conspiracy. Un-
fortunately for the defense, Hawley was arrested the next day and
charged with perjury. Stuart announced in court that Hawley had
admitted that his testimony had been entirely fabricated and that
he had never seen Phelps until he had come into the courtroom.
After the defense had closed, Stuart cleverly produced Hawley in
court and there the latter made a complete confession of how he
[67 ]
had been bribed by Elder Billings, the minister at Jackson prison
who had been active on behalf of the defense, to commit perjury.
He now declared that his conscience had bothered him and he
wished to make a clean breast. At one blow, the statements of every
defense witness was placed under a dark cloud. True, Seward in
his closing argument to the jury, disclaimed responsibility for
Hawley and stated that he had been maliciously imposed on the
defense by enemies of Phelps. He disowned Hawley as a "silly
fool" and declared that others with like testimony had been re-
jected by the defense itself. On the whole, however, the Hawley
incident must have greatly harmed the defense, and the prosecu-
tion, in its final pleas to the jury, hammered away strongly at the
point.
The case for the defense or at least its impact on the jury was
further weakened by the relentless and highly eflEective cross-
examination to which its witnesses were subjected by the prosecu-
tion lawyers, Van Arman and Van Dyke. With the canny Phelps
at their elbows, advising and giving them leads, the two were able
to trip up the country bumpkins who appeared for the defense.
Some of these farmers spoke of the two lawyers as being "rather like
badgers" and complained of being browbeaten. Van Arman, in
particular, savagely and skilfully plied the witnesses with a barrage
of questions on circumstantial details that confused and exasper-
ated them and must have raised some doubts in the jury's minds
about their general credibility. Van Arman here laid the basis for
his reputation as a highly skilled cross-examiner. Thickset and
swarthy as an Indian, with a magnificent head and a strong lower
jaw, he overawed the witnesses he faced. But one witness amusingly
turned the tables on his tormentor. Asked by Van Arman what he
and a friend had been talking about, he replied, "He said . . . that
there was one dark-skinned, ugly-looking specimen that was a
pretty saucy fellow for whom a man had better keep his eye
skinned, that he was rather a scabby fellow . . . and told me to
look out for him." The witness then coyly added, "He didn't tell
his name, but he was one of the lawyers." Laughter in the court-
room greeted the exchange as Van Arman asked again, "Didn't
he say that Van Arman was the man?" Came the reply, "He didn't
say who he was— only he was a scabby man and told me to look out
for him as he would browbeat me pretty well." A moment later,
[68]
this witness tried to prove he would not be browbeaten when, in
answer to Van Arman's insistent questioning on some point, he
said, "I might or might not; don't remember as I did; I won't want
to be humbugged any longer; I told you all about it." Directed by
the court to answer, he replied non-committally and then parried
the next question, "If he did say anything, he may have said so;
if he said so— why he said so." And the court again had to order
him to answer properly. Other witnesses were badgered and con-
fused on cross-examination to the point of helplessness. As one
said to Van Dyke: "You keep rattling around so that I can't find
what you are at . . . You mix it up so I can't tell when the day
was I saw [him]." ^^
The defense lawyers by comparison were not nearly so effective.
Seward and Frink, who did most of the courtroom work for the
defense, were overshadowed by their opposites in this respect.
Frink's sympathy for his clients was no substitute for ability. And
Seward, for all his astuteness and driving logic, which sometimes
verged on sophistry, just did not shine in cross-examination. Slight
and wiry, with his long narrow head and big nose, thick grizzled
hair, and careless dress, the Senator impressed those who agreed
with him with his rugged honesty and ability, his calm dignity. As
Henry Adams once remarked: "There's no shake in him. He talks
square up to the mark and something beyond it." To a less sympa-
thetic observer in that courtroom, he seemed like "a pet fox made
vain by adulation. . ." "He sits," this acidulous reporter continued,
"pursing his mouth like a toothless old lady, his twinkling grey
eyes see all in the room. When speaking to a witness, he rubs his
hands in exultation; then gives his head a toss. . ." Nor did the
prosecution lawyers hesitate to taunt the Senator from New York,
whose public office and peculiar political views laid him open to
attack. They made slighting references to the "higher law" and to
the morals of men in public life. Van Arman, a Democrat, brazenly
accused Seward of vanity inflated by "the fulsome adulation of
partizan editors and the interested flattery of partizan friends. , ."
Even Judge Wing could not resist joining in such hardly proper
depreciation. One Saturday afternoon, while court was met on the
second floor of the city hall, Seward requested an early adjourn-
ment because of the noise from the market below. Wing replied
that as the noise might make it difficult for Seward to be under-
[69]
iwotty
loons
April 1 1, the day they said they had come to the Centre to get the
match and be "fixed out" for the trip to Niles to burn the depot
there. According to the story now brought out in court, Phelps
and Lake had brought the match encased in a box to Michigan
Centre themselves, deposited it with Filley for safekeeping, had
then inveigled the boys to the tavern at the Centre on the pretext
of free drinks and a game of bowls, and finally that evening asked
for and received the box from Filley. The railroad agent who had
been sent there by Clark for the purpose of witnessing the "fixing
out" had seen only a box being delivered to Phelps. The whole
series of events related by Phelps and Lake had been nothing but
a clever fabrication of circumstances to make it seem as if Filley,
Fitch, and the rest had provided the two informers with a match
to burn the Niles depot. On the stand a second time, Phelps and
Lake denied everything and stuck to their original story.
The defense also brought evidence into court to contradict Wes-
cott. The picket fence around Fitch's house, through which Wes-
cott had said he had crawled to eavesdrop, was produced in order
to show that no pickets had been removed and that nobody could
have crawled through or under it. The Fitches' adopted daughter,
Amanda, and their hired girl further showed that W'escott could
not have overheard Fitch and his wife discussing the campaign
against the railroad, as he said he did, in bed in their first-floor
bedroom, for they had slept upstairs on the second floor that sum-
mer. Little Abel Fitch, the adopted son, further testified that the
hole under Filley 's barroom was too small for him to crawl into,
let alone the adult Wescott.
The whole case against Fitch and company, the defense now con-
tended, was nothing but a conspiracy on the part of Phelps, Lake,
and Wescott. The three had cleverly contrived a chain of circum-
stance that pointed to the guilt of the men from Michigan Centre
in burning the depot and then strengthened it with their own testi-
mony of criminal admissions. But there was evidence, "dead, cold
mute, inanimate matter" that they had overlooked, that spoke in
"thunder tones" of the innocence of the defendants. The defense
then exhibited a log of whitewood which had been found buried
under the hay in an old shack on the farm that Phelps had lived
on till shortly before the arrests. The log was of the same kind of
wood and of the same dimensions as the match which Phelps said
[71 ]
the defendants had given him. The inference that Phelps had made
the match himself and used it to incriminate the innocent, the
prosecution waved airily aside on cross-examination, by suggesting
that the defense itself had placed the log on Phelps' land. But other
witnesses then testified that two or three weeks before the match
had first been seen by Clark and Van Arman, Phelps and Lake had
borrowed augers the identical size of the holes drilled in the match
from one of their neighbors and that Lake had been seen at work
with the augers on a log of whitewood, with the shavings lying on
the floor about him.
And why had Phelps and Wescott conspired against Fitch? Be-
cause they hated him. Phelps, while still serving his term in Jack-
son, had told the foreman of the prison machine shop that "he was
in prison through the influence of Fitch and others, and that, if he
lived to get out, he would make them sweat for it, and give them
the same feed they had given him." Another prison official told,
on the stand, how once when Fitch had been visiting the jail,
Phelps had pointed to him and said: "If you knew him as well as
I do, you would not think much of him; he was the means of my
being here and I'll have revenge or satisfaction."
Phelps, recalled to the stand, said he did not remember having
said any such thing and insisted that Fitch was a good friend of his.
Another witness, however, brought out that the previous January,
when Phelps and his wife had spent the night in his home, he had
overheard the couple whispering in another bed in the same bed-
room. Mrs. Phelps had asked her husband if he was going to see
Fitch the next day and if he thought he could do as he calculated to
do. Phelps had replied that if Wescott would do as he had agreed
to do and stick by, he thought he would "come a good drive." It
certainly seemed as if Phelps and Wescott were working in concert
to make money from the railroad by swearing a crime against their
common enemy. For Wescott, too, according to one witness, had
once openly declared that Fitch was a notorious scoundrel who
would appear as a friend to your face, and the moment you turned
your back would run a dagger through your heart and that he
(Wescott) would see him "peeping through the grates yet."
Having proved to its satisfaction that Phelps, Lake, and Wescott
had fashioned a broad net of lies to entrap Fitch and his friends,
the defense then delivered what it felt to be the coup de grace to
[72]
the prosecution's case. It produced witnesses to show that the cele-
brated match simply would not burn when ignited. The witnesses
told of experiments conducted by Seward, Howard, Frink, and
others on a match made according to the specifications Phelps had
given in court: the cotton soaked in camphene had been placed in
the holes in the log and ignited, but the log had never caught fire,
even after four or five attempts. The whole case of the prosecution,
the defense suggested, was not only false; it could not have possibly
been true. It had not been convincingly proven, moreover, that the
fire in the depot had been deliberately set. Several witnesses testi-
fied for the defense that they had first seen the flames elsewhere
than in the cupola, where they should have been if Gay had really
put the match there. Gay, besides, had been disabled at the time
and had to use crutches and could not have carried the match all
the way up to the cupola. His unwonted prosperity in the month
of the fire had not been due to his payment by the "conspirators,"
but, as his own son now swore, to the payment of several notes that
he had held.
In rebuttal, the prosecution brought 118 witnesses who testified
that they had never heard Phelps' reputation for truth questioned
and that they would believe him under oath. A county judge, mem-
bers of the legislature, lawyers, doctors, ministers, merchants, and
farmers, as well as other prison officials, appeared in behalf of the
state's star witness, asserting that from 1840 to the time of his sen-
tence for horse stealing they had generally found Phelps trust-
worthy and had not been aware of any reflections on his truthful-
ness in the communities in which he had lived. Many of them ad-
mitted, however, on cross-examination, that they had not known
Phelps too well and most of them revealed that since the trial
had begun, they had heard some people speak "very hard" of
Phelps, that "enough [had been] said of him to hang the devil,"
that they had "heard a general bark about him lately."
Mrs. Phelps herself denied on the stand that she and her husband
had ever whispered in bed about a scheme with Wescott to "come
a good drive" over Fitch. Indeed, Henry had always looked on
Fitch as his friend. She explained, moreover, that Lake had bor-
rowed the augers solely for the purpose of mending the springs on
their buggy and had returned them the same day. Additional wit-
nesses then contradicted important points established by the de-
[73]
fense: the flames had been first seen issuing from the cupola of the
depot; Fitch had been abed in the downstairs room when a tenant
of his had come to see him one morning in the summer of 1850.
As for the log of whitewood found on Phelps' premises, it had been
unearthed at the suggestion of the crafty Burnett and, by implica-
tion, had probably been planted there. Furthermore, the prosecu-
tion now brought out. Elder Billings, who had bribed one witness
to perjure himself, had tried to get a match made in order to
secrete it in Phelps' house. While this plan had not been carried
out, was it not likely that the whitewood log had been the next best
substitute? The state then put Dr. Edmund G. Desnoyers, a Detroit
chemist, on the stand to prove that the match if ignited would
burst into flame. The experiment took a long time and much effort,
and a substitute for camphene, which would not work as specified,
had to be used, but there was no doubt that the match was the
incendiary instrument used to burn the depot.
At this point, Van Arman launched a sharp attack on the cred-
ibility of all the defense witnesses. One farmer and his son had
testified for the defense that on April 1 1 they had seen Phelps and
Lake part company on the way to Michigan Centre and that the
latter had carried a bundle the size of the match wrapped in red.
The prosecution had sent men out to the farm in question, and
they reported that from where the farmer and his son had stood,
no one could see passers-by on the road much less a bundle carried
under the arm. Van Arman suggested that the jury go out to the
farm and see for itself. He urged haste, for as the place was so near
Leoni, "the defense will bring twenty or thirty to swear away every
fence and tree about the place. . ." Seward objected strongly to
these personal aspersions and countered with some slighting re-
marks about Van Arman's dual role as counsel for the people and
agent of the railroad, who had "descended to the haunts of vice"
to secure evidence. With regard to a visit to the field near Leoni,
Seward charged that the prosecution lawyers had already inspected
the place in the company of one of the jurors, and sarcastically
added that, this time, he hoped defense counsel would be per-
mitted to go along. Van Arman, standing on his dignity, said he
would not reply "to the tirade of the counsel, which he presumes
is meant merely for the public." Being thick-skinned, he was not
at all wounded by the pointed remarks. True, he had visited a
[74]
"haunt of vice," but he had "testified to truth he knew, while the
other counsel was here for months seeking to screen guilt. . ."
At this point, the court interrupted with the remark that the
matter had gone far enough. Prosecuting Attorney Stuart inter-
jected that he thought Van Arman had not gone "near so far" as
the defense counsel in rude and indecent personal attacks. Judge
Wing replied that he had no wish to prevent counsel from reply-
ing to any attack on his integrity but merely desired to prevent
excitement. Van Arman would not, however, remain silent. He
defended his own actions by citing his high motives, to prevent the
destruction of life and property on the railroad. He insinuated
that Seward's motives in endlessly delaying the trial had not been
so pure, that he hoped to break up the trial by the death or illness
of a juror or give the defendants time to concoct perjury. Such
conduct, he sneered, could not be distinguished "in point of
morality from helping the defendants out of prison by handing
them a file."
After this bitter contretemps the prosecution recalled Phelps and
Lake to the stand to deny that they had made any matches, or knew
anything about the log of whitewood found in the hay, or had sep-
arated on April n, or brought any box to Michigan Centre that
day. With this, the state completed its rebuttal and rested.
In many respects, the climax of the trial had already been passed.
On August 24, Abel F. Fitch had died in the Sisters of Charity Hos-
pital to which he had been removed from his cell in moribund con-
dition. He had been taken sick with dysentery on August 12 and
by August 15 could no longer appear in court, which then ad-
journed from day to day for almost two weeks. After his death, the
trial continued to its appointed end, but the proceedings were
something of an anticlimax. The chief defendant was no longer on
trial; he had gone, as the piety of the time would have it, to appear
before a higher tribunal. The prosecution persisted in its efforts of
getting a conviction and setting an example to other opponents of
the railroad, but the defense lost its spark with the death of a sick
and lonely man.
All during the long hot days in court and the miserable hot
nights in jail. Fitch's hope and health had wasted away. In his now
sporadic letters home, disease and despair were the keynotes. He
continued to proclaim his innocence to Amanda and took some
[75]
comfort from the fact that Seward, "the old guv," as he fondly
called him, was convinced of it too. He felt sure that the railroad
lawyers knew he was not guilty and was all the more appalled at
their determined efforts to secure a conviction. It all seemed so
unreal to him, so like a dream. "It does not seem possible," he told
his wife, "that we can be sworn to States Prison by such devils,
[but] they say I shall never breath one half hour of free air while I
live." Resigning himself to a martyr's fate, he cried:
If this RR company must rule this State why the sooner we know
it the better and perhaps I may as well be the first victim as the last. . .
If this is all due and in accordance with the principals of our government
and the people of Michigan are wilhng to submit to it why I must of
course suffer but God only knows whos turn will come next.
Again in that dark hour, his mind turned to his dearest Amanda.
On August 12, his yearning burst forth: "How much I want to see
you and be again at my peaceable home with my quiet little family,
language cannot express." It was his last letter home.'^^
Two days later, on August 14, Fitch took to his bed, never to
leave it. A week later the dying man was removed from his cell to
the hospital. Amanda came from Michigan Centre to be with him
in his last moments. An eyewitness wrote the following account
of the end:
At 3 o'clock P.M. yesterday, Mr. Fitch became conscious that he could
not live, and talked calmly and firmly of his approaching death. He
desired that Mr. Frink might be sent for, to consult about his worldly
matters. Prosecuting Attorney Stuart and Doctors Rice and Pitcher
arrived about 10 o'clock. An examination and consultation was had, and
the opinion expressed that he could not survive the night. Mr. Stuart
went to the bedside of the dying man when he (Fitch) inquired, "What
is to be done now?" and said, "I shall die a martyr to liberty." Soon
after, he remarked that he put his trust in God, and desired that he might
be baptised. He received the solemn rite at the hand of one of the Sisters
of Charity; and whilst in the midst of the ceremony, while committing
his soul to God, he declared his entire innocence of the crimes with
which he was charged— said he had never violated the laws of his country
—that he had simply expressed his opinions, as he supposed he had a
right to do, and thought it not just that he should be punished.
Mr. Fitch then called his wife to him, bid her good bye, saying,
"Farewelll it is hard to part with the only being I ever loved"; and then
bidding adieu to other friends around him, closed his eyes for a moment.
Recovering again, he exclaimed, "There is poor, dear little Amanda— I
had nearly forgotten her— remember me to her. I dread to die with this
[76]
charge resting upon me. Will not the truth come out and my character
be vindicated?" Being assured by Mr. Frink that his character should be
vindicated, he expressed himself prepared to die; and taking the hand of
his wife, and pressing it to his lips, he said, "Amanda, it is hard to part—
I die of a broken heartl" and fell back, asleep in death.''^
That night the body was brought to Michigan Centre, and to
Jackson the next morning for the funeral. A procession of carriages
and teams nearly a half mile long accompanied the coffin from the
Centre. The Congregational Church of Jackson, where the last
services were held, was filled to overflowing, with people crowding
around the doors and windows. The Reverend Gustavus L. Foster
preached the funeral sermon, taking his text from Job lo: 22,
"Without any order." Death and affliction often seemed to men as
without any order, the preacher pointed out; and Fitch's death
seemed to his many friends who believed in his innocence to be so.
In God's wisdom and knowledge, however, nothing was without
order. Mr. Foster, with characteristic boldness, then proceeded to
attack the authorities and the railroad company as being largely
responsible for Fitch's death. He condemned "in the name of hu-
manity" the refusal of the courts to grant Fitch bail and character-
ized the treatment he had received in prison as "an arbitrary rigid-
ity, amounting well-nigh to the infliction of cruelty. . ." Nor could
one expect more from "heavy monied corporations" that existed
only for gain and violated the Sabbath by running trains on Sun-
days. "Many of the men composing the company owning this Rail
Road may be good men, spending much of their time in Psalm
singing in eastern churches," but their minions in Michigan reck-
lessly trampled on civil and divine law every Sabbath day. Such a
corporation was bound to act as it did to defend its rights, but indi-
viduals too had rights, especially when "arraigned before a civil
tribunal which should never feel the bias of a moneyed anxiety."
The preacher did not shower the deceased with immoderate praise.
Fitch, he said, had been neither a saint nor a vile creature, but a
worthy man, who had never turned the poor away from his door
and whose generosity had won him more friends than any other
man in the region.^^
The death of Fitch, though it shook the defense, brought it fresh
accessions of public support and sympathy. As the astute James F.
Joy discerned, it was bound to have repercussions that might affect
[77]
the outcome of the trial. The day of the funeral, Joy was writing
to Superintendent Brooks that Fitch's death would "undoubtedly
have a great effect on the public mind" and cautioned against al-
lowing anybody connected with the railroad to make "injudicious
remarks." He added cannily,
if anything be said, it should be to express regret at the course taken
by the defendants' counsel which has protracted the trial through the hot
season and sympathy for the family of Fitch. Better however say nothing
and give no occasion for any invidious remark."
Sympathy needed, however, no new occasion for invidious re-
marks. As the wife of one of the other prisoners informed her hus-
band with almost hysterical unbelief: "News has just reached us of
Mr. Fitch's death and my God can it be true. . . This company I
believe means to keep you there till they kill you all." The Jack-
son American Citizen spoke of the "universal sadness thrown over
our community" by the death of "one of the victims of the jealousy
and malice of the Central Railroad monopoly. . ." For the editor
of this Whig antirailroad paper, the death of Fitch only under-
lined his opinion, expressed earlier, that the trial and the charges
were a mesh of lies; though other newspapers on the line and north
of the road had been constantly manufacturing opinion in favor of
the corporation, he would not be deterred from honest criticism
by fear of a monopoly of a few foreign capitalists and their local
political hucksters. Now, he reprinted in full the eyewitness ac-
count of Fitch's death which the Detroit Daily Tribune had
printed and added the charge that Fitch had not been treated
fairly in his last illness. William Gunn, another prisoner who had
died of the same disease a day or so later, had been removed to the
hospital at the first sign of illness, while Fitch had not been taken
there until he had been pronounced incurable. The editor then
followed this charge up by publishing the whole of the Reverend
Foster's funeral sermon on the front page and preparing copies
of it for distribution in pamphlet form. A little later, sentiment
bubbled over into bad verse when there appeared in the columns
of the American Citizen the following anonymous "Lines Written
Upon the Occasion of the Death of Abel F. Fitch:"
Malice, hate, envy, all combined.
His peace they would destroy,
[78]
They tore him from the sacred arms
Of home and all its joys.
They dragged him to a felon's cell-
There in that evil hour.
His heart was crushed, the strong man fell
Beneath oppression's power.
Worn out at last with dire disease
And anguish's keener smart.
Faintly in death's cold arms he said—
I die of a broken heart.
Ye men of monied power and might,
Hear ye those dying words.
Look at the lonely widow's form.
And see the wreck that ye have made.'^
Sympathy for the deceased and doubts of his guilt were not con-
fined to Jackson County. The official organ of the Baptists of Mich-
igan, published in Detroit, did not hesitate to celebrate Fitch's vir-
tues and, while withholding comment on the trial, declared that
the public mind was divided on the question of his guilt. The De-
troit Daily Tribune itself, which four months previously had led
the pack in the outcry against the desperados from Jackson County,
now called Fitch a man who had been known in his community as
kind, conscientious, and charitable, and printed the dramatic
deathbed account. This newspaper's reversal was neither as sudden
nor as capricious as it seemed. Voicing the views of Free-Soil Whigs,
it could no longer escape the conclusion that the interests of the
railroad and the political fortunes of the Democratic administra-
tion were closely bound together in the prosecution. Early in
August, after the defense had already presented most of its case,
the Tribune had begun to express editorial doubts about the guilt
of the defendants. A week later, it affirmed "that there is a con-
spiracy on one side or the other" and warned that if other news-
papers "enlisted" on the side of the railroad, the Tribune would
not "be awed by wealth— no matter how great— into silence." It
cautioned the prosecution that monied power must be used pru-
dently and "never to control public opinion. Courts, Juries, the
Press, or oppress the weak and the poor." Journalistic attacks on
the defendants and their counsel would not help the railroad's
cause, for there was too much respect for law and justice in the city
[79]
of Detroit, "too much hatred of oppression and tyranny whether
manifested by governments or corporations." "^^
Sympathy for the defendants strengthened the feeling of the
righteousness of their original cause— opposition to the Michigan
Central Railroad. Antirailroad sentiment, set back by the sudden
strike of the arrests and held at bay by the judicial proceedings,
now flared up once more, fueled by the passions arising out of the
trial. The focus of this opposition was naturally in Jackson County.
Four days after Fitch's death, an "indignation meeting" was held
at the courthouse in Jackson to allow the citizens to vent their
feelings about the trial and "to ask," as one sympathizer expressed
it in a letter to the editor, "if our hardy yeomanry stand ready to
be humbled at the beck or nod of the agents of a great monied
monopoly." The speakers at the crowded gathering were careful
to blame both parties, the men of Leoni as well as the Michigan
Central. The company had precipitated the trouble by not paying
enough for cattle killed, but this was no excuse for damaging rail-
road property, and those who did so should be punished. Resolu-
tions were passed protesting the company's use of spies, the manner
of the arrests, the excessive bail, the filthy conditions of the jail,
and the treatment of the prisoners in a way "as would have dis-
graced an Austrian Bastille." It was charged, too, that many in-
nocent persons had been arrested to keep them from appearing as
witnesses for the defense. Finally, the hope was expressed that the
opposition to the railroad in the future would stay within legal
limits and would not descend to criminal violence, but would up-
hold the right and further all means to encourage competition
with the Michigan Central. At the close of the meeting, a com-
mittee was selected to prepare for a larger mass meeting on Sep-
tember 13 which would give in resounding tones "the verdict of the
People as to Right in the unholy war." '^'^
The judicious tenor of the indignation meeting, culminating in
the proposal to restore competition, suggests an inspiration far
removed from the violent anger of farmers whose only piece of live-
stock had been killed on the tracks. This first gathering obviously
laid the ground for the well-organized and well-publicized mass
meeting of September 13, which was dominated by outstanding
merchants and politicos of the community who were not averse to
using the resentments aroused by the trial to further their own
[80]
ends. The second meeting, heralded by the American Citizen as
"5000 Freemen in Council," condemned the authorities for their
conduct of the trial in the same terms as its predecessor. It too re-
gretted the criminal attacks on the railroad on the one hand, and
the policies of the company on the other. It heard William T.
Howell, an old antimonopoly man who had voted against the sale
of the railroad by the state back in 1846, call the Michigan Central
"the curse of an insolent and overgrown monopoly on the people."
It agreed unanimously that "the Central Rail Road [had] been
using our laws and Government as a means of outrage, oppression
and injustice." A course of action was advised for the future— to
keep an eye on the railroad, elect honest men to office, and work
to build a branch road from Jackson to the Michigan Southern
Railroad at Adrian in order to create competition. Another reso-
lution called on the Southern Railroad to carry out its pledges to
build this branch road and pledged the assembled citizens to "meet
it frankly and half-way." Here was the voice of the men who were
eager for a connection between Jackson and Adrian and hoped
then to carry the line through to Grand Rapids as part of the
Grand River Valley Railroad. These were the potential investors in
new railroads in the interior of the state who found their efforts
blocked by the monopoly sections of the special charter granted
the Michigan Central Railroad. In closing, the meeting inscribed
the name of the deceased leader on its banner and resolved that it
would "ever cherish the memory of the virtues of our lamented
friend and fellow-citizen, Abel F. Fitch, the victim of a foul con-
spiracy of unjust oppression and cruel wrong." "^^
The same issue of the Whig American Citizen which printed the
detailed story of the mass meeting also contained a two-column
discussion of the whole conflict of the farmers and the railroad,
defending the prisoners and attacking the policies of the company
and its local supporter, Wilbur F. Storey, publisher of the Demo-
cratic Jackson Patriot. Editor De Land carefully explained his
own position: he wished "to preserve the sovereignty of the State
in the hands of the people and keep it from the grasp of foreign
capitalists and their lickspittles"; he did not wage war against the
company and its rights— it had in fact greatly benefited the county
and the state— "but a war as lasting as life is waged against its
despotism, as displayed by its agents." Broadening his attack, De
[81 ]
Land called the railroad monopoly a "locofoco bantling" which
received its special charter from a Democratic legislature and which
subsequent Democratic legislatures had "tinkered up ... to suit
Boston capitalists and remove them from the reach of the people."
The corporation in return had given the Democrats funds and
votes which enabled them to continue in office. ^^
The shift in opinion even brought defection in the ranks of the
prosecution. Jacob M. Howard, the Whig politician who had been
hired by the company to assist in the prosecution, became con-
vinced that he had made a mistake in taking the case and withdrew
from all active participation in the trial, explaining that he no
longer believed Henry Phelps was telling the truth.^o
The railroad and its supporters began to fight back. The Demo-
cratic organ, the Free Press, and the old-line Whig Advertiser, in a
nonpartisan spirit, continued their attacks on the defendants and
their counsel in defense of the Michigan Central and the interests
of the city of Detroit. The company itself tried to curry whatever
favor it might by placing a special train at the disposal of the court
for a visit to the scenes of the alleged crimes. The train carried the
party of judge, jury, and lawyers all the way to Marshall where
they were dined and lodged overnight at the company's expense.
Largesse was extended to the point of cajolery by offering free rides
on the cars to anyone who lived between Jackson and Detroit to
come and hear the closing arguments of counsel. One of the eastern
directors of the company resorted to threats while on a visit to
Detroit. He reportedly said: "These prisoners must be convicted
and unless they are, there is over ^7,000,000 of property rendered
worthless. If they are not convicted, I will sell my stock for what
I can get, for it will not be worth a cent in two years." This in-
judicious outburst, if true, was calculated to coerce the public into
demanding a conviction, and certainly did not reflect the realities
of the railroad's situation.^i
This battle for public opinion was carried over into the lawyers'
final arguments to the jury. For two full weeks, the big oratorical
guns boomed away at the judge, jury, and each other, and at the
public within and without the courtroom. To accommodate the
large audiences of nearly a thousand who came to revel in the fes-
tival of oratory, the sessions of court were held in the great hall on
the third floor of the new Fireman's Hall. Here, Stuart, Van
[82 ]
Arman, and Van Dyke summed up the case for the state and refuted
the arguments of the defense, while Frink, Hewitt, William A.
Howard, and Seward sought to destroy that case and establish the
innocence of their clients by pinning the crime of conspiracy on
the prosecution's chief witnesses, Phelps, Lake, and Wescott. Van
Arman spoke for two-and-a-half days, hammering and slashing
away at the defendants with vicious invective and pulling all the
stops in his maudlin appeals to the jury. Seward replied for three
days in a masterful harangue compounded of logic, learning, melo-
drama, and cutting sarcasm, which even the hostile Free Press
found uncommon, though it sneered at the speech as a mixture of
"appropriate quantities of the dough, the sugar and the spices."
Van Dyke met the challenge admirably and more than matched
Seward's forensics. Tall, dignified, elegant, this "Chesterfield of the
Michigan Bar," made the final plea for the state, suavely and skill-
fully demanding a conviction on the highest moral and patriotic
grounds. The other lawyers delivered addresses of lesser length and
force, and by September 25 the case was ready to go to the jury.82
Almost as much as on the merits of their respective cases, counsel
dwelt on those issues and charges which were agitating the public.
Echoes of the excitement of the early days of the trial, of anti-
corporation sentiment, of the death of Fitch, and of the resurgence
of sympathy for the defendants bounded around the walls of the
crowded courtroom. Now it was the defense which conjured up the
ogre of an omnipotent monopoly, which had whipped the public
into a lather of vengeful delirium and was intent on crushing
valiant, humble citizens fighting only for their rights under the law.
And it was the prosecution that counseled the members of the jury
to mistrust and ignore that fickle guide, public opinion, and follow
only their consciences. Van Dyke admitted innocently that right
after the arrests for an atrocious crime that almost burnt the whole
city to the ground, "it was natural that for a time, the public pulse
should beat the quicker," and then rhetorically flung the charge of
arousing the public back at the defense:
Have the prosecuting counsel run through the streets pledging their
honors to the innocence or guilt of the prisoners? Have they sought, day
after day, to raise an influence that might be brought to bear on your
deliberations? Have they sown distrust broadcast in the community, or
gathered public meetings for the purpose of denouncing these judicial
[83]
proceedings? Have they got up deathbed scenes . . .? Have they pub-
lished sermons of doubtful morality and perverted taste, for distribu-
tion . . . ? Have they passed through the streets, stating that they knew,
and could v^^ager, that certain of the jury they might name, would never
agree to convict?
The lawyers for the defense accused the state of hasty circumven-
tions of the law and of virtually depriving their clients of the right
to bail, of using spies with criminal records to collect evidence. To
these charges, Van Arman and Van Dyke replied that the trial had
been a free and fair one, according to law, such as the defendants
could not have had anywhere else in the world. As for bail, it was
the court that had fixed the amount, not the prosecution. It was,
furthermore, by no means excessive, considering the enormity of
the crime. If the bail had been any less, these dangerous criminals
would have been set free to continue their attacks on life and prop-
erty. "Would you have sent your wife and family upon that [rail-]
road," Van Arman asked the jury, "with these men at large?" And
in using spies of shady backgrounds, the company had only fought
fire with fire; their work had been necessary and useful and hence
honorable. Besides, who were these men who now appealed for
their rights at law? "Have not these men for two years been in open
and avowed rebellion against all law . . ., trampled upon all legal,
social and moral obligations and become and proclaimed them-
selves most openly, mere pirates, outlaws, robbers and murderers?"
By their crimes, have they not forfeited "all protection and con-
sideration from their fellow citizens?"
Counsel for the people went on in this vein, thoroughly to black-
guard the prisoners in the dock. Seward had pictured his clients
as simple, honest farmers and mechanics, "pioneers of the State,"
poor struggling settlers in a new land, in the rural hamlet of Leoni,
who were seeking justice at the hands of powerful wealth. The
prosecution lawyers dismissed this idyllic portrait as ridiculous.
These men were an organized group of reckless and depraved
felons who would stop at nothing to gain their ill-conceived ends.
"Rural hamlet, indeed," Van Dyke sneered. Leoni was a benighted
sink of iniquity which had steadily been declining in population.
It was not strange that its people were ready to burn and kill. Van
Dyke explained:
There is no accounting for the actions of men who begin by believing
[84]
in the utter corruption of all who surround them, even of those whose
virtue and wisdom have placed them to preside over the most sacred
institutions; and who end by adopting vengeance as their guiding star,
and hugging that hideous passion to their heart. They become blind to
reason, justice and humanity. Every feeling turns to morbid hatred;
every pulse throbs with bitter passion, and innocent and guilty are alike
sacrificed to minister to an insatiate appetite for revenge.
Some of the defendants had died, but, ah, sighed Van Dyke, he
could not but wish "that while yet in their childhood they had
sank sweetly into their last repose, long before vice and crime
stained their youth and subjected their manhood to this ordeal
at the bar of their offended country." Nothing was sacred to them,
shouted Van Arman, "not even the holy Sabbath. Look at their
moral character, playing cards, gambling, drinking and carousing
Sabbath after Sabbath. Listen to their horrid oaths— their blas-
phemies. . . Is not crime the natural and appropriate sequel of such
a history?" Not merely the actual crimes of the defendants, but all
the possible horrors of their actions were spelled out for the jury
in fascinating detail verging on bathos. The Leoni villains had
once obstructed the tracks, meaning to throw off a scheduled pas-
senger train into the Dry Marsh, but by chance a freight train
had been stopped. Van Arman would not, however, let the occasion
slip by; he wrung every drop of sentiment from it.
Little did the thoughtless and merry company who left your city on
that bright summer day . . . dream of the deadly perils which beset their
path. Little did the admiring traveler deem, as he gazed upon the smiling
landscapes . . . that such a land could harbor the bloody assassin— that
beneath the shade of those sunny groves crept, with stealthy tread, the
murderer, against whose wiles and snares the arm of the law was power-
less to protect his life. Little deemed the mother, as she fondly played
with infant slumbering upon her breast, that its winding sheet, and hers,
was prepared in the cold bosom of that sunless and dismal lake! And
yet it was for them— for that fated train, thus heavily laden with human
beings, that the fatal toils were set. In the silent depths of those stag-
nant waters, where the blessed light of heaven could never smile upon
them, their grave was dug.
Van Dyke was not to be outdone by his colleague. He too dwelt
tearfully on the catastrophe that had been averted. "Fancy," he
begged the jury,
fancy that doomed train approaching, with its precious freight— fami-
lies returning from long and painful absence— visions of home and hap-
[85]
piness flashing before them; on they rush unconscious of the fate
prepared for them; there is a sudden stop— one mighty bound of the
engine— one shrill whistle, one wild scream, and all is over. They are
sunk, entombed— not in the beautiful cemeteries where mourning friends
may weep over their ashes— not even in the bright clear waters of our
lake; but amid the slime and mud that ages have accumulated in that
dismal spot.
The defense lawyers could not match these fanciful previsions of
doom, but were not altogether inept at similar pathetic excursions.
They did not hesitate to play up the death of Fitch for all it was
worth, presenting him as a martyred hero, a victim of greed and
cruelty. Frink perorated on the theme: "His life has been sacrificed
in the midst of his days. God in his providence has permitted him
to fall upon the altar of freedom— a victim of injustice and oppres-
sion." Fitch was a fine man, a gentleman, whose innocence counsel
never doubted. And, Frink concluded, soberly prodding the jury,
"a higher and holier tribunal has ere this judged him in mercy."
Seward chimed in, in turn, "Death. . . has invested the transaction
with the dignity of tragedy." In a voice husky with emotion and
constant snuff-taking, and without showy oratorical grace, he de-
livered his own peroration, which must have left the jury floun-
dering in its own tears. "Fitch," he exclaimed,
who was feared, hated and loved most of all, has fallen in the vigor of life
"hacked down
His thick summer leaves all faded!"
When such an one falls, amid the din and smoke of the battlefield, our
emotions are overpowered— suppressed— lost in the excitement of public
passion. But when he perishes a victim of domestic or social strife— when
we see the iron enter his soul, and see it day by day, sinking deeper and
deeper, until nature gives way and he lies lifeless at our feet— then there
is nothing to check the flow of forgiveness, compassion and sympathy.
If in the moment when he is closing his eyes on earth, he declares, "I
have committed no crime against my country, I die a martyr for the
liberty of speech, and perish of a broken heart"— then, indeed do we feel,
that the tongues of dying men enforce attention, like deep harmony.
Who would willingly consent to decide on the guilt or innocence of one
who has thus been withdrawn from our erring judgment, to the tribunal
of eternal justice? Yet it cannot be avoided. If Abel F. Fitch was guilty
of the crime charged in this indictment, every man here may nevertheless
be innocent; but if he was innocent, then there is not one of these, his
associates in life, who can be guilty. Try him, then, since you must-
condemn him, if you must— and with him condemn them. But remember
that you are mortal and he is now immortal; and that before that tribunal
[86]
where he stands, you must stand and confront, and vindicate your judg-
ment. Remember, too, that he is now free. He has not only left behind
him the dungeon, the cell and the chain; but he exults in a freedom,
compared to which, the liberty we enjoy is slavery and bondage. You
stand, then, between the dead and the living. . . You will, I am sure, be
just to the living, and true to your country; because, under circumstances
so solemn— so full of awe— you cannot be unjust to the dead, nor false to
your country, nor to your God.^
Van Dyke, immediately following Seward, could not let the ap-
peal go unchallenged. He opened his address with ironic modesty:
While I feel pleased in beholding the laurels which this trial has en-
twined around other brows, I will seek to gather none for my own. I
will neither wander into the paths of fancy, nor address myself to those
who sit without the jury box. . . I shall not seek or hope to leave the
impress of oratorical power upon your imagination. . . You must expect
from me, gentlemen, no eloquent declamations. . . I will not weave a
single wreath of fancy. . . I [shall] refrain from pursuing the meteoric
fancies, eloquent philippics and sublime apostrophes. . .
He then struck back at the defense's dramatic evocation of death
and innocence. What had the deaths of some of the defendants to
do with the case? Because two of them had died, was that any rea-
son to infer the innocence of the remainder? "Permit me to ask you
gentlemen— what have you to do with death bed scenes— false in
fact, morbid in taste and wholly irrelevant to this issue." The death-
bed drama was fiction. Fitch was without doubt delirious in his last
moments. His dying words, "dressed up as they now are . . ., would
meet from the deceased, could he hear them, no sign of recog-
nition. . . They might serve to adorn a page of some yellow covered
novel— they have served to grace two elegant perorations," but
were out of place here in a court of law.
Even more reprehensible. Van Dyke thought, were the strictures
on the railroad corporation delivered by his opponents. They had
described the railroad company as a grasping monopoly that would
brook no criticism or interference in its relentless pursuit of gain,
that sought to dominate the state and the people with its power and
crush all who opposed it. The trial, according to the defense, was
no longer an issue between the state and the defendants, but as
Frink put it, between Fitch and "the monetary power" of a corpora-
tion with seven million dollars capital, "a power behind and above
the government— a power that is seldom regulated by humane and
[87 ]
just sentiments; that always seeks to crush those it cannot cajole. . ."
Seward, though he had disclaimed hostility to corporations and
support for illegal methods to fight them, had also dwelt on the
abuse of the people by the Michigan Central. "Corporate wealth,"
he had warned the jury,
cannot long oppress the citizen in such a country and under such a gov-
ernment as this. Your verdict against these defendants, if it shall appear
to be well grounded upon the evidence, will abate a rapidly rising popu-
lar commotion; but, if it shall not be so sustained by the evidence, a
people which make the wrongs of each one the common cause of all, will
pick strong matter of wrath out of the bloody finger ends of a successful
conspiracy.
At this. Van Dyke was shocked. He assailed such demagogic
appeals to bend justice to popular clamor. He defended and lauded
the corporation as a harbinger of endless prosperity and universal
bliss. It was not true that strife had come into Michigan when the
state sold the railroad to a corporation. It was, on the contrary, a
"fortunate hour," for
where heaven's light was once shut out by dense forests, it [now] shines
over fertile fields and rich luxuriant harvests . . . ; hope and energy
sprung from their lethargic sleep, labor clapped her glad hands and
shouted for joy; and Michigan, bent for the moment like a sapling by
the fierceness of a passing tempest, relieved from the debts and burthens,
rose erect, and in her youthful strength, stood proudly up among her
sister states. . . A detestable monopoly! These railroads built by united
energies and capital are the great instruments in the hand of God to
hasten onward the glorious mission of Religion and Civilization.
Van Dyke sorely regretted that "the eminent counsel" had per-
mitted his "energetic bile" to gush forth for "sinister purposes"
and had talked about sacrificing citizens at the behest of dangerous
monopolies. Worst of all, Seward had intimated that if the verdict
were not satisfactory, the people would take things into their own
hands. These were "poisoned and dangerous sentiments" ap-
propriate not for a court of law in the state of Michigan but for
some bloody Paris tribunal. "Ah, gentlemen," Van Dyke warned
the jury, "there is a worse evil abroad through this land, than the
overshadowing power of corporations. These are isms of dreadful
and fearful import around us. They menace our public institutions
and private rights. There is a spirit of disloyalty to law and coun-
try." There are attacks on the revered traditions of our land in the
[88]
name of a "higher law," in which public clamor is placed above
the law and the people are aroused to sit in judgment over courts
and juries. This evil can lead only to the destruction of civili-
zation. Beautiful, prosperous, peaceful Michigan— it has come into
being and flourished mightily under the aegis of the law. Disregard
the law and you destroy all this. But enough! What he said surely
did not apply to the law-loving citizens of Michigan, but rather
to "some foreign district, some land where anti-rent and anti-law
make part of her history," like Mr. Seward's state of New York.
Finally, Van Dyke, like Van Arman, called for a conviction not
merely on the intrinsic merits of the case but equally on its all-
embracing importance. "This cause," he pointed out,
has spread through the confines of our State and beyond its limits, and
a world is looking on to see if there is here strength, and virtue sufficient
to assert the integrity of the law. . . The dignity, the honor, and the
character of Michigan are in your keeping. . . We are called upon by
every high consideration to do our duty in this case . . . Gratitude for the
lovely heritage God has given us; patriotism, love for the beautiful pen-
insula, in which is fixed our destiny and centered our all of earthly good
and hope ... all unite in one voice, and ask that you be firm, free and
steadfast on this occasion. For if these dangerous doctrines which pro-
duced the outrages we are considering, are to spread from the hamlet of
Leoni, throughout the breadth of the land, and even to the jury box of
our courts; if men animated by deep hate against a corporation, feel and
think that they are justified in redressing their own real or fancied
wrongs, in their own way; if courts are to be scouted at, laws to be
trampled on, order rushed into wild confusion, and crime sympathized
with and left to stalk unpunished; then indeed have evil days come upon
us. Capital, virtue, peace and property will be trodden over, and crushed
by mob violence and all the dire evils which will follow in its train. . .
The first jury which renders a verdict, tainted by the unhallowed spirit
of fear, or public opinion, or prejudiced by loud clamors against monopo-
lies and tyrannical corporations, will have stricken a death blow at this
country's honor and welfare.
Van Dyke was confident, however, that Michigan would be "loyal
to the Union and to the law."
These solemn appeals for loyalty to God and country over-
shadowed in large measure the summing up of the evidence. In
elaborating the legal case against the defendants, the lawyers for
the prosecution stressed the fact that they had been engaged in a
conspiracy. The men of Leoni, it was clearly pointed out, hated the
railroad, swore to get redress, obstructed the tracks and attacked
[89]
the trains, threatened to burn depots, met and discussed their
plans, and took oaths of mutual loyalty: all of which was evidence
enough that they were conspiring to destroy railroad property
until their demands were met. It all raised more than a pre-
sumption that they also burnt the depot in Detroit. The later at-
tempt to burn the Niles depot was equally part of the over-all plan.
True, each of the criminal acts against railroad property at or
near Michigan Centre had not been brought home to a particular
defendant. But it was not necessary to prove who committed each
and every crime. If one act was proved against one man, the pre-
sumption was that all were guilty of all the acts, unless proven
innocent. All the defendants, moreover, need not have aided and
abetted in each outrage nor even have been present. It was suf-
ficient that they had been cognizant of the offense and consented
to and approved of it. That was the essence of conspiracy or com-
bination: the necessary elements of "unity of motive, purpose and
design" were all present.
As to the crime charged in the indictment, the burning of the
depot, there was no doubt that the building had been destroyed by
an incendiary. The place where the flames had first been seen by
reliable witnesses, in the cupola, high above the elevating machin-
ery and the storage bins, proved that the fire had not been an ac-
cidental one. Too, the depot had been shut down at midnight and
all the candles extinguished. In any case, Gay had admitted to
Phelps that he had set the fire with a match. Experiments con-
ducted by the chemist, Dr. Desnoyers, proved that the match would
burn for several hours, as Gay said it had done. Van Arman had,
nevertheless, to admit that it had not been proven beyond a shadow
of a doubt that the depot fire had not been an accident, for, as
he explained, "There never was a case of burning where the proof
was certain that it did not take place by accident."
Van Dyke and Van Arman then stoutly defended the veracity
of Phelps and Wescott, their star witnesses. Of Phelps, Van Arman
said, in all candor:
He is either the most execrable villain that has ever appeared in mod-
ern times, either the vilest and most abandoned wretch that Providence
has ever permitted to pollute the earth ... or he is the most deeply
wronged man on the face of the earth. If he has deceived us, there is no
penalty too heavy for his crime.
[90]
But he could not have possibly deceived all the counsel for the
state as well as Superintendent Brooks and Mr. Clark. "You must
see," Van Arman argued, "that we all have fully believed [him] or
we had not dared to commence these proceedings." The prose-
cution had not, moreover, accepted Phelps' testimony, crucial as
it was, without corroboration. Clark and Van Arman had con-
firmed Gay's confessions, and an independent witness had been
present when Phelps had been "fixed out" for burning the Niles
Depot at Michigan Centre the night of April ii, 1851. Nor had
Phelps' testimony, or Wescott's, been shaken on cross-examination.
Both of their stories were so long and so complicated, they could
not have possibly been fabricated, and the defense's attempts to
contradict them had utterly failed. On the contrary, it was the de-
fense witnesses who were tainted with perjury. Van Arman pointed
out that Hawley himself had confessed to that crime, and added,
"It would be rashness after the experience we have had of the skill
and resources of these defendants to doubt for a moment that they
could prove anything they wish." The charge that Phelps, Lake,
and Wescott had themselves conspired to pin the crime on Fitch
and company was equally baseless. They had no cause to injure
Fitch; they were indeed his friends and accepted as such until
exposed as railroad agents. Phelps and Wescott could not have
schemed together, for they had not been acquainted until after they
had made their separate reports to Clark, who had not let one see
the other's reports. Phelps and Lake could not have made the
matches: they had not seen one until Fitch had shown them one.
The log of whitewood had probably been planted on Phelps' va-
cated premises, for whatever he was, Phelps was no fool who would
have left it there to be found and used as evidence against him.
It was the defendants who had conspired, prosecution counsel
contended, to destroy the property of the railroad and who had
hired Gay to burn the depot in Detroit. There was no doubt that
Fitch knew Gay and had negotiated with him in the summer of
1849. Had not Gay mentioned his name and that of others at the
Centre? Aaron Mount, one of the defendants, had, according to
Lake, admitted being associated with Gay in crime and had brought
Fitch and Gay together. Too, Wescott had testified that he had
followed Fitch to Gay's house in Detroit and seen him enter it.
On this point, the prosecution made much of the testimony of
[91 ]
Dr. James A. Hahn, mayor of Marshall, who had been on the train
that had brought the prisoners to Detroit. According to Dr. Hahn,
Fitch had asked to see the warrant for his arrest. As he read it, he
said that he had a slight acquaintance with Phelps some years be-
fore the latter had gone to prison but since then had had little to do
with him. Fitch had then added that he saw that he was charged
with being an accomplice of a certain Mr. Gay, but that he did
not know Gay and had never heard of him. And then, after a pause,
he said, "I believe that old Gay has turned state's evidence." This
last remark. Van Dyke insisted, unquestionably proved that the
squire of Michigan Centre knew the bawdy-house keeper of
Detroit; otherwise, why should Fitch call him "old Gay," and
what state's evidence was there to turn.
In concluding his argument. Van Dyke briefly reviewed the evi-
dence against each of the thirty-two defendants. Against seventeen
of them, he admitted that, thoua:h there was evidence to show that
they were involved in the general conspiracy to destroy railroad
property, there was none implicating them in the crime of burning
the depot. He said he would be satisfied if the jury acquitted these
and told them "to go and sin no more." Against three of the de-
fendants, the evidence was doubtful, and the jury would have to
consider their cases carefully and then decide as it saw fit. Against
twelve of them, whom he named, he had no doubt that the evi-
dence was strong and true that they were clearly guilty of being
accomplices before the fact. For these, he demanded a conviction,
so that history might record the fact that "a firm and able judge,
an intelligent and honest jury, unawed by fear and prejudice, and
unawed by threats, vindicated the violated law."
In their closing arguments, Frink and Seward denied completely
the guilt of their clients and tried to prove that there was no basis
in fact or in law for the case against them. The charge of con-
spiracy was false and even ludicrous. The criminal acts against
railroad property in Jackson County had indeed and unfortunately
been committed, but they were "individual, casual, unpremed-
itated crimes," in which it was proven that only three or four of
the defendants had been involved and only those present had been
implicated. The expressions of hostility had been legitimate indivi-
dual opinions, and the threats uttered, "individual, impulsive,
passionate, but idle." All the meetings cited as evidence of a con-
[92 ]
spiracy had been accidental, not preconcerted, irregularly and
openly held in the public barroom, "open to all comers, whether
village gossips or travelers." All the criminal acts and gatherings
had, moreover, taken place in Jackson County, in another juris-
diction, and were no concern of the jury in Wayne County. In vain
the defense had opposed the admission of such testimony on the
ground that those crimes, even if committed by the defendants,
could not be proven under the present indictment; that if the de-
fendants did or did not burn the depot, it mattered not whether
they conspired to do so. The prosecution had offered this mass of
evidence, promising to prove a conspiracy to destroy all the prop-
erty of the railroad, including the depot. This they had not done.
They had succeeded, however, Frink charged, in their design "to
subserve the same unholy purpose of the declarations, made not
only in the streets, and in public journals, but in the presence of
this court, denouncing in advance, as outlaws, and as their per-
jured abettors, every man who should be a witness for, the de-
fendants."
Seward then attacked Wescott and his testimony, on which the
charge of conspiracy was largely based. Wescott, Seward charged,
who had told of the alleged declarations made to him by the de-
fendants and to him alone, in the presence of no one else, was noth-
ing but a "hireling informer," of dubious repute, a coward, with a
grudge against Fitch. He had been contradicted in many parts of
his story. Most of the remarks he attributed to the defendants
showed nothing more than hostility to the railroad. Wescott tried
to supply this deficiency by adding that Fitch, Filley, and Corwin
had called themselves "The Leoni Band"; that Filley had angrily
declared, "Leoni against the world"; that other Leonians had said
to him that they were banded together for the destruction of the
road unless they were paid for their cattle. Seward pointedly asked:
Do you not see how admirably this testimony is adapted to the exigen-
cies of the prosecution? I imagine I hear the counsel. Van Arman, say,
wanted— proof of a conspiracy. Wescott: They called themselves the
Leoni Band. . . Van Arman: Wanted— proof that the band was banded
together. Wescott: Fitch said— we are banded and conspired together
against the railroad company. Van Arman: Wanted— proof that the ob-
ject of the conspiracy was the destruction of the railroad. Wescott: Fitch
said, we are banded and conspired together for the entire destruction of
the railroad. . . .
[93 ]
Seward then reduced to absurdity the whole notion of a con-
spiracy:
What a solemn and fearful scene that must have been when these
conspirators threw off the mask— "Leoni against the world." Where and
what was this Leoni? It was a hamlet among the oak openings of Mich-
igan. What was its magnitude? It consisted of a country tavern, a store
house, a school-house, a church, a dozen humble tenements. Who were
the members of this band? One country gentleman, one keeper of a
tavern and ball-alley, one drinking teamster, one backwoodsman, and one
village mason; and they acted their parts with as much boldness, and
even more, than the clowns in the interlude in Midsummer Night's
Dream. For when Bottom proposed to act the part of Lion, he was over-
ruled lest he might roar too loudly, and so "frighten the duchesses and
the ladies." No such timidity distinguished the clowns of Leoni. They
proclaimed themselves the unterrified— "Leoni against the world."
With this, he mockingly dismissed the witness: "Adieu, Mr.
William D. Wescott."
Coming closer to the heart of the case, Seward blasted the evi-
dence purporting to connect the defendants with Gay in the burn-
ing of the depot. In the first place, at least nineteen of the defend-
ants had not been shown to have had any connection with Gay.
Against the rest, there were only the reported admissions by Gay
and the defendants themselves, "the most uncertain and unsat-
isfactory of all testimony," because it consisted of mere repetition
of oral statements of others, liable to be misunderstood or in-
correctly heard or reported. All the alleged declarations and admis-
sions, Seward insinuated, bore the mark of falsehood, for they were
all couched in the language of the witnesses who reported them.
It reminded one of the "Grecian oracles" or the "Rochester rap-
pings," where the ghosts "were learned in the languages of the
conjurors."
Such admissions, moreover, meant nothing in the face of the
fact that the crime could not have been committed in the manner
supposedly confessed. The match as described by Phelps would
not burn. It could not have burst into flame several hours after it
had been lighted in Gay's house and then carried through the
streets in a covered box. Even if it had, Gay could not have de-
posited it unseen in the cupola at 7 or 8 p.m., as he reportedly
said he did, with the guards and employees busy all about the
depot. Why had no one seen Gay? Why had the prosecution not
[94]
brought Gay's wife to testify that he had left his home with the
match that evening? Why had they spirited her away? Nor had
it been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the fire had been
incendiary and not accidental. Even if it had first been seen in the
cupola, as the prosecution contended, that still did not prove it
had not been accidental.
More important, Seward continued, it had not been incontro-
vertibly established that any of the defendants actually knew Gay.
Fitch had not been in Detroit in the summer of 1849. Wescott's
testimony that he had followed Fitch to Gay's house early in 1851
had been contradicted by witnesses who had been in Fitch's com-
pany all the time he was in the city. The meeting Wescott referred
to had, in any case, taken place after the fire. As for Dr. Hahn's
testimony about Fitch's remarks on the train after the arrests. Fitch
certainly was truthful in denying all knowledge of Gay before the
arrests. After the arrests and after he had read the warrant, "old
Gay's" name must have become as "familiar as household words."
No evidence had been brought to show that Fitch had ever nego-
tiated with Gay to undertake the crime. When and where had this
been done? Fitch was dogged by spies and certainly any meeting be-
t\veen him and Gay would not have remained unknown. Ab-
solutely no proof had been offered that any of the defendants had
made the match and then delivered it to Gay, or that any payment
had ever been made for the crime. Had all this been done by mes-
senger or correspondence? Why had not Phelps testified to any
of these crucial transactions? Why had not the defendants revealed
these important matters to Phelps and the other spies as they had
the other details of their crime?
The charge that the defendants had hired Gay to burn the depot
rested entirely on admissions, that is, on what Phelps and Lake said
Gay and Fitch and others had told them. And Phelps and Lake
and Gay were utterly unworthy of credit. Gay, Seward specified, was
a man . . . who had been convicted of more than twenty crimes, ranging
from petit larceny to murder . . ., a man who lived in daily association
with culprits, and who at the time kept a house of ill-fame, and thus
subsisted by the debasement of one sex, while he harbored the most
depraved of the other.
His purported admissions as to the complicity of the defendants in
the crime, moreover, were not admissible as evidence. Gay was
[95 ]
dead and no longer on trial. As a principal, his admissions could
not be evidence against his accessories until he himself had first
been convicted. Hence, Frink argued, the whole trial had been
invalidated on the technical ground that Gay had not been found
guilty and the indictment of accessories alone must charge the
ofEense in substantive language and not in a dependent manner.
Seward did not go along with his colleague in charging a mistrial.
He merely contended that the testimony of Gay's declarations had
been allowed to come in unadvisedly, on a promise by the prose-
cution that had not been kept, and should therefore now be
stricken from the record.
As for Phelps and Lake, both were convicted criminals. Phelps
had, in addition, been impeached by over a hundred witnesses.
The witnesses brought by the prosecution to uphold his reputation
had not destroyed that impeachment. Some of them knew nothing
of Phelps' character after 1842, and all of them without exception,
when testifying favorably as to his reputation, had declared "not
that they [had] heard it discussed and then pronounced good, but
simply that they [had] not heard it discussed at all . . ." And by the
very neighbors who had come into court and said that his character
and reputation were bad!
"I ask you now to consider," Seward reminded the jury,
the circumstances under which [Phelps] appears. He testifies under the
impulse of an overpowering necessity. A stipend of $40 a month as an
informer is his only resource for support. . . His fortune involves two
alternatives; one that he carry the prosecution through and cause these
defendants to be sent to the State Prison and thus establish a claim to
be restored to that social confidence which he so early lost; the other that
he shall be convicted of wilful and malicious conspiracy against these
defendants with perjury and subornation of perjury, and return, after a
guilty respite of two years and six months to the State Prison whence he
came.
Phelps was motivated, besides, by an "impulse of a studiously con-
cealed but malevolent and persevering revenge against Abel F.
Fitch, who was originally the chief mark of this fearful prosecu-
tion . . ." Vehemently, Seward dismissed the state's star witness:
"Enough then for Henry Phelps. 'Room for the leper! Room!' "
Phelps' testimony, Seward also pointed out, had been contra-
dicted again and again in its circumstantial details by many wit-
nesses. He had testified to appointed meetings with Fitch in Mich-
[96 ]
igan Centre and in Detroit, in which the latter had allegedly talked
of his great success in burning the depot, and asked Phelps to burn
the Niles depot and engage in counterfeiting. Witnesses, however,
had merely heard Phelps and Fitch converse about such common-
place subjects, as Fitch's twin oxen or where fish and provisions
could be bought in Detroit. The imputation was clear that Phelps
had simulated a close acquaintance with Fitch under various
pretexts, reporting the while a farrago of incriminating admissions,
of which the witnesses had heard nothing. There was, too, a sus-
picious identity in the language of the admissions reported by
Phelps and Lake, an identity "as harmonious as in the ritual of a
Free Mason's Lodge or in the liturgy of the Episcopal Church," and
which smacked of their sinister purpose and falsity.
The whole case, the defense reiterated in conclusion, was a false
and diabolical conspiracy by Phelps and his accomplices. The
motives of the conspirators were hatred of Fitch and the hope of
sharing the large reward offered by the railroad company. To this
end, the three testified falsely that Fitch and the others from Leoni
had admitted hiring Gay to burn the depot. Phelps and Lake had
made the matches themselves and pretended to have received them
from Fitch. They had brought a match themselves to Michigan
Centre the day they left to burn the Niles depot. They had given
a match to Gay so that Clark and Van Arman could see it in his
possession. Phelps had induced Gay to admit that he had burned
the depot, and the latter was precisely the kind to confess to a crime
on the promise of immunity and a share of the reward. Or Gay had
perhaps been duped by Phelps and had been arrested to keep him
from testifying. The conversations between Gay and Phelps, re-
ported on the witness stand by the latter, showed that some such
conspiracy had been in the minds of the two. Phelps had testified
that he had met Gay in Detroit in the Palo Alto saloon shortly after
the depot fire. The two had discussed a scheme to free a mutual
friend who was in jail for counterfeiting. They were to burn the
railroad depot, get witnesses to swear the crime on some third per-
son they disliked, and then have their friend in jail inform against
the hapless victim. Their friend would as a result be freed and
all three would share the reward received from the railroad com-
pany. Phelps had then suggested that the plot to free their friend
be based on the fire that had already taken place rather than on
[97 ]
some future one. These conversations, Phelps had revealed in
court, had gone on over a period of weeks, and it was in the course
of them that Gay had admitted that he burnt the old depot.
"What," Seward asked after repeating Phelps' story, "what are all
the pretended admissions of Gay and Fitch now produced here but
the fabrications thus early foreshadowed?"
Seward then referred to Prosecuting Attorney Stuart's plea that
Erastus Smith be acquitted, as further proof of the existence of a
conspiracy. Smith was one of the defendants, a Detroit friend of
Gay's, who, according to Phelps, had admitted knowing of the plan
to burn the depot and receiving part of the $150 Fitch had paid
for the crime. Now, Stuart in his closing argument had asked for
the acquittal of Smith on the grounds that he had been seduced by
Phelps into falsely admitting his complicity in a crime of which
he had no knowledge. "When I heard [Stuart] submit this extra-
ordinary proposition," Seward triumphantly declared,
I thanked God and took courage. It revealed the secret of this entire
prosecution. It showed that Smith had been fraudulently made a defend-
ant that he might utter without oath, false allegations to convict the
defendants at Michigan Centre, under an assurance that he should be
acquitted himself. And now, gentlemen, since Smith's allegations are
admitted to be false, are Gay's averments, made under the same circum-
stances, true? ... If Smith was seduced so easily by Phelps, Gay had
even less virtue to resist his seduction. I declare, gentlemen, my profound
conviction that the whole prosecution was conceived in fraud; that George
W. Gay never burned the depot; that he and Smith falsely accused them-
selves of that crime under a promise from Phelps to share in the reward
of a conviction of the defendants . . . ; and that Gay, if he had lived to
go through a trial and conviction, would have been recommended for a
pardon, and would have shared that reward.
Seward, in brief, charged that Smith was a partner to the conspir-
acy, an accomplice of Phelps in the plot to convict the defendants,
and that Stuart's plea for Smith's acquittal proved that charge.
Van Dyke, too, must have thought that Stuart's plea was a mistake
for, in closing for the prosecution, he ignored it and asked for
Smith's conviction along with the rest.
After the counsel had concluded their arguments. Judge Wing
delivered his charge to the jury. He reviewed the history of the
case, but forebore to summarize the evidence, referring the jury
to the printed transcript that was made available to them. He
[98 ]
lectured them with all the usual admonitions to impartiality and
spelled out the usual legal precepts that were to guide them. On
the technical questions raised by counsel in the course of the trial,
he ruled against the defense. He admitted that, in law, Gay's de-
clarations were evidence neither of his guilt or that of his ac-
complices. The defense had erred, however, in waiting too long to
object to them and it was now too late to strike them out. Pre-
sumably, the defense should have objected when the declarations
had been first introduced in evidence after Gay's death. The testi-
mony of \Volliver and other railroad spies who were clearly ac-
complices in some of the crimes committed in Jackson County was
valid, because they had dissociated themselves from the defendants
some time before the arrests. As to the impeachment of Phelps,
Judge Wing told the jury that any evidence of his reputation for
truth based on what was said of his testimony at the trial was not
admissible. Further, if some witnesses said they had not heard
Phelps' reputation discussed at all, nothing could more clearly
uphold and establish it. Finally, the judge warned the jury to
ignore the counsel's appeals to their emotions. If the Michigan
Central Railroad were indeed a monopoly buying up judges and
juries, that fact ought to have nothing to do with the decision in
this case. "Large interests are dependent on your verdict," Wing
reminded the jury, only to ask them to dimiss that consideration
from their minds. He emphasized that no thought of the conse-
quences must be allowed to influence their verdict, which must be
one they could reasonably arrive at on the basis of the evidence
and not one of whose truth they would have to swear.
On September 25, at 11:30 a.m., the case went to the jury. The
jurors, according to one report, started their deliberations with
prayer, at the suggestion of one of their number who found himself
bewildered by the impenetrable jungle of conflicting evidence
and dismayed by the importance of the case. That evening, more
than nine hours later, the jury returned with a verdict. It found
twelve of the defendants guilty as charged and exonerated the re-
maining twenty, recommending two of the guilty ones, Erastus
Smith and Dr. Ebenezer Farnham, to the mercy of the court. The
next morning, the prisoners, surrounded by their families, were
brought into court to be sentenced. Their lawyers, in a last-ditch
maneuver, moved for a new trial and for suspension of sentence
[99]
for a short time, but both motions were overruled. Judge Wing
then asked the guilty defendants why sentence should not be passed
on them. Some arose and protested their innocence. The judge in
turn lectured them severely on their crime and pronounced sen-
tence. Ammi Filley and Orlando Williams received ten years at
hard labor in the state's prison at Jackson. William Corwin, Eben
and Richard Price, Andrew J. Freeland, Dr. Ebenezer Farnham,
and Aaron Mount were sentenced to eight years each, and the three
Champlin brothers, Lyman, Erastus, and Willard, and Erastus
Smith, to five years each. All twelve were then taken to Jackson
prison by a special train provided by the Michigan Central Rail-
road.8*
The verdict was received by the Detroit press with gratitude
that the city's reputation as a "Christian community" had been
upheld against the attacks of base criminals. In Jackson, Editor
De Land, in the Citizen, expressed his surprise and, he believed,
that of the entire community. He felt that truth and justice had
been "cheated of their prey," that the wrong men had been con-
victed. In explanation, he could only conclude that not even
"great legal talent could prevail against adverse public opinion
backed by the almost . . . almighty power of a monied corporation."
And he later cited the Ypsilanti Sentinel, the Jonesville T.elegraph,
and the Battle Creek Journal as sharing his opinion.^^
At this distance in time, it matters little whether the defendants
were guilty or not. It is more important to view the trial as an
example of the way in which the railroad company moved to de-
fend itself against its enemies. The company officials urgently
needed and were determined at all costs to secure a conviction
in order to halt the attacks on the trains in Leoni and Grass Lake
townships. That conviction, they were certain, could not have been
gotten in Jackson County in the face of a hostile public opinion.
After the depot burned and Phelps presented them with evidence
that the Leonians were responsible for the fire. Brooks, Joy, and
Clark eagerly seized the opportunity to try the road's enemies in
another, more friendly jurisdiction. With a largely favorable press
and public opinion, they pushed their advantage to the limit. The
prosecution lawyers successfully appealed to the patriotism and
sense of social order of the jury of Detroit businessmen and poli-
ticians and convinced them that the defendants, who were clearly
[ 100 ]
guilty o£ criminal offenses in Jackson County, could reasonably be
presumed to have burnt the depot in Detroit. The whole trial thus
seems to have been part of a larger conflict of force between the
Michigan Central and the farmers of Jackson County rather than
a legal action of the people of the state of Michigan against some
criminals who had burnt down a building. And the triumph of
the company was signalized when Joy, after having paid Van Dyke
and Van Arman $2,000 each for their services, and lesser sums to the
other lawyers, rewarded Prosecuting Attorney Stuart with the sum
of $500 for his services to the state.^^
The feelinsf will not down, nevertheless, that the defendants
had not burnt the depot. To a layman unversed in the law, it
seems that the voluminous and conflicting evidence does not prove
beyond a reasonable doubt that Fitch and company were guilty
of the crime with which they were charged. And subsequent events,
too, raise some doubts about the justice of the jury's decision.
Four months after the trial, in January, 1852, the Michigan
Central shops in Detroit were destroyed by fire, and two years after
that, the passenger offices also burnt down. These later fires were
undoubtedly accidents, contingent hazards of the early days of
railroad operations. Was it not likely that the earlier fire in the
freight depot was of similar origin and that no crime had been
committed at all? ^'^
Almost two years after the trial, Erastus Smith, one of the con-
victed defendants, was pardoned and after his release, made out
an affidavit, which was published in Burnett's Grass Lake news-
paper, in which he revealed in great detail his relations with Phelps
before the aiTests. Smith affirmed that he had been duped by Phelps
and had had no connection with the burning of the depot. He
declared that Phelps had approached him many times to swear
falsely and involve Fitch and the others in the crime. Phelps had
also suggested that the two of them go to Michigan Centre and talk
to the boys at Filley's tavern "about something, no matter what,"
while he, Phelps, would take notes. Thus, the arch-plotter craftily
argued, "one of us could talk and the others could swear that they
saw it, and in this way, we can back one another up." When Smith
refused to go along, insisting that he was "not smart enough to go
into such an operation as that," Phelps retorted, "God damn it,
you are smart enough to tell a story and stick to it," adding that
[ 101 ]
that was all Smith had to do. He, Phelps, would make the state-
ments and write them down and Smith would swear to them.
Smith still refused, but was present at a meeting with Gay when
when the latter agreed to go into the scheme with Phelps. Later,
he received other propositions from Phelps, such as to pass counter-
feit money, but declined these too. The next thing he knew he was
arrested with Gay. The clear implication of Smith's whole story
was that Phelps had turned on him when he had refused to join the
conspiracy and had had him arrested so that he could not reveal
the sordid details of the plot on the witness stand. It is, of course,
possible that Smith concocted this version of his relations with
Phelps to put his own role in the best possible light, and present
himself as a victim rather than an accomplice of Phelps, as Seward
had suggested in his closing address. Whatever Smith's role, it is
not unreasonable to suspect that Phelps had been guilty of perjury
and subornation of prejury as part of his plot to swear the Leoni
people to jail. ^8
In a broader sense, all the actions of the railroad company in this
savage conflict may perhaps be understood more clearly in the
light of contemporary business policy. Superintendent Brooks con-
ceived the role of the company as one of pioneer development
in a new land involving risks for which the investors were to be
duly paid. He and his advisors accepted no broad social responsi-
bility other than the efficient and profitable transportation of peo-
ple and goods. The public as consumer or shipper or as voter en-
tered little into any considerations of policy. The result was a
shortsighted ruthlessness that accorded ill with the populist Amer-
ican ethos and inevitably brought heated protest, which Super-
intendent Brooks felt justified in ignoring. Not until the company
felt that its strategic position in the state legislature as against
rival pressure groups was threatened, did it act to turn aside and
blunt the edge of protest. It thus received its first limited lesson in
the conduct of public relations, a subject in which American in-
dustry was to undergo a long and expensive process of education.
The Michigan Central in the 1850's faced only its worried political
henchmen who advised it to mollify public sentiment if continued
favorable legislative action was expected. Later American corpora-
tions were to face continuous bureaucratic regulation by self-acting
defenders of the public interest brought into being by the clamor
[ 102 ]
of a mass electorate. American industry today has, in response,
evolved in its publicity a rationale of social utility designed to
minimize postive regulation. The Michigan Central, attacked by
a combination of antimonopoly opinion and rival railroads, had
to backtrack on its intransigeance and resort to conciliation in
order to protect its favored economic and political position in the
state.
In Jackson County, outraged feelings and political strategy
combined to keep alive the animus against the Michigan Central.
The Whig American Citizen kept sniping at Brooks and the rail-
road and their political allies. Whatever the specific occasion,
whether attacking the company's political influence or bringing
charges of monopoly, it lost no chance to drag in the fate of the
convicted twelve and the martyred Fitch. Once, it concluded a re-
port of a train crash in which many westbound immigrants had
been killed with the reminder that other victims of the company's
greed and overweening lust for power were also languishing in
state's prison. Local excitement and hatred flared up to a new in-
tensity late in 1852 around the person of Henry Phelps, who made
the mistake of showing his face in Jackson County. While visiting
friends in Grass Lake, he was arrested on a warrant sworn out by
the indefatigable Burnett and charged with conspiracy to convict
the men of Leoni. In the face of a loud clamor to jail the traitor
and informer, the railroad station agent at Jackson hired a lawyer
to defend him, reporting to Detroit that "all Leoni and Michigan
Centre is after [Phelps]," and asking if the company wished to
undertake the defense. The company evidently did, for it supplied
the heavy bail of $5,000 fixed by the local justice, "a hot anti Rail
Road man," according to the agent. The Jackson County grand
jury indicted Phelps for conspiracy and the trial was set for March,
1853. When the case came up, the company exerted itself to get
its employee off. Phelps' lawyer asked for a change of venue to an-
other county. The judge, after some hesitation based on his fear
of the public reaction, was prevailed upon to grant the motion
and the case was transformed to Washtenaw County. Then, the
prosecuting attorney for Jackson County, Austin Blair, was per-
suaded "to slide the whole thing by quietly" by Moses A. Mc-
Naughton, a Free Soil state senator from Jackson, acting on behalf
of the railroad. McNaughton, in reporting on the negotiations to
[ 103 ]
Joy in Detroit, explained that Blair was honest and could not be
bribed, but since "his ambition far exceeded his avarice . . .," he
could be appealed to on that basis. Blair obligingly dropped the
case against Phelps on the ground that the indictment was tech-
nically deficient, and the latter was for the moment safe from the
toils of his enemies. A year later. Van Dyke advised Joy that Phelps
had better disappear from the Michigan scene altogether, at least
long enough for the statute of limitations to operate, because
otherwise, the "Jackson County patriots" would continue to hound
him and the company would be put to great expense to protect
him.89
"Has anyone sounded Burnett as to whether he can be induced
to haul off?" McNaughton had asked Joy in exasperation while
arranging for Phelps' rescue. For it was the irrepressible lawyer
from Grass Lake who had emerged as Fitch's successor as the gadfly
of the opposition to the railroad in Jackson County. After his
acquittal in the trial, Burnett had seemingly taken a vow of
eternal hostility to the Michigan Central and its officials for what
he felt was their baseless persecution of innocent men and devoted
himself to proving that justice had miscarried. It was he who had
hounded Phelps with arrest. And in January, 1853, he changed his
vocation and embarked on a career as publisher and editor of a
fortnightly newspaper, Public Sentiment, dedicated to the cause
of his comrades who were still in jail. "Five months imprisonment,"
he declared, "has given us a keen and fiery disposition," and every
issue of the paper, which appeared for more than a year, was filled
with slashing attacks on the railroad company and everybody con-
nected with the trial. As the self-proclaimed defender of justice,
Burnett charged that the great railroad conspiracy was in fact a
conspiracy against the men of Leoni for a crime which was never
committed; that the company's agents and spies had been guilty
of kidnapping, arson, and perjury as well as conspiracy; that Sup-
erintendent Brooks knew that Phelps' testimony about the burning
of the depot was false and paid for in "railroad gold"; and that
Fitch had been murdered under color of law at the instigation
and by the agency of the Michigan Central. To support his charges,
Burnett reviewed and analyzed the evidence brought out at the
trial with his sharp lawyer's mind and published new damaging
evidence and displayed altogether, as one contemporary later re-
[ 104 ]
membered, "an acumen, audacity, and mendacity that astonished
the bench and bar of the whole state." Fearless and even reckless
in his exposures of the alleged machinations of Brooks and Stuart,
he was threatened wath a libel suit but managed to stay clear of
the law. In addition, Burnett struck out at the railroad as a mo-
nopoly whose persecution of its opponents was only part of a
general policy of ruthless exploitation of the people of Michigan.
Any action against the company, any expression of hostility any-
where in the state, found a place in Public Sentiment alongside of
his own highly vituperative excoriations. To some, like the editor
of the American Citizen, it seemed that Burnett had gone too far.
De Land, for all his sympathy for the cause, editorially rebuked
his colleague from Grass Lake for reflecting unjustly on the reputa-
tion of individuals, even hinting that he was close to blackmail,
and in August, 1854, obligingly reported that Public Sentiment
had ceased publication.^^
One of Burnett's chief aims in his foray into journalism had
been to win a pardon for the convicted "conspirators" who were
serving their terms in Jackson prison. And despite or even because
of his dogmatic one-tracked sensationalism, he did perhaps as
much as anyone to bring about this end. There had been some
sentiment for a pardon right after the trial, but nothing came of it.
Superintendent Brooks was reported as saying that "it had cost
$50,000 to convict these men and that he would not consent that
the governor should pardon a single man." As the issue was thrown
into the political pond and spread wide circles of antirailroad
sentiment, the company's officials became more seriously concerned
with the matter. In the gubernatorial election campaign of 1851,
the Whigs and the Democrats charged each other's candidates with
promising, if elected, to pardon the "conspirators," and with
posing as railroad men in Detroit and antirailroad men in Jackson
County. The incumbent Democrat won the election, but Town-
send E. Gidley, the Whig candidate who lived in Jackson County,
won his home county, solely because the voters in Leoni and Grass
Lake townships, who had the year before given the Democrats
small majorities, now turned on the railroad-dominated admini-
stration and gave large majorities to the Whigs.^i
The next year, in the First Congressional District, which in-
cluded Wayne, Livingston, Washtenaw, and Jackson counties,
[ 105 ]
David Stuart, Democrat, opposed William A. Howard, Whig. As
far as Jackson County was concerned, the contest was one between
the prosecuting attorney who had sent the innocent "conspirators"
to jail and the man who had courageously defended them. Ac-
cording to the American Citizen, it had been necessary to offer
large sums of money "to conciliate the opposition of certain prom-
inent democrats in this county to Stuart." Stuart realized his handi-
cap and worked hard to overcome it. He signed, in company with
prominent local citizens, a petition to the governor for the pardon
of the prisoners. He personally tried to mollify the antirailroad
men. He visited Benjamin F. Gleason, one of the defendants who
had been acquitted, and who was a Democrat, and asked him to
vote for him and tell others to do so. Stuart argued that it was he
(Stuart) that had secured the acquittal of some of the "conspir-
ators" and now sought a pardon for the rest. He promised Gleason
a job with the state. The visit backfired when Gleason wrote a letter
to the American Citizen revealing Stuart's machinations and bit-
terly attacking him. He declared:
Now he is fooled, for I cant lie for him, after being rode and made a
cripple of by his lies, I cant vote for him. I defy him and the Michigan
Central Railroad Company to fetch an illegal act of mine, done to him
or that company.
Gleason went on to proclaim the innocence of all the defendants
and the falsity of the charges against them. "And you (Stuart)
know it . . . ," he concluded, "and if you are an honest man, you
will come out and tell the truth. That we ask at your hands before
we can vote for you." Stuart's supporters were more successful in
getting a letter from Orlando Williams, still serving his ten-year
sentence, urging his friends to work for the Democrat, because if
elected he would get a pardon for the prisoners. Stuart won the
election because Wayne and Livingston counties gave him large
majorities, but Jackson County went to Howard, even though it
gave Franklin Pierce, the Democratic presidential candidate, a
majority over Winfield Scott. Of course, many Jackson County
voters, who shared some of Abel F. Fitch's antislavery sentiments,
also voted for Howard because he freely expressed such views. In
the next congressional election, in 1854, Stuart was soundly beaten
by Howard, who this time ran as a candidate of the newly organized
Republican Party.^^
[ 106]
The campaign for a pardon for at least three of the prisoners
against whom there had been little or no incriminating evidence
came to a climax when the legislature met in January, 1853.
Governor Robert McLelland had been favorably considering the
petition presented the previous fall and was awaiting the session
to issue a pardon. Additional petitions from almost one thousand
legal voters of Oakland and Jackson counties were presented to
the House and Senate requesting a pardon for the "Central Rail-
road prisoners." Joy himself, faced with mounting attacks in the
legislature on the company's monopolistic privileges, finally saw
the wisdom of pardoning some of the "conspirators." He and
Superintendent Brooks had talked to three of them in jail and
gotten assurances from them that, if pardoned, they would not re-
new their attacks on the railroad. Joy realized, too, how tenuously
implicated in the crime these men had been and, above all, that a
pardon "would have a tendency to obliterate those feelings which
unhappily seem to prevail to a considerable extent in that portion
of the state against the company." At this point, progress bogged
down in the political jockeying connected with the fight in the
legislature between the Michigan Central and Michigan Southern
forces. A special committee of the House had been appointed to
consider the numerous petitions and report on them. The com-
mittee, in a move to embarrass the governor and the Michigan
Central, issued a report attacking the entire prosecution of the
conspiracy case and presented a resolution recommending a pardon
for all the "conspirators." A motion to adopt the report and the
resolution and print five hundred copies was passed 39 to 23. On
reconsideration, however, the house reversed itself and laid the
matter on the table by a vote of 46 to 20. There the matter rested,
until March 4, when Governor McLelland, just before resigning
to take up his post as Secretary of the Interior in Pierce's cabinet,
issued a pardon for Farnham, Erastus Champlin, and Smith. In
support of his actions the governor cited the following: the favor-
able application of the Michigan Central Railroad and its attorney,
James F. Joy; the recommendation of David Stuart and prominent
citizens of Jackson County; the petitions of more than 2,500 cit-
izens; and finally, the good behavior of the prisoners.^^
After the prison gates had swung open for the first three "con-
spirators," the pardon of the rest soon followed. Governor Andrew
[ 107 ]
Parsons, McLelland's successor, pardoned one prisoner in October,
1853, and five more in December, 1854. The reasons he gave were
essentially the same as McLelland's: the petition of thousands of
people, the request of prominent citizens of Jackson County as well
as David Stuart and the attorney of the Michigan Central, plus
the recommendation of the jury that had convicted them. The
governor also cited "the deep interest which reliable men of all
parties and interests have taken in these cases, and the general pre-
vailing opinion that the ends of justice have been fully met." Ammi
Filley and Orlando Williams, who had received the longest sen-
tences, had to wait for their freedom until the victorious Repub-
lican governor, Kinsley S. Bingham, came into office.^^
The policy of conciliation, thus begun in 1853, also included
the payment of indemnities to some of the defendants who had
been acquitted at the trial. Before authorizing this step, Joy had
a thorough investigation made to be sure that none of them had
been guilty of any offenses against the railroad property or had any
guilty knowledge of such. And when Wilbur F. Storey, editor
of the Democratic Jackson Patriot.who had made the investigation,
further assured him that "the effect on the public mind would be
salutary," Joy made some financial restitution to them "for the
lost time and other sacrifices arising from their arrest and de-
tention." He was careful to insist, however, that this action was
entirely gratuitous and that, as of right, these men were not en-
titled to any compensation.^^
It was at this time, too, that Joy entered into the arrangement
with Senator Moses A. McNaughton of Jackson to act as his secret
representative and adviser in matters involving the railroad in
Jackson County. McNaughton, it is important to note, was not an
administration Democrat but a Free Soiler who joined the fusion
Republican Party the following year, and his employment reflected
the company's growing concern with the political revolution then
going on in Michigan. McNaughton, it will be recalled, arranged
for the dropping of the case against Phelps. He had also urged on
Joy the wisdom of procuring a pardon for the "conspirators" solely
as a matter of policy, to mollify public feeling. After the first par-
dons had been issued, the senator also furthered the railroad's new
policy of conciliating the opposition by arranging with De Land,
the antirailroad Whig editor of the Jackson American Citizen, to
[ 108 ]
publish a favorable article or two in his newspaper in return for
a payment of fifty dollars. "With the ready" McNaughton assured
his employer, "I can do anything I please." ^'^
The pardon of the conspirators and the payment of indemnities,
if meant to assuage outraged sentiments of neighborly loyalty and
blunt the charges of injustice, were something less than effective.
The old hurt continued to rankle, and a lively hatred of the Mich-
igan Central still flourished in Leoni in 1854.^"^ The policy of
conciliation also failed because the feeling against the railroad
had become something more than local resentment over the per-
secution of the innocents. It had burgeoned once more into a
widespread opposition to the company as a monopoly which still
refused to pay fairly for the cattle its trains killed, which fixed
higher rates for short hauls than for long, and which prevented
new and necessary railroads from being built in the state. Tangled
in this skein of the antimonopoly movement was the feud between
the Michigan Central and its rival, the Michigan Southern Rail-
road, itself a giant corporation using every political and economic
weapon to attack and gain an advantage over its competitor. Out of
this juncture of interests and ideals emerged the movement for
the enactment of a general railroad incorporation law to break
the power of the Michigan Central Railroad.
The demand that the railroad be made to pay for damages to
property was heard again when the legislature met in 1853. As a
public meeting in Birmingham stated in a resolution: "It is the
duty of the law-making powers of the state to provide a code of
laws, which will enable the most humble citizen to obtain his just
right of property against incorporated wealth." Shoemaker's old
bill, defeated in 1851, providing for a minimum of protection of
property along the line of the railroads, was introduced again.
This time, it was the House that passed the bill, with only one dis-
senting vote, while the Senate turned it down. Not until 1855,
when the legislature was under the control of the Republicans,
were laws passed requiring the Michigan Central and the Michigan
Southern railroads to take safety measures at all crossings and fence
the right of way and making the companies liable for all cattle
killed until the fences were erected.^s
Criticism of the high freight rates that the Michigan Central
charged farmers along its line also continued to be heard and led
[ 109 ]
to a renewed demand for the construction of a branch line between
Jackson and Adrian as the only way of bringing down the rates.
Businessmen and investors of Jackson who were financially inter-
ested in the Grand River Valley Railroad, which they hoped would
open up the interior of the state north of the Central Railroad
and make Jackson a commercial center, also advocated the con-
struction of the Jackson branch in order to connect their proposed
line from Grand Rapids to Jackson with Adrian, Toledo, and the
East. And all efforts were now concentrated on getting the Mich-
igan Southern to build the Jackson-Adrian link, as it was legally
required to do by its charter, but to no avail. The American Citizen
faithfully supported the campaign through 1852 and warned that
if the line were not built, "the Central Company [could] still filch
the life blood from the business veins of the community and op-
press and imprison and martyr our citizens at will." Not until
the spring of 1853 did the directors of the Southern Railroad agree
to undertake the construction of the Jackson branch, but, as will
presently appear, entirely for their own reasons. Amos Root, a
Jackson merchant and big investor in the Grand River Valley Rail-
road, who was now a member of the lower house of the legislature,
was the leading spirit behind the negotiations and finally got
Elisha Litchfield, one of the Southern directors, to give his word
that the line would be built in three years. Litchfield insisted,
however, that his company be given without cost the right of way
extending ten miles south of Jackson. The eager promoters agreed
and three of them immediately gave personal bonds in the amount
of $15,000 to secure the right of way. They started to buy up the
necessary land, opened books for the sale of additional Southern
Railroad capital stock to finance the project, and advertised for
bids on construction material. At this point, the venture ran head-
on into the opposition of the Michigan Central, whose agents
bought up strategic parcels of land along the proposed right of way.
This obstacle, too, was finally overcome and the land was secured,
though at a cost of about $5,000 greater than planned, and several
hundred men were put to work grading the right of way. To rally
public support to the venture and raise additional funds, plans
were made to hold a large mass meeting in Jackson on August 20,
1853.99
On the appointed day, two thousand citizens met at the court-
[110]
house in Jackson, with delegates attending from Lenawee, Hills-
dale, Ingham, Eaton, Barry, Ionia, and Jackson counties. Speeches
and resolutions all strongly demanded the construction of the Jack-
son branch and the Grand River Valley Railroad. The courthouse
rang with attacks on the monopoly maintained by the Michigan
Central for its own benefit and that of the city of Detroit at the
expense of the farmers of central Michigan. Singled out for attack
were the measures taken by the Central Railroad to prevent the
construction of the Jackson branch, which, it was declared, were
cause enough for the forfeiture of the company's charter. It was
resolved, too, that if the two proposed lines could not be built
under the existing special charters, the people should seek passage
of a general railroad law by the terms of which any group of in-
vestors could build any lines they wished and could finance. The
meeting closed with the appointment of a committee on permanent
organization to carry on the good fight, another to raise additional
funds, and a third to see the governor about the forfeiture of the
Michigan Central's charter.^oo
The company did not wait long to take countermeasures. Within
the week, Superintendent Brooks and Joy filed a bill of chancery in
the Wayne County Circuit Court in Detroit, complaining that
the construction of the Jackson branch without their consent
violated the terms of the company's charter and would tap its
business and destroy its profits, and asking for an injunction to
halt the work on the proposed line. In support of the plea, the bill
cited section 5 of the company's charter, which provided that no
railroad could be built from the eastern or southern boundary of
the state, any part of which came within five miles of the line of
the Michigan Central. The defense, representing the Michigan
Southern and the backers of the Jackson branch, argued a pre-
liminary motion that the suit should not have been brought in
Wayne County but in Jackson County, where the alleged violation
had taken place. After this motion was denied, the defense went on
to argue that the Michigan Southern was only doing what it was re-
quired by its charter to do, that is, complete the line from Adrian
to Jackson. Judge Samuel Douglass maintained, however, that the
actions of the defendants were clearly in conflict with the charter
of the Michigan Central and in his decision ruled in favor of the
complainants and granted the injunction. The work on the Jack-
[ 111 ]
[ 112 ]
[ 1^3]
son branch was thus effectively stopped and its promoters could
now look forward only to a general railroad law for relief.^"^
The directors of the Michigan Southern had come perforce to
the same conclusion. The two rival railroads had entered Chicago
in the spring of 1852 and were engaged in a running fight to
capture the through east-west traffic. Joy and Brooks labored
mightily to gain an overland connection through Canada with
Buffalo and the East to match the Southern's lake shore line. Late
in 1852, the Southern carried the fight to the enemy by seeking an
amendment to its charter allowing it to extend its line from Mon-
roe to Detroit. Such a line would tap the Central's business and
feed it, through the already-built Monroe-Toledo spur, into the
Southern's through route from Chicago to Buffalo. When the
Southern presented its petition to the legislature in 1853, J<^y ^'^'
mediately wheeled his minions into line against it. The Detroit
Free Press attacked the proposal as a blow to the commercial inter-
ests of Detroit and a boon only to the through shippers of other
states. The lawmakers took no action and gave Joy time to counter-
attack with a petition for an amendment to the Michigan Central's
charter to build its own line from Detroit to Toledo via Monroe.
Faced with a deadlock in its efforts to get into Detroit from Toledo
by an amendment to its charter, the Southern Railroad shifted its
tactics and once again swung behind the movement for the passage
of a general railroad incorporation law.^02
Sentiment for such a law was steadily growing. Its popularity
was reflected in Governor McLelland's annual message to the
legislature in 1853. The Democratic governor recommended the
passage of the law because "the growing necessities and increasing
business of the state require the construction of new lines of rail-
roads." The problem of amending the special charters to extend
and change the lines of the existing roads, he added, could also
be met by a general law. And even the correspondent of the Free
Press reported from Lansing that most of the members of the legis-
lature were in favor of the law in order "to open the way for the
full competition of capital" and thus bring cheaper rates and
other benefits.1^3
When Joy heard from his agents in Lansing that the Southern
Railroad was pushing the general railroad law, he marshaled all
his forces once again to oppose it. In January, 1853, the Southern's
[ 114]
agents organized a large public meeting in Detroit to support the
law, as the only way to give Detroit a connection with Toledo. Joy
himself and his colleagues appeared in person to counteract the
move, but the Southern supporters gained the day and a favorable
resolution was passed. The second day, however, Joy and Van Dyke
were successful in getting the meeting to reverse itself and approve
a resolution opposing a general railroad law and endorsing an
independent line to Toledo. Subsequently, the two rivals arranged
meetings in other parts of the state to support their respective
positions. The Free Press ran a series of long articles which argued
that the law was detrimental to the interests of Detroit and would
encourage unhealthy speculative ventures. The upshot of all these
moves and countermoves as well as legislative intrigues was a vic-
tory for the Michigan Central forces. The House passed the law but
it was lost in the shuffle of unfinished business in the Senate. It was
at this point that the Southern Railroad agreed to build the Jack-
son branch in a flanking attack on their rivals, only to see this
effort too stopped by the courts.^o^
The victory of the Michigan Central, however, was only tem-
porary, for the tide was running strongly against it. The supporters
of the general railroad law greeted the setback in the legislature
with charges that it had fallen victim to the rapacity of the Central
Railroad and that Detroit and the railroad had defeated the wishes
of the rest of the people of the state. They resumed the agitation
at the end of 1853 with a series of public meetings in Detroit and
Adrian culminating in another great mass meeting in Jackson on
December 28. At these meetings. Governor Andrew Parsons was
requested to call a special session of the legislature to act on the
general railroad law in accordance with the wishes of the people.
The governor managed to resist the pressure, explaining that there
was no urgency in having the law passed, since the state of the
money market was such that no new railroads could be built at
this time anyway.i^^
By 1854, even the Free Press was admitting editorially that most
of the people wanted a general railroad law. And the issue became
one of the ingredients in the bubbling political cauldron in the
state. The Free Soil Democrats, meeting in convention in Jackson
on February 22, 1854, wrote into their platform a plank on state
affairs which called for a prohibition law, free schools, and a "gen-
[ 115]
eral law under which capital may be associated and combined for
the prosecution of works of public improvement and of various
industrial pursuits." The Detroit Daily Democrat, the Free Soil
organ, later spelled this out to mean that the party favored a
general railroad law. When the merger between the Free Soil Dem-
ocrats and the antislavery Whigs took place the following July
under the oaks in Jackson, the platform of the new Republican
Party also demanded the passage of such a law. This plank was
not, however, adopted without opposition. Jacob M. Howard, of
Detroit, chairman of the resolutions committee, presented the
majority report of the committee to the convention which said
nothing of a general railroad law. It was Austin Blair of Jackson,
also a member of the committee, who presented a minority report
embodying planks on state affairs calling for reform in the ad-
ministration of the state's finances and a general railroad law. This
last resolution stated: "that in our opinion the commercial wants
of the State require the enactment of a general railroad law, which,
while it shall secure the investment, and encourage the enterprise,
shall also guard and protect the rights of the public and of in-
dividuals . . ." Blair's resolutions were considered too radical by
the sixteen members of the committee and had not been accepted.
When Blair presented his minority report to the convention at
large, the chairman, David S. Walbridge of Kalamazoo, considered
by some a tool of the Michigan Central, refused to put the question
to a vote. Trying to bury the resolutions, he unceremoniously left
the chair and started for his hotel before the convention had ad-
journed. Angry delegates pursued him, brought him back and
forced him to put the question, which was then carried by a large
majority. Two months later, the Democratic state convention also
included a plank for a "judiciously framed" general railroad law
in its platform.1^6
Although both parties had officially come out in support of the
general railroad law, the issue was overshadowed in the ensuing
campaign by the heated arguments over slavery. In Jackson, how-
ever, the American Citizen repeatedly urged the election of Austin
Blair, who was running for the Senate on the Republican ticket,
as a true supporter of such a law. It declared that the election
would decide whether Michigan would have the law or not and
accused the Democrats of giving it only sham support.^or
[ 116]
When the Republicans swept the state in November, the way
was cleared for the passage of the law in the new legislature. Even
Governor Parsons, in his last message before going out of office,
now recommended the law. The new governor, Kinsley S. Bingham,
claimed in his inaugural address that the law was demanded by
nearly unanimous public sentiment and was necessary for the rapid
development of the state's economic resources. Austin Blair, now
the majority leader in the Senate, introduced the bill and managed
its progress through the upper house. In a last ditch stand, James
A. Van Dyke, now counsel for the Michigan Central, presented a
memorial to the Senate, opposing the law and claiming that it
violated the terms of the company's charter by allowing competing
railroads to be built. He argued that the company had paid two
million dollars to the state, not for the mere physical property and
tangible assets, but for the valuable but intangible monopoly
privileges. If the state was weary of the contract into which it had
entered, he queried, why did it not repurchase the railroad at the
terms provided in the charter? The Senate ignored Van Dyke's
appeal and passed the bill unanimously. Before the month was out,
it had passed the lower house too and become law.^^^^
The new law was certainly no panacea for Michigan's railroad
problems. It did, however, register adequately contemporary
thought on this important economic issue. Under its terms, any
group of investors who met the minimum conditions could secure
a charter and organize a corporation to build and operate a rail-
road. Railroad companies thus received the same privileges that
had been extended to plank road, telegraph, and mining com-
panies in 1851 and to all manufacturing enterprises in 1853. Al-
though the state thereby relinquished in large part the right to
direct economic enterprise, it did not abandon its right to regulate
such activities. It is significant that the opposition to the general
railroad law had not been based on the principle of laissez faire
but on the practical arguments that it favored the Michigan South-
ern Railroad and thus harmed the interests of Detroit. Only Van
Dyke had, when it was already too late, brought up the issue of
breach of contract. And the regulations written into the new law,
though relatively ineffective because little or no means of enforce-
ment were provided, were positive enough. All new railroads
organized under the act were required to install such safety meas-
[ 117 ]
ures as bells on locomotives, a steam whistle to be sounded before
all grade crossings, "stop, look, and listen" signs at the crossings,
fences along the right of way, and special farm crossings with cattle
guards where necessary. Maximum passenger fares were fixed,
though at the high rate of three cents a mile. The legislature was
also given the right to reduce all rates but not to an extent that
would produce less than a 15 per cent annual return on capital
stock paid in.^°^
The passage of the law in 1855 was followed in short order by
the construction of the new lines previously proposed. The Jackson
branch was completed to Manchester within the year and to Jack-
son in 1857 under the auspices of the Southern Railroad, by then
known as the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana. The
Grand River Valley Railroad was completed in 1870. Stockholders
of the Southern Railroad also organized the Detroit, Monroe and
Toledo Railroad which connected its two termini in 1857. But
the much hoped for competition between the two major rival lines
did not materialize. In 1857, the Michigan Central and the Mich-
igan Southern and Northern Indiana entered into an agreement
to pool all through passenger and freight traffic on a percentage
basis.^i^^
After the passage of the general railroad law, public agitation
and antagonism faded temporarily in the sequel of war and boom,
to revive again in the crisis of the 1870's. And time and circum-
stance removed the chief actors in the great railroad conspiracy
from the scene. Some of the key witnesses at the trial met sorry ends.
Phelps, who had been given a job on the railroad, went to Texas
and was killed in a brawl, while Wescott died in Dearborn of
delirium tremens. Wolliver succumbed in an Illinois jail where he
was serving time for highway robbery. Lake saw the inside of Jack-
son prison again before he passed on.m
Quite different fates befell the railroad officials and lawyers.
Superintendent Brooks relinquished control of the operations of
the Michigan Central and moved upstairs to the presidency, and
he and Joy turned their organizing efforts further west. Darius
Clark was rewarded with an appointment as general ticket agent
of the Michigan Central Railroad in New York City. He returned
to the state once but was quite reticent about the part he had played
in convicting the "conspirators." Van Dyke became one of the
[ "8]
lawyers for the Michigan Central in 1852, while Van Arman left
for Chicago in 1858 and was there appointed to the legal staflE of
the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, which Joy and
Brooks had such a large part in organizing and promoting.1^2
Most of the defendants returned to their homes to spin out their
lives in welcome obscurity. But Ammi Filley, embittered and
restless, shook the dust of Leoni from his heels and moved to
Illinois and then to Nebraska, where he died in the i88o's.ii3
In Jackson County, however, the great railroad conspiracy re-
mained a focus of resentment that was elaborated in the course of
time into a legend of injustice and heroism. A directory of the
city of Jackson, published in 1869, recorded that the people had
outlived the unhappy effects of the railroad troubles, "though the
convictions in the minds of the surviving parties as to who was
right and who wrong, remain now about the same as then." When
a Jackson newspaper in later years retold the story of the arrests
and trial, it concluded the account with a touch becoming an an-
cient epic: "And thus were the ends of justice defeated and money
and power and villainous craft triumphed over innocence and
helplessness." By that time, the Michigan Central had become "a
growing and thriving corporation" which had made mistakes
"which wiser members in sober moments have acknowledged and
deplored ..." The spies, Phelps, Gay, Wescott, and Lake, were the
villains in this morality play and on them the writer poured his
wrath. As for Fitch, he wrote:
Abel F. Fitch died a crushed and heart-broken but guileless man, and
an honest Christian gentleman. The fact that the prisoners were all
pardoned at the suggestion of the railroad company and their lawyers,
that a tender of damages was made to them after being released, and that
the witnesses, to this day, all stand convicted for perjury, is, of itself,
vindication enough for all.^*
By 1881, the gray of truth had darkened into the black myth
of villainy. A history of the county published in that year told the
story of how the spies, "disreputable scoundrels . . . cowards and
villains . . . reptiles," had failed to discover any of the culprits who
had been obstructing the tracks and had resolved to swear to any-
thing to collect the reward offered by the railroad company. They
had set fire to the depot in Detroit and then had sworn that inno-
cent citizens living sixty miles away had hired one of them to do it.
[ "9]
At the trial, these scoundrels had been "willing instruments in the
hands of the railroad company" and one unprincipled lawyer,
Van Arman, who coached them in the art of perjury.^^^
Colonel De Land, onetime editor of the Jackson American
Citizen, in his history of Jackson County compiled in 1903, re-
peated the same story. He inveighed against the villainy of the
railroad's agents and spies and assured the world "that their victims
were in prison for a crime they never committed," And concluded
his tale thus: "A beautiful marble monument stands over the grave
of Captain Fitch and the story is still told of the wickedness of
his taking off." ^^^
[ 120 ]
NOTES
* Most of the research for this book was made possible by a grant from the
Committee on the Study of Midwestern Life and History, of Michigan State
College. The author also wishes to acknowledge the aid and cooperation of
the following: the officials of the New York Central System in Detroit and New
York who allowed unrestricted use of the records of the Michigan Central
Railroad, and particularly Mr. Robert Barrie of the Detroit office; Mrs. El-
leine H. Stones and her assistants at the Burton Historical Collection in the
Detroit Public Library; Dr. F. Clever Bald, assistant director of the Michigan
Historical Collections at the University of Michigan; the librarians of the
Michigan State Library and the Law Library in Lansing, and of the public
libraries of Jackson, Marshall, Adrian, and Grand Rapids; the county clerk
of Jackson County for permission to consult the county records; and finally,
Harry Brown, Madison Kuhn, and John A. Garraty of Michigan State College,
who read and criticized the manuscript.
For the general accounts of the great railroad conspiracy, see Michigan as a
Province, Territory and State. . . . 3:319-24 (New York, 1906); Silas Farmer,
The History of Detroit and Michigan, 1:900 (Detroit, 1884); Alvin F. Harlow,
The Road of the Century, 223-24 (New York, 1947); History of Jackson
County . . . , (Chicago, 1881); Charles V. DeLand, DeLand's History of Jack-
son County. . . . , 153-60, (n.p. 1903).
^ For the early history of railroads in Michigan see Harlow, The Road of the
Century, chapter 10; "James F. Joy Tells How He Went into the Railroad
Business," in the Detroit Free Press, May 1, 1892, reprinted in the Michigan
Historical Collections, 22: 297-304 (Lansing, 1894).
^Report of the Directors of the Michigan Central Railroad to the Stock-
holders, June, 18^1, 31 (Boston, 1851); Memorandum Book, unpaged, in the
Law Library of the New York Central System, Detroit.
* "Annual Report of the Board of Internal Improvements 1845," Michigan
Joint Documents, 1846, number 4: 11 (Lansing, 1846).
*Niles Republican, June 2, 16, August 25, 1849; John Gilbert, "The Great
Conspiracy," in the Michigan Historical Collections, 31:234 (Lansing 1902);
George Sedgwick to John W. Brooks, May 12, 1849, Charles Vail to John W.
Brooks, May 11, 1849, in Letters Received Superintendent's Office, Michigan
Central Railroad, May, 1849, volume 11, in the Archives of the New York
Central System, Detroit; Detroit Daily Free Press, June 21, 1849; E. Lakin
Brown, "Autobiographical Notes" in the Michigan Historical Collections,
30:491-92 (Lansing, 1906).
° Marshall Statesman, June 13, 1849; Marshall Democratic Expounder,
August 17, 1849; Charles O. Hoyt and R. Clyde Ford, John D. Pierce, Founder
of the Michigan School System, 134-36 (Ypsilanti, 1905).
[ 121 ]
' The account of the conflict between the farmers of Jackson County and the
Michigan Central Railroad is, unless otherwise specified, based on the evidence
taken and the addresses made at the trial of the Jackson County farmers,
which are to be found in Report of the Great Conspiracy Case: The People
of the State of Michigan versus Abel F. Fitch and Others, Commonly called
the Railroad Conspirators . . . , 3 parts (Detroit, 1851), hereafter cited as
Report; and in George R. Lilibridge, Report of the Conspiracy Trial in the
Wayne County Circuit Court . . . (Detroit, 1851), hereafter cited as Lili-
bridge. These two transcripts of the proceedings at the trial differ somewhat
and have been used to supplement each other.
''Grass Lake Public Sentiment, March 1, 1854.
® De Land, History of Jackson County, 153.
'Detroit Daily Advertiser, June 19, 1849; Grass Lake Public Sentiment,
March 1, 1854.
^° "Sketch of the Life and Experience of Charles H. Frisbie, for Forty-seven
Years a Locomotive Engineer," in C. H. Salmons, The Burlington Strike, 473
(Aurora, Illinois, 1889). Frisbie was an engineer on the Michigan Central
Railroad in the 1840's and 1850's.
""Sketch of Frisbie" in Salmons, The Burlington Strike, 471-72; Report,
part 1:70; Detroit Daily Free Press, June 21, 1849.
^ Minutes of Directors' Meeting, Michigan Central Railroad, DecemTier 24,
1849, in the Archives of the New York Central System, Detroit; John Murray
Forbes to Joshua Bates, August 17, 1850, in Letter Book Michigan Central
Railroad, in the Archives of the New York Central System, New York; Detroit
Daily Free Press, July 3, 1849.
" Criminal Docket County Court Jackson County, 1848-1856, 26, 27, in
the county clerk's vault, Jackson County Building, Jackson; Benjamin F.
Burnett to editor, Ypsilanti Sentinel, April 27, 1851, cited in the Jackson
American Citizen, May 7, 1851; Grass Lake Public Sentiment, March 1, 1854.
"Grass Lake Public Sentiment, March 1, 1854.
"De Land, History of Jackson County, 84, 101, 108, 155, 426; Jackson
County Land Records, Deeds, liber 1-6, passim, in Land Record Office, Jack-
son County Building; Jackson County Circuit Court Docket, 1838, in the
county clerk's vault, Jackson County Building; History of Jackson County,
402; County Canvass 1850, 1851, in Election Returns 1849-1852, in the
county clerk's vault, Jackson County Building; Jackson American Citizen,
April 9, 1851; United States Census 1850, Population Schedules for Mich-
igan, volume 4, Jackson County, Leoni Township, 118, microfilm in Michigan
State Library, Lansing; Report, part 2:67, 68; part 3: 231-32.
^^ Grass Lake Public Sentiment, May 15, 1853; Abel F. Fitch to [Mrs.]
Amanda Fitch, March-June 1851, passim, microfilm copy at Michigan State
College of the originals in Michigan Historical Collections, Ann Arbor;
Charles E. Barnes, "Battle Creek as a Station on the Underground Railway,"
in the Michigan Historical Collections, 38:282 (Lansing, 1912); Jackson Ameri-
can Citizen, October 6, 1850, April 9, 1851; Detroit Daily Free Press, April 26,
1851; Detroit Daily Tribune, May 22, 1851.
^" Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, March 21, May 14, 1851.
[ 122 ]
^ Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, March 21, 1851.
"United States Census 1850, Michigan, volume 4, Jackson County, Grass
Lake Township; De Land, History of Jackson County, 276; History of Jackson
County, 334.
-"De Land, History of Jackson County, 404; Life and Adventures of Wil-
liam Filley (Chicago, 1867); United States Census 1850, Michigan, volume 4,
Jackson County, Leoni Township, 118.
^ According to Mr. Orrin Blackman of Jackson, the building now standing
on the northeast comer of the New York Central Railroad crossing at Mich-
igan Centre is, with some additions and alterations, the original tavern that
stood there in 1850.
^ "Sketch of Frisbie," in Salmons, The Burlington Strike, 474.
® Gilbert, "The Great Conspiracy," in the Michigan Historical Collections,
31:236; Harmon L. Spa[u]lding to John W. Brooks, September 13, 1850, in
Letters Received Superintendent's Office, September, 1850, volume 29.
^Detroit Daily Free Press, June 7, 1850; Report, part 3: 98.
^Ann Arbor Michigan Argus, July 16, 1851.
^De Land, History of Jackson County, 154.
"Marshall Statesman, June 13, 1849; Marshall Democratic Expounder,
August 17, 1849.
^"Annual Message of the Governor 1846" in the Joint Documents of the
Senate and House of Representatives, 1846, p. 27 (Detroit, 1846); History of
Jackson County, 477; John W. Brooks, Reply to a Communication from
Mitchell Hindsill Esq. and Others of Kalamazoo Concerning Comparative
Rates of Transportation of Freight over the Michigan Central Railroad (De-
troit, 1848); Jackson American Citizen, September 19, October 24, November 7,
14, December 5, 1849, January 2, 1850.
^Jackson American Citizen, March 12, September 24, 1851; Harlow, The
Road of the Century, 253; Adrian Michigan Expositor, March 18, 1851; Senate
Documents 1850, number 33: 2 (Lansing, 1850); House Documents 1851, num-
ber 9: 3 (Lansing, 1851).
^ Michigan Reports, 2 Gibbs 259-60; Jackson American Citizen, September 24,
1851; Ann Arbor Michigan Argus, July 16, 1851.
^^ Michigan Reports, 2 Gibbs 261.
^^ For a discussion of this development in another state, see Oscar and Mary
F. Handlin, Commonwealth: A Study of the Role of Government in the
American Economy: Massachusetts, 1^^4-1861, 194, 261-62 (New York,
'947)-
^ Hoyt and Ford, John D. Pierce, 135; Report of the Proceedings and
Debates of the Convention to Revise the Constitution of the State of Mich-
igan, i8$o, 29, 30 (Lansing, 1850); Debates and Proceedings of the Consti-
tutional Convention of the State of Michigan, i86j, 1:145, 146 (Lansing,
1867); James V. Campbell, Outline of the Political History of Michigan, 538-
39 (Detroit, 1876); Detroit Daily Free Press, February 11, 1853.
** Report of the Proceedings and Debates, 18^0, 29, 30, 586-go, 734.
^Portrait and Biographical Album of Jackson County, Michigan, 189 (Chi-
cago, 1890); Detroit Daily Free Press, February 17, 1851; House Journal 1850,
520, 710 (Lansing, 1850); House Journal 1851, 104, 574 (Lansing, 1851);
[ 123 ]
Senate Journal 1850, 262, 470 (Lansing, 1850); Senate Journal i8$i, 20, 69,
422 (Lansing, 1851); House Documents 1851, number 14 (Lansing, 1851).
^Report, part 1: 135, 136, 152; part 3: 245; Lilibridge, 79; Fitch to Mrs.
Fitch, March 21, 1851; Darius Clark to John W. Brooks, March 21, 1851, in
Letters Received Superintendent's Office, March 1851, volume 35; James F.
Joy to George F. Porter, March 2, 1850, in Joy Manuscripts, transcripts in the
Michigan Historical Collections; Adrian Michigan Expositor, March 18, 1851.
*' Detroit Daily Free Press, March 10, March 25, April 2, 1851; Adrian
Michigan Expositor, April 9, 1850; Senate Journal iS^i, 234, 305.
^ Gilbert, "The Great Conspiracy," in the Michigan Historical Collections,
31:235; Marshall Statesman, December 5, 1848; Michigan Biographies, 1:172
(Lansing, 1914); Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, May 11, 1851; Report, part 3: 76.
^» Clark to Brooks, August 17, August 22, August 30, 1850, in Letters Re-
ceived Superintendent's Office, August 1850, volume 28; Henry G. Pearson,
An American Railroad Builder: John Murray Forbes, 37, 38, (Boston, 1911).
^ Clark to Brooks, August 22, November 1, 2, 1850, in Letters Received
Superintendent's Office, August, 1850, volume 28, November, 1850, volume
31; Grass Lake Public Sentiment, March 15, 1854.
*^ Report, part 3: 44-45; Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, May 6, 1851.
*^ Clark to Brooks, August 15, 17, 1850, in Letters Received Superintendent's
Office, August, 1850, volume 28; Report, part 2: 86-87.
^ Clark to Reuben N. Rice, March 15, 1851; Clark to Brooks, March 29,
1851, in Letters Received Superintendent's Office, March, 1851, volume 35.
** Criminal Docket County Court Jackson County, 1848-1856, 83; Jackson
American Citizen, November 13, 1850.
«> Clark to Brooks, February 26, March 21, 1851; James F. Joy to Reuben N.
Rice, February 26, 1851; James F. Joy to Brooks, March 28, 1851, in Letters
Received Superintendent's Office, February, 1851, volume 34, March 1851,
volume 35; Laws of Michigan, 1851, number 128.
"Clark to Brooks, February 26, 1851, in Letters Received Superintendent's
Office, February, 1851, volume 34.
*' Detroit Daily Advertiser, November 20, 1850; Detroit Daily Free Press,
June 7, 1851; Report, part 2: 7.
^ See footnotes 45 and 46.
** Detroit Daily Advertiser, April 21, 22, 1851; Detroit Daily Free Press,
April 21, 1851; Niles Republican, April 26, 1851; Gilbert, "The Great Con-
spiracy," in the Michigan Historical Collections, 31:237-38.
^° Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, April 21, 1851; Detroit Daily Advertiser, April 26, 28,
1851; Jackson American Citizen, May 7, 1851.
^Report, part 2: 140; part 3: 163, 388; Wayne County Circuit Court Crim-
inal Calendar, November 26, 1847, to February 23, 1878, numbers 1632-36,
in Wayne County Courthouse, Detroit; Law Papers, Wayne County Circuit
Court, case number 4971, in Wayne County Courthouse, Detroit; Detroit Daily
Advertiser, April 25, 30, June 5, 1851; Jackson American Citizen, May 7, 1851.
^The account of the trial is, unless otherwise specified, based on the two
reports of proceedings cited in note 6; Detroit Daily Tribune, April 29, 1851.
The author has searched through the records in the Wayne County Circuit
Court record room but the original papers in this trial were not to be found.
[ 124 ]
'^Report, part 3: 93, 94; Jackson American Citizen, September 3, 1851;
Charles I. Walker, "The Detroit Bar," in the Michigan Law Journal, 2:9
(January, 1893).
^* Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, May 11, 1851; Detroit Daily Advertiser, May 15, 17,
1851; Detroit Daily Tribune, May 16, 1851.
^Detroit Daily Advertiser, April 21, May 2, 7, 1851; Detroit Daily Free
Press, April 21, May 26, 1851; Detroit Daily Tribune, April 25, 26, 28, May 3,
1851; Jackson American Citizen, April 30, May 14, 1851.
^Report, part 3: 163; Adrian Michigan Expositor, June 3, 1851; Detroit
Daily Advertiser, May 26, 1851.
"Detroit Daily Free Press, April 29, 1851; Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, May 14,
1851; Jackson American Citizen, May 7, 1851.
^Jackson American Citizen, September 3, 1851; Detroit Daily Free Press,
May 30, 1851; Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, May 11, 1851.
™ Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, May 18, May 25, June 1, 1851; Frederick Bancroft,
Life of William H. Seward, 1:181 (New York, 1900); Jackson County Mort-
gages, liber 10, 401, in Land Record room, Jackson County Building. Seward's
fee was secured by a mortgage on Fitch's land, which was discharged in 1855.
*° Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, May 6, May 11, 1851.
®^The occupations of the jurors were ascertained in Farmer, History of
Detroit and Michigan, volume i, using the index; Shove's Business Advertiser
and Detroit Directory for 1852-18$^ (Detroit, 1852); Fitch to Mrs. Fitch,
May 30, 1851.
'^ Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, April 21, 22, May 6, 1851.
** Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, May 6, 14, 18, 1851.
** Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, May 11, 14, 25, 1851.
** Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, May 6, 14, 18, June 1, 1851; Detroit Daily Advertiser,
May 22, 1851.
*^Law Papers, Wayne County Circuit Court, case number 4971, 4976.
«^ Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, May 18, 1851.
^* Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, May 25, June 29, 1851; Henry Frink and William A.
Howard to Brooks, July 7, 1851, in Letters Received Superintendent's Office,
July, 1851, volume 39.
^^ Anson De Puy Van Buren, "Sketches, Reminiscences, and Anecdotes of
the Old Members of the Calhoun and Kalamazoo County Bars," in the Mich-
igan Historical Collections, 11:281 (Lansing 1888); Cyrenius P. Black, "Legal
Reminiscences of Forty Years," in the Michigan Historical Collections, 35:138-
39 (Lansing, 1907).
™Lucien B. Proctor, "William H. Seward as a Lawyer," in the Albany Law
Journal, 35:284-89 (April 9, 1887); Bancroft, Life of Seward, 1:184; Worth-
ington C. Ford, ed.. Letters of Henry Adams (i8$8-iSpi), 62 (Boston, 1930);
Detroit Daily Tribune, August 25, 1851.
"Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, June 20, 29, August 1, 12, 1851.
"Detroit Daily Tribune, August 25, 1851.
■^Jackson American Citizen, August 27, September 3, 1851.
'* Joy to Brooks, August 26, 1851, in Letters Received Superintendent's OfiBce,
August, 1851, volume 40.
''"Matilda Freeland to Andrew J. Freeland, August 25, 1851, transcripts of
[ 125]
original letters, in Michigan Historical Collections; Jackson American Citizen,
July 16, August 27, September 3, October 1, 1851.
''^Michigan Christian Herald, August 28, 1851; Detroit Daily Tribune,
August 8, 15, 23, 25, 1851.
"Jackson American Citizen, September 3, 1851.
''^ Jackson American Citizen, September 17, 1851.
'» Jackson American Citizen, September 3, 1851.
«» Grass Lake Public Sentiment, December 1, 12, 1853.
81 Detroit Daily Tribune, August 15, 23, 25, 1851; Jackson American Citi-
zen, August 6, September 3, October 15, 1851; Detroit Daily Advertiser, July 29,
1851; Gilbert, "The Great Conspiracy," in the Michigan Historical Collections,
31:238; E. Lakin Brown, "Autobiographical Notes," in the Michigan Historical
Collections, 30:491.
^Detroit Daily Free Press, September 4, November 7, 1851; Detroit Daily
Tribune, September 16, 1851; J. W. Donovan, Modern Jury Trials and Advo-
cates, third revised edition, 116 (New York, 1885). The closing arguments
were interrupted for a week, September 18-25, because of a juror's illness.
The addresses of Stuart and William A. Howard have not been preserved.
*^J. N. W., "William H. Seward at the Bar," in the Albany Law Journal
35:399 (May 14, 1887); Proctor, "Seward as a Lawyer," in the Albany Law
Journal 35:285. Parts of Seward's closing address were reprinted in school
elocution books.
8* Detroit Daily Tribune, September 25, 26, 1851; Jackson American Citizen,
October 1, 15, 1851; Detroit Daily Advertiser, September 27, 1851; Niles
Republican, October 4, 1851.
*« Detroit Daily Advertiser, October 11, 1851; Detroit Daily Free Press,
November 7, 1851; Jackson American Citizen, October 1, 15, November 26,
1851.
^ Joy to Brooks, October 2, 1851 in Letters Received Superintendent's Office,
October, 1851, volume 42.
^Farmer, History of Detroit, 1:900; Detroit Daily Advertiser, January 24,
1852, January 24, 1854.
*« Grass Lake Public Sentiment, May 2, 1853.
^Jackson American Citizen, June 9, October 6, 1852, April 6, 1853; Crim-
inal Docket County Court Jackson County, 1848-1856, 124; William Norris
to Reuben N. Rice, October 4, 1852, in Letters Received Superintendent's
Office, October, 1852, volume 54; Grass Lake Public Sentiment, December 10,
1853; Moses A. McNaughton to Joy, March 22, 25, 1853; Van Dyke to Joy,
April 22, 1854, in Joy Manuscripts, transcripts in the Michigan Historical
Collections.
8° Moses A. McNaughton to Joy, March 25, 1853, in Joy Manuscripts,
transcripts in the Michigan Historical Collections; Grass Lake Public Senti-
ment, January 1, 15, February 1, March 15, July i, September 1, 1853; Jackson
American Citizen, November 30, 1853, August 16, 1854; De Land, 276, 290.
*i Marshall Democratic Expounder, October 10, 1851; Jackson American
Citizen, October 1, 29, November 5, 12, 26, 1851; Grass Lake Public Senti-
ment, April 1, 1853; George B. Cooper to Brooks, October 1, 1851 in Letters
[ 126 ]
Received Superintendent's Office, October, 1851, volume 42; Detroit Daily
Free Press, November 7, 1851; Detroit Daily Advertiser, October 9, 10, No-
vember 4, 6, 1851; Election Returns, 1849-1857, in County Clerk's OEBce,
Jackson County Building, Jackson.
*2 Jackson American Citizen, October 6, 20, November 3, 24, December 29,
1852, March 9, 1853; Early History of Michigan: Biographies of State Officers
. . . , 360 (Lansing, 1888).
*^ Jackson American Citizen, January 26, March 9, 1853; Joy to Unknown,
January 8, 1853 in Joy Manuscripts, transcripts in the Michigan Historical Col-
lections; House Journal 185^, 83, 136, 165, 185, 273, 322, 342, 375, 376
(Lansing, 1853); Senate Journal i8j}, 185 (Lansing, 1853); Michigan Joint
Documents 18^4, number 1: 47 (Lansing, 1854).
** Michigan Joint Documents 18^4, number 1: 36, 46; House Documents
iSyj, number 20: 1, 7 (Lansing, 1857). Aaron Mount died in jail.
*^ Wilbur F. Storey to Joy, January 12, 1853, in Joy Manuscripts, transcripts.
*® Moses A. McNaughton to Joy, February 23, March 15, 1853, in Joy Manu-
scripts, transcripts.
^Michigan as a Province, Territory and State, 3:321.
** Grass Lake Public Sentiment, July 1, 1853; House Journal 18^^, 367;
Senate Journal 18$^, 303; Laws of Michigan 18^5, number 82, 138, 139.
*® Jackson American Citizen, September 24, October 8, November 5, 1851,
February 25, May 5, 1852, April 6, August 10, 17, September 14, 1853; Marshall
Democratic Expounder, October 17, 1851; Portrait and Biographical Album of
Jackson County, Michigan, 732 (Chicago, 1890).
^•^ Jackson American Citizen, August 24, 1853; Detroit Daily Free Press,
August 24, 1853; Adrian Michigan Expositor, August 23, 1853; Adrian Daily
Watchtower, August 26, 1853.
^'* Jackson American Citizen, August 31, September 14, November 30, De-
cember 21, 1853; Adrian Daily Watchtower, September 1, 1853; Detroit Daily
Free Press, December 2, 1853; Report of a Case . . . in the Circuit Court of
the County of Wayne, entitled the Michigan Central Railroad Company versus
the Michigan Southern Railroad Company, (Detroit, 1853).
^°2 Detroit Daily Free Press, January 13, 15, 17, 1853; Adrian Michigan
Expositor, November 16, 1852.
^"^ Detroit Daily Free Press, January 7, 22, 1853.
^'^ J. R. Williams to Joy, January' 15, 1853; C. C. Jackson to Joy, January 20,
1853, in Joy Manuscripts, transcripts; Detroit Daily Free Press, January 24,
25, 26, 28, February 2, 3, 11, March 3, 1853; Detroit Daily Advertiser, January 21,
22, 24, 26, 1853; Jackson American Citizen, February 9, 1853; House Journal
i8y^, 353; Senate Journal 18$^, 356.
^•^ Jackson American Citizen, February 16, 1853, January 4, 1854; Adrian
Michigan Expositor, February 22, 1853, January 3, 1854; Detroit Daily Ad-
vertiser, January 4, 1854; Detroit Daily Free Press, December 28, 29, 30, 1853,
January 11, 1854.
^•^ Detroit Daily Free Press, January 12, September 15, 1854; History of
Jackson County . . . , 328, 330; William Livingstone, History of the Repub-
lican Party, 1:37, 41, 53 (Detroit, 1900); De Land, 178, 180; Jackson American
[ 127 ]
Citizen, July 6, 1854; Albert Williams, "The Republican Party— The True
History of Its Birth," in the Michigan Historical Collections, 28:480 (Lansing,
1900); Adrian Michigan Expositor, July 15, 1854.
^•"The author has gone through the files of the Detroit Free Press and
Advertiser for July-November, 1854; Jackson American Citizen, October 4,
11, 18, November 1, 1854.
^•^ Jackson American Citizen, January 3, 10, 17, 31, February 7, 1855; Senate
Journal 1855, 4, 51, 151; House Journal 18^5, 291; Senate Documents i8$$,
number 3.
^'^ Laws of Michigan iS$$, number 82.
"" Michigan Railroad Commission, Aids, Gifts, Grants and Donations to
Railroads, including Outline of Development . . . , 98-101 (Lansing, 1919);
Farmer, 1:899.
"^ Henry Phelps to Darius Clark, December 9, 1851, in Letters Received
Superintendent's Office, December, 1851, volume 44; De Land, 160; Jackson
American Citizen, September 8, 1852, August 17, 1853.
*^ Michigan Historical Commission, Michigan Biographies, 1:172; Friend
Palmer, Early Days in Detroit, 348, 350 (Detroit, 1906); Farmer, 2:1037; A. T.
Andrews, History of Chicago, 2:468 (Chicago, 1885).
^^ Life and Adventures of William Filley, 13; Michigan Historical Collec-
tions, 4:270 (Lansing, 1883).
^* James M. Thomas, Jackson City Directory for 1869-yo, 97 (Jackson, 1869);
History of Jackson County . . . , 449-50.
"^History of Jackson County . . . , 446-49.
^'De Land, 153-60.
[ 128]
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