Tag Archives: 1865

1865: George Baker and George Beal, Salem murderers

Posted on by

A 1938 Oregon Magazine retrospective on the May 17, 1865 Salem, Ore. hanging of George Baker and George Beal(e) comes from a compilation of research on the wonderful site Oregon Pioneers.

These were very much pioneer days. The Pacific Northwest Oregon Territory started drawing large scale white settlement from the 1830s, with the onset of the Oregon Trail, the means by which both the offenders and the victim in this case arrived at this distant land.

The state of Oregon (only a subset of the Oregon Territory, which also comprised the present-day states of Washington and Idaho) attained statehood in 1859 with the census population weighing in at 52,000 the following year. Its first judicial executions only occurred in 1850 — so this punishment was very much a novelty, as the piece below indicates. (I’ve added some line breaks for readability.) There’s a great deal more at the Oregon Pioneers site.

SEVENTY-THREE Years is a long time, yet there are people now living who witnessed the execution of Beal and Baker on May l7th, 1865. The writer was a boy of 10 years at that time. Well do I remember the trial and execution of the men, for the murder of Daniel Delaney for his money.

Daniel Delaney was a wealthy stock raiser living about two miles southwest of Turner. He was a southerner and brought slaves with him to Oregon. He was a good citizen and a clean man, and his stock roamed over the hills and the valleys around Turner Station.

At that time he settled here there were no fences and the stock roamed over the whole country. There were no banks in this part of the state and whoever had money must hide it about his premises.

Delaney was supposed to have a lot of money. Beal was keeping a saloon in Salem in a building now occupied by the Marion Hotel. He lived across the street in a house south of the old Rector Hotel with his wife and mother. Beal had a partner in the crime, George Baker, who drove cattle for the early day butchers of Salem. He was a weak minded man, and lived on the block south of Beal’s saloon with his wife and three or four children.

On the night of the murder, Beal met Baker at a point on Mill Creek, formerly agreed upon. Beal was walking and Baker was riding a black mare hereafter mentioned in this article. At this point they obtained some charcoal which they used on their faces to disguise themselves, as Beal was well acquainted with Delaney, and often would stay all night with him while off on hunting trips when in that part of the country. He also crossed the plains in the same train with Delaney in 1843.

Delaney lived alone except for a colored boy, 12 years of age, and his dog. They called the old man out of the house and shot him and also the dog. The colored boy hid in the wood pile near the house. Delaney, who was wounded, recognized Beal and said to him, “Spare my life, Beal, and you can have all the money I have got.” Beal drew a revolver from his pocket and said to him, “Dead men do not talk,” and fired a shot that finished Delaney, who was wounded.

The colored boy remained in hiding until daylight next morning, then taking the dog, which was badly wounded, carried him over to one of Delaney’s sons about a mile away, giving the alarm.

Beal and Baker were soon arrested for the crime on suspicion. One of the suspicious circumstances was that the black mare which Baker was riding on the night of the murder had lost one shoe. Another was the finding of a hat band which had been lost off Beal’s hat.

The trial was very interesting and so many people wanted to hear the trial that there was not room in the old wooden court house which occupied the same ground as the present one, so the trial was held in the Holman block, used by the legislature before the state capitol was built.

The prisoners were defended by Caton & Curl with David Logan, prominent attorney in Oregon at that time. Rufus Mallory was prosecuting attorney. The colored boy proved to be a very good witness for the state; also the hat band which fitted Beal’s hat was found in his bed room after his arrest; also the black mare had one shoe missing.

The prisoners were found guilty after a long and tedious trial and were sentenced to be executed on the 17th day of May, 1865. For this purpose the county of Marion erected a wooden scaffold on the block on South Church street, bounded by Church, Mill, Winter and Leslie streets.

The prisoners were confined in a small brick jail on the northwest corner of the court house block, until the day of the execution, when they were taken from the jail by the then Sheriff of Marion County, Samuel Hedrick, and placed in a hotel bus and taken to the place of execution, where they paid the penalty of their crime.

The death march was impressive. At that time Marion county had a militia company known as the Marion Rifles. They were dressed in gaudy uniforms as on dress parade and formed around the bus in a hollow square with fixed bayonets. Marching east on Court to Church street, thence south on Church street to the place of execution. The procession was followed by a vast crowd of people.

The military unit then formed about the scaffold until after the execution. People came to witness this execution from all parts of the state, even some Indians from Grand Ronde and the Siletz reservations. In fact, it was considered a public holiday. My old school teacher, Pearson, a law and order man, dismissed school so his pupils could witness the execution of these men as an object lesson.

The high grounds about the mill race formed a natural amphitheater for the occasion. Beal walked up the steps to the platform on the scaffold with a firm step. He then produced a small bible and read from it a short chapter, and then said in a firm voice, “Now take this book and read it and follow its teachings and you will never come to what I have.” He then tossed the book to the people in the crowd.

Baker was very weak and had to be assisted up the steps.

Soon the rope was placed about the necks of the prisoners and it was soon over. Public sentiment was strong against these men, especially Beal, who was considered the master mind in this sad affair; even so much so that objections were made to them being buried in our local cemetery. But Daniel Waldo, a good old pioneer, granted space for them on his farm on what is known as the Waldo Hills. He said every man, good or bad, should be entitled to six feet of earth.

The public sentiment against the murderers was so far reaching it even extended to the attorneys for the defense, in the loss of practice. However, it sent Rufus Mallory, who prosecuted the case, to the lower house of congress from Oregon.

And it must have had some good effect in a moral way, for it was twenty years before another man was executed for murder in Marion County.

I wrote this story as I remember it as a boy of ten years of age. I had a chum like most boys, and we were interested very much in the trial and excitement. Sometimes we could not get a seat. One time we secured good seats but the sheriff, Samuel Hedrick, made us give them up to older people. We did not like it very much, but had to do it with a smile. But twenty-three years later the ten-year old boy had taken over his office.

On this day..

1865: Robert Cobb Kennedy, Confederate terrorist

Posted on by

Robert Cobb Kennedy, the last Confederate executed by the Union during the U.S. Civil War, was hanged on this date in 1865 as an arsonist.


Harper’s magazine illustration of an arsonist.

Kennedy, a West Point washout from a Louisiana plantation, was part of an ensemble of Confederate agents who attempted to torch New York City on November 25, 1864 — a mission designed to revenge Sherman’s march.

On that Friday evening, the night after Thanksgiving, the eight conspirators fired 13 Gotham hotels as well as theaters, public buildings, and the ludicrous museum of showman P.T. Barnum.* Nineteen fires were started overall, the plotters hoping that their simultaneous flaring would overwhelm the city’s capacity to respond and turn into a general conflagration. Through a combination of good luck, bad arson, and timely informants the various blazes were caught before they could do any real damage.

That couldn’t quite be said of the arsonists, who were all — even Kennedy — able to slip away safely to Canada before they could be caught. Kennedy risked a return trip through Detroit hoping to reach Confederate soil. He didn’t make it.

“Mr. Kennedy is a man of apparently 30 years of age, with an exceedingly unprepossessing countenance,” by the description of the New York Times (Feb. 28, 1865) as he stood trial before a military tribunal.

His head is well shaped, but his brow is lowering, his eyes deep sunken and his look unsteady. Evidently a keen-witted, desperate man, he combines the cunning and the enthusiasm of a fanatic, with the lack of moral principle characteristic of many Southern Hotspurs, whose former college experiences, and most recent hotel-burning plots are somewhat familiar to our readers. Kennedy is well connected at the South, is a relative, a nephew we believe, of Howell Cobb, and was educated at the expense of the United States, at West Point, where he remained two years, leaving at that partial period of study in consequence of mental or physical inability. While there he made the acquaintance of Ex. Brig. Gen. E.W. Stoughton, who courteously proffered his services as counsel for his ancient friend in his present needy hour. During Kennedy’s confinement here, while awaiting trial, he made sundry foolish admissions, wrote several letters which have told against him, and in general did, either intentionally or indiscreetly, many things, which seem to have rendered his conviction almost a matter of entire certainty.

He was hanged at Fort Lafayette, having admitted to setting the fire at Barnum’s museum (“simply a reckless joke … There was no fiendishness about it. The Museum was set on fire by merest accident, after I had been drinking, and just for the fun of a scare”). His was the only life claimed by the Confederate incendiaries.

* This facility was born under a bad star: although it survived the ministrations of Kennedy and friends, it burned to the ground the following July. Barnum put up a successor museum which also burned down, in 1868 — leading the man to pivot into the circus industry where he fixed his name in the firmament.

On this day..

1865: Henry Wilson, shy subject

Posted on by

(Thanks to Robert Elder of Last Words of the Executed — the blog, and the book — for the guest post. This post originally appeared on the Last Words blog. Fans of this here site are highly likely to enjoy following Elder’s own pithy, almanac-style collection of last words on the scaffold. -ed.)

“I had made a request not to have my photograph taken, for fear my friends would recognize me. Somebody else made a request that it should be taken, and Chase [the sheriff] paid more attention to them than to me, and let them try to take it as I came out. You can see what kind of man this Chase is, and if I had a chance I would take his photograph d—-d quick. I don’t think they got a good one. So my friends will not know it. Perhaps my photograph will be the means of finding out who I am, but I doubt it d—-dly. I have nothing more to say, and you may go on as soon as you please, for it is no consolation to me to be kept standing here in the cold.”

— Henry Wilson, convicted of murder, hanging, New York.

Executed December 22, 1865 A career burglar, Wilson was executed for slaying of Henry DeVoe, whose home he had been robbing. Wilson admitted to killing two other New Yorkers — Burr Burton in Syracuse and Mrs. Lewis in Lancaster — and told police he was the man wanted for a host of unsolved crimes. He went to the gallows three days before Christmas. A reporter for the Rochester Democrat censored Wilson’s profanities, which appear to be derivations of damn.

On this day..

1865: Thomas King, heartstabber

Posted on by

From the public domain History of Siskiyou County, California Illustrated with Views of Residences, Business Buildings and Natural Scenery, and Containing Portaits and Biographies of its Leading Citizens and Pioneers.

THOMAS KING.

After lying in jail two years, and receiving two trials, hoping for a release from the extreme penalty of the law until a few weeks before his death, Thomas King was executed on the twenty-third day of June, 1865, for a heartless and causeless murder, for dealing a death-blow, unprovoked and unexpected. He was born in Ireland, and when about twelve years of age, left his home because his parents had punished him for some offense. For several years he roamed about the United Kingdom, the associate of bad characters, until for the commission of
some felony he was transported to Australia.

When the Crimean war was raging, a regiment was raised among the convicts, by order of Lord Raglan, the men being given their liberty at the close of the war. In this regiment King enlisted, and after the fall of Sebastopol received his discharge. He made his way to Halifax, and from there to California, and to this county. After mining at Humbug, Scott Bar and various other places, he went to the south fork of Scott river, where he committed the terrible crime, for which the law exacted the penalty of his life.

On the second of July, 1863, having already become considerably under the influence of liquor, he entered French’s saloon, and began flourishing a knife in a threatening manner, and was deprived of it by the barkeeper. Among others in the saloon was James Duffy, who had been drinking, and whom King accused of having his knife. The accusation was denied, and upon being informed where the knife was, King demanded it from the barkeeper and it was restored to him. Throwing the weapon upon the floor and striking a tragic attitude, he exclaimed: “There lays me dagger. Whoever picks it up, dies by me hand.”

Not dreaming of danger, Duffy stooped, picked up the weapon and laid it upon the counter, saying, “You wouldn’t kill me, your best friend, would you?” “Yes, I would,” he said, as he took up the knife and made several false motions, touching Duffy’s breast with the handle, while the victim stood there smiling, unconscious of danger. Suddenly King reversed the knife, and with a, quick, hard blow, buried it deep in Duffy’s heart, the murdered man sinking to the floor with the exclamation, “You have cut me.” King made a pass with the bloody weapon at the barkeeper, and then sprang to the door and fled. The horrified witnesses of the tragedy stood for an instant in blank amazement, and then hastened in pursuit of the murderer, whom they soon overtook and secured after a slight resistance.

He remained in jail until the following February, when, after a trial lasting three days, he was found guilty of murder in the first degree, and was sentenced by Judge E. Garter to be executed Friday, March 18, 1864. An appeal to the Supreme Court gained for the condemned man a new trial, based upon the construction of a statute, and not upon the merits of the case. He was again tried in September, and was sentenced to be hanged on Friday, November 4, 1864, but an application to the Supreme Court produced a stay of proceedings until the case could be reviewed by that body. While awaiting the decision of the court, on Saturday, the eighth of February, 1865, he made a bold, and for a time, successful attempt to regain his freedom. Confined in the jail, which was the old wooden building first erected by the county, were also George Foster and Robert Ferry, both under a sentence to the penitentiary for grand larceny, and McGuire, a deserter from the army. The last named was allowed in the corridor, and was in the habit of calling for water. About eight o’clock on the night in question Foster succeeded in getting out of his cell, and after releasing the prisoners from their cells, had McGuire call for water, as usual, and when Jailor McCullough opened the door he was seized, gagged, and bound, and the prisoners escaped, having their irons still upon them. They had been gone but twenty minutes when their flight was discovered. The town was aroused, and people started in all directions in search of the fugitives. About daylight Ferry was caught at Cherry creek by John Hendricks and others. having been unable to get rid of his irons. About two o’clock Sunday afternoon William Short and Charles Brown found King in a clump of manzanita bushes, near Deming’s old brickyard, but a short distance south-west of Yreka. His long confinement of nineteen months had so weakened him that he had been unable to proceed further or to remove the irons from his limbs, although one of them he had succeeded in sawing partially through. A party composed of Livy Swan, A.V. Burns, J. Babb, A.D. Crooks, Sherman, Stone, and Groots, in pursuit of Foster and McGuire, stopped Monday night at Cherokee Mary’s, a resort for thieves, nine miles from Yreka. About four o’clock Tuesday morning the two fugitives approached the house and were ordered to surrender, and upon attempting to escape were fired upon by Jesse Sherman, with a shot gun, and Foster was wounded in the head and captured, while McGuire escaped by flight. Foster had succeeded in removing his irons, and now, severely wounded, was conveyed again to jail, while McGuire went to Fort Jones, and, finding escape impossible, gave himself up. Foster and Ferry had the terms of their sentences increased, while McGuire, who would have been released in a few days, was sent to San Quentin for two years for his little exploit in jail-breaking.

George Foster, alias Charles Mortimer, alias Charles J. Flinn, was the leader in the jail delivery, a hardened and reckless felon, and ended his career upon the scaffold. He was first sent to San Quentin from San Francisco for three years, and when his term expired, went back, chloroformed a man and robbed him of $1,800, was arrested, and escaped from officer Rose, by knocking him senseless and nearly cutting his throat. He then came to Siskiyou county, and was soon sentenced to three years for grand larceny, which term was increased to seven years for his participation in the jail delivery. After his release he continued his career of crime, finally murdering a woman in Sacramento, September 19, 1872, for which act he paid the penalty upon the gallows, not, however, until his brother lost his life in a desperate attempt to release him from the jail in which he was confined while awaiting the day of his execution.

The Supreme Court having reviewed the case and sustained the decision of the lower court, King was brought before Judge Garter in May, and was sentenced to be hanged on Friday, June 23, 1865. Preparations were accordingly made by Sheriff A.D. Crooks by erecting a gallows in the jail-yard. King’s conduct during the trials had been one of bravado and defiance, and this he maintained to the last, being quite abusive while on the scaffold. He remarked as they were leading him from his cell to the place of his death, “I’m the handsomest man here, if I am going to be hung.” But few spectators were admitted within the jail walls to witness the last act of this terrible drama, which culminated at nine minutes to two o’clock. The murderer who thus received the just punishment for the crime, nearly two years after he had plunged the fatal knife into an innocent and unsuspecting bosom, was buried a little east of town, near the remains of Crowder and Sailor Jim, executed several years before.

On this day..

1865: Francis Johnson (Francis Harper), lynch survivor

Posted on by

From the Chicago Republican, Dec. 23, 1865:

Special Despatch to the Chicago Republican.

WATSEKA, Iroquois Co., Ill. Dec. 22.

Francis Johnson, alias Francis Harper, was executed at Watseka, Iroquois county, Ill., on Dec. 22, for the murder of Dr. W. Nelson, of Muncie.

THE MURDER.

The murder was committed on the night of Nov. 2, about half a mile south of Gilman station, on the Illinois Central railroad. Harper and Nelson got off the passenger train at Gilman, and started on foot for Onarga. When about half a mile south of the station Harper drew a pistol and shot Nelson through the head but not so as to cause instant death. When he saw the pistol-shot did not kill Nelson, Harper sprang upon him and choked him to death; then robbed the boy of a few dollars in postal currency, and took the murdered man’s clothes, with the marks of blood upon them; also his valise, watch, and ring — all of which were marked with the owner’s name. Harper went to Onarga; had a tailor mend the torn and bloody coat, took the cars for Chicago, and was arrested on the train, through the agency of a telegraphic message to the conductor, who found the property in his possession. Harper was taken back to Gilman, and hung three times by a mob, but was cut down by Sheriff Martin before quite dead. At last the Sheriff got him away, and he was taken to Kankakee. He was brought from there and tried at the last term of the Circuit Court, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged on the 22d inst.

HIS TRIAL AND CONVICTION.

The evidence upon which Harper was convicted of the murder of Nelson was purely circumstantial, but conclusive. It was proven that he had hired a revolver in Kankakee, and furthermore that he had accompanied the murdered man on the cars of the Illinois Central railroad to Gilman, at which station they left the train together. It was also substantiated on the trial that he had been boarding with him at the Murray House at Kankakee, nearly a week prior to the time; and when Nelson expressed the determination to go to Gilman, Harper immediately announced his intention of accompanying him. After getting off from the train there, Harper asked Nelson to accompany him to the house of a friend, which invitation was accepted, and the two proceeded down the track together. This invitation on the part of Harper was merely a ruse to decoy his victim into some lonely spot; and, when they had proceeded about one hundred rods, Harper, stepping behind Wilson, drew his revolver, and shot him, as detailed above.

All these details were fully substantiated upon the trial; but in addition to them, Harper, when he was arrested, had upon his person Nelson’s coat, torn and covered with blood; the knife, watch, clothing, satchel and box of the deceased; and upon the latter were Nelson’s initials. After the case was given to the jury, they were out but a short time, when they returned a verdict of “guilty.”

EFFORTS AT COMMUTATION.

Harper was not without relatives, and, upon the announcement to them that he had been sentenced to death, they addressed themselves assiduously to the work of endeavoring to secure for him a reprieve, or commutation of the sentence to imprisonment for life. Gov. Oglesby, however, refused to grant their request; and since neither Judge Starr, who presided at the trial, nor the District Attorney, could be induced to add their signatures to a petition in his behalf, it became evident that the murderer must pay the full penalty of his crime.

WANT OF SYMPATHY.

To say that not a particle of sympathy was manifested by the people of Iroquois county in behalf of Harper, would be no more than speaking the honest truth. We have already stated that so outraged were the people against him at the time he was held in custody at Gilman that he was taken from the officers and hanged by the summary process of Lynch law, but after a desperate effort by the sheriff and his officers, was rescued from the hands of the mob and lodged in jail at Kankakee. Throughout his confinement, during his trial, and after his sentence, there was scarce an individual to be found who expressed a regret at the terrible fate which awaited him, or who entertained a doubt of his guilt.

DENIES HIS GUILT.

The prisoner, throughout the time that intervened between his sentence and Friday of last week, strenuously denied his guilt. No persuasion or entreaty could move him, and no assertion on the part of those who visited him in his cell, that they believed him to be the murderer of Nelson, seemed to move him in the least. To every interrogatory he gave the stereotyped response that he was innocent and knew nothing about the murder, though at times he seemed very humble, and shed tears when conversing with visitors upon the subject of the murder and his approaching doom. To those who were familiar with him he seemed to be borne up by some hope of reprieve, faint though it was, and an escape from the death to which the law had condemned him.

HIS CONFESSION.

One week ago today, Harper confessed his guilt. It was not, however, until assured that all hope of escape from death upon the gallows was out of the question and that all, including his own counsel, believed him to be guilty, that he unburdened his soul of the great secret it bore and escaped the additional sin of going before his Maker with a lie upon his lips. He had been visited in the morning by Dr. Thayer, who earnestly urged him to reflect upon the perilous position he occupied and besought him to make a full confession of his guilt. Bursting into tears, he confessed that he did shoot Nelson on the night of Nov. 2, between Gilman and Onarga. He also confessed that he hired a revolver in Kankakee for that purpose, and that he intended to kill him when they left that place together. He said that the shot did not kill Nelson; that he had a hand-to-hand struggle with him, and that he was not dead when he left him. He further said that he got his own coat bloody, and that he would have given his own life if he could have called Nelson back to life after he had done the fatal deed. He further confessed that he changed his name from Harper to Johnson, and he deserted from the army. The prisoner also said that he had felt for some time a desire to unburden his heart and acknowledge his guilt to his fellow-men, before his God, and seek his pardon. He said that he did not commit the murder for money and reward, but because he was in an unhappy state of mind, which drove him to desperation.

NOT GUILTY OF OTHER CRIMES.

The prisoner denied having participated in or committed other crimes. When asked if he knew anything about the mysterious disappearance of De Los Carrier, he replied that as God was his witness he knew nothing about him; that Nelson was the only man he ever murdered. In this statement the prisoner evinced much candor and honesty, and many believed he was speaking the truth.

THE EXECUTION.

The sentence of the law was carried into effect today, and Harper was executed. Since his sentence he has been confined in the jail at Kankakee, from whence he was brought to this place last evening. During the past few days he has exhibited signs of sincere penitence, and expressed the hope that God had pardoned his terrible sin. In the transit from Kankakee to this place he was far more cheerful than it was expected he would be, and conversed freely with those in attendance upon him.

PREPARATION FOR THE EXECUTION.

Sheriff Martin had made all possible preparation for the execution of the condemned, and, notwithstanding the oft-repeated threats on the part of the people in this locality that the execution should be a public one, it was conducted in a strictly private manner. He called to his assistance a guard of fifteen veteran soldiers, who were stationed around the enclosure in which the execution took place, and effectually guarded the execution from any interruption. The arrangements of this officer were made in a most judicious manner, and the result proved them to be every way successful.

THE GALLOWS.

The arrangement of the instrument of death was different from that ordinarily used, in that the culprit was suddenly jerked up instead of being dropped through a trap, as is ordinarily the custom. A heavy weight attached to a rope passing over a pully, was held by a cord in such a manner that, when this cord was cut, the weight dropped six feet, jerking the unfortunate man suddenly from his standing place into the air. The drop was frequently tested, and found to work smoothly prior to the execution.

HIS LAST NIGHT ON EARTH.

Harper passed his last evening upon earth in devotional exercises. He manifested little nervousness, but read his Bible and said his prayers calmly and quietly, and with hardly the air of one who knew he was to die upon the morrow. He also conversed freely with his spiritual advisers, and sometimes alluded to his approaching end calmly and seemingly without fear. At a late hour prayer was offered in his behalf by those in attendance, in which he joined, and soon after he retired to rest, and during the greater portion apparently slept soundly and quietly.

THIS MORNING

He arose very early, and when asked how he had passed the night, replied that he had rested well. Breakfast was brought him, of which he partook with a good relish, and afterward engaged in conversation with Dr. Thayer, who had so often visited him during his confinement. In this interview he talked freely and again expressed the hope that his sins had been forgiven. The sacrament was administered to him by clergymen who were in attendance at ten minutes before eleven o’clock, and at its conclusion he was directed to prepare himself to proceed to the place of execution. He signified his readiness to accompany the officers, and with them walked forth to die.

AT THE GALLOWS.

Arriving within the enclosure, within which the scaffold had been erected, he was permitted to warm himself for the day was bitter cold, and upon being asked if he had anything to say, replied in the affirmative. In a few words, earnestly spoken, he urged the spectators to take warning by his fate, and entreated them to beware of bad company, which he said had taught him habits which led him to the commission of the terrible crime for which he was about to die. He again acknowledged his guilt and the justice of his punishment, and at the conclusion of his remarks was conducted to the scaffold.

Harper stepped upon the gallows at 11:05 , and was immediately dressed in the shroud prepared for him. He then sang one verse of a hymn in a clear voice, the noose was adjusted around his neck, and the cap was drawn over his face and fastened. At 11:15 the drop fell, and Francis Harper had paid the penalty of his earthly crimes.

He was jerked up six feet, but fell back two feet. The neck was not broken. A few contortions, and he was pronounced dead at 11:19 by the attending physicians. At 11:30 the body was taken down, and will be forwarded to his father at Effingham, Ill. Everything passed off quietly; and thus died one who acknowledged his guilt and admitted the justice of his punishment.

HIS EARLY LIFE.

Harper was twenty-two years of age, and was born in Morgan county, Ind. He had no Christian education, except the good counsels of his mother, which were disregarded. In 1864 he joined the 70th Indiana regiment, but soon after deserted. Since that time he has led a career of crime in this State, which yesterday terminated upon the gallows.

On this day..

1865: Samuel Clarke, Jamaican radical

Posted on by

On this date in 1865, the creole politician Samuel Clarke was condemned and immediately executed under martial law in the crackdown following Jamaica’s Morant Bay Rebellion.

A carpenter from the parish of St. David, Clarke was a political activist — the kind of gadfly whom like Tony Moilin in the Paris Commune “a prudent and wise Government must rid itself when it finds a legitimate occasion to do so.” And the post-rebellion British crackdown was just such a “legitimate occasion” … well, sort of.

“Persons were tried and put to death under martial law for acts done, and even for words spoken, before the proclamation of martial law,” complained John Stuart Mill. “A peasant, named Samuel Clarke, was hanged some days after the proclamation of amnesty, for words spoken two months before the proclamation of martial law, his only specified offence being that he had, at that time, declared with an oath that a letter signed by the Secretary of State for the Colonies was a lie.”

Like the more celebrated white politician George William Gordon, Clarke was seized from outside the martial law zone and brought into it so that he could be prosecuted for “subversion” that consisted of merely having liberal opinions.

According to Swithin Wilmot (“The Politics of Samuel Clarke: Black Creole Politician in Free Jamaica, 1851-1865,” Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 44, No. 1/2 (March-June, 1998), a key source for this post), Clarke first became obnoxious to elite planters in the early 1850s when he mobilized black ex-slaves to capture one of the parish seats in the colonial assembly. Clarke would serve a month in prison for an election day riot that claimed the life of a poll clerk. But a few months after his release, “the small settler voters … pronounced their own verdict on the conduct of their black political leaders” by giving Clarke and his party a clean sweep at the 1853 elections and a stranglehold on local politics in St. David.

Clarke himself did not meet the property qualifications to contest a seat in the colonial assembly, but his faction had the votes to control these seats — and Clarke himself became a militant levelling voice whom white elites regarded as a demagogue, forever inciting “the people to be rude and insolent to their employers.”

The bloody year of 1865 finds Jamaica facing an economic crisis thanks to trade liberalization and Clarke provocatively denouncing the “Queen’s Advice” directed at the restive lower orders (“The prosperity of the Labouring Classes … depends … upon their working for Wages, not uncertainly, or capriciously, but steadily and continuously, at the times when their labour is wanted”) as “a lie, a damned red lie” and complaining of a regressive levy that “The taxes were only made for the Black man and not the White, there was one law for the Black man and one for the White man.”

In the wake of October’s Morant Bay black rising, these statements would be read in a most incendiary light by Governor Edward John Eyre — but they were made before that rising, and Clarke did not take part in the rebellion. As with Gordon, his standing political commitments simply became retroactively seditious.

A few days after the riot at Morant Bay … [Clarke] was told a warrant was out for his arrest. He at once gave himself up to the authorities, and was handed over to the military at Uppark Camp. While there, he was told by an officer of superior rank he would be hanged, although he had not been engaged in the riot, because he was one of the “ringleaders” of the people … Mr. Eyre personally directed that Clarke, with a number of other prisoners who had been arrested in Kingston, out of the martial law district, for the same crime of having attended the Underhill meetings, should be sent to Morant Bay for trial; and he was so sent, on or about the 1st of November, many days after Mr. Eyre had himself declared the rebellion to be subdued, and had issued a so-called proclamation of amnesty.

Clarke was put upon his trial on the 3rd of November at Morant Bay before a Court-martial, of which Lieutenant Brand was president, and it is unnecessary to say more than that the sentence was death. The only witnesses examined were the Custos Georges, McLean the Vestry Clerk, and a reporter called Fouche, who gave evidence as to Clarke’s speech at the Underhill meeting in Kingston. The evidence disclosed no circumstances of participation in the riot by word or deed, and related solely to Clarke’s words weeks even months before martial law was proclaimed.

Within an hour of the trial Samuel Clarke was on the gallows, the proceedings of the Court-martial and the sentence having been “approved and confirmed” by General Nelson. At this very time General Nelson had himself apparently begun to sicken at the work, he having already hung upwards of 170 persons, including seven women. He accordingly represented to General O’Connor that he had doubts about trying the remainder of the Kingston prisoners by Court-martial for words spoken before the proclamation of martial law. The General agreed with him, but although the same doubt applied most conspicuously to the case of Samuel Clarke, it did not save him from his doom …

Before his trial Mr. Clarke was flogged by order of Provost-Marshal Ramsay, and among the prisoners forced to witness the execution were his brother, Mr. G[eorge] Clarke.* (Source, which also has a full transcript of the trial)

* George Clarke was the son-in-law of another prominent martyr of these days, the Baptist deacon Paul Bogle.

On this day..

1865: Okada Izo, barbarian-expeller

Posted on by

On this date in 1865, the Japanese samurai Okada Izo was dispatched by crucifixion.

He was one of* the “Four Hitokiri“ — manslayers — whose legendary blades coruscated in the Bakumatsu era that marked Japan’s pivot from an isolationist feudal state, one where samurai were big men on prefectures, to a burgeoning modern power ruled by industry and mass conscription.

The irony was that dinosaurs like the Hitokiri helped bring the asteroid down on their own heads.

During the chaotic Bakumatsu period, triggered by Japan’s becoming involuntarily opened to the outside world, the emperor — long a figurehead marginalized by the shogun — entered the political fray under the xenophobic banner “revere the emperor, expel the barbarians.”

Warriors/assassins like the Hitokiri were wooed by the imperial camp and the promise of a policy that would maintain the purpose and privilege of elite swordsmen. But once power was conquered, the Meiji emperor repaid those knights’ exertions by doing the modernization thing that Hitokiri types had hoped to avoid.

Okada Izo was among the first barbarian-expellers to be caught up by the policy swing. After a couple of years running amok in Kyoto, the anti-foreigner movement was suppressed and its leader forced to commit seppuku, which was still more deference than Izo received.

The execution, usually conceived as the end, is the jumping-off point for the surreal time-and-space-hopping 2004 Takasha Miike bloodbath Izo, “one of the most difficult works of art to be made in recent times.”

* Along with fellow-execution victim Kawakami Gensai, and two other guys who met violent deaths that were not (more’s the pity for this site) executions.

On this day..

1865: Not Lambdin P. Milligan, ex parte man

Posted on by

This date in 1865 was the originally scheduled hanging of Indiana pro-slavery gadfly Lambdin P. Milligan — a sentence respited two days prior by President Andrew Johnson, and then subsequently commuted, for which reason Milligan survived to attach his surname to a landmark Supreme Court decision the following year.

During the Civil War, the state of Kentucky was a borderlands claimed by, and viciously fought over, by both North and South. “I hope to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky,” Abraham Lincoln wrote in 1861.

Kentucky’s northern neighbor, the Union breadbasket Indiana, had little fighting and no hint of Confederate power — but it was a hotbed of so-called “Copperheads”, northern Democrats who opposed Lincoln’s willingness to prosecute the civil war. So fraught was the Hoosier political situation that in 1862, Indiana’s Republican governor refused to call the Democrat-dominated legislature for fear that it might vote a secession bill or attempt to withdraw Indiana from the war.

The inevitable existence of northern domestic opposition to the war came joined at the hip to impossible statecraft conundrums. Just how much wartime dissent and/or resistance could be countenanced — as a legal matter, and a practical one? President Lincoln would not have received an A+ from the American Civil Liberties Union; he suspended the writ of habeas corpus in the Union and resorted to military tribunals and martial law in some places.

Our man Milligan was one of these Copperhead Indiana Democrats born to test Washington’s elasticity. He was an exponent of the Knights of the Golden Circle,* a pro-slavery secret society whose name denoted their aspiration to the antebellum filibusters‘ dream of a human-bondage empire to ring the Caribbean basin.

An attorney,** Milligan briefly became the toast of Democrats nationwide (whatever was left of the nation) for his robust defense of Clement Vallandigham when the former Congressman was prosecuted under the anti-Copperhead General Order 38.

At this point, Milligan was very well-known in what was then called the Northwest, and he was a major political player in Indiana — a pivotal state in the 1864 election.

But according to federal spies who tailed him in 1863-64, his interests in governance ran to more illicit grants of state power. Milligan was arrested in October 1864 as a principal in what was dubbed the “Northwestern Conspiracy”: a plot to mobilize the antiwar factions in that part of the country. This was no mere matter of pamphleteering; the “visionary and desperate” scheme aimed to prolong the hopes of the now-fading South by instigating an armed uprising in the Northwest that would relieve Union pressure on Dixie and perhaps turn the tide of the war.

Milligan was among several of the conspirators swept up in arrests in the following weeks, then tried by military tribunal for treason and sedition. It’s hard to argue that the plot was anything but.

But why a military court? This is the question in Milligan’s great legacy to posterity, the Supreme Court ruling Ex Parte Milligan.†

Milligan himself was not a soldier, and had not been in a war zone. He was a civilian, and Indiana’s regular civilian courts had never ceased to function. The question at stake in Milligan’s appeal to the Supreme Court was whether there was any legitimate recourse to a military tribunal under such conditions — well behind the lines, as it were.

On the morning of March 5, 1866, 34-year-old Republican U.S. Representative James Garfield — the future president whose assassin would command contentious caselaw all his own — strode into the U.S. Supreme Court to eloquently argue Milligan’s side.

“Such a doctrine,” Garfield intoned of the civilian courts’ being intentionally bypassed on national security grounds, “is too monstrous to be tolerated for a moment; and I trust and believe that … it will receive its just and final condemnation. Your decision will mark an era in American history. the just and final settlement of this great question will take a high place among the great achievements which have immortalized this decade. It will establish forever this truth, of inestimable value to us and to mankind, that a republic can wield the vast enginery of war without breaking down the safeguards of liberty; can suppress insurrection, and put down rebellion, however formidable, without destroying the bulwarks of law; can, by the might of its armed millions, preserve and defend both nationality and liberty … if the protection of the law shall, by your decision, be extended over every acre of our peaceful territory, you will have rendered the great decision of the century.

The high court found for Milligan unanimously, establishing as a constitutional bedrock Garfield’s proffered principle that civilian courts must try civilians wherever those courts are open, and ordered Milligan’s release. Although re-indicted by a civilian grand jury, Milligan was not re-prosecuted; he resumed his law practice and died near Fort Wayne, Indiana on December 21, 1899.

* Also known as the Sons of Liberty, a callback to revolutionary patriots.

** Milligan studied law in Ohio, his native soil; his class of nine also included Edwin M. Stanton — Lincoln’s War Secretary during the events of this post. Milligan himself reflected that “I should have probably been hung” but for his fortuitous ancient friendship with Stanton.

† Court precedents with names like Furman v. Georgia are most familiar to us, signifying two disputing parties; by contrast, the phrase ex parte (by/for the party) theoretically indicates a decision issued on behalf of the named party, without need of any opposing party’s intervention. (Ex parte Quirin is another notable death penalty case using this terminology.)

While the ex parte locution was once a common one for habeas corpus appeals, such cases were in practice almost invariably contested by some organ of the state — as Milligan’s was.

On this day..

1865: Henry Regley and Charles King, General Sheridan’s deserters

Posted on by

On this date in 1865, two Union soldiers were shot as spies at Winchester, Virginia.

Union General Philip Sheridan and his famed Napoleon complex* were wintering in Winchester, Va. where he had recently clinched northern control of the Shenandoah Valley, and put its fertile farmlands to the torch to cripple the rebel army.

Sheridan, who had in the course of that campaign made his lasting fame by rallying his troops after an initially devastating Confederate surprise attack, was highly concerned at the prospect of rebel spies and infiltrators.

Our two poor fellows, Henry Regley and Charles King, were actually nothing of the sort — just bounty jumpers who donned the blue uniform to collect a cash reward for joining up, and then deserted at the first opportunity. Given the state’s primitive tools in the 1860s for monitoring individual citizens or verifying identity, many bounty jumpers simply repeated the enlistment-desertion cycle several times.

Being shot as a deserter was one of the occupational hazards — a small one, but a real one. But being shot as a spy? Well, General Sheridan was on the lookout.

These deserters on their way out of camp happened to bump into a patrol of “Confederates”: actually a Union detail Sheridan had uniformed like the enemy for sneaky reconnaissance. What ensued next was your basic comedy of mistaken identity … with a double execution at the end.

The following is a newspaper dispatch filed a few day later by one of their fellow soldiers writing under the pen name “Manatom” for the Newark Daily Advertiser; it comes from New Jersey Butterfly Boys in the Civil War: The Hussars of the Union Army

Henry Recli [sic] of Co. L and Christian A. Gross, alias Charles King of the same Company, a German by birth, left the regiment while at the present camp. A party of scouts led by Major [Young] of Gen. Sheridan’s staff, at their head, dressed in rebel uniforms met these men up the valley, a number of miles outside the picket lines. As they conversed with them, the deserters supposing them to be genuine rebels, gave them the contraband information, and stated that they had been trying to desert for some time. They assented to a proposal to exchange clothing, and then were arrested.

I am informed by Chaplain John L. Frazee, whose trying duty it was to be with the condemned during their last hours, that both persisted in their innocence to the last. When told by the Provost Marshall Lee, that they were to die at noon, they said they knew that the night before, when they were in Winchester, at which place Gross, who had always signed his name as Charles King, wrote a letter to friends in Philadelphia, signed Christian A. Gross, in which he expressed his doubts of the carrying out of the sentence. The chaplain believes this idea deceived them until the last moment, although they yielded a sort of mechanical compliance with the solemn services held with them in private, and kneeled in prayer before being taken from prison.


Private Friederich Jaeckel’s drawing in his diary of the two deserters, again via New Jersey Butterfly Boys. Though that book’s caption places this on January 6, 1864, context suggests this must in fact be our 1865 incident; there is no indication I can find of an executed pair in the army dating to exactly one year before.

The details of the execution of this kind are terribly formal and impressive. Fully three thousand cavalrymen were drawn upon three sides of a square upon a gentle slope a little way from headquarters. Each regimental and brigade staff was with its organization and centrally stationed was Gen. Custer and his staff and body guard. When the Division was arranged, Provost Marshall Lee gave orders that the condemned should be brought forth, and thoroughly unused as I was to seeing death in that shape, the memories clustering about that slow moving group, seem as if burned in my brain.

The Provost Marshall, preceded by the band, with a small body guard, led — then the firing party, made up of twelve picked men from our own regiment. A large open wagon, drawn by four white horses, came next — in which there were two coffins, upon each of which sat a doomed man riding backwards, with feet ironed and hands tied behind. Each had a long white scarf about the head. Besides these rode the Chaplain and a proper guard dismounted closed the rear.

The fine brigade band, which had marched in silence until near the Division, when the first side of the square was reached, began playing a Dead March, and thus did this little group march slowly around inside the whole army, and at last halt at an open grave — dug in the center.

The men were now lifted from the wagon, the Coffins duly placed, and the men seated as before facing the whole Division. Marshall Lee then, from his horse, read the order and warrant … brief religious services were held, the Chaplain reading a portion of the burial service, and offering prayer for the condemned. Neither had anything to say, and the Chaplain retired a few paces. The faces of the men were then covered, and the firing party quickly drawn up in line with pieces previously carefully loaded and placed in their hands. One of the twelve had, by a merciful regulation in the Articles of War, a blank cartridge, and each comrade had the hope that he should send no fatal ball.

More rapidly than I can trace this account was the preparation done. Ten paces off stood the line — each man sternly appreciative of his fearful duty.

“Attention” Ready! Aim! Fire! The report was almost as if one carbine had responded. Two bodies fallen backwards and dead were all that remained of Recli and Gross. The surgeon in a few moments pronounced life extinct; and the scene closed by marching the whole body of troops past their Coffins, lying as they fell — this most solemn warning one can imagine to the soldier — to be faithful to himself, his oath and his Country. MANATOM

* Abraham Lincoln’s hilarious description of the 1.65-meter (5′ 5″) “Little Phil”: “A brown, chunky little chap, with a long body, short legs, not enough neck to hang him, and such long arms that if his ankles itch he can scratch them without stooping.”


General Sheridan

On this day..

1865: William Corbett and Patrick Fleming

Posted on by

(Thanks to Ramicles, the pseudonymous 19th century Chicago correspondent of the Providence Press, for this eyewitness account of a December 15, 1865 hanging of two hired assassins. It appeared under a December 16 dateline in that paper’s December 21, 1865 edition. -ed.)

I have promised the numerous readers of the EVENING PRESS a description of a death scene, and I will keep my word. But believe me, it is no welcome task; my heart is not in it. On my mind one solemn moral is impressed — one moral only: the terrible reality of crime, the terrible reality of punishment. One naturally follows the other, as night follows day.

At the hour of three, lacking ten minutes, on yesterday afternoon, I saw two men, William Corbett and Patrick Fleming, take a formal farewell of this world and enter an untried existence. Those who love to linger on the few hours which the wretched men passed, in the anticipation of that final scene, may do so. I will not. They knew that they had incurred the law’s extreme penalty, and must suffer that penalty. There is a disposition on the part of doomed men to “die game;” and much of the apparent heartlessness is bravado only.

As I have said in a former letter, Fleming has for several days seemed indifferent or defiant. Whether he had faint hopes of pardon, I know not; but there seemed to be something in his manner that showed his reliance to some extent on the mobid [sic] humanitarianism of the age, (as exhibited in the case of the Malden murderer Greene,) and had not finally made up his mind for death.

Those who had not made human nature a study, were therefore unprepared to see the difference in demeanor of the two men, on the scaffold. Corbett, who, since his sentence, has seemed to realize his solemn situation, and has been much depressed, because, as his last moments drew near, cheerful and even jubilant, and the gloomy Court House echoed his hilarious merriment, which was startlingly horrible, as wild laughter wakened in the throat of death. There is something grotesquely awful in hearing a man laugh while the rope is around his neck. (The Republican reporter styled that death “ecstacies!” [sic] I had always supposed that ecstacy was less boisterous; but I am ready at all times to receive new ideas and novel definitions. — Who ever knew a man in Chicago to be wrong? “If any, speak, for him have I offended.”) The conduct of Flemming [sic] was in striking contrast. He seemed chilled with the thought of death, and was so lost in contemplation that he scarcely heard the voice of the clergyman admonishing him to pray.

He indeed repeated the words of the prayer, but so unconsciously that it seemed only mechanical. His eyes were vacantly staring, and his countenance was ghastly in its expression of deadly fear. Was that gaze fixed on vacancy alone? Was it a retrospective vision of the soul gazing on itself, and with reversed sight recalling all the past — the hours of childhood — the fleeting moments of early manhood — the years whose only noteworthy incidents were damning deeds of midnight robbery — that night of blood — that death-cry of his victim — the fatal shot — the flight — the vision of justice and the avenging Nemises [sic] following his track — the arrest — the trial — the death sentence, and the lingering death of expectation preceding its infliction? Or was there one more torture? Was his the gift of prescience, and the power to look beyond the Shadow of the Dark Valley, and was it what he there saw that transfixed him into a statue of cold horror? Who shall say?

Those were my reflections when I looked on the miserable man; and I unconsciously repeated to myself the heartfelt words of the psalmist: “Cut me not off, O, my God, in the midst of my days!”

I shuddered as I thought that the doomed one might be silently repeating the same prayer, and II, by mesmeric rapport or sympathy, had caught up his inaudible petition. Then came another hideous laugh from the lips of Corbett — a few hasty words of farewell — a slight gliding sound as the well oiled bolts slid swiftly back — and two forms shrouded in white cloth were spasmodically struggling with death. The drop was located in the east wing of the Court House, the trap being constructed in the floor. After the two surgeons in attendance had pronounced them both dead, the bodies were lowered into the coffins, as usual, and a few had a curiosity to look at the faces. Singular as it may seem, Flemming had undoubtedly suffered the least pain of the two. The features were somewhat distorted and discolored. But Corbett’s face was a sight such as one would look on but once, and wish to efface [sic] the memory of that one look, and think of it no more forever. The tongue protruded fearfully from the mouth, and the teeth had bitten through it, in that last agony of dissolution. Truly is an execution a moral lesson which no one may witness without a thrill of horror whatever one may think of the theory of capital punishment.

There was one fact in connection with the affair, which I cannot understand. The widow of the murdered man repeatedly made application to the Sheriff for permission to see the hanging and it was refused. At an early hour I saw a lady dressed in deep mourning standing at the Court House gate and I was informed that it was Mrs. Maloney. After all was over, she still stood there, shivering in the intense cold, the bitter freezing cold. It appears some one had told her that the men who had murdered her husband and left her desolate, would be reprieved, and that only increased her anxiety to see the sentence of the law fulfilled.

Hour after hour she waited, while stout men, wrapping more closely their overcoats and mufflers around them, hurried on more rapidly as they felt the keen blast which swept across the square. Several times she was assured that the criminals were hanged; but she refused to believe it, till an acquaintance in whom she had confidence told her, and then with an expression of relief and satisfaction on her face, she suddenly left for home, and I saw her no more. Poor woman! the wrong done her and her child had been avenged. Justice had vindicated itself. Who shall say but half the sorrow of bereavement was lifted from her heart by the knowledge that the slayers of her husband had tasted the bitter waters of death, held to their unwilling lips by the hand of Retribution? Why was it that the satisfaction of witnessing the punishment was denied her? I may be wrong, but I only repeat the sentiments of many men here and elsewhere when I say: Hangings should be public.

I have heard and read many objections to public executions; but I am convinced that whatever may be said of the rude and brutal deportment of the crowd — the levity — the profanity, &c. &c., I am convinced that no man ever saw an infliction of the Death Penalty, and forgot it. Men may read the long accounts given by newspaper reporters, but the reality beggars description. The reader can get but a very poor idea from the most graphic account, and like any other item of news, it is not long remembered. If the grand object is to warn men, by impressing on their minds the terrible consequences of crime, then that warning should be given in the most public manner possible.

When I commenced this communication I had no thought of making a plea for the gallows; and I will only say, that until some more fearful mode of punishing the crime of murder can be invented, hanging commends itself to the approval of reflecting people. It is a severe remedy, but it is the only effectual one; and those individuals who oppose capital punishment so zealously, may easily find other ways to vent their sentimentalism. Sympathy for those whom crime has injured would be better placed than sympathy for criminals. You will hear from me on this subject no more until Jeff. Davis is hanged, and then I shall probably have some comments to make, as I shall endeavor to “be there to see.”

On this day..