On May 21, 1834, the case was again presented and the attorneys argued for further delay, but failed. Shouse stood trial, and after a two days’ hearing the jury was instructed to consider the evidence. There is nothing in the written records showing for what motive Shouse killed Simpson. In fact, the records contain little other than stereotyped legal phrases relative to postponing the case. They throw practically no light on the evidence heard. No summaries of the testimony have been found. Shouse denied his guilt. The name of Ford does not appear in any of the documents. Tradition says that Shouse not only did not betray Ford, but shielded him whenever an opportunity presented itself.
After the jury had retired, one William Sharp appeared on the scene and begged to be heard. Shouse’s attorneys prepared a written avowal of what Sharp’s statement would contain and presented it to the judge with an argument that in view of the new evidence by a material witness the case be retried, regardless of the verdict of the present jury. This was overruled. This document is the only one from which can be gathered any suggestion as to the character of evidence probably employed by the defense. Its plea was that “Shouse expects to prove by said witness (Sharp) that the deceased Simpson told him about a week before his death that he had some short time before collared the defendant Shouse and dared him to cut, that he intended then in a few days to take his pistol and go over to Shouse’s house and settle him.” This was a plea of self-defense. But, as already stated, this motion was overruled. The jury, after due deliberation, found Shouse “guilty as charged.”
According to most traditions, Simpson had more knowledge of the criminal conduct of the Ford’s Ferry outlaws than it was safe for one man to have. It was rumored that a large reward was about to be offered for evidence leading to the conviction of any member of the band, and Simpson’s confederates feared he would be tempted to betray them. Shouse, it seems, was selected—or volunteered—to see that “dead men tell no tales.”
No man of his time was more familiar with the details of the Shouse murder trial than William Courtney Watts. He furnished the following statement to a representative of the Louisville Courier-Journal which published it March 27, 1895:
“Shouse was one of the ring-leaders of the notorious Ford gang and it is generally believed that Ford deputized him to kill Simpson. It was observed that after Shouse was sentenced to be hanged, his attorney, Judge Wyley P. Fowler, spent a large part of his time in the cell of Shouse. It finally leaked out that Shouse was dictating to Judge Fowler a history of the robber band to which he had belonged and that his statements implicated some of the wealthiest and most prominent citizens in Livingston County. At that juncture Judge Fowler received a number of anonymous letters in which writers threatened his life in the event of his ever making public the communications made to him by Shouse. By the advice of friends Judge Fowler spent the succeeding winter in Frankfort. Upon his return Mr. J. W. Cade, the circuit clerk, asked Judge Fowler if the Shouse history had been destroyed. He replied: ‘No good could come of its publication. It would cast a shade upon the reputation of some of Livingston County’s most esteemed citizens.’ Nothing further was ever heard of the manuscript and it is believed that Judge Fowler destroyed it.”
It is said Judge Fowler’s notes were based on the dictations the doomed Shouse intended for the public, and on such reports as were being openly discussed among the people. Judge Fowler, however, having been Ford’s attorney for a number of years and having represented Shouse in his last trial, recognized that any statement he made would be considered as based on confidential information received by him as an attorney, and that, in consequence, he would be unjustly condemned.
What Shouse’s history and confession contained was the subject of much speculation for a generation or two. There is an impression among some people living in the lower Ohio River valley that Judge Fowler’s alleged manuscript on the history of the robber band still exists. Inquiry recently made among his descendants resulted in learning that many years before his death in 1880, he, in the presence of an intimate friend, destroyed all his data on the subject. Judge Fowler never permitted any one to see his notes and seldom discussed the matter. It is said that on one occasion when he was asked whether or not the Ford’s Ferry band was a branch of the clan led by John A. Murrell, he left the impression that it had at one time made some preparations to work in conjunction with the great western land pirate and his band of negro stealers.
More or less has been written by historians and novelists about John A. Murrell, but no writer connects him with Cave-in-Rock or Ford’s Ferry. The History of Virgil A. Stewart, a book on the life of Murrell, compiled by H. R. Howard and published in 1836, gives an incomplete list of Murrell’s associates. Among the four hundred and fifty names there recorded there is none familiar to persons now living near Cave-in-Rock. Tradition says that Shouse made a few trips between the Cave and Marked Tree, Arkansas, to meet Murrell or some of his representatives for the purpose of delivering and receiving messages pertaining to negro stealing and the disposition of counterfeit money. But whether or not the Ford’s Ferry band was ever part of the John A. Murrell clan will remain, in all probability, one of the Ford’s Ferry mysteries.[40]
On June 7, 1834, Judge Thomas C. Brown sent a writ to Joshua Howard, Sheriff of Pope County: “Whereas ... Judgment hath been given in our said court that the said Henry C. Shouse shall be hanged by the neck until he is dead and that execution of said judgment be made and done on Monday the ninth day of June A.D., 1834, between the hours of twelve of the clock at noon and four of the clock in the evening of the same day, at some convenient place in the vicinity, not more than one-half mile from the town of Golconda in said county, in the usual manner of inflicting punishment in such cases....” And on June 9 Shouse paid the extreme penalty.
Tradition has it that on the day of the hanging thousands of people came to Golconda from Gallatin and Pope counties, Illinois, and from Livingston County, Kentucky, and other sections, to see the first legal hanging in the county and to witness the death struggle of a Ford’s Ferry and Cave-in-Rock outlaw. Even to this day, a large crowd in that section of the country is measured as being “as big as the one when Shouse was hanged.” The execution took place in the creek bottom immediately north of the town limits, at a spot where the slopes of the hills converge to form a natural amphitheatre. About two o’clock in the afternoon Shouse was placed on an ox-cart and driven to the scaffold that had been built by erecting two heavy timbers with a cross beam over them. Between these two upright posts the cart was placed, and into it the condemned man’s coffin was then shoved, thus serving the purpose of a platform and trap. Shouse’s hands were tied behind his back; he was blindfolded and made to stand erect upon his coffin. The suspended rope was looped around his neck; the oxen pulled the cart forward and Shouse fell.