present. The gallery was appropriated to the ladies, about two hundred of whom were present, three-fourths of these were remarkable for their beauty. On Judge Bridges taking the bench, Judge Rowan suggested that, in view of the immense concourse who wished to hear the argument, it might be advisable to adjourn to an adjacent church. The court, for very obvious reasons, declined to entertain the proposition, but, with a view to accommodate the ladies, assigned the galleries to their exclusive use. The prosecuting attorney, Mr. Bullock, opened the argument on behalf of the State, and proceeded to make a clear statement of the law bearing on the case, with an application as to the facts. He was followed by Colonel Robertson, who spoke for an hour for the defence. In a few minutes after Colonel Robertson closed Mr. Prentiss arose, and addressed the jury substantially as follows: "May it please your Honor and you, gentlemen of the jury:-I rise to address you with mingled feelings of regret and pleasure. I regret the occasion which has caused me thus accidentally and unexpectedly to appear before you, and has compelled you to abandon for a time the peaceful and quiet avocations of private life for the purpose of performing the most important and solemn duty which in the relations of civilized society devolves upon the citizen. I regret to behold a valued and cherished friend passing through one of the most terrible ordeals ever invented to try the human feelings or test the human character. An ordeal through which I do not doubt he will pass triumphantly and honorably, without leaving one blot or stain upon the fair fame that has been so long his rightful portion, but through which he cannot pass unscathed in his sensibilities and feelings. The lightning scar will remain upon his heart, and public justice herself cannot even, though by acclamation through your mouths she proclaim his innocence, ever heal the wounds inflicted by this fierce and unrelenting prosecution, urged on as it has been by the demons of revenge and avarice. Most of all do I regret the public excitement which has prevailed in relation to these defendants, the uncharitable prejudgment which has forestalled the action of the law, the inhospitable prejudice which has been aroused against them because they are strangers, and the attempt which has been made and is still being made to mingle with the pure stream of justice the foul, bitter, and turbid torrent of private vengeance. But I am also gratified; gratified that the persecution under which my friends have labored is about to cease, that their characters, as well as public justice, will be vindicated, that the murky cloud which has enveloped them will soon be dissipated, and the voice of slander and prejudice sink into silence before the clear, stern, thoughtful response of this solemn tribunal. "The defendants are particularly fortunate in being tried before such a tribunal. The bearing and character of his Honor, who presides with so much dignity, give ample assurance that the law will be correctly and impartially laid down; and I trust I may be permitted to remark that I have never seen a jury in whose hands I would sooner entrust the cause of my clients, while at the same time you will do full justice to the Commonwealth. I come before you an utter stranger, and yet I feel not as a stranger toward you. I have watched during the course of the examination the various emotions which the evidence was so well calculated to arouse in your bosoms, both as men and as Kentuckians; and when I beheld the flush of honorable shame upon your cheeks, the sparkle of indignation in your eyes, or the curl of scorn upon your lips as the foul conspiracy was developed, I felt that years could not make us better acquainted. I saw upon your faces the mystic sign which constitutes the bond of union among honorable and honest men, and I knew that I was about to address those whose feelings would respond to my own. I rejoiced that my clients, in the fullest sense of the term, were to be tried by a jury of their peers. + Gentlemen of the jury, this is a case of no ordinary character and possesses no ordinary interest. Three of the most respectable citizens of the State of Mississippi stand before you indicted for the crime of murder, the highest offence known to the laws of the land. The crime is charged to have been committed not in your own county but in the city of Louisville, and there the indictment was found. The defendants during the past winter applied to the Legislature for a change of venue, and elected your county as the place at which they would prefer to have the question of their guilt or innocence investigated. This course at first blush may be calculated to raise in your minds some unfavorable impressions. You may naturally inquire, Why was it taken? Why did they not await the trial in the county in which the offence was charged to have been committed? In fine, why they came here? I feel it my duty before entering into the merits of this case to answer these questions and to obviate such impressions as I have alluded to, which without explanation might very naturally exist. In doing so it will be necessary to advert briefly to the history of this case. My clients have come before you for justice; they have fled to you even as to the horns of the altar, for protection. "It is not unknown to you that upon the occurrence of the events the character of which you are about to try great tumult and excitement prevailed in the city of Louisville. Passion and prejudice poured poison into the public ear. Popular feeling was roused into madness. It was with the utmost difficulty that the strong arm of the constituted authorities wrenched the victims from the hands of an infuriated mob. Even the thick walls of the prison hardly afforded protection to the accused. Crouched and shivering upon the cold floor of their gloomy dungeon, they listened to the footsteps of the gathering crowds, and ever and anon the winter wind that played melancholy music through the rusty grates was drowned by the fierce howling of the human wolves who prowled and bayed around their place of refuge, greedy and thirsting for blood. Every breeze that swept over the city bore away slander and falsehood upon its wings. Even the public press, though I doubt not unwittingly, joined in the work of injustice. The misrepresentations of the prosecutor and his friends became the public history of the transaction, and from one end of the Union to the other these defendants were held up to public gaze and public execration as foul, unmanly murderers, and that, too, before any judicial investigation whatever had occurred, or any opportunity been afforded them for saying a single word in their defence. "I recollect well when I received the first information of the affair. It was in some respectable newspaper which professed to give a full account of the transaction, and set forth with horrible minuteness a column of disgusting particulars. Instantly, openly, and unhesitatingly I pronounced the paragraph false and trampled it under my heels. When rumor seemed to endorse and sustain the assertions I laughed her to scorn. I had known Judge Wilkinson long and well. I knew him to be incapable of the acts attributed to him or of the crime with which he was charged. Not an instant did I falter or waver in my belief. I hurled back the charge as readily as though it had been made against myself. What! a man whom I had known for years as the very soul of honor and integrity to be guilty suddenly and without provocation of a base and cowardly assassination! One whose whole course of life had been governed and shaped by the highest moral principle, whose feelings were familiar to me, whose breast ever had a window in it for my inspection and yet had never exhibited a cowardly thought or a dishonorable sentiment,-that such a one and at such an era in his life, too, should have leaped at a single bound the wide gulf which separates vice from virtue and have plunged at once into the depths of crime and infamy! Why, it was too monstrous for credence; it was too gross for credulity itself. Had I believed it I should have lost all confidence in my kind. I would no longer have trusted myself in society, where so slender a barrier divided good from evil. I should have become a man-hater, and, Timon-like, gone forth in the desert that I might rail with freedom against my race. You may judge of my gratification in finding the real state of the facts of the case so responsive to my opinion. "I am told, gentlemen, that during this popular excitement there were some whose standing and character might have authorized a different course of conduct, who seemed to think it not amiss to exert their talents and influence in aggravating instead of assuaging the violent passions of the multitude. I am told that when the examination took place before the magistrate every bad passion, every ungenerous prejudice, was appealed to. The argument was addressed not to the court but to the populace. It was said that the unfortunate individuals who fell in the affray were mechanics, while the defendants were Mississippians, aristocratic slaveholders, who looked upon a poor man as no better than a negro. They were called gentlemen in derision and contempt. Every instance of violence which has occurred in Mississippi for years past was brought up and arrayed with malignant pleasure, and these defendants made answerable for all the crimes which, however much to be regretted, are so common in a new and rapidly-populating country. It was this course of conduct and this state of feeling which induced the change of venue. I have made these remarks because I fear a similar spirit still actuates that portion of this prosecution, which is conducted not by the State but by private individuals. "I am not aware that the Commonwealth of Kentucky is incapable of vindicating her violated laws or unwilling to prosecute and punish the perpetrators of crime. The district attorney has given ample proof that she is provided with officers fully capable of asserting her rights and protecting her citizens, and, with the exception of one or two remarks which fell from him inadvertently, I accord to his observations my most unqualified approbation. He has done equal justice to the State and to the defendants; he has acquitted himself ably, honorably, and impartially. But, gentlemen, though the State is satisfied the prosecutor is not. Your laws have spoken through their constituted agents, now private vengeance and vindictive malice will claim to be heard. One of the ablest lawyers of your country-ay, of any country-has been employed to conduct the private part of this prosecution; employed not by the Commonwealth but by the real murderer,-him whose forehead I intend before I am done to brand with the mark of Cain, that in after-life all may know and all may shun him. The money of the prosecutor has purchased the talent of the advocate, and the contract is that blood shall be exchanged for gold. The learned and distinguished gentleman who sits before me, and to whom I allude, may well excite the apprehension of the most innocent. If rumor speaks truth he has character sufficient even though without ability, and ability sufficient even without character, to crush the victims of his purchased wrath. I said with the exception of one or two remarks I was pleased with the manly and honorable course of the Commonwealth's attorney. Those remarks seem to be more in the spirit of his colleague than in accordance with his own feelings. I was sorry to hear him mention so pointedly and to dwell so long upon the fact that the defendants were Mississippians, as if that constituted an ingredient in their crime or furnished a proof of their guilt. If to be a Mississippian is an offence in my clients, I cannot defend them. I am myself particeps criminis. We are all guilty with malice aforethought. We have left our own bright and beautiful homes and sought that land the name of which seems to arouse in the minds of the opposing counsel only images of horror. Truly, the learned gentlemen are mistaken in us; we are no cannibals nor savages. I would that they would visit us and disabuse their minds of these unkind preju dices. They would find in that far country thousands of their own Kentuckians who have cast their lot by the monarch stream, in the enjoyment of whose rich gifts, though they forget not, they hardly regret the bright river (Ohio) upon whose banks they strayed in their childhood. No State has contributed more of her sons to Mississippi than Kentucky, nor do they suffer by being transplanted to that genial soil. Their native State may well be proud of them, as they ever are of her. "But I do injustice to you and to her in dwelling upon this matter. Here, in the heart of Kentucky, my clients have sought and obtained an unprejudiced and impartial jury. You hold in your hands the balance of justice, and I ask and expect that you will not permit the prosecution to cast extraneous and improper weights into the scale against the lives of the defendants. You constitute the mirror whose office is to reflect in your verdict the law and the evidence which have been submitted to you. Let no foul breath dim its pure surface and cause it to render back a broken and distorted image. Through you now flows the stream of public justice. Let it not become turbid by the trampling of unholy feet. Let not the learned counsel who conducts the private part of this prosecution act the necromancer with you as he did with the populace of the city of Louisville when he raised a tempest which even his own wizard hand could not have controlled. Well may he exclaim in reference to that act, like the foul spirit in Manfred,— 'I am the rider of the wind, The stirrer of the storm; The hurricane I left behind Ay, so it is still with lightning warm. But you, gentlemen, will perform the humane office of conductor and convey this electric fluid safely to the earth. "You will excuse these prefatory observations; they are instigated by no doubt of you, but by a sense of duty to the defendants. I wish to obviate in advance the attempts which I know will be made to excite against them improper and ungenerous prejudices. You have seen in the examination of one of the witnesses (Mr. Graham) this very day a specimen of the kind of feeling which has existed elsewhere, and which I so earnestly deprecate. So enraged was he because the defendants had obtained an impartial jury that he wished the whole Legislature in that place not to be mentioned to ears polite, and that he might be the fireman, and all on account of the passage of the law changing the venue. Now though I doubt much whether this worthy gentleman will be gratified in his benevolent wishes in relation to the final destiny of the Senate and Representatives of this good Commonwealth, yet I cannot but believe that his desires in regard to himself will be accomplished, and his ambitious aspirations fully realized in the enjoyment of that singular office which he so warmly covets. |