THE HARRIS TRIAL.
[FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.] New York, July 21, 1865. As the Count De Grammont was riding away from London on his way to France he was overtaken by two gentlemen, brothers, who said, " Good morning, Sir Count. Haven't you forgotten some- thing? " " Ah ! yes," he replied, " Pve forgotten to marry your sister." And thus De Grammont was brought back at the point of the sword, so to speak, to the arms of La belle Hamilton. I have always begrudged that lovely Englishwoman to that French- man, but still more am I annoyed at the conduct of the Hamil- tons, and most at the willingness of La belle Hamilton herself to become the wife of De Grammont, or of any man under such cir- cumstances, no matter what his position or his gifts of mind and person, or what bad been her previous expectations, or how bind- ing his engagements. This feeling is very general among men in the Free States, and almost universal among women. Women here, it must be admitted, are not yet as a bOdy so pure and single-minded that they do not sometimes make marriages of interest. But although some women here will marry a man for whom personally they have no particular desire, the cases in which a man would be accepted as a husband who was known to marry merely to fulfil an engagement to which he felt bound in honour are very few indeed. A woman who made such a marriage would be regarded with contempt by other women in any condition of life, and would be looked upon as one who had disgraced her sex. Suits brought by women for divorce are numerous here—ten to one to what they were in Eng- land before Sir Cresswell Cresswell took his seat ; suits for breach of promise of marriage are very rare—not one to ten of those brought in England, according to my observation of law reports. Women here have came to the belief, and to act upon the belief, that if a man, either because he has not character enough to know his own mind, or because he has come to a clear conviction that he made a mistake, no longer desires a woman for his wife, she is fortunate if she finds this out before marriage has tied her to him for life.
I have been led to mention these facts by the event of a singular trial which has just taken place in Washington. A young woman named Harris, an Irishwoman, although I believe her name is not Celtic, who was a milliner's shop-girl in Chicago, was made love to by a mall named Burroughs, whose social station, although not among the cultivated class, was somewhat above hers. He finally married, not her, but another woman, and received an appoint- ment as a clerk in the Treasury at Washington. Some months ago she followed him to Washington, and waiting for him in one of the corridors of the Treasury building, shot him, killing him upon the spot. A friend of mine happened to have business at the Treasury that day, and was in and out of the building three or four times in the course of the morning. He saw this girl at every visit sitting there in the corridor through which he passed, waiting quietly for her victim, whom she despatched when he appeared in the coolest and most business-like manner. She had taken a journey of more than 1,000 miles to find him ; he had been for some months married to another woman, and so she had neither hope nor pretence of compelling him to do her justice, as the cant phrase goes ; he had never wronged her, had given neither her nor her family any cause of complaint other than his failure to meet their expectation that he would marry her ; she sought no damage for ruined prospects. Her motive was, like Cain's, mere revenge for wounded vanity, and her act a murder, if his or any other killing since his day were murder ; and yet she was unanimously acquitted by a Washington jury, who deliberated less than ten minutes upon their verdict, and one of whom is reported to have said that but for making a show of respect for the District Attorney they would not have retired from the jury-box.
If this were to be regarded as a leading case, the situation of the men of this country would be not very enviable. Visions of young ladies who have misunderstood, or chosen to misunderstand, friendly attentions and expressions of regard, appearing with a package of notes in one hand and a revolver in the other, demand- ing, not your purse, but your person or your life,—of stout matrons with inflamed countenances calling at your lodgings with a loaded blunderbuss to know how soon you intend to meet Amanda's reasonable expectations,—of Amanda herself, a nice young lady who has killed several backward lovers, standing with bloody knife over your own prostrate corpse, exclaiming, " Thus do I vindicate the right of my sex to a victim at the altar, without the halter !"—visions like these would fill the mind of every man not happy enough to be deformed, a pauper, or a negro. But unless I am much mistaken, this case—the responsibility of which rests entirely with the jury—is of no value as an indication of the tone of public feeling here, north of the Potomac, and it may be out of Washington, although I think that its limitation as an exponent of public morals is only the former boundary of slavery. This is certain, that among all whom I have heard speak of the trial durbig its ten days' progress, no man not born or bred in the Slave States expressed a desire for the girl's acquittal, and every such man said in effect that she only served the fellow right, and ought to be acquitted and applauded. But the very women here at the North speak of her not only with condemnationbutcontempt, and hoped for the honour of their sex thatshewouldbe found guilty. The pretence set up on the trial that she was insane they scout, as well they may, for she was so palpably as sound in mind as judge, counsel, or jury, that her counsel was obliged to put his plea of her insanity in the form of an assertion that she lolled Burroughs when she "was labouring under an insane impulse,"—a plea that might cover nine out of ten murders that ever were committed. The shameful verdict in this case is only an exponent, and it is a perfectly fair one, of the tone of society in the Slave States. A disappoints B, wounds B's vanity, mars B's prospects, does B any wrong, from a trivial affront to a gross outrage. B thereupon kills A " on sight." Verdict., south of Mason and Dixon's line, excusable, or more probably, justifiable homicide. Some of my readers may remember that in. the second or third year of the war General Foster killed General Nelson. Both were in the national army. There is no doubt that Nelson was a coarse, over- bearing fellow. He and General Foster met in the hall of an hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, and Nelson was undeniably very arrogant and rude. Whereupon Foster drew a pistol and shot him dead. Public opinion in Louisville sustained General Foster, so that I believe he was not even put upon his trial. What a reproach, too, that the Government—such was the condition of affairs—did not think it prudent to try him by court-martial. As to the lack of trial in Kentucky, what good of putting a man on trial for an act deemed justifiable by every man of the community out of which you must take your jury? Washington is celebrated for such verdicts. Not long before the war a waiter at one of the principal hotels there—not a negro, but an Irishman—answered a Southerner in a manner deemed improper by his slave-driving arrogance, and it is very likely that the servant was saucy as well as the gentleman insolent. The latter thereupon assaulted the former, and on his resisting, killed him with pistol or bowie knife, I forget which. The matter never proceeded farther than a preliminary investigation before a magistrate. Soon after a well-known politician having discovered that his wife was false to him, extorted from her a written confession, which he made her sign, and after this deliberate proceeding he armed himself with two pistols, laid in wait for the man, and as deliberately shot him to death, continuing to fire upon him after he had shot him down. Now, although the most respect- able newspaper in the country openly declared that this man was excluded from decent society, when he was put upon his trial in Washington for an act which could never be justified, and could only be measurably palliated by a condition of mind consequent upon exceeding sensitiveness as to relations between the sexes, he was not even found guilty of manslaughter, but absolutely acquitted. A friend of my own offended in some trifling way a Southerner at a public ball in New Orleans, and an hour or two after the man stabbed him to death in the dressing-room, plung- ing a bowie knife into his back three times as he was stooping to buckle the strap of his overshoe. The murderer went entirely un- punished. The very Norse berserkers and vikings, who went out to kill men as hunters go to kill deer or buffaloes, would have made him pay blood-money, or die himself, but among the slave- holders he suffered no penalty whatever.
At the trial which is the occasion of this letter, the proceedings in court were of so disgraceful and disorderly a character that newspapers, the public, and the country over, have cried shame. The counsel for the prisoner denounced the prosecuting attorney as " no gentleman." The latter retorted, when the former replied, • ' Here's a chip on my shoulder : knock it off if you dare." (This is a mode of picking a quarrel among blackguard boys here, the knocking off of the chip being returned by a blow.) The judge did order the marshal to put a stop to this quarrelling, but showed favour to the insulting party, the counsel for the prisoner ; and after the prosecuting officer had concluded his argument, he sub- mitted the case without a charge, and, according to the reports, said to the jury that he "hoped that they had made up their minds, and would soon render a verdict." The verdict, " not guilty," was received with acclamation by a crowded court-room. Handker- chiefs were waved and hats thrown up. Many of the spectators rushed toward the murderess to congratulate her. Her counsel caught her up in his arms and kissed her ; and she was borne out fainting, " as a lady should," amid more shouting by those out- side the court-house. Now what must be the administration of justice in a community which renders such verdict; and thus con- ducts itself upon such trials? Do not attribute this disposal of this or other like cases and this behaviour to democracy or the election of judges. Judges are not elected but appointed in Washington, which, with the whole district of Columbia, is under the control of the highest legislative body in the land. But a stream cannot rise higher than its source. In New England there is a far purer, more absolutely democratic government than there is in Wash- ington, and in New York judges are—most unwisely in my judg- ment—elected. And yet either in New England or in New York (outside the City), and in Ohio, or Pennsylvania, or New Jersey, such disgraceful verdicts or such scenes in court are unheard of, impossible. It must be confessed that this trial and the memories of others which it has awakened in the public mind go far to justify the Government in its determination to try the conspirators in the assassination plot by a military tribunal. Could it have been reasonably expected that a jury taken from a community whose moral sense is so blunted, whose notions of justice are so per- verted as is plainly the case with the people of Washington, would render a true verdict according to the law and the evidence in the case of conspirators in a cause with which they once at least had hearty sympathy? (For Washington was as strongly " secesh" and pro-slavery as Charleston.) I believe now that no such ver- dict would have been rendered ; but that the assassins would have been regarded as persons who had taken—in a somewhat violent and irregular way, to be sure—vengeance for a great wrong, and that therefore they were excusable. The Government doubtless acted upon its knowledge of this state of things ; and the people are now beginning to see that, offensive as military courts are to our feelings in regard to the administration of justice, it acted wisely. The truth is, that the South needs not reconstruction or re-organization merely, but regeneration.
A YANKEE.
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