We need not linger over the details of the trial. The witnesses for the
prosecution were called. First came a Creole woman, so old that she did
not know her own age, but was a grown-up girl in the days of the Spanish
governor-general Galvez, sixty-five years before. She recognized in the
plaintiff the same person whom she had known as a child in John F.
Miller's domestic service with the mien, eyes, and color of a white person
and with a German accent. Next came Madame Hemin, who had not known the
Müllers till she met them on the Russian ship and had not seen Salome
since parting from them at Amsterdam, yet who instantly identified her
"when she herself came into the court-room just now." "Witness says,"
continues the record, "she perceived the family likeness in plaintiff's
face when she came in the door."
The next day came Eva and told her story; and others followed, whose
testimony, like hers, we have anticipated. Again and again was the
plaintiff recognized, both as Salome and as the girl Mary, or Mary
Bridget, who for twenty years and upward had been owned in slavery, first
by John F. Miller, then by his mother, Mrs. Canby, and at length by the
cabaret keeper Louis Belmonti. If the two persons were but one, then for
twenty years at least she had lived a slave within five miles, and part
of the time within two, of her kindred and of freedom.
That the two persons were one it seemed scarcely possible to doubt. Not
only did every one who remembered Salome on shipboard recognize the
plaintiff as she, but others, who had quite forgotten her appearance then,
recognized in her the strong family likeness of the Müllers. This likeness
even witnesses for the defense had to admit. So, on Salome's side,
testified Madame Koelhoffer, Madame Schultzheimer, and young Daniel Miller
(Müller) from Mississippi. She was easily pointed out in the throng of the
crowded court-room.
And then, as we have already said, there was another means of
identification which it seemed ought alone to have carried with it
overwhelming conviction. But this we still hold in reserve until we have
heard the explanation offered by John F. Miller both in court and at the
same time in the daily press in reply to its utterances which were giving
voice to the public sympathy for Salome.
It seems that John Fitz Miller was a citizen of New Orleans in high
standing, a man of property, money, enterprises, and slaves. John Lawson
Lewis, commanding-general of the State militia, testified in the case to
Mr. Miller's generous and social disposition, his easy circumstances, his
kindness to his eighty slaves, his habit of entertaining, and the
exceptional fineness of his equipage. Another witness testified that
complaints were sometimes made by Miller's neighbors of his too great
indulgence of his slaves. Others, ladies as well as gentlemen,
corroborated these good reports, and had even kinder and higher praises
for his mother, Mrs. Canby. They stated with alacrity, not intending the
slightest imputation against the gentleman's character, that he had other
slaves even fairer of skin than this Mary Bridget, who nevertheless, "when
she was young," they said, "looked like a white girl." One thing they
certainly made plain--that Mr. Miller had never taken the Müller family or
any part of them to Attakapas or knowingly bought a redemptioner.
He accounted for his possession of the plaintiff thus: In August, 1822,
one Anthony Williams, being or pretending to be a negro-trader and from
Mobile, somehow came into contact with Mr. John Fitz Miller in New
Orleans. He represented that he had sold all his stock of slaves except
one girl, Mary Bridget, ostensibly twelve years old, and must return at
once to Mobile. He left this girl with Mr. Miller to be sold for him for
his (Williams's) account under a formal power of attorney so to do, Mr.
Miller handing him one hundred dollars as an advance on her prospective
sale. In January, 1823, Williams had not yet been heard from, nor had the
girl been sold; and on the 1st of February Mr. Miller sold her to his own
mother, with whom he lived--in other words, _to himself_, as we shall see.
In this sale her price was three hundred and fifty dollars and her age was
still represented as about twelve. "From that time she remained in the
house of my mother," wrote Miller to the newspapers, "as a domestic
servant" until 1838, when "she was sold to Belmonti."
Mr. Miller's public statement was not as full and candid as it looked.
How, if the girl was sold to Mrs. Canby, his mother--how is it that
Belmonti bought her of Miller himself? The answer is that while Williams
never re-appeared, the girl, in February, 1835, "the girl Bridget," now
the mother of three children, was with these children bought back again by
that same Mr. Miller from the entirely passive Mrs. Canby, for the same
three hundred and fifty dollars; the same price for the four which he had
got, or had seemed to get, for the mother alone when she was but a child
of twelve years. Thus had Mr. Miller become the owner of the woman, her
two sons, and her daughter, had had her service for the keeping, and had
never paid but one hundred dollars. This point he prudently overlooked in
his public statement. Nor did he count it necessary to emphasize the
further fact that when this slave-mother was about twenty-eight years old
and her little daughter had died, he sold her alone, away from her two
half-grown sons, for ten times what he had paid for her, to be the
bond-woman of the wifeless keeper of a dram-shop.
But these were not the only omissions. Why had Williams never come back
either for the slave or for the proceeds of her sale? Mr. Miller omitted
to state, what he knew well enough, that the girl was so evidently white
that Williams could not get rid of her, even to him, by an open sale. When
months and years passed without a word from Williams, the presumption was
strong that Williams knew the girl was not of African tincture, at least
within the definition of the law, and was content to count the
provisional transfer to Miller equivalent to a sale.
Miller, then, was--heedless enough, let us call it--to hold in African
bondage for twenty years a woman who, his own witnesses testified, had
every appearance of being a white person, without ever having seen the
shadow of a title for any one to own her, and with everything to indicate
that there was none. Whether he had any better right to own the several
other slaves whiter than this one whom those same witnesses of his were
forward to state he owned and had owned, no one seems to have inquired.
Such were the times; and it really was not then remarkable that this
particular case should involve a lady noted for her good works and a
gentleman who drove "the finest equipage in New Orleans."
One point, in view of current beliefs of to-day, compels attention. One of
Miller's witnesses was being cross-examined. Being asked if, should he see
the slave woman among white ladies, he would not think her white, he
replied:
"I cannot say. There are in New Orleans many white persons of dark
complexion and many colored persons of light complexion." The question
followed:
"What is there in the features of a colored person that designates them to
be such?"
"I cannot say. Persons who live in countries where there are many colored
persons acquire an instinctive means of judging that cannot be well
explained."
And yet neither this man's "instinct" nor that of any one else, either
during the whole trial or during twenty years' previous knowledge of the
plaintiff, was of the least value to determine whether this poor slave was
entirely white or of mixed blood. It was more utterly worthless than her
memory. For as to that she had, according to one of Miller's own
witnesses, in her childhood confessed a remembrance of having been brought
"across the lake"; but whether that had been from Germany, or only from
Mobile, must be shown in another way. That way was very simple, and we
hold it no longer in suspense.