After being repeatedly urged by me, my counsel, Honorable Jason B. Brown, called for the production of the contract between Deputy and the prosecuting attorney, in which demand he was sustained by the court. The attorney, Douglas Long, rising with flushed face and hang-dog air admitted the existence of the contract but stated that it was not in his power to produce it. This satisfied the court and the matter was not pressed.
While the trial was in progress, I observed in the court room the presence of a man whose name and residence were subsequently learned. He was one Higgins, and he came from Detroit. It was also afterwards ascertained that he had attended in the interest of Charles Stewart, Ed. Rice and “Punch” Mason, the actual robbers. He appeared nervous and deeply interested, and before the proceedings were over left the town, ostensibly for Detroit, saying that he was going for the purpose of raising money to clear the three innocent men then on trial. Although he did not return, this incident furnished a clue to the guilty parties and their whereabouts. After the rendition of the verdict, I laid these facts before Sheriff Byrnes and warrants were obtained for the arrest of the parties named.
Our trial consumed five days, and during its entire progress popular sentiment against us ran very high. In the streets of Brownstown, the demonstrations were almost riotous. Bonfires were lighted in the evening and threats of violence were freely and openly made. The jurymen were undoubtedly aware of these facts and were probably not uninfluenced by them. We were informed that no man charged with crime, however innocent he might be, could be acquitted in Brownstown “unless he brought his jury with him,” and were asked to advance thirty-five dollars to be used in “convincing” seven of the jurors.
After the evidence was all in, my counsel, Col. Brown, addressed the jury in stentorian tones. His plea was alleged to be in our behalf, but at its close I found it necessary to ask him on which side of the case he had been speaking. The prosecuting attorney demanded a conviction (in which he was ably seconded by the howling mob outside), the jury, and the twelve “good men and true” withdrew from the courtroom, ostensibly to weigh the evidence, but in reality to formulate a predetermined verdict of guilty. Their foreman announced their conclusion (?) upon their return, and the farce was over. For some unexplained reason Col. Brown had retired from the room, during the absence of the jury, and it devolved upon Lieut. Gov. Smith to make the stereotyped motion for a new trial, which was promptly over-ruled.
The verdict fell with crushing effect upon my wife, who had been at Brownstown throughout the trial, and whose natural grief at the conviction of a husband whom she knew to be innocent, was rendered more poignant by the reflection that she and her only child would be now thrown upon the “cold mercy of an unfeeling world.”
I made a personal appeal to the presiding judges to defer sentence, urging that I would be able to introduce additional and stronger proof of my innocence, and in all probability to trace the parties really guilty. My prayer was of no avail, and we were then and there sentenced to three years’ imprisonment in the penitentiary at Jeffersonville. I forbear to comment upon what I feel satisfied the reader will agree with me in regard to the indecent haste of these proceedings.
That night we passed in the county jail, which was doubly guarded, with a view to our protection against the angry, yelling crowd outside, which surged backward and forward through the streets, rending the air with demoniac shouts and clamoring for our execution by the light of the great bonfire, whose livid flames danced fitfully upon the walls of our prison. The next morning, in charge of Sheriff P. T. Byrnes, one of nature’s nobleman, we started for Jeffersonville. We were permitted to stop at the Snodgrass House, to say good bye to the family who, at the risk of their own popularity and that of their hostelry had so zealously yet fruitlessly identified themselves with our cause. They had kind[kind] words for us in that hour of our humiliation[humiliation] and distress, and their generous sympathy stirred us as nothing yet—not even the murderous mob, thirsting for our blood—had stirred us; we broke down and wept. At Seymour the train was boarded by that matchless[matchless] orator, that eminent jurist, that advocate without a peer, the great, the only Col. Jason B. Brown. Words of honeyed cheer fell from his lips like rain, but alas, they were not as “water to a thirsty land.” We had lost faith in the redoubtable Colonel, and his assurance that he would “have us out of prison in a week” fell upon our ears like the hollow echo of a mocking laugh.
Arriving at the penitentiary, we went through the customary routine. The necessary descriptions were entered, the formal minute of our conviction, the county from which received, the crime charged, length of sentence, etc., etc., was made. We were given the regulation bath, duly shaved by the convict barber, and then we donned the stripes, that badge of infamy which burns into the soul as the branding iron into the quivering flesh. We were assigned to labor in the shoe-shop.
I feel that it would be folly for me to hope to convey to the reader who has never tasted of the bitterness of prison life even a faint idea of the feelings of him who for the first time enters the gloomy gates of a penitentiary to do the State involuntary service as a felon. The overwhelming sense of shame, the sickening feeling of isolation from all that makes life sweet, the bitter memories of the past that crowd, like a horde of mocking demons, upon the brain—all these might well plunge into an agony of despairing grief, a stouter heart than mine. Nor is the unvarying routine of prison life calculated to draw a man from that self-contemplation which is at once the most tiresome and the most dangerous of all mental exercises. I shall never be able to recall without a shudder those wearisome days of bootless toil, rendered all the more unbearable by the alternation of those dark nights of loneliness;—nights whose bleak shadows were deepened rather than dispelled by memories of home, of wife and child, and of all that the heart holds dear. It is out of the utter agony of such a life that the helpless soul turns to its Creator as its sole remaining refuge, or in the bitterness of its torment curses even Him who made it.
After Sheriff Byrnes had safely landed us in the penitentiary, he proceeded to Indianapolis[Indianapolis] with the warrants for the arrest of Stewart, Rice and Mason, for the purpose of securing requisitions for their surrender. I had had a surfeit not only of Indiana justice but of Indiana lawyers as well. I therefore wrote to St. Louis and retained the services of Ex-Gov. Johnson. He came to the prison and learned from me all the facts of the case. Forthwith he set about securing the extradition of the guilty parties from Canada, whither they had fled.[[A]]