It had already become famous. Early in April the press of the city, though
in those days unused to giving local affairs more than the feeblest
attention, had spoken of this suit as destined, if well founded, to
develop a case of "unparalleled hardship, cruelty, and oppression." The
German people especially were aroused and incensed. A certain newspaper
spoke of the matter as the case "that had for several days created so much
excitement throughout the city." The public sympathy was with Salome.
But by how slender a tenure was it held! It rested not on the "hardship,
cruelty, and oppression" she had suffered for twenty years, but only on
the fact, which she might yet fail to prove, that she had suffered these
things without having that tincture of African race which, be it ever so
faint, would entirely justify, alike in the law and in the popular mind,
treatment otherwise counted hard, cruel, oppressive, and worthy of the
public indignation.
And now to prove the fact. In a newspaper of that date appears the
following:
Hon. A.M. Buchanan, _Judge_.
Sally Miller _vs_. Belmonti. }--No. 23,041.
This cause came on to-day for trial before the court, Roselius
and Upton for plaintiff, Canon for defendant, Grymes and
Micou for warrantor; when after hearing evidence the same is
continued until to-morrow morning at 11 o'clock.
Salome's battle had begun. Besides the counsel already named, there were
on the slave's side a second Upton and a Bonford, and on the master's
side a Sigur, a Caperton, and a Lockett. The redemptioners had made the
cause their own and prepared to sustain it with a common purse.
Neither party had asked for a trial by jury; the decision was to come from
the bench.
The soldier, in the tableaux of Judge Buchanan's life, had not dissolved
perfectly into the justice, and old lawyers of New Orleans remember him
rather for unimpeachable integrity than for fine discrimination, a man of
almost austere dignity, somewhat quick in temper.
Before him now gathered the numerous counsel, most of whose portraits have
long since been veiled and need not now be uncovered. At the head of one
group stood Roselius, at the head of the other, Grymes. And for this there
were good reasons. Roselius, who had just ceased to be the State's
attorney-general, was already looked upon as one of the readiest of all
champions of the unfortunate. He was in his early prime, the first full
spread of his powers, but he had not forgotten the little Dutch brig
_Jupiter_, or the days when he was himself a redemptioner. Grymes, on the
other side, had had to do--as we have seen--with these same redemptioners
before. The uncle and the father of this same Sally Miller, so called, had
been chief witnesses in the suit for their liberty and hers, which he
had--blamelessly, we need not doubt--lost some twenty-five years before.
Directly in consequence of that loss Salome had gone into slavery and
disappeared. And now the loser of that suit was here to maintain that
slavery over a woman who, even if she should turn out not to be the lost
child, was enough like to be mistaken for her. True, causes must have
attorneys, and such things may happen to any lawyer; but here was a cause
which in our lights to-day, at least, had on the defendant's side no moral
right to come into court.
One other person, and only one, need we mention. Many a New York City
lawyer will recall in his reminiscences of thirty years ago a small,
handsome, gold-spectacled man with brown hair and eyes, noted for
scholarship and literary culture; a brilliant pleader at the bar, and
author of two books that became authorities, one on trade-marks, the other
on prize law. Even some who do not recollect him by this description may
recall how the gifted Frank Upton--for it is of him I write--was one day
in 1863 or 1864 struck down by apoplexy while pleading in the well-known
Peterhoff case. Or they may remember subsequently his constant, pathetic
effort to maintain his old courtly mien against his resultant paralysis.
This was the young man of about thirty, of uncommon masculine beauty and
refinement, who sat beside Christian Roselius as an associate in the cause
of Sally Miller _versus_ Louis Belmonti.
FOOTNOTES:
[27] Long since burned down.
[28] The similarity in the surnames of Salome and her master is odd, but
is accidental and without significance.