Killer Colt (36 page)

F
or a while, Sam Colt shared his brother’s hopeful outlook. In early February—at the very time that John was telling friends that he expected to get a new trial—Sam went out and purchased a ten-dollar flute for himself: a sign, according to the speculations of his most authoritative biographer, that he was in a sufficiently optimistic frame of mind to indulge in some lighthearted diversion.
¹

From the evidence of his diary, he was still in an upbeat mood one month later during a brief trip to Connecticut. By then, with Dudley Selden and his associates concentrating on John’s appeal, Sam had refocused his own attentions on his submarine battery project. During the first week of March, he traveled to New London, Stonington, and Mystic to “investigate several intriguing leads on the attempts of an obscure Connecticut inventor, Silas Clowden Halsey, to conduct a torpedo attack” during the War of 1812.
²

Halsey’s efforts had been undertaken in response to emergency legislation enacted by Congress offering private citizens a hefty reward for the destruction of British warships. He had tinkered together an ingenious “submarine boat”—a tiny, one-man affair with a hand-cranked propeller and an air tube poking out of the water. Attached to the front was a small, corkscrewed spear with an explosive charge attached. The plan was to sneak beneath the hull of one of the British vessels blockading New London Harbor, drive the spear into the hull, then retreat before the explosion went off. On the night of June
30
, 1813, he had set off on his mission and was never heard of again.
³

For several days, Sam traveled around the various Connecticut towns, interviewing veterans of the war, including Captain Jeremiah Holmes of Mystic, who had participated in the efforts to attack the British fleet with submarine explosives and provided Sam with a detailed description of Halsey’s ship and torpedoes.
⁴
Though engaged in serious business, Sam appears to have been in a relaxed, even carefree mood, as his comically misspelled journal entries make clear. On Sunday, March 7, for example, he records that, after attending “piscopal chirch” in Norwich, he “rambled through the town & over the hils,” then “called on Mrs. Chappell was introduced to her husband (fine fellow) & to of her brothers, took tea & spent the evening very pleasantly to say nothing of the whiskey.” The following morning, he took a “stemebote” back to New London, admiring the beautiful “senery on the river.” The rest of the day was “spent very pleasantly at the residence of Captain Bassett in company of Miss Bassitt & Miss Church.”
⁵

Back in New York City, he continued his experiments. Just a few days after returning from Connecticut, he reported to Naval Secretary Abel Upshur that he had succeeded in setting off an underwater charge “at a distance of ten miles.” In the same letter, he assured Upshur that he would be ready to make a public test of his harbor defense system “about the first of May.”
⁶

Delays in the delivery of zinc plates and other vital components forced Sam to postpone his demonstration (“all progress in my experiments must wate,” as he put it to one correspondent).
⁷
He was finally ready in midsummer. Ever the showman, he decided to stage the event in the harbor off Castle Garden, the popular amusement spot on the southern tip of Manhattan where he had held a demonstration of his repeating rifles five years earlier. The date he chose was the Fourth of July—thirteen years to the day after his first, boyhood experiment with underwater explosives on Ware Pond.

Ballyhooed by the city press, the event drew thousands of spectators who crowded the wharves on both the Lower Manhattan and Jersey City waterfronts. Among those in attendance were Mayor Morris and the entire city council, along with reporters from a dozen newspapers. At precisely noon, the firing of a twenty-gun national salute signaled the start of the demonstration.

A derelict hundred-ton naval “vessil” (as Sam spelled it) had been provided
for the occasion. “Fitted with temporary masts from which were displayed various flags with piratical devices,” the “old hulk” was towed through the water until it reached a speed of roughly three knots. Two hundred yards way, on the deck of the seventy-four-gun warship
North Carolina
, Sam—surrounded by naval officers and other official observers—activated his galvanic detonating device. The “effect of the explosion was tremendous,” wrote the reporter for the
New York Evening Post
. “The vessel was shattered into fragments, some of which were thrown two or three hundred feet in the air, and there was not a single piece left longer than a man could have carried in one hand.”
⁸

The response of the spectators was captured by a gentleman named John Mount, who witnessed the demonstration from the Jersey side. Two days later, on July 6, he sat down and composed an effusive letter to Sam, congratulating him on “the entire success of your recent submarine explosion.”

“As the dense volume of smoke rose heavenwards,” Mount enthused, “its terrific grandeur could only be exceeded by the amazement and wonder of all the multitude around me at the means by which it was accomplished … I trust, my dear sir, that the government will properly appreciate the vast importance of this mode of defense and that you may reap the honors and emoluments to which you are justly entitled.”
⁹

Sam himself was justifiably pleased with the results of his experiment. He had no time to savor his triumph, however. On the very day that he received Mount’s admiring letter, word arrived of a long-awaited decision in his brother’s case. And for Sam and the other supporters of John Colt, the news couldn’t have been worse.

E
ven before the New York Supreme Court took up John’s case in its July term, his lawyers had made a separate bid to have the conviction overturned. On Friday, May 6, 1842, John Morrill and James Emmett appeared before Judge Kent at the Court of Oyer and Terminer to make a motion for a new trial. Word having spread that Colt himself would be present, “all the world assembled to see him.” The rumor proved unfounded, however. Colt never appeared, “and all the world was disappointed.”
¹

The principal ground for the motion was that one of the jurors, a boardinghouse owner named Nathan R. Husted, “had expressed strong and unqualified sentiments as to the guilt of the prisoner” before being sworn in. Specifically, a lodger at Husted’s hostelry had heard him remark that if it were up to him, “Colt would be hanged first and tried afterward.”

District Attorney Whiting countered that “Colt had received a fair and impartial trial” and that the motion constituted “an impeachment of the juror, an honorable and honest man” who had performed “a most unpleasant and unthankful duty,” only to find himself “arraigned for having expressed an opinion relative to the prisoner.”

A week later, Judge Kent handed down his ruling. This time, John was brought into court. The spectators who filled the room to capacity watched him intently as Kent read his decision.

“The remarks of Mr. Husted,” said the judge, “were made at his own house in October last. They were casual and unpremeditated and unaccompanied by discussions.” After careful consideration, Judge Kent therefore
ruled, “This court, under the affidavits produced, cannot disturb this verdict, and they deny the motion under the firm conviction that granting it would impair, if it did not vitally weaken, the administration of justice in criminal cases of magnitude and importance.”

John, who had kept his gaze steadily fixed on the judge, showed no trace of emotion as the decision was rendered. It was as if, wrote James Gordon Bennett, “he had expected it as a matter of course.”
²

•   •   •

Two months to the day after John’s lawyers made their unsuccessful motion before Judge Kent, Dudley Selden appeared before the state supreme court at Utica to argue for a new trial.

There were two major grounds for his plea. The first had to do with jury selection. After the fiasco of the first day of the trial—when only nineteen out of forty-five potential jurors had shown up—Judge Kent had directed the sheriff to summon “three hundred persons duly qualified to serve as jurors.” He had, moreover, demanded that all three hundred appear in two days’ time and refused Selden’s request for a lengthier postponement. Selden now insisted that, by ordering so large a number in so short a time, Kent had deprived the defendant “of a fair opportunity for scrutinizing the panel and preparing for a proper exercise of his right to challenge.”

Selden further argued that since “the only instrument specified in the indictment as the means of committing the offense was a
hatchet,”
Judge Kent had “erred in allowing proof tending to show that the death of the deceased might have been caused by the discharge of a pistol.”

Following Selden’s presentation, District Attorney Whiting arose to argue on behalf of the people. Even before he could speak, however, the court announced its decision.

The judges were “unable to see any ground for interfering with the proceedings.” To begin with, “The statute in respect to summoning jurors prescribes no precise limit as to numbers but says that the sheriff shall be directed to summon so many as are necessary to make at least twenty-four jurors from whom a jury may be selected … As to the refusal of the court to postpone, this was also a matter resting in discretion and therefore not the subject of review in the present case.”

The judges further ruled that Kent was correct in allowing evidence regarding
the pistol, since the indictment also contained a count charging that the killing had been done “with a certain instrument to the jurors unknown.”

The defense’s motion having been denied, the court ordered that “the proceedings be remitted to the Oyer and Terminer with directions to proceed and pass sentence.”
³
Eight months after his conviction, John Colt would finally receive his dread judgment.

A
t 10:10 on Tuesday morning, September 27, 1842—a year, almost to the day, since his arrest—John Colt was led into the packed courtroom by officers James Colvin and Frank F. Smith. Apart from his jailhouse pallor, his appearance had changed “very little from what it presented at the trial” and his “manner and demeanor” struck most observers as “perfectly calm and collected.” Making his way to the front of the room, he took his usual seat beside the stove and—with his back to the gawking spectators—occupied himself in perusing the morning newspapers, looking up occasionally to exchange a word with his lawyers and his brother Sam, seated directly beside him.
¹

Twenty minutes later, Judge Kent entered and took his seat. Following some preliminary business, John, clutching a sheet of paper in one hand, was asked to rise. The clerk, Henry Vandervoort, then faced him and intoned the ritual formula: “Prisoner, you may remember that you have heretofore been indicted for a certain murder; upon that indictment you were arraigned; upon your arraignment you pleaded not guilty and put yourself upon the country for trial, which country has found you guilty. What have you now to say why judgment should not be pronounced against you, according to law?”

“I have prepared a few remarks that I wish to go to the court,” John said with his usual composure.

“Do you wish it read aloud?” asked Kent.

“Certainly, sir,” John said, reaching out the paper to Kent. He then reseated himself while Kent briefly scanned the document.

A moment later, Kent—whose expression had darkened noticeably—launched into Colt’s statement in a voice that carried to the furthest corner of the courtroom: