Philadelphia, February 22. YESTERDAY, for the first time in the
annals of New York state, and, I believe, almost for the first time in the annals of the United States, a slave-trader underwent the penalty of death for having been en- gaged in the slave trade. The case is a remarkable one in itself—re- markable still more as an illustration of the change in public feeling. Probably the fact will be conveyed to you as a mere item of general news, and, as such, may attract but little attention. In the opinion, however, of those best competent to judge, yesterday's execution is one of the severest blows yet struck against the whole system of slavery. It is on this account that I wish to lay the features of the case fully before you. It is now more than forty years ago (if I am not mistaken, in the year 1818) that engaging in the African slave trade was declared an act of piracy by the Government of the United States, and, as such, punishable by death. Practically, the Government has been contented hitherto with this abstract enunciation of principle, and has not sought to turn theory into practice. It is just to state that the slave trade has been an unimportant item in the trade of America. Partly owing to the want of a home market, partly to the vigilance of the British cruisers, and still more to the obloquy which attended any person supposed to be engaged in the traffic, the trade has been relatively but little prosecuted. It is just, also, to admit that such slave trade as there was, was carried on by Northern not by Southern men. The North had far greater material facilities than the South for carrying on the trade; the interests of the slave-breeding states were steadily opposed to any importation of slaves; and also with the South, it was a point of honour to have nothing to do with the slave trade. It is to the credit of human nature, that most indi- viduals or nations, addicted habitually to any sin, have some peculiar development of that sin, on which they look with exaggerated aver- sion. Slavery was the sin the South had a mind to—for the slave trade they were not inclined, and damned it accordingly. Be this the right explanation or not, it was by Northern Yankees that such slave trade as existed was carried on, and New York was the head- quarters of the trade.
The whole affair was kept very secret. There were in New York a certain small number of mercantile houses, surmised rather than suspected to be engaged in the African slave trade, perhaps a score or so in all; and every year a few vessels sailed from the port, nominally to trade with Africa for produce, but in reality for slaves. The anti-slavery party, to their credit, kept a keen look-out for all vessels engaged in the trade, and resolved that the law against the slave trade should not be allowed to fall into disuse for want of protest. Whenever their agents could ascertain that a vessel was about to sail on the slave trade, they gave information to the state authorities, but without effect. Under the rowdy government, which till within the last few years disgraced New York, the police were notoriously venal, and it was always worth a slaver's while to bribe liberally. The more respectable authorities of the state all belonged to the extreme democratic party, and were unwilling to do anything which might offend the pro-slavery interest, or still more strengthen the abolitionist party. More than all, too, public opinion was not in favour of vigorous measures. There was a general though undefined conviction that the slave trade between Virginia and the South only differed in name, not in substance, from the slave trade between Africa and Cuba, and that the country which recognized the former as a" peculiar institution," could hardly be very severe in suppressing the other. Indeed, the connivance of the North in the slavery of the South had so demoralized public feeling on the whole subject, that the refusal to allow British cruisers to stop vessels engaged in the slave trade sailing under the American flag, was regarded as a national triumph. The result of this state of things was, that slavers were almost allowed to escape unarrested, and when they were brought to trial, either the juries refused to convict, or else the punishment inflicted, on the plea of insufficient evidence or of mitigating circum- stances, was extremely light.
Impelled by the remonstrances of foreign Powers rather than by any pressure of publics feeling at home, the United States Govern- ment, towards the end of Mr. Buchanan's presidency, had begun to employ a little more activity in suppressing the African trade, and in the autumn of 1860 a slaver loaded with a cargo of 900 slaves, commanded by a Captain Gordon, was seized off the coast of Africa by an American man-of-war. The slaves were landed in Monrovia, and the captain of the slaver was sent to New York, the port from whence he had sailed, for trial. The case was a very bad one. The slaves had been packed with more than usual disregard for life, and treated with more than common inhumanity. Of the 900 and odd shipped on the Erie, 300 died before the vessel reached Liberia. No excuse could be made for the captain. He was a New Englander from Maine, of a very respectable Presbyterian family, and a man of education. This was the fourth slave trip in which he had embarked, and, in two out of the four, he had made enormous profits. At the time of his seizure he hoisted British colours, and then alleged that two Spaniards on board the Erie were the real owners of the ship, and that he was only a passenger, but there was no doubt as to his real guilt. Still, when lac .was brought to trial in New York in October, 1860, little idea was entertained that he would be really punished. The State Prosecutor's district attorney, Mr. Roosevelt, "actually stated in.his speech for the prosecution that if the prisoner was found not guilty (which was highly probable) of piracy, or if the jury found lum guilty, such an outside pressure would be brought
to bear upon the President as would compel him to pardon him ; in either case the prisoner would go scot free."
There is little doubt that this statement (however extraordinary a one for a prosecutor to make) was substantially correct, and Gordon would have escaped, but his counsel tried to quash the case on a technical objection that formal notice of the pleadings had not been given by the United States Government to the state authorities, and the trial was, in consequence, postponed in order that the error might be rectified. Meanwhile, Buchanan was succeeded by Lincoln; the democratic officials were replaced by republican ones. The Secession movement took place, and popular feeling in the North generally, and in New York especially, became anti-slavery instead of Southern and pro-slavery as it had been hitherto. This change was fatal to Gordon. The new district attorney took up the case and pushed it on vigorously. For a time a conviction seemed hopeless, as the officer in eommand of the Erie, when sent as a prize ship to New York, on whose evidence the case for the prosecution rested, had joined the insurgents in the South. However, the prosecution, for once, was in earnest. The sailors who had served under Gordon were traced out, and by their evidence the fact of his having been the virtnal commander of the vessel while engaged in the slave trade was clearly established. There could be no reasonable doubt as to the facts, the jury brought him in guilty of piracy, and the court sen- tenced him to death.
Still, little apprehension was felt, either by the condemned culprit or the public, that the sentence would be really executed. It was believed that the long delay in the trial, the fact that the law had never been put into force, and, above all, the unwillingness on the part of the Government to take any step which put them in direct opposition to the system of slavery, would prove, adequate grounds to remit the capital sentence. The prisoner was not wanting in powerful friends, and the whole influence of the slave-trading com- munity was exerted vigorously, though unostentatiously, in his favour. But public sentiment proved too unanimous to get up any popular de- monstration on his behalf. Not a New York paper, of any weight, could befound to advocate his cause; and even the Herald only dared to support him by a suspicious silence on the whole subject. The prisoner's counsel used every argument to weigh with the President, but, after a careful consideration of the case, be refused to interfere with the action of the law, on the ground that the ease was clears and that it was his duty to see the laws executed. With a mercy which to me seems a somewhat doubtful one, a reprieve of a fortnight was granted, in order that the prisoner might prepare for death. During this fortnight, the President was exposed to the most in- fluential and painful solicitations from the friends and relatives of the prisoner for a commutation of the punishment ; and the last appeal was made to him at a time when he was distracted by grief at the approaching death of his youngest child, let, with that firm- ness of resolution, which I suspect is Mr. Lincoln's strongest claim to distinction, he kept fast to his decision. When this appeal failed, the prisoner's counsel started a technical objection to the execution, on the ground that, by the state law of New York, no condemned culprit could be executed till he had been imprisoned for a year after his sentence was passed, and that therefore Captain Gordon, though a United States prisoner, could not be executed in the state of New York by the state authorities except in accordance with the state laws. The objection seems to me to have something lit it, and two years ago would probably have stayed the execution; -but now-a-days the whole doctrine of state rights is looked upon suspiciously, and the judges before whom the application was made decided that, if this appeal were correct, it would follow that the sentences of the United States courts could never be carried out in any state unless they were in accordance with the local legislation of that state—a consequence which manifestly could not be admitted, and, therefore, the appeal must be dismissed.
After this, as a last attempt, on the day preceding the execution an endeavour was made to summon a mass meeting in New York, to protest against the sentence being carried out. The following placard was stuck about the city:
"Citizens of New York, come to the rescue ! Shall a judicial murder be committed in your midst and no protesting voice raised against it ? Captain Nathaniel Gordon is under sentence of execu- tion for a crime which has been virtually a dead letter for forty years. Shall this young man be quietly allowed to be made the victim of fanaticism?" The people were then summoned to attend a meeting at the Merchants' Exchange in the afternoon. The police were ordered to remove this document by the civic authorities, as tending to bring the Government into disrepute, but a sufficient number were left on the walls to make the fact of the meeting generally known. I was present at the hour appointed, and barely a couple of hundred people were assembled. A good number were obviously idlers like myself; several, whom I knew, were strong anti-slavery men who had come to protest against the meeting in case it seemed likely to be influential; and the majority were roughs, with a lot of very ill-looking Greek and Portuguese merchants. No signature was affixed to the placatd, and no one volunteered to address the meeting. After about an hour's delay the meeting had thinned to about one hundred persons, and then some unknown stranger got up, and stated that he had never heard of the meeting till a quarter of an hour before, but that he was opposed to staining this glad season, when Washington's birthday was about to be celebrated, together with the late Union victories, by a public execution. The meeting then dissolved itself.
With this "fiasco" the last hope was gone, and the unhappy prisoner made up his mind that the end was come. Every precaution had been taken to hinder him from committing suicide, but, by some
means or other, he procured cigars loaded with strychnine, and tried to kill ldmself by smoking them. The poison did not act rapidly enough, and he was unable to conceal, his agony. Remedies were applied, but towards morning his strength began to fail. The exe- cution had been fixed by his own wish for two o'clock, but it was feared he would not live till then, and, in obedience to their duty, the authorities of the prison had him executed in the Tombs prison at noon. Very few persons were present, and when I passed the prison an hour afterwards' there was no sign of excitement, except the collection of a small crowd of Irish, who were waiting to see the body carried out.
The story is a painful one, and horrible as the man's crime was, one cannot but feel pity for him. Still, the fact that a slave-trader has been hang in New York, and hung amidst the, approbation of the public, is a gain not only to America, but to the world.
AN ENGLISH TRAVELLER.
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