The House, notwithstanding the demonstrative proof, and its enforcement by the powerful and unanswerable argument of Prentiss, sent the election back to the State, to be determined by a new election. In this, Prentiss and Wood were triumphantly elected. He was not again a candidate, retiring for the time from politics, and giving his undivided attention to his profession.
It was always a matter of astonishment, to all who could never make of a political enemy a personal friend, why it was that Prentiss, so bitter in his political denunciations of political partisans, and so bitter a partisan, should yet, among the opposition, have so many warm admirers and most devoted friends. His nature was sensitive, generous, and confiding. There was no malice festering in his heart, and in his opposition, he was only so to the politics, not the personal qualities of the man. By these he judged of the man, and the character of these regulated his conduct toward him. He did not pass through life without enemies. The man to whom this is possible is one of no positive points in his character, no strength of will, no fixity of purpose, and of but little intellect. Such men never occupy the public attention—are altogether negative, as well in action as in mind. The enemies of Prentiss were such from envy, or political hatred. His great abilities, when brought in contact with those suing for popular favor, so shrivelled and dwarfed them as to inspire only fear and hatred. But men of this character were scarce in that day in Mississippi. Such was the tone of society, and such the education of her sons, that traits so dishonorable rendered odious the man manifesting them, and those of talent and education emigrating to the country soon caught this spirit as by inoculation. If there were any who were influenced by such base and degrading motives, and who felt these a part of their nature, they most generally could command policy enough to conceal them.
No community is long in discovering the genuine from the counterfeit character. It did not require months to learn all the heart, all the nature of Prentiss. Too frequently are great abilities coupled with a mean spirit, and transcendent genius underlaid with a low, grovelling nature; but these may be known by the peculiar form or development of the cranium. The high coronal developments discover the intense moral organization: the lofty and expansive forehead, the steady, unblenching eye, and the easy self-possession of manner are all indications of high moral organization, and the possession of a soul superior to envy, malice, and vindictive hatred, and one to which little meannesses are impossible. Such a head and such a soul had S.S. Prentiss. His whole character was in his face, and so legible that the most illiterate could read it. This won to him like natures, and all such who knew him were instinctively his friends.
Judge Wilkinson was such a man, and though as ardently Democratic as Prentiss was Whig, and as uncompromising in his principles, yet these two were friends in the loftiest sense of the term. Judge Wilkinson had a difficulty with a tailor in Louisville, Kentucky, who attempted an imposition upon him to which he would not submit. A quarrel ensued, and the knight of the needle and shears determined on revenge. Collecting about him his ready associates, they went to the hotel where Wilkinson lodged, and waylaid him at the door between the dining-parlor and the reception-room, and attacked him on his coming in from supper. In the rencontre three of the assailants were killed, and the remainder of the gang fled. Immediately surrendering himself, he was incarcerated and held for trial: although assaulted with murderous intent, and acting clearly in self-defence, he was denied bail. He was a stranger, and the prejudices of the court and the people of Louisville were so manifest that he demanded and obtained a change of venire.
The trial came off at Harrodsburg. Prentiss, learning the facts and the situation of his friend, volunteered immediately to defend him in court, and to befriend him in any manner possible to him. The celebrated Ben Hardin was employed to assist in the prosecution. The eyes of all Mississippi and Kentucky were turned to Harrodsburg when this trial commenced. Others volunteered—and among these was John Rowan—to assist in the defence. But the case for Wilkinson was conducted exclusively by Prentiss. It continued for some days. John Rowan—so celebrated in the State for his talents and great legal learning, as well as for his transcendent abilities as an advocate—sat by, and trusted all to Prentiss.
There were many sparrings in the course of the trial between Hardin and Prentiss upon points in the law of evidence, and as to the admissibility or rejection of testimony, as also upon many points of the criminal law of England, whether changed or not by statutory provisions of the State.
In one of these, Rowan handed an open authority to Prentiss, and was taunted by Hardin for the act, by saying: "Give your friend all the aid you can: he needs it."
"I only preserved the book open at the page where Mr. Prentiss had marked the law," said Rowan: "he requires no aid from me, brother Hardin. With all your learning and experience, he is more than a match for you."
This Hardin was not long in discovering, and especially did he feel it when Prentiss came to reply to his address to the jury. So long accustomed to defy competition as a criminal lawyer, Hardin was not only surprised at the tact and masterly talent displayed by his adversary, but he was annoyed, and felt that to maintain his prestige as the great criminal lawyer of Kentucky, he must put forth all his powers. He had done so; and in his summing up before the jury he seemed more than himself. When he had concluded there were many who deemed conviction sure.
Prentiss followed, and in his grandest manner tore to tatters every argument and every position advanced and assumed by Hardin. Towering in the majesty of his genius in one of those transcendent flights of imagination so peculiar to him, when his illustrations in figures followed each other in such quick and constant succession as to seem inexhaustible, he turned suddenly upon Hardin, and, stooping his face until it almost touched that of the stern old Kentuckian, he hissed forth: "Dare you, sir, ask a verdict of such a jury as is here sitting upon this testimony?—you, sir, who under the verdict of nature must soon appear before the awful bar to which you now strive prematurely to consign this noble, this gallant young man! Should you succeed, you must meet him there. Could you, in the presence of Almighty God—He who knows the inmost thoughts—justify your work of to-day? His mandate is not to the gibbet. Eternal Justice dictates there, whose decrees are eternal. Do you think of this? Do you defy it? If not—if you invoke it, do it through your acts toward your fellow-man. Have you to-day done unto this man as you would he should do unto you? I pause for a reply—none. Then shudder and repent, for the record even now is making up against you in that high court from which there is no appeal. You, gentlemen of the jury, are no hired advocates: you are not laboring for blood-money. Though your responsibility to your God is equal to his, you will not go to the bar of your Creator with blood—guiltless blood—upon your consciences. You will not, as he will, in that awful presence, on that eventful day, look around you for the accusing spirit of him whom you consigned to the gibbet with a consciousness of his innocence of murder. How will it be with you? (turning again to Hardin.) Ah! how will it be with you? Still silent. Despite the hardness of his features, mercy like a halo sweeps over them, and speaks to you, gentlemen, eloquently: 'Acquit the accused!' Look over yonder, gentlemen: within these walls is one awaiting your verdict in tearless agony—she who but for this untoward event would now have been happy as his bride: she who has cheered him in his prison-cell daily with her presence and lovely soul! Hers, not his fate, is in your hands. To him death is nothing: the brave defy death—the good fear it not; then why should he fear? But she! O God! it is a fearful thing to crush to death with agony the young, hopeful, and loving heart of virtuous woman. His death is only terrible in her future. Go with her, gentlemen, through life; contemplate the wan features of slow decay: see in these the one eternal, harrowing thought; list to the sigh which rives the heart; watch the tear which falls in secret; see her sink into the grave; then turn away, look up into heaven, and from your heart say: 'O God! I did it.' You will not; you cannot; you dare not."