Against the prisoner at the bar, as an individual, I can not have the
slightest prejudice. I would not do him the smallest injury or injustice.
But I do not affect to be indifferent to the discovery and the punishment
of this deep guilt. I cheerfully share in the opprobrium, how much soever
it may be, which is cast on those who feel and manifest an anxious concern
that all who had a part in planning, or a hand in executing this deed of
midnight assassination, may be brought to answer for their enormous crime
at the bar of public justice.
This is a most extraordinary case. In some respects it has hardly a
precedent anywhere; certainly none in our New England history. This bloody
drama exhibited no suddenly excited, ungovernable rage. The actors in it
were not surprised by any lionlike temptation springing upon their virtue,
and overcoming it before resistance could begin. Nor did they do the deed
to glut savage vengeance, or satiate long-settled and deadly hate. It was
a cool, calculating, money-making murder. It was all "hire and salary, not
revenge." It was the weighing of money against life; the counting out of
so many pieces of silver against so many ounces of blood.
An aged man, without an enemy in the world, in his own house, and in his
own bed, is made the victim of a butcherly murder for mere pay. Truly,
here is a new lesson for painters and poets. Whoever shall hereafter draw
the portrait of murder, if he will show it as it has been exhibited in an
example, where such example was last to have been looked for, in the very
bosom of our New England society, let him not give it the grim visage of
Moloch, the brow knitted by revenge, the face black with settled hate, and
the bloodshot eye emitting livid fires of malice. Let him draw, rather, a
decorous, smooth-faced, bloodless demon; a picture in repose, rather than
in action; not so much an example of human nature in its depravity, and in
its paroxysms of crime, as an infernal nature, a fiend in the ordinary
display and development of his character.
The deed was executed with a degree of self-possession and steadiness
equal to the wickedness with which it was planned. The circumstances, now
clearly in evidence, spread out the whole scene before us. Deep sleep had
fallen on the destined victim, and on all beneath his roof. A healthful
old man, to whom sleep was sweet,--the first sound slumbers of the night
held him in their soft but strong embrace. The assassin enters through the
window, already prepared, into an unoccupied apartment. With noiseless
foot he paces the lonely hall, half-lighted by the moon; he winds up the
ascent of the stairs, and reaches the door of the chamber. Of this, he
moves the lock by soft and continued pressure till it turns on its hinges
without noise; and he enters, and beholds his victim before him. The room
was uncommonly open to the admission of light. The face of the innocent
sleeper was turned from the murderer, and the beams of the moon, resting
on the gray locks of his aged temple, showed him where to strike. The
fatal blow is given! and the victim passes, without a struggle or a
motion, from the repose of sleep to the repose of death!
It is the assassin's purpose to make sure work; and he yet plies the
dagger, though it was obvious that life had been destroyed by the blow of
the bludgeon. He even raises the aged arm, that he may not fail in his aim
at the heart; and replaces it again over the wounds of the poniard! To
finish the picture, he explores the wrist for the pulse! He feels for it,
and ascertains that it beats no longer! It is accomplished. The deed is
done. He retreats, retraces his steps to the window, passes out through it
as he came in, and escapes. He has done the murder; no eye has seen him,
no ear has heard him. The secret is his own, and it is safe!
Ah! gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake. Such a secret can be safe
nowhere. The whole creation of God has neither nook nor corner where the
guilty can bestow it, and say it is safe. Not to speak of that eye which
glances through all disguises, and beholds everything as in the splendor
of noon; such secrets of guilt are never safe from detection, even by men.
True it is, generally speaking, that "murder will out." True it is that
Providence hath so ordained, and doth so govern things, that those who
break the great law of Heaven by shedding man's blood, seldom succeed in
avoiding discovery. Especially, in a case exciting so much attention as
this, discovery must come, and wilt come, sooner or later. A thousand eyes
turn at once to explore every man, everything, every circumstance
connected with the time and place; a thousand ears catch every whisper; a
thousand excited minds intensely dwell on the scene, shedding all their
light, and ready to kindle the slightest circumstance into a blaze of
discovery.
Meantime, the guilty soul can not keep its own secret. It is false to
itself, or rather it feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be
true to itself. It labors under its guilty possession, and knows not what
to do with it. The human heart was not made for the residence of such an
inhabitant. It finds itself preyed on by a torment, which it dares not
acknowledge to God nor man. A vulture is devouring it, and it can ask no
sympathy or assistance either from heaven or earth. The secret which the
murderer possesses soon comes to possess him; and, like the evil spirits
of which we read, it overcomes him, and leads him whithersoever it will.
He feels it beating at his heart, rising to his throat, and demanding
disclosure. He thinks the whole world sees it in his face, reads it in his
eyes, and almost hears its workings in the very silence of his thoughts.
It has become his master. It betrays his discretion, it breaks down his
courage, it conquers his prudence. When suspicions from without begin to
embarrass him, and the net of circumstance to entangle him, the fatal
secret struggles with still greater violence to burst forth. It must be
confessed, it will be confessed; there is no refuge from confession but
suicide, and suicide is confession.
--Daniel Webster.
NOTE.--The above extract is from Daniel Webster's argument in the trial of
John F. Knapp for the murder of Mr. White, a very wealthy and respectable
citizen of Salem, Mass, Four persons were arrested as being concerned in
the conspiracy; one confessed the plot and all the details of the crime,
implicating the others, but he afterwards refused to testify in court. The
man who, by this confession, was the actual murderer, committed suicide,
and Mr. Webster's assistance was obtained in prosecuting the others. John
F. Knapp was convicted as principal, and the other two as accessaries in
the murder.