Killer Colt Read online

  5. Edwards, Colt’s Revolver, pp. 173–74.

  6. Ibid., p. 174.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Ibid.; Lundeberg, Submarine Battery, p. 26; Rohan, Yankee Arms Maker, pp. 148–49; Keating, Flamboyant Mr. Colt, p. 59.

  9. Rohan, Yankee Arms Maker, p. 149.

  CHAPTER 49

  1. New York Herald, May 7, 1842, p. 1.

  2. Ibid., May 13, 1842, p. 1.

  3. Edwin Burritt Smith and Ernest Hitchcock, Reports of Cases Adjudged and Determined in the Supreme Court of Judicature and Court for the Trial of Impeachments and Correction of Errors of the State of New York, book 15 (Newark, NY: The Lawyers’ Co-Operative Publishing Company, 1885), pp. 431–37.

  CHAPTER 50

  1. New York Herald, September 28, 1842, p. 1; New York Sun, September 28, 1842, p. 2; Hagerstown (MD) Mail, October 7, 1842, p. 3.

  2. As John himself described it. See Life and Letters of John C. Colt, letter 19.

  3. Ibid.

  4. New York Herald, September 28, 1842, p. 1.

  CHAPTER 51

  1. New York Sun, September 28, 1842, p. 2; Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer, October 28, 1842, p. 2; Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 28, 1842, p. 2.

  2. Bennett ranked the murder of Adams with three other violent incidents that had riveted the city in recent years. In March 1838, U.S. Representative Jonathan Cilley of Maine was shot to death in a duel with a fellow congressman, William Graves of Kentucky, who had taken offense at a remark Cilley had made about Graves’s friend James Watson Webb, editor of the Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer. Four years later, Webb himself was badly wounded in a pistol duel with Kentucky congressman Thomas Marshall. Most savage of all was the September 1842 grudge match between prizefighters Thomas McCoy and Christopher Lilly that did not end until—after nearly three hours and 120 rounds—McCoy was beaten to death, “his face literally knocked to pieces.” For accounts of the Graves-Cilley and Marshall-Webb duels, see Don C. Seitz, Famous American Duels (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1929), pp. 251–82, 283–309. The McCoy-Lilly fight is described in George N. Thomson, Confessions, Trials and Biographical Sketches of the Most Cold-Blooded Murderers, Who Have Been Executed in the Country from Its First Settlement Down to the Present Time (Hartford, CT: S. Andrus and Son, 1887), pp. 411–12.

  3. New York Herald, September 28, 1842, p. 2.

  CHAPTER 52

  1. Tucher, Froth & Scum, p. 168.

  2. Powell, Authentic Life, pp. 6, 14, 23, 31, 49, 61.

  3. Life and Letters of John C. Colt, p. 5.

  4. Ibid., p. 16.

  CHAPTER 53

  1. New York Times, June 4, 1873, p. 8. The best and most complete account of the scandal is Geoffrey O’Brien, The Fall of the House of Walworth.

  2. For example, see Charles Edwards, Pleasantries About Courts and Lawyers of the State of New York (New York: Richardson & Company, 1867), p. 317.

  3. In his autobiography, Governor William Seward notes that John’s “counsel applied to me thirteen days only before the day of his execution.” See Frederick W. Seward, William H. Seward: An Autobiography from 1801 to 1834: With a Memoir of His Life, and Selections from His Letters, 1831–1846 (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1877), p. 629.

  CHAPTER 54

  1. Bancroft, Life of William H. Seward, p. 120.

  2. Ibid., pp. 122–23; Earl Conrad, The Governor and His Lady: The Story of William Henry Seward and His Wife Frances (New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1960), p. 238.

  3. Conrad, Governor, p. 247.

  4. Seward, William H. Seward, p. 629.

  5. Ibid.

  6. All quotes are taken from letters found on the microfilm edition of the William Henry Seward Papers, University of Rochester, River Campus Libraries, Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, reel 165, items 5894–5901.

  7. Seward, William H. Seward, p. 633. Seward would, in fact, become the victim of an assassination attempt—not, however, as a result of his decision in the Colt case. On the night of April 15, 1865—at the same time that Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth—Seward, then Lincoln’s secretary of state, was savagely attacked at home by Lewis Powell, one of Booth’s coconspirators in a plot to decapitate the Union government. Stabbed in the face with a bowie knife, Seward survived, though he bore disfiguring scars for the rest of his life.

  8. George Baker, ed., The Works of William H. Seward, vol. 2 (New York: Redfield, 1853), pp. 648–61.

  9. New York Sun, November 14, 1842, p. 2.

  CHAPTER 55

  1. New York Sun, November 16, 1842, p. 2; New-York Commercial Advertiser, November 17, 1842, p. 2; Seward, William H. Seward, pp. 632–33; Lydia Maria Child, Letters from New-York, ed. Bruce Mills (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1998), p. 242, n. 4.

  2. Child, Letters from New-York, p. 241, n. 4; p. 137.

  3. Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas, The Diary of George Templeton Strong: Young Man in New York 1835–1848 (New York: Macmillan, 1952), p. 189.

  4. Child, Letters from New-York, p. 137.

  5. Ibid. Also see “Everything Is Changed: The Old Salt Still Brooding Over Early New-York,” New York Times, May 16, 1886, p. 5.

  6. Nevins and Thomas, George Templeton Strong, pp. 188–90.

  7. Ibid., pp. 190–91; Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 17, 1842, p. 2.

  8. New York Times, May 16, 1886, p. 5.

  9. Nevins and Thomas, George Templeton Strong, p. 190.

  CHAPTER 56

  1. New York Sun, November 19, 1842, p. 2.

  2. Nevins and Thomas, George Templeton Strong, p. 190; New York Herald, November 18, 1842, p. 1.

  3. Child, Letters from New-York, pp. 137–38; New York Times, May 16, 1886, p. 5.

  4. New York Herald, November 18, 1842, p. 1; New-York Commercial Advertiser, November 19, 1842, p. 2; Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer, November 19, 1842, p. 2.

  5. Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer, November 19, 1842, p. 2.

  6. New-York Commercial Advertiser, November 19, 1842, p. 2.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Child, Letters from New-York, p. 139.

  9. New York Herald, November 18, 1842, p. 1; New-York Commercial Advertiser, November 19, 1842, p. 2.

  10. Sutton, New York Tombs, p. 76.

  11. New-York Commercial Advertiser, November 19, 1842, p. 2.

  12. New York Herald, November 18, 1842, p. 1.

  13. Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer, November 22, 1842, p. 2.

  14. Sutton, New York Tombs, p. 77; New York Herald, November 18, 1842, p. 1.

  15. New York Herald, November 18, 1842, p. 1.

  16. Ibid.; New-York Commercial Advertiser, November 19, 1842, p. 2.

  17. Nevins and Thomas, George Templeton Strong, p. 191.

  18. New York Herald, November 18, 1842, p. 1.

  19. New-York Commercial Advertiser, November 19, 1842, p. 2.

  20. Ibid.

  21. Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer, November 19, 1842, p. 2.

  22. New York Herald, November 18, 1842, p. 1; New-York Commercial Advertiser, November 19, 1842, p. 2.

  23. New York Times, May 16, 1886, p. 5.

  24. New-York Commercial Advertiser, November 19, 1842, p. 2.

  25. Nevins and Thomas, George Templeton Strong, p. 192.

  26. Abbott, “Mystery of the Tombs,” p. 690; Jan Seidler Ramirez, Painting the Town: Cityscapes of New York (New York: Museum of the City of New York, 2000), pp. 96–97.

  27. Child, Letters from New-York, pp. 242, 138.

  CHAPTER 57

  1. New York Herald, November 17, 1842, p. 2.

  2. “A Crime of Forty Years Ago,” New York Times, December 18, 1880, p. 12.

  3. New-York Commercial Advertiser, November 19, 1842, p. 2.

  4. Seward, William H. Seward, p. 635; Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer, November 19, 1842, p. 2.

  5. Abbott, “Mystery of the Tombs,” p. 690; New York Herald, November 18, 1842, p. 2.

 
6. Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer, November 22, 1842.

  7. New York Sun, November 19, 1842, p. 2; New York Tribune, November 19, 1842, p. 2; New-York Commercial Advertiser, November 19, 1842, p. 2.

  8. Seward, William H. Seward, p. 634.

  CONCLUSION: LEGENDS

  CHAPTER 58

  1. New York Herald, November 23, 1842, p. 2.

  2. Christian Reflector, November 23, 1842, p. 5.

  3. Ohio Repository, December 1, 1842, p. 3.

  4. Life and Letters of John C. Colt, letter 18, June 10, 1842.

  5. For a thorough discussion of Universalism, see Ann Lee Bressler, The Universalist Movement in America 1770–1880 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

  6. Bressler, Universalist Movement, p. 39.

  7. Review of Universalism Examined, Renounced, Exposed by Matthew Hale Smith, Princeton Review, no. 4 (October 1843): pp. 527–28.

  8. Christian Watchman, December 10, 1842, p. 12.

  9. Trumpet and Universalist Magazine, December 31, 1842, p. 15.

  10. New York Evening Journal, December 27, 1842, p. 3.

  11. See Louis P. Masur, Rites of Execution: Capital Punishment and the Transformation of American Culture, 1776–1865 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).

  12. Child, Letters from New-York, p. 139.

  13. New York Tribune, November 19, 1842, p. 2.

  14. New York Sun, November 24, 1842, p. 2.

  15. Bergman, Collected Writings of Walt Whitman, pp. 162–63.

  CHAPTER 59

  1. New York Sun, November 21, 1842, p. 2.

  2. Macatamney, Cradle Days, p. 191.

  3. “Everything Is Changed,” p. 5.

  4. Nevins and Thomas, George Templeton Strong, p. 193; Hartford Daily Courant, December 12, 1842, p. 2.

  5. New-York Commercial Advertiser, November 19, 1842.

  6. New York Sun, November 19, 1842.

  7. New York Herald, November 20, 1842, p. 2.

  CHAPTER 60

  1. Carolyn L. Karcher, The First Woman in the Republic: A Cultural Biography of Lydia Maria Child (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), p. 303. Despite the prominent literary and intellectual status she enjoyed in her own time, Child is best known today (to the extent that she is remembered at all) as the author of the holiday chestnut “Over the river and through the woods / To grandfather’s house we go,” originally published in the second volume of her collection Flowers for Children (1844).

  2. These remarks were excised from the later, edited version published in Child’s book Letters from New-York. See p. 243, n. 16.

  3. Mrs. Sigourney was a regular contributor to the Juvenile Miscellany, the popular bimonthly magazine that Mrs. Child founded in 1826. See Carolyn L. Karcher, “Lydia Maria Child and the Juvenile Miscellany: The Creation of an American Children’s Literature,” in Periodical Literature in Nineteenth-Century America, ed. Kenneth M. Price and Susan Belasco Smith (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1995), pp. 93–109.

  4. For more on this famously unsuccessful experiment in cooperative living, see Sterling F. Delano, Brook Farm: The Dark Side of Utopia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).

  5. Child, Selected Letters, pp. 183–84.

  6. See Lundeberg, Submarine Battery, pp. 31–34.

  7. Ibid., p. 31.

  8. A summary of James’s career can be found in Livingston, Biographical Sketches, pp. 93ff. For an account of the duel, see Dick Steward, Duels and the Roots of Violence in Missouri (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000), pp. 126–27.

  9. This and the other letters from James are on file at the Connecticut Historical Society.

  10. Keating, Flamboyant Mr. Colt, p. 69; Rywell, Man and Epoch, p. 72; Hosley, American Legend, pp. 22–23.

  11. Lundeberg, Submarine Battery, p. 46.

  12. Ibid., p. 55; Hosley, American Legend, p. 22.

  CHAPTER 61

  1. See Edwards, Colt’s Revolver, pp. 195–204; Houze, Colt: Arms, Art, Invention, p. 68.

  2. Evans, They Made America, pp. 60–61; Edwards, Colt’s Revolver, p. 99.

  3. Houze, Colt: Arms, Art, Invention, p. 73; Evans, They Made America, p. 66.

  4. Evans, They Made America, p. 68.

  5. Hosley, American Legend, p. 23.

  6. Ibid., p. 26.

  7. Ibid., p. 28.

  8. Rywell, Man and Epoch, p. 130.

  CHAPTER 62

  1. Edwards, Colt’s Revolver, p. 42.

  2. Tucher, Froth & Scum, p. 173.

  3. Ibid., pp. 173–74.

  4. Keating, Flamboyant Mr. Colt, p. 145.

  5. Ibid., p. 65.

  CHAPTER 63

  1. The source of the Julia Leicester legend appears to be Colt biographer William Edwards (see Colt’s Revolver, pp. 309, 340–42). Contrary to the claims by Edwards and subsequent writers who have unquestioningly accepted his statements, Colt historian Herbert G. Houze has conclusively shown that the woman who married Friedrich von Oppen was not Caroline Henshaw but rather the much younger Julia Colt, a distant cousin of Sam’s. Also see Houze, Colt: Arms, Art, Invention, p. 69, n. 14; p. 247.

  2. See Lewis, Nation-Famous New York Murders, pp. 240–41.

  3. Christian Reflector, February 1, 1843, p. 19; Brother Jonathan: A weekly Compendium of Belle Lettres and the Fine Arts, vol. 4 (February 4, 1843), p. 137. For a concise account of Bannister’s career, see Martin Banham, ed., The Cambridge Guide to Theatre (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 76.

  Ninety-five year later, a dramatization of the Colt affair was broadcast on the airwaves. Scripted by George J. Throp, “The Case of John C. Colt” was the debut episode of Out of the Hall of Records, a weekly radio series of “dramatized programs based on the annals of notorious court cases preserved in the Hall of Records of New York City.” The episode was broadcast on WNYC, Monday, December 5, 1938, 4:00–4:30 EST. The original script can be found in the WPA Radio Scripts collection at the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts, box 40, file 1, “The Case of John C. Colt” (Collection ID# T-MSS 2000–005).

  4. See Bon Gaultier, “A Night at Peleg Longfellow’s,” The New World: A Weekly Family Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and the Arts, vol. 7 (August 26, 1843): p. 227.

  5. The Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1966), pp. 237–45.

  6. Warner Berthoff, ed., Great Short Works of Herman Melville (Harper & Row/Perennial Library, 1969), pp. 63–64.

  7. Theodora De Wolf Colt, Stray Fancies (Boston: published for private circulation, 1872), pp. 118–22.

  8. Hosley, American Legend, pp. 30–31.

  9. Ibid., p. 138.

  10. Keating, Flamboyant Mr. Colt, p. 187.

  11. Hosley, American Legend, p. 145.

  12. Barnard, Armsmear, p. 295.

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