I visited the Auburn State Prison, upon the morning of the 4th instant, accompanied by the Boston Quartet Club, better known in New York city than in this region for their valuable services in calling out so many thousands to hear the eloquence of John B. Gough, in behalf of temperance. We passed through the different workshops of the prison, where many hundreds are doing the different labours allotted to them by their agents. The health of the prisoners is as good, and spirits better than any institution I have ever visited. Though the gloom of the prisoner was not made manifest by his haggard countenance, yet I could not prevent the melancholy reflection, that every heart knew its own sorrow. I have seen much of human depravity in this wicked world—I have felt the sensitive nerve made like an ice-drop by the cold finger of scorn—I know how to sympathize with the child of circumstances—with the heart-broken parent, whose pale, care-worn cheek but too plainly speaks, "We feel trouble, but ye know it not." How many friends and relatives are now bemoaning the loss of that boy who was once the pride of all that knew him in the days of his affluence! Rising eight hundred souls are now confined in the Auburn State Prison; and as my thoughts expanded in their melancholy train, I asked myself, Who are to blame for all the crimes committed, and which have incarcerated so many human beings? I answered by referring to my own sad experience. By the carelessness of the parent or guardian, the bud is nipped before the blossom puts forth, and should it not scatter its leaves to the four winds, it cannot fail to produce evil fruit. With these sad feelings, I wended my way through the prison, which speaks well to the praise of the different agents placed there to conduct the working departments.
On my return to the prison office, I was introduced to the chaplain, Rev. O.E. Morrill, which reverend gentleman informed me that a man by the name of Wyatt, then confined in one of the cells for the murder of Gordon, on the 16th of March, in the Auburn State Prison, had confessed to him that he had lived a gambler several years in the south and west, and he would like I should call upon him. I accompanied him to the cell of the murderer. The door was thrown open upon its grating hinges, when the reverend gentleman introduced me as an acquaintance of his who had travelled south several years, and thought that he (Wyatt) would be glad to converse with him. He said he was happy to see me, and asked me to be seated. After a short discourse, relative to the different classes of men then in confinement, I asked him what he followed in his travels through the south. He told me gambling. I asked him how long he had been engaged in that nefarious business. He said twelve or thirteen years. I asked him if he knew many gamblers? He said he did. I asked him if he ever knew one by the name of Green? He said he did. I asked his name? He answered, "John;" said he knew him in 1832, 1833, 1834, and 1835, and saw him in 1842 in St. Louis. I asked him if he was intimate with Green? He said he knew him as one gambler knew another. I asked if I favoured him? He said if I would stand in the light he would tell me. I did so. He said I looked like the man. I told him I was the man, but that I never knew him by the name of Wyatt. He said I did not; that Wyatt was not his real name. He then told me another, which was not his real name, and asked me if I did not hear of a man being murdered near St. Louis in the year 1841, and of two men being arrested, both tried and convicted, one having a new trial granted him, the other being hung. I told him that I thought I had. He said he was the man that had the new trial granted, and was acquitted; "and," said he, "they hung the wrong man; he was innocent; I am the guilty man; but they hung him and cleared me." "But," says I, "you were under a different name still, at that time." He said, "Yes, by none of those names do you know me, but my real name you are familiar with. Your name," said he, "I knew in the year 1832; the gamblers called you John, but Jonathan is your real name." My curiosity was highly excited at the strange management of the murderer. But you may imagine the increase of it when he told me his real name. I looked at the murderer, and could scarcely believe my own eyes; yet he stood before me a living marvel. I have pledged secresy as to his real name until after his execution. I interrogated him on his first steps in vice, and how he became so hardened. He told me to remember the treatment he had received from the Lynchers' lash at Vicksburg. I did, but my eyes could scarcely credit reality. I had known him in 1832, 1833, 1834, and in the early part of 1835, as a bar-keeper in Vicksburg. He was never a shrewd card-player, but at that time was considered an inoffensive youth. The coffee-house he kept was owned by North, who, with four others, were executed on the 5th of July, 1835, by Lynch law. Wyatt and three others were taken on the morning of the 7th, stripped, and one thousand lashes given to the four, tarred and feathered, and put into a canoe and set adrift on the Mississippi river. It makes my blood curdle and my flesh quiver to think of the suffering condition of these unfortunate men, set adrift on the morning of the 7th of July, with the broiling sun upon their mangled bodies. Two died in about two hours after they were set afloat. Wyatt and another remained with their hands and feet bound forty hours, suffering more than tongue can tell or pen describe, when they were picked up by some slave negroes, who started with the two survivors to their quarters. His companion died before they arrived. Wyatt survives to tell the horrors of the Lyncher's lash. He told me seven murders had been occasioned by their unmerciful treatment to him, and one innocent man hung. I know his statements to be true, for I had known him before 1835, and his truth in other particulars cannot be doubted. He murdered his seventh man, for which crime he will be executed. I have another communication for your paper concerning the murderer, and his prospects in the world to come.
Yours, truly,
J. H. GREEN.
Auburn, April 10, 1845.
No. 3.
From the Christian Advocate and Journal.
GREEN'S SECOND VISIT TO AUBURN STATE PRISON.
Doctor Bond:
Dear Sir,—I made my second visit to the prison on Sabbath morning, the 6th instant, accompanied by the Boston Quartet Club. As we were winding our way through the halls and passing the gloomy cells, I felt sad and melancholy upon reflecting on the purpose of so large a prison. Is it possible, thought I, that our heaven-favoured land of freedom requires institutions of so extensive a character as this to keep down the vices of a people who boast of their morality? Yet, horrible as it appeared to me, I thought, if many of the foreign travellers, who are ever ready to criticise and condemn our institutions, were conducted through the Auburn State Prison, without any intimation of its design, they would put it down in their journals of travel as an institution to diffuse literary science and useful knowledge; and from what we have learned of institutions of the latter kind, under monarchical governments, we have little hesitation in saying, that they would not compare well with this prison. Nor would they be willing that some of their plans for the diffusion of useful knowledge, in the way of charity, should be compared, in respect to health and religious principles, with this institution, intended only for the punishment and prevention of crime, and the reformation of criminals. And if it be the fact, that our state's prison is better calculated than some foreign institutions designed to educate the poor of the land for this same purpose, it certainly will stand good that our land of liberty is comparatively the land of morality.