Autobiography of a Female Slave

by Martha Griffith Browne

"Finally, gentlemen," resumed Mr. Trueman, "permit me to take back to my Northern home the warm, personal testimony to your love of justice, which, unbiased by considerations of color, is dealt out to high and low, rich and poor, white and black, with equal and impartial hands. Disarm, by your verdict in this instance, the reproach by which Kentucky may hereafter be assailed when her enemies shall taunt her with injustice and cruelty. It has long been said, at the North, that 'the South cannot show justice to a slave.' Now, gentlemen, 'tis for you, in the character of sworn jurors, to disprove, by your verdict, this oft-repeated, and, alas! in too many instances, well-authenticated charge. And I conjure you as men, as Christians, as jurors, to deal justly, kindly, humanely with this poor uncared-for slave-woman. As you are men and fathers, slave-holders even, show her justice, and, if need be, mercy, as in like circumstances you would have these dispensed to your own daughters or slaves. She is a woman, it may be an uncultured one; this place, this Court, is strange to her. There she sits alone, and seemingly friendless, in the dock. Where was her master? Had he prepared or engaged an advocate? No, sir; he left her helpless and undefended; but that God, alike the God of the Jew and the Gentile, has, in the hour of her need, raised up for her a friend and advocate. And be ye, Gentlemen of the Jury, also the friend of the neglected female! By all the artlessness of her sex, she appeals to you to rescue her name from this undeserved aspersion, and her body from the tortures of the lash or the halter. Mark, with your strongest reprobation, that lying accuser of the powerless, who, thwarted in the attempt to violate one article in the Decalogue, has here, and in your presence, accomplished the outrage of another, invoking upon his soul, with unholy lips, the maledictions with which God will sooner or later overwhelm the perjurer. Look at him now as he cowers beneath my words. His blanched cheek and shrivelling eye denote the detected villain. He dares not, like an honest, truth-telling man, face the charges arrayed against him. No, conscious guilt and wicked passion are bowing him now to the earth. Dare he look me full in the eye? No; for he fears lest I, with a lawyer's skill, should draw out and expose the malicious fiend that has urged him on to the persecution of the innocent and defenceless. Send him from your midst with the brand of severest condemnation, as an example of the fate which awaits a false witness in the Courts of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Restore to this prisoner the peace of mind which has been destroyed by this prosecution. Thus you will provide for yourselves a source of consolation through all the future, and I shall thank heaven with my latest breath for the chance that threw me, a stranger, in your city to-day, and led me to this temple of justice to urge your minds to the right conclusion."

He sat down amid such thunders of applause as incurred the censure of the judge. When order was restored, the Commonwealth's attorney rose to close the case. He said "he could see no reason for doubting the veracity of his witness whom the opposition had so strenuously endeavored to impeach. For his own part, he had long known Mr. Monkton, and had always regarded him as a man of truth. The present was the first attempt at his impeachment that he had ever heard of; and he felt perfectly satisfied that Mr. Monkton would survive it. Had he been the character which his adversary had described, it might have been possible to find some witness who could invalidate his testimony. No one, however, has appeared; and I take it that no one exists. The gentleman would do well to observe a little more caution before he attacks so recklessly the reputation of a man."

Mr. Trueman rising, requested the prosecutor to indulge him for one moment.

"Certainly," was the reply.

"I desire the jury and the Court to remember," said Mr. Trueman, "that I made no attack upon the reputation of the witness in this case. Doubtless that is all which it is claimed to be. I freely concede it; but the earnest prosecutor must permit me to distinguish between reputation and character. I did assail the character of the man, but not hypothetically or by shrewd conjectures; 'out of his own mouth I condemned him.' This is not the first instance of crime committed by a man, who, up to the period of transgression, stood fair before the world. The gentleman's own library will supply abundant proofs of the success of strong temptation in its encounters with even established virtue; and I care not if this willing witness could bolster up his reputation with the voluntary affidavits of hosts of friends; his own testimony, to-day, would have still produced and riveted the conviction of his really base character. I thank the gentleman for his indulgence."

The prosecutor continuing, endeavored to show that the testimony was, upon its face, entirely credible, and ought to have its weight with the jury. He labored hard to reconcile its many and material contradictions, reiterated his own opinion of the witness as a man of truth; and, with an inflammatory warning against the Abolition counsel, who, he said, was perhaps now "meditating in our midst some sinister design against the peculiar institution of the South," he ended his fiery harangue.

When he had taken his seat, Mr. Trueman addressed the Court as follows:

"Before the jury retire, may it please your Honor, as the case is of a serious nature, and as we have no witness for the defence, I would ask permission merely to repeat the version of the circumstances of this case detailed to me by the prisoner at the bar. Such a statement, I am aware, is not legal evidence; but if, in your clemency, you would permit it to go to the jury simply for what it is worth, the course of justice I am sure would by no means be impeded."

The judge readily consented to this request, and Mr. Trueman rehearsed my story, as narrated in the foregoing pages.