Thirty Years' View (Vol. 2 of 2) / or, A History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850

by Thomas Hart Benton

The case of Spencer was now over: the cases of Small and Cromwell were briefly despatched. The commander contrived to make the three victims meet in a narrow way going to the sacrifice, all manacled and hobbling along, helped along, for they could not walk, by persons appointed to that duty. Gansevoort helped Spencer—a place to which he had entitled himself by the zeal with which he had pursued him. The object of the meeting was seen in the use that was made of it. It was to have a scene of crimination and recrimination between the prisoners, in which mutual accusations were to help out the miserable testimony and the imputed confessions. They are all made to stop together. Spencer is made to ask the pardon of Small for having seduced him: Small is made to answer, and with a look of horror—"No, by God!" an answer very little in keeping with the lowly and Christian character of Small, and rebutted by ample negative testimony: for this took place after the secret whispering was over, and in the presence of many. Even Gansevoort, in giving a minute account of this interview, reports nothing like it, nor any thing on which it could be founded. Small really seems to have been a gentle and mild man, imbued with kind and pious feelings, and no part of his conduct corresponds with the brutal answer to Spencer attributed to him. When asked if he had any message to send, he answered, "I have nobody to care for me but a poor old mother, and I had rather she did not know how I died." In his Bible was found a letter from his mother, filled with affectionate expressions. In that letter the mother had rejoiced that her son was contented and happy, as he had informed her; upon which the commander maliciously remarked, in his report, "that was before his acquaintance with Spencer." There was nothing against him, but in the story of the informer, Wales. He instantly admitted his "foolish conversations" with Spencer when arrested, but said it was no mutiny. When standing under the ship gallows (yard-arm) he began a speech to his shipmates, declaring his innocence, saying "I am no pirate: I never murdered any body!" At these words Mackenzie sung out to Gansevoort, "Is that right?" meaning, ought he to be allowed to speak so? He was soon stopped, and Gansevoort swears he said "he deserved his punishment." Cromwell protested his innocence to the last, and with evident truth. When arrested, he declared he knew nothing about the mutiny, and the commander told him he was to be carried home with Spencer to be tried; to which he answered, "I assure you I know nothing about it." His name was not on the razor-case paper. Spencer had declared his ignorance of all his talk, when the commander commenced his efforts, under the ten minutes' reprieve, to get confessions, and when Spencer said to him, as he turned off to go to Small and Cromwell with the ten minutes' news—the first they heard of it: "As these are the last words I have to say, I trust they will be believed: Cromwell is innocent." When told his doom, he (Cromwell) exclaimed, "God of the Universe look down upon me; I am innocent! Tell my wife—tell Lieutenant Morris I die innocent!" The last time that Mackenzie had spoken to him before was to tell him he would be carried to the United States for trial. The meeting of the three victims was crowned by reporting them, not only as confessing, and admitting the justice of their deaths, but even praising it, as to the honor of the flag, and—penitently begging pardon and forgiveness from the commander and his lieutenant!—and they mercifully granting the pardon and forgiveness! The original record says there were no "hangmen" on board the ship: but that made no balk. The death signal, and command, were given by the commander and his lieutenant—the former firing the signal gun himself—the other singing out "whip!" at which word the three wretched men went up with a violent jerk to the yard-arm. There is something unintelligible about Cromwell in the last words of this original "record." It says: "S. Small stept up. Cromwell overboard, rose dipping to yard-arm." Upon which the editor remarks: "The above paper of Commander Mackenzie is so illegible, as not to be correctly written" (copied). Yet it was this paper that Spencer is officially reported to have read while waiting to be jerked up, and to have agreed to its correctness—and near two-thirds of which were not written until after his death!

The men were dead, and died innocent, as history will tell and show. Why such conduct towards them—not only the killing, but the cruel aggravations? The historian Cooper, in solving this question, says that such was the obliquity of intellect shown by Mackenzie in the whole affair, that no analysis of his motives can be made on any consistent principle of human action. This writer looks upon personal resentment as having been the cause of the deaths, and terror, and a desire to create terror, the cause of the aggravations. Both Spencer and Cromwell had indulged in language which must have been peculiarly offensive to a man of the commander's temperament, and opinion of himself—an author, an orator, a fine officer. They habitually spoke of him before the crew, as "the old humbug—the old fool;" graceless epithets, plentifully garnished with the prefix of "damned;" and which were so reported to the captain (after the discovery of the mutiny—never before) as to appear to him to be "blasphemous vituperation." This is the only tangible cause for hanging Spencer and Cromwell, and as for poor Small, it would seem that his knowledge of navigation, and the necessity of having three mutineers, decided his fate: for his name is on neither of the three lists (though on the distribution list), and he frankly told the commander of Spencer's foolish conversations—always adding, it was no mutiny. These are the only tangible, or visible causes for putting the men to death. The reason for doing it at the time it was done, was for fear of losing the excuse to do it. The vessel was within a day and a half of St. Thomas, where she was ordered to go—within less time of many other islands to which she might go—in a place to meet vessels at any time, one of which she saw nearly in her course, and would not go to it. The excuse for not going to these near islands, or joining the vessel seen, was that it was disgraceful to a man-of-war to seek protection from foreigners! as if it was more honorable to murder than to take such protection. But the excuse was proved to be false; for it was admitted the vessel seen was too far off to know her national character: therefore, she was not avoided as a foreigner, but for fear she might be American. The same of the islands: American vessels were sure to be at them, and therefore these islands were not gone to. It was therefore indispensable to do the work before they got to St. Thomas, and all the machinery of new arrests, and rescue was to justify that consummation. And as for not being able to carry the ship to St. Thomas, with an obedient crew of 100 men, it was a story not to be told in a service where Lieutenant John Rodgers and Midshipman Porter, with 11 men, conducted a French frigate with 173 French prisoners, three days and nights, into safe port.

The three men having hung until they ceased to give signs of life, and still hanging up, the crew were piped down to dinner, and to hear a speech from the commander, and to celebrate divine service—of which several performances the commander gives this account in his official report:

"The crew were now piped down from witnessing punishment, and all hands called to cheer ship. I gave the order, 'stand by to give three hearty cheers for the flag of our country!' Never were three heartier cheers given. In that electric moment I do not doubt that the patriotism of even the worst of the conspirators for an instant broke forth. I felt that I was once more completely commander of the vessel which had been entrusted to me; equal to do with her whatever the honor of my country might require. The crew were now piped down and piped to dinner. I noticed with pain that many of the boys, as they looked to the yard-arm, indulged in laughter and derision."

He also gives an impressive account of the religious service which was performed, the punctuality and devotion with which it was attended, and the appropriate prayer—that of thanks to God for deliverance from a great danger—with which it was concluded.

"The service was then read, the responses audibly and devoutly made by the officers and crew, and the bodies consigned to the deep. This service was closed with that prayer so appropriate to our situation, appointed to be read in our ships of war, 'Preserve us from the dangers of the sea, and from the violence of enemies; that we may be a safeguard to the United States of America, and a security for such as pass on the seas upon their lawful occasions; that the inhabitants of our land may in peace and quietude serve thee our God; and that we may return in safety to enjoy the blessings of our land, with the fruits of our labor, with a thankful remembrance of thy mercies, to praise and glorify thy holy name through Jesus Christ our Lord.'"

This religious celebration concluded, and the prayer read, the commander indulges in a remark upon their escape from a danger plotted before the ship left the United States, as unfeeling, inhuman and impious at the time, as it was afterwards proved to be false and wicked. After the arrest of Spencer, the delators discovered that he had meditated these crimes before he left the United States, and had let his intention become known at a house in the Bowery at New York. In reference to that early inception of the plot, now just found out by the commander, he thus remarks:

"In reading this (prayer) and in recollecting the uses to which the Somers had been destined, as I now find, before she quitted the waters of the United States, I could not but humbly hope that divine sanction would not be wanting to the deed of that day."

Here it is assumed for certain that piratical uses were intended for the vessel by Spencer before he left New York; and upon that assumption the favor of Heaven was humbly hoped for in looking down upon the deed of that day. Now what should be the look of Heaven if all this early plotting should be a false imputation—a mere invention—as it was proved to be. Before the court-martial it was proved that the sailor boarding-house remark about this danger to the Somers, was made by another person, and before Spencer joined the vessel—and from which vessel the commander knew he had endeavored to get transferred to the Grampus, after he had come into her—the commander himself being the organ of his wishes. Foiled before the court in attaching this boarding-house remark to Spencer, the delators before the court undertook to fasten it upon Cromwell: there again the same fate befell them: the remark was proved to have been made by a man of the name of Phelps, and before Cromwell had joined the vessel: and so ended this last false and foul insinuation in his report.

The commander then made a speech, whereof he incorporates a synopsis in his report; and of which, with its capital effects upon the crew, he gives this account: