HV UC-NRLF $B 3fl2 25fl 1 DEFENCE OF their own house, in the night time, without any provocation, without one moment's warning, se;it by the Murderer to join the Assembly of the Just ; and even the laboring man, sojourning within their gates, received the fatal blade into his breast, and survives through the mercy, not of the murderer, but of God. , For William Freeman, as a murderer, I have no commission to speak. \ If he had silver and gold accumulated with the frugality of Crcesus, and I should pour it all at m}' feet, I would not stand an hour between him i and the Avenger. But for the innocent, it is my right, my duty to speak. I If this sea of blood was innocently shed, then it is my duty to stand be- '; side him until his steps lose their hold upon the scaffold. " Thou shalt not kill," is a commandment addressed not to him alone, but to me, to you, to the Court, and to the whole community. There are no exceptions from that commandment, at least in civil life, save those of self-defence, and capital punishment for crimes, in the due and just administration of the law. There is not only a question then whether the prisoner has shed the blood of his fellow man, but the question, whether we shall unlawfully shed his blood. I should be guilty of mur- der if, in my present relation, I saw the executioner waiting for an in- sane man, and failed to say, or failed to do in his behalf, all that my ability allowed. I think it has been proved of the Prisoner at the bar, that, during all this long and tedious trial, he has had no sleepless nights, and that even in the day time, when he retires from these halls to his lonely cell, he sinks to rest like a wearied child, on the stone floor, and quietly slumbers till roused by the constable with his staff to appear again before the Jury, His Counsel enjoy no such repose. Their thoughts by day and their dreams by night are filled with oppressive ap- prehensions that, through their inability or neglect, he may be con- demned. I am arraigned before you for undue manifestations of zeal and excite- ment. My answer to all such charges shall be brief. When this cause shall have been committed to you, I shall be happy indeed if it shall ap- pear that my only error has been, that I have felt too much, thought too intensely, or acted too faithfully. If my error would thus be criminal, how great would yours be if you should render an unjust verdict ! Only four months have elapsed since an outraged People, distrustful of judicial redress, doomed the prisoner to immediate death. Some of you have confessed that you approved that lawless sentence. All men now rejoice that the prisoner was saved for this solemn trial. But this trial would be as criminal as that precipi- tate sentence, if through any wilful fault or prejudice of yours, it should prove but a mockery of justice. If any prejudice of witnesses, or the imagination of Counsel, or any ill-timed jest shall at any time have di- WILLIAM FREEMAN. O verted your attention, or if any pre-judgment which you may have brought into the Jury Box, or any cowardly fear of popular opinion shall have operated to cause you to deny to the prisoner that dispassionate consid- eration of his case which the laws of God and man exact of you, and if, owing to sijch an error, this wretched man falls from among the living, what will be your crime ? You will have violated the commandment, " Thou shalt not kill." It is not the form or letter of the trial by Jury that authorizes you to send your fellow man to his dread account, but it is the spirit that sanctifies that glorious institution ; and if, through pride, passion, timidity, weakness, or any cause, you deny the prisoner one iota of all the defence to which he is entitled by the law of the land, you yourselves, whatever his guilt may be, will have broken the command- ment, '* Thou shalt do no murder." There is not a corrupt or prejudiced witness, there is ngt a thoughtless or heedless witness, who has testified what was not true in spirit, or what was not wholly true, or who has suppressed any truth, who has not of- fended against the same injunction. Nor is the Court itself above that commandment. If these Judges have been influenced by the excitement which has brought this vast as- semblage here, and under such influence, or under any other influence, have committed voluntary error, and have denied to the prisoner or shall hereafter deny to him the benefit of any fact or any principle of law, then this Court will have to answer for the deep transgression, at that bar at which we all shall meet again. When we appear there, none of us can plead that we were insane and knew not what we did ; and by just so much as our ability and knowledge exceed those of this wretch, whom the world regards as a fiend in human shape, will our guilt exceed his if we be guilty. I plead not for a Murderer. I have no inducement, no motive to do so. I have addressed my fellow citi;zens in many various relations, when rewards of wealth and fame awaited me. I have been cheered on other occasions by manifestations of popular approbation and sympathy ; and where there was no such encouragement, I had at least the gratitude of him whose cause I defended. But I speak now in the hearing of a Peo- ple who have prejudged the prisoner, and condemned me for pleading in his behalf. He is a convict, a pauper, a negro, without intellect, sense, or emotion. My child, with an affectionate smile, disarms my care-worn face of its frown whenever I cross my threshold. The beggar in the street obliges me to give, because he says " God bless you," as I pass. My dog caresses me with fondness if I will but smile on him. My horse recognizes me when I fill his manger. But what reward, what gratitude, what sympathy and affection can I expect here ? There the prisoner sits. Look at him. Look at the assemblage around you. Listen to their ill- >^^-Jy'. ■^- *,V"XW-T. -:T«? *^i.v -.:.-> ARGUMENT WILLIAM H. SEWAKD. DEFENCE OF WILLIAM FREEMAN, TRIAL FOR MURDER, Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from L IVIicrosoft Corooration WILLIAM n. I>A\'1I) WRIGHT. ' Coi\mc\ for Pri.s^iner. CHKISTOPHKR MORGAN. *^ JOHN TAN BUREN. .Hfnrnn/ UtiinnI, ) ,, , „,.^ IJJMAN SHERWOOD, hist. Allormu. s ''" '^' K E P O K T K 11 y.\ ^ H L A T C H F O K I). FOURTH EDITION. AUBURN, N.^. r. DERBY *rotiictory replies to the same question. Warren T. Worden asked him: " Did you go in at the front door ? Yes. Did you go in at the back door ? Yes. Were you in the hall when your hand was cut ? Yes. Was your hand cut at the gate ? Yes. Did you stab Mrs. Wyckoff in the hall ? Yes. Did you stab Mrs. WyckofF at the gate ? Yes. Did you go out at the back door ? Yes. Did you go out at the front door ? Yes.'* Ethan A. Warden asked him, " What made you kill the child ?'* " Don't know any thing about that." At another time he answered, " I don't think about il ; 1 didn't know it was a child." And again, on an- other occasion, "Thought — feel it more;" and to Dr. Bigelow% and other witnesses, who put the question, whether he was not sorry he had killed the child, he replied, " It did look hard — T rather it was bigger." When the ignorance, simplicity, and sincerity of the prisoner are admit- ted, how otherwise than on the ground of insanity, can you explain such inconsistencies as these ? The testimony of Van Arsdale and Helen Holmes, proves that no words could have passed between the prisoner and Van Nest, except these , " What do you want here in the house ?" spoken by Van Nest, before the fatal blow w^as struck. Yet when inquired of by Warren T. Worden what Van Nest said to him when he entered the house, the prisoner said, after being pressed for an answer, that Van Nest said to him, " If you eat my liver, I'll eat yours " ; and he at various times re- peated to the witness the same absurd expression. To the Rev. John M. Austin he made the same statement, that Van Nest said, " If you eat my liver, I'll eat your liver " ; to Ira Curtis the same ; to Ethan A. Warden the same ; to Lansingh Briggs the same ; and the same to al- most every other witness. An expression so absurd under the circum- stances, could never have been made by the victim. How otherwise can It be explained than as the vagary of a mind shattered and crazed ? The prosecution, confounded with this evidence, appealed to Dr. Spen- cer for relief. He, in the plenitude of his learning, says, that he has read of an ancient and barbarous Pebple, who used to feast upon the livers of their enemies, that the prisoner has not imagination enough to have invented such an idea, and that he must have somewhere heard the tradition. But when did this demented wretch, who reads " woman " for "admirable," and "cook" for "Thompson," read Livy or Tytler, and in what classical circle has he learned the customsnof the ancients? Or, what perhaps is more pertinent, who were that ancient and barbarous People, and who was their Historian ? Consider now the prisoner's earnest and well-attested sincerity in be- WILLIAM FREEMAN. 35 lieving that he could read, when either he never had acquired, or else had lost, the power of reading. The Rev. Mr. Austin, visited him in jail, at an early day, asked him whether he could read, and being an- swered that he could, gave him a Testament. In frequent visits after- wards, when the prisoner was asked whether he had read his Testament, he answered, " Yes," and it was not until after the lapse of two months that it was discovered that he was unable to spell a monosyllable. Ira Curtis says : " I asked him if he could read, he said, * Yes,' and commenced reading, that is he pretended to, but he didn't read what was there. He read, ' Ok ! Lord — mercy — Moses' — and other words mixed up in that way. The words were not in the place where he seemed to be reading, and it was no reading at all, and some words he had over I had never heard before. I took the book from him, saying, * You don't read right.' He said, * Yes, I do.' I said, ' William, you can't read.' He said, ' I can.' I gave him a paper, pointed him to the word • admira- ble ' — he pronounced it ' woman.' I pointed to the word ' Thompson ' — he read it * cook.' He knew his letters, and called them accurately, but could not combine them. I asked him to count. He commenced and counted from one up to twenty, hesitated there some time, and finally counted up to twenty-eight, and then jumped to eighty. Then I started him at twenty, and he said * one.' I told him to say ' twenty-one ' ; but he seemed to have difficulty in saying * twenty-one.' He tried to go on. He did count up to twenty regularly, by hesitating ; but never went higher than twenty-eight correctly. I asked him how much two times four was, — he said ' eighty." How much two times three was — he said, ' sixty or sixty-four.' " Many other witnesses on both sides of this cause, Mr. Austin, Mr. Hopkins, Mr. Hotchkiss, Mr. Worden, Mr. Smith, Dr. Van Epps, Dr. Brigham, Dr. McCall, Dr. Coventry, Dr. Willard, Dr. BiGELOw, Dr. Clary and Dr. Spencer, have with varied ingenuity, sought to detect a fraud in this extreme ignorance and simplicity, and have unanimously testified to you that the simpleton sincerely believes he reads accurately, and as honestly thinks he counts above twenty-eight correctly, while in truth he cannot advance beyond that number in count j ing, and cannot read at all. Yet he must, at least, have learned in the Sunday School that he could not read, and the Keepers of the Prison show that he put up his daily manufacture of rings and of skeins of thread, in quantities accurately counted, to the number of several dozea I think you will agree with Doctor Hun, that there is not a sane man twenty-three years of age, brought up in this country, who does not know whether he can read, and who cannot count twenty-nine. Mark his indifference and stupidity as to his situation. Ethan A. Warden asked him, " do you expect to be hung .' * Don't think about it.' Do you like to be in jail ? ' Pretty well.' Is it a good place ? 36 DEFENCE OF * Yes.' Do you sleep well ? • Yes.' Do you think of what" you've done ? ' No.' " William P. Smith asked him in the jail if he knew whether he waa in jail or in the Prison. He hesitated some time, and finally thought he* was in the jail, but wasn't sure. " Do you know what you are confined here for r" " No." Dr. Van Epps asked him what he was put in jail for. " Don't know." Afterwards he seemed to recollect himself and said, •* horse" Dr. Brigham says, " I tried in various ways to ascertain if he knew what he was to be tried for. I tried repeatedly and never could get a distinct answer. It was often • I don't know,' and sometimes ' a horse.* I asked him at one time, what his defence would be. Shall we say that you did not kill ? He answered very quickly, looking up, ' No.' But may we not say so ? ' No, that would be wrong ; I did do it.' Some one asked him when others were there. May we say you are crazy ? * I can't go so far as that.' I asked him if he had employed any body to defend him, and said, Mr. Seward is now here, you had better employ him and tell him what to say. Here is Mr. Seward, ask him. He said in a reading tone, • Governor Seward, I want you to defend me,' repeat- ing the words I had told him to use." When on trial for stealing a horse, six years ago, he had counsel of his own choice, and was treated and tried as a man who understood and knew his rights, as indeed it is proved that he did. Here, his life is at stake. He does not know even the name of a witness for or against him, although his memory recalls the names of those who testified against him on his trial for stealing the horse, and the very eflfect'of their testi- mony. Dr. Brigham says, " I asked him what he could prove in his defence. He replied, ' the jury can prove that I was in prison five years for steal- ing a horse, and didn't steal it.' " When asked if he is not sorry for crimes so atrocious, he answers always, either, "No," or *' Don't know." On the very day when he was to be arraigned, he had no counsel ; and, as Mr. Austin testifies, was made to understand, with difficulty, enough to repeat like a parrot a consent that I should defend him. The Attor- ney General says, the prisoner " knew he was guilty, and that counsel could do nothing for him. If he was as wise and as intelligent as Bacon himself, he could give no instructions to counsel that would help him." Aye, but is he as wise and as intelligent as Bacon ? No, Gentlemen, no man ever heard of a sane murderer in whose bosom the love of life and the fear of death were alike extinguished. The accused sat here in court, and saw Dr. Bigelow on the stand, swearing away his life, upon confessions already taken. Dr. Bigelow WILLIAM FREEMAN. 3T followed him from the court to his cell, and there the prisoner, with child-like meekness, sat down on his bench and confessed further for hours, all the while holding the lamp by whose light Dr. Bigexow re- corded the testimony, obtained for the purpose of sealing his fale beyond a possible deliverance. He was asked about the Judges here, was ignorant where they sat, and could only remember that there was a good looking man on the ele- vated stage, which he was told was the bench. He was asked what they say in court, and he says " They talk, but I hear nothing"; what or whom they are talking about, and he says " Don't know" ; whom he ha« seen here, and he recalls not his Judges, the Jury, the Witnesses or the Counsel, but only the man who gave him tobacco. From his answers to Mr. Hopkins, Mr. Austin, Mr. Smith, and others, as well as from the more reliable testimony of his mother, of his brother- in-law, of Mr. Lynch, Mr. Warden, Mr. Hotchkiss, and others, we learn that in his childhood, and in State Prison, he attended Sunday School and Divine Worship. Yet we find him at the age of twenty-three, after repeated religious instructions, having no other idea of a Supreme Being and of a future state than that Heaven was a place above, and God was above, but that God was no more than a man or an animal. And when asked by Mr. Hopkins what he knew about Jesus Christ, he an- swered that he once came to Sunday School in the State Prison. What did he do there ? " Don't know." Did he take a class there ? *' Don't know." Did he preach .' Don't know." Did he talk ? Don't know." The prisoner gave the same answers to the Rev. Mr. Austin, to Mr. Hopkins, his Sunday School teacher, and to Dr. Brigham. Mr. Horace Hotchkiss says : " I asked him in the jail, If you shall be convicted and executed, what will become of you ? He answered, * Go to Heaven.' I asked him why, and he replied, * Because I am good.'" Dr. Brigham inquired: "Do you know any thing of Jesus Christ ?" " I saw him once." " Did you kill him at Van Nest's ?" The poor fool (as if laboring with some confused and inexplicable idea) said, "Dont know." I think, Gentlemen, that you will agree with Dr. Hun, Dr. Brigham, and the other intelligent witnesses, who say that, in their opinion, there is no sane man of the age of twenty-three, who has been brought up in church-going families, and been sent to Sunday School, whose religious sentiments would, under such circumstances, be so con- fused and so absurd as these. To the Rev. Mr. Austin, he said after his arrest, " li they will let me go this time, I will try and do better." And well did that witness re- maik, that such a statement evinced a want of all rational appreciation of the nature and enormity of his acts, for no man twenty-three years old, possessing a sound mind, and guilty of four-fold murders, could sup- 88 DEFENCE OF pose that he would be allowed to escape all punishment by simply pro- mising, like a petulant child, that he would " do better." Mark his insensibility to corporeal pain and suffering. In the conflict with Mrs. Wykoff, he received a blow which divided a sinew in his wrist, and penetrated to the bone. The physicians found him in the jail with this wound, his legs chained, and heavy irons depending une- qually from his knees. Yet he manifested absolute insensibility. Insane men are generally very insensible to pain. The reason is, that the ner- vous system is diseased, and the senses do not convey to the mind ac- curate ideas of injuries sustained. Nevertheless, this passes for nothing with Dr. Spencer, because there was an ancient sect of philosophers who triumphed, or affected to triumph, over the weakness of our common na- ture, and because there are modern heroes who die without a groan on the field of battle. But in what school of philosophy, or in what army, or in what battle-ship was this idiot trained, that he has become insen- sible ta pain, and reckless of death ? I proposed, Gentlemen, at the close of the testimony, that you should examine the prisoner for yourselves. I regret that the offer was rejected. You can obtain only very imperfect knowledge from testimony in which the answers of the prisoner are given with the freedom and volubility of the interrogators. We often judge more justly from the tone, man- ner, and spirit of those with whom we converse, than from the language they use. All the witnesses agree that the prisoner's tone and modula- tion are slow, indistinct, and monotonous. His utterance, in fact, is that oi an idiot, but on paper it is as distinct as that of Cicero. I have thus shown you. Gentlemen, the difficulties which attend you in this investigation, the law concerning insanity, the nature and character- istics of that disease, the great change which the prisoner has undergone, and some of those marked extravagances which denote lunacy. More conclusive evidence yet remains ; and first, the delusion by which the prisoner was overpowered, and under whose fearful spell his crimes were committed. Delusion does not always attend insanity, but when found, it is the most unequivocal of all proofs. I have already observed that melancholy is the first stage of madness, and long furnished the name for insanity. In the case of Hatfield, who fired at the King in Drury-Lane Theatre, Lord Erskine, his Counsel, demonstrated that insanity did not consist in the absence of any of the intellectual faculties, but in delusion ; and that an offender was irresponsible, if his criminal acts were the immediate, unqualified offspring of such delusion. Erskine there defined a delusion to consist in deductions from the immovable assumption of matters as re- alities, either without any foundation whatever, or so distorted and dis- figured by fancy as to be nearly the same thing as their creation. WILLIAM FREEMAN. 39 The learned men here have given us many illustrations of such delu- sions; as that of the man who believes that his legs are of glass, and therefore refuses to move, for fear they will break ; of the man who fancies himself the King of the French ; or of him who conjfides to you the precious secret, that he is Emperor of the world. These are palpa- ble delusions, but there are others equally, or even more fatal in their effects, which have their foundation in some original fact, and are thus described by Dr. Ray, at page 210 of his work : *' In another class of cases, the exciting cause of homicidal insanity is of a moral nature, operating upon some peculiarphysical pre-disposition, and sometimes followed by more or less physical disturbance. Instead of being urged by a sudden imperious impulse to kill, the subjects of this form of the affection, after suffering for a certain period much gloom of mind and depression of spirits, feel as if bound by a sense of neces- sity to destroy life, and proceed to the fulfilment of their destiny, with the utmost calmness and deliberation. So reluctant have courts and ju- ries usually been to receive the plea of insanity in defence of crime, de- liberately planned and executed by a mind in which no derangement of intellect has ever been perceived, that it is of the greatest importance that the nature of these cases should not be misunderstood." Our learned witnesses have given us various definitions of a delusion. Dr. Hun's is perhaps as clear and accurate as any ; " It is a cherished opinion opposed by the sense and judgment of a.11 mankind." In simple speech, it is what is called the predominance of one idea, by which rea- son is subverted. I shall now show you such a predominance of one idea, as will elucidate the progress of this maniac, from the first disturb- ance of his mind, to the dreadful catastrophe on the shore of the Owasco lake. That delusion is a star to guide your judgments to an infallible conclusion, that the prisoner is insane. *rf you mistake its course, and consign him to a scaffold, it will rest over his grave, indicating him as a martyr, and you as erring or unjust judges. In April, 1840, Mrs. Godfrey, who resides in the town of Sennett, on the middle road, four miles north-east of Auburn, lost a horse. One Jack Furman, a hardened offender, stole the horse. For some purpose, not now known, he put him into the care of the prisoner, who was seen with him. Both Furman and Freeman were arrested. The former was the real thief and Freeman constructively guilty. Freeman was arrested by Vanderheyden, taken into an upper chamber, and there declared his innocence of the crime. He was nevertheless committed to jail. All the police, and the most prejudiced of the witnesses for the people, have tes- tified their entire conviction that the prisoner was innocent. Furman was selected by favor as a witness for the people. Freeman, while in jail, comprehending his danger, and conscious of his innocence, dwelt 46 DEFENCE OF upon the injustice, until, having no other hope, he broke prison and es- caped. Being re-taken, he assigned as the reason for his flight, that Jack' Furman stole the horse, and was going to swear him into the State Prison. The result was as he apprehended. He was convicted by the perjury of Furman, and sentenced to the State Prison for five years. This was the first act in the awful tragedy, of which he is the hero. Let Judges and Jurors take warning from its fatal consequences. How deeply this in- justice sank into his mind, may be seen from the testimony of Aretas A. Sabin, the keeper, who said to him on the day he entered the Prison^ " I am sorry to see you come here so young." The prisoner wepl. Well would it have been, if this, the last occasion on which the prisoner yielded to that infirmity, had, ominous as it was of such fatal mischief, been understood and heeded. A year passed away ; and he is found in the Prison, neglecting his al- lotted labor, sullen, and morose. James E. Tyler, the keeper, says : " I had talked to him, and found it did no good. I called him up t© punish him — told him I was going to punish him for not doing more work, and should do so repeatedly until he should do more work. When I talked with him about doing more work, he gave as an excuse, * that he was there wrongfully, and ought not to work.'" The excuse aggravated the severity of his castigation. Such was Penitentiary cure for insipient insanity. Van Kuren, a foreman in one of the shops at the Prison, represents the prisoner as sullen, intractable, and insolent. He caused him to be punished, although he then discovered, on all occasions, that idiotic laugh, without cause or motive, which marks the maniac. Siij\s E. Baker remarked the same idiotic laugh when the prisoner was at his work, in his cell, and in the Chapel. William P. Smith, a foreman in the Prison, remarked his peculiari- ties, but unfortunately was not then led to their true cause. Theron R. Green, as has been already seen, discovered the same pe- culiarities, divined their cause, held him irresponsible, and gave an un- heeded warning against his enlargement. The discipline of the Prison forbids conversation between convict and convict, and between keepers and prisoners. The iron that had entered the prisoner*s soul was necessarily concealed, but Depuy, and Warden, and Green, who thought him changed then, as well as Smith, Van Ku- ren, Baker, and Tyler, who regarded him only as ignorant and obsti- nate, give conclusive evidence that the ruin of his mind was betrayed, in a visible change of his appearance, conduct and character. The time at length arrived, when the secret could no longer be sup- pressed. The new Chaplain, the Rev. Alonzo Wood, was in the Agent's office when the prisoner was discharged. Two dollars, the usual gratu- WILLIAM FilUfiMAN. 41 ity, was offered liim, and he was asked to sign a receipt. " laintgoing to settle so." For five years, until it became the ruling thought of his life, the idea had been impressed upon his mind, that he had been impri- soned wrongfully, and would, therefore, be entitled to payment, on his liberation. This idea was opposed " by the judgment and sense of aU mankind." The court that convicted him, pronounced him guilty, and spoke the sense and judgment of mankind. But still he remained uncon- vinced. The keepers who flogged him, pronounced his claim unjust and unfounded, and they were exponents of the *' sense and judgment of all mankind." But imprisonment, bonds and stripes, could not remove the one inflexible idea. The Agent, the Keepers, the Clerk, the spectators, and even the Reverend Chaplain, laughed at the simplicity and absurdity of the claim of the discharged convict, when he said, " I've worked Jive years for the State, and aint going to settle so." Alas ! little did tht-y know that they were deriding the delusion of a maniac. Had they been wise, they would have known that " So foul a sky clears not without a storm." The peals of their laughter were the warning voice of Nature, for the safety of the family of Van Nest. Thus closes the second act of the sad drama. The maniac reaches his home, sinks sullenly to his seat, and hour af- ter hour, relates to John Depuy the story of his wrongful imprisonment, and of the cruel and inhuman treatment which he had suffered, enquires for the persons who had caused him to be unjustly convicted, learns their names, and goes about drooping, melancholy and sad, dwelling continu- ally upon his wrongs, and studying intensely in his bewildered mind how to obtain redress. Many passed him, marking his altered countenance and carriage, without stopping to enquire the cause. Doctor Hermance alone sought an explanation : " I met him about the first of December last ; I thought his manner very singular and strange. I enquired the cause. He told me that he had been in the Prison for five years, and that he wasn't guilty, and that they would'nt pay him. I met him after- wards in the street, again remarked his peculiarities and enquired the cause. He answered as before, that he had been in State Prison five years wrongfully, and they wouldn't pay him." The one idea disturbs him in his dreams and forces him from his bed ; he complains that he can make no gain and can't live so : he dances to his own wild music, and encounters visionary combatants. Time passes on until February. He visits Mrs. Godfrey at her house in Sennett. He enters the house, deaf, and stands mute. " I gave him a chair," says Mrs. Godfrey, '* he sat down. I asked which way he was travelling. He wanted to know if that was the place where a wo- 42 DEFENCE OF man had a horse stole, five years before. I told him it was. He said he had been to Prison for stealing the horse, and didn't steal it neither. I told him I knew nothing about that, whether it was he, or not. He said he'd been to Prison for stealing a horse, and didn't steal it, and he wanted a settlement. Johnson, who was there, asked him if he should know the horse if he should see it. ' No.' ' Do you want the horse .'* * No. Are you the man who took me up ? Where is the man who kept the tavern across the way and helped catch me ?' * He is gone.* I asked him if he was hungry. He said, he didn't know but he was. I gave him some cakes, and he sat and ate them." Here were exhibited at once the wildness of the maniac, and the imbe- cility of the demented man. His delusion was opposed to " the sense and judgment of all mankind." Mrs. Godfrey and Mr. Johnson exposed its fallacy. But still the one idea remained, unconquered and uncon- querable. The maniac who came to demand pay for five years unjust imprisonment, was appeased with a morsel of cake. He was next seen at Mr. Seward's ofiice, a week or ten days before the murder. He asked if that was a 'Squire's office, and said he wanted a warrant. Mr. Parsons, the clerk, says : " I didn't understand, until he had asked once or twice. I asked him what he wanted a warrant for. He said, for the man who had been getting him into Prison, and he want- ed to get damages. I told him the Justices' offices were up street, and he went away." Next we find him at the office of Lyman Paine, Esq., Justice, on the Saturday preceding the death of Van Nest. Mr. Paine says : •* He open- ed the door, came in a few feet, and stood nearly a minute with his head down, so. He looked up and said : 'Sir, I want a warrant.' * What for.' He stood a little time, and then said again : ' Sir, I want a war- rant.' ' What do you want a warrant for ?' He stood a minute, started and came up close to me, and spoke very loud : 'Sir, I want a warrant. I am very deaf and can't hear very well.' I asked him in a louder voice, what he wanted a warrant for, ' For a man who put me to State Pris- on.' ' What is your name r ' William Freeman ; and I want a war- rant for the man who put me to Prison.' I said : ' If you've been to Prison, you have undoubtedly been tried for some offence.' ' I have ; it was for stealing a horse, but I didn't steal it. Pve been there five years.' ' I asked who he wanted a warrant for. He told some name — I think it was Mr. Doty." [You will remember, gentlemen, that Mr. Doty, Mr. Hail, and Mrs. Godfrey, all of Sennett, and Jack Furman, of this town, were the witnesses against him.] " I told him if he wanted a warrant, it must be for perjury — he must give me the facts and I would j*ee. He stood two or three minutes and then said : '-S/r, I want a war- rant.* I asked further information. He stood a little while longer, took WILLIAM FREEMAN. 43 out a quarter of a dollar, threw it on the table, and said : *Sir, I demand a warrant' — appeared in a passion, and soon after went out. He return- ed in the afternoon, said he would have a warrant, and gave the names of Mr. Doty and Mrs. Godfrey." Mr. Paine saw, in all this, evidence of stupidity, ignorance, and mal- ice, only, but not of Insanity. But, Gentlemen, if he could have looked back to the origin of the prisoner's infatuation, and forward to the dread- ful catastrophe on the shore of the Owasco Lake, as we now see it, who can doubt that he would then have pronounced the prisoner a maniac, and have granted, not the warrant he asked, but an order for his com- mitment to the County Jail, or to the Lunatic Asylum } Denied the process, to which he thought himself entitled, he proceed- ed a day or two later to the office of James H. Bostwick, Esq., another Justice. " I saw him," says this witness, " a day or two before the mur- der. He came, and said he wanted a warrant. I asked for whom. He replied ; ^for those that got me to Prison.. I was sent wrongfallij. /, want pay.' I asked him who the persons were. He mentioned a wid- ow and two men. He mentioned Mrs. Godfrey as the widow woman Jack Furman and David W. Simpson as the two men." (Simpson was the constable by whom he was arrested the second time for stealing the horse.) Mr. Bostwick declined issuing the warrant, and informed him there was no remedy, and again expounded to him the " sense and judgment of all mankind," in opposition to his delusion. According to the testimony of John Depuy, the prisoner was agitated by alternate hope and despair in regard to his redress. At one time he told Depuy, that he'd got it all fixed, and wanted him to go down to the Justice's office and see that he was paid right. At another, he told De- puy that the •• 'Squires wouldn't do.nothing about it; that he could get no warrant, nor pay, and he couldn't live so." Then it was that the one idea completely overthrew what remained of mind, conscience and reason. If you believe Hersey, Freeman, about a week before the murder, showed him several butcher knives; told him he meant to kill Depuy, his brother-in-law, for trivial reasons, which he assigned, and said that he had found the folks that put him in Prison, and meant to kill them. Hersey says : " I asked him who they were. He said, they were Mr. Van Nest, and said no more about them. He didn't say where they lived, and nothing about any other man, woman, or widow." This witness admits that he suppressed this fact on the preliminary examination. If you reject this testimony, then there is no evidence that he ever had any forethought of slaying Van Nest. If you receive it, it proves the complete subversion of his understanding ; for John G. Van Nest, and all the persons slain, resided not in Sennett, nor in Auburn, but four 44 DEFENCE OP miles south of the latter place, and eight miles from the house of Mrs. Godfrey. The prisoner, within a week before the crime, named to the' magistrates every person who was concerned in his previous conviction. We have shown that neither John G. Van Nest, nor any of his family or kindred, nor any person connected with him, was, or could have been, a party, a magistrate, a witness, a constable, a sheriff, a grand juror, attor- ney, petit juror, or judge in that prosecution, or ever knew or heard of the prosecution, or ever heard or knew that any such larceny had been com- mitted, or that such a being as the prisoner existed. Mrs. Godfrey and the witnesses on the former occasion, became known to the remaining family and relatives of Van Nest, here in court, for the first time, during these trials. ^ You will remember that Erskine's test of a delusion that takes away , responsibility is — that the criminal act must be the immediate, unqualijied offspring of the delusion. I shall now prooceed to shew, that such is the fact in the present case. The first witness to whom the prisoner spoke concerning the deeds which he had committed was George B. Parker. This was at Phenix, Oswego county, immediately after his arrest, within twenty hours after the perpetration of the crime. *' I pushed very hard for the reasons," says the witness ; " what he had against Van Nest. * I suppose you know I've been in State Prison Jive years,' he replied. ' I was put- there inno- cently I've been whipped and knocked and abused, and made deaf, and there wont any body pay me for it.' " Vanderheyden arrived soon afterwards. He says : *' I called the the prisoner aside, and said to him ; ' Now we're alone, and you may as well tell me how you came to commit this.' He says to me : ' You know there is no law for me.' I asked him what he meant by that * no law.' He said, 'they ought to pay me."* Ethan A. Warden followed him into his cell in the jail, and asked him, •' When you started from home what did you go up there for ? — 'I must go.' Why must you go .' '/ must begin my work.' What made you do it ? ' They brought me up so.' Who brought you up so ? * The State.' They didn't tell you to kill, did they ? 'Don't know — won't pay me.' Did you know these folks before you went to Prison .' * No.' — Was you there a few days before to get work .' « Yes.* Did they say anything to offend you or make you angry? 'No.' What made you kill them ; what did you do it for ? ' I must begiti my work.' Didn't you expect to be killed .' * Didn't know but I should.' If you expected • to be killed what made you go ; did you go to get money .' ' No.' Did you expect to get money ? * No.' Did you intend to get the horse ^ — ' No.' How did you come to take him .' ' Broke my things, (meaning knives) — hand was cut — came into my mind — take the horse — go — and — WILLIAM FREEMAN. 45 get so — could do mere work.* If you had not broke your things, what would you have done ? * Kept to work.' Did you mean to keep right on ? ' / meant to keep to work.' Would you have killed me if you had met me ? * Spose I should.* What made you begin at that house ? — ' Stopped two or three jjlaces, thought it wasn't far out enough to begin.* Are you not sorry you killed so many ? * Don't think any thing about it.* " The prisoner has invariably given similar answers to every person who has asked him the motive for his crime. Warren T. Worden, Esq., says, '* I asked him why he took the horse ? He answered, *My hand ivas hurt, and I couldn't Icill any more.* I asked him why he killed them ? and he answered, 'Why did they send me to State Prison when I wasn't guilty.' And in making this reply he trembled, and I thought he was going to weep. I told him they would hang him now ; he showed no feeling." Dr. FosGATE says that Dr. Hurd asked him what he killed those folks for ? He replied, " They put me in Prison." John R. Hopkins says, " I turned his attention to the idea of pay— if he had got his pay for his time in prison ? That question raised him up and he looked comparatively intelligent, and brightened up his whole countenance. He said * No.' Who ought to pay you ? *All of them.* Ought I .' He looked up with a flash of intelligence, said nothing, but looked intently at me, and the answer was conveyed by the look, I ask- ed if this man, (pointing to Hotchkiss) ought to pay him .' He looked at him, as at me, and said, ' Do what's right,' or * we'll do what's right.' We then spoke about his trial, and he was stupid and dull again." The Rev. J. M. Austin, says : " I put questions to find his motive for killing that family. His answers were very broken and incoherent, but invariably referred to his being in prison innocently. Had the per- sons you killed, anything to do with putting you into prison .' * No.' Did you know their names ? ' No.' Why did you kill that particular family ? No direct answer but something about being put in prison wrongfully. Do you think it right to kill people who had no hand in putting you in prison ? He gave an incoherent reply. Igathered, ' shall do something to get my pay.' How much pay ought you to have ? * Don't know.' Was it right to kill those innocent persons for what had been done by others ? • They put me in prison.' Who did — The Van Nest family ? * No.' Why then did you kill them ? Did you think it right to kill that innocent child ? I understood from his gestures in reply, that he was in a labyrinth, from which he was incapable of extricating himself. How did you happen to go that particular night ? • The time had come.' Why did you enter that particular house ? * I went along out and thought I might begin there* I asked if he ever called on Mrs. 46 DEFENCE OF Godfrey. He said, * I went to Mrs. Godfrey to get pay, and she wouldn't pay me. I went to Esquires Bostwick and Paine and they wouldn't dcr nothing about it" Mr. Ira Curtis, says : " I asked him how he came up there. ' I went up south a piece.' How far ? ' Stopped at the house beyond there.' What for ? ' To get a drink of water.' What did you go into Van Nest's house for ? ' Don't know.' Did you go in to murder or kill them? 'Don't know.' Was it for money ? ' Didn't know as they had any.' Did you kill the child ? ' They said I killed one, but I didn't. What did you kill them for ? ' You know I had my work to do,' Had you anything against these people ? 'Don't know.' Why didn't you com- mence at the other place .' ' Thought it wasn't time yet.' He said they wouldn't pay him. He had been imprisoned and they wouldn't pay him.' " Dr. Hermance says : *' Doctor Pitney asked him how he happened to go up." ♦ It rained and I thought it would be a good time ' Why did you go to Van Nest's, and not to some other family ,' No answer. Why didn't you come and kill me .' He smiled but gave no answer. Don't you think you ought to be hung for killing Van Nest and his fam- ily ? The same question was repeated authoritatively, and he replied : • Sent to prison for nothing — ought I to be hung?' Suppose you had found some other person, would you have killed any other as well as Van Nest ? ' Yes.' I asked why did you kill Van Nest and his family ? ' For that horse.' What do you mean by killing 'for that horse ?' ' They sent me to prison and they won't pay me.' Had Van Nest anything to do with sending you to prison ? * No.' " Dr. Briggs says : '* When I repeated the question, why did you kill Van Nest ? he replied, ' Why was I put in prison five years T " William P. Smith, asked : " Why did you kill those people ? * I'va been to prison wrongfully five years. They wouldn't pay me Who .' * The people, so I thought I'd kill somebody.' Did you mean to kill one, more than another? 'No' Why did you go so far out of town? * Stopped at one place this side; wouldn't go in — couldn't see to fight, 'twas dark, looked up street, saw a light in next house, thought I'd go there, could see to fight.' Don't you know you've done wrong ? * No.^ Don't you think 'twas wrong to kill the child ? After some hesitation, he said, ' Well — that looks kind o'h-a-r-d.' Why did you think it was right ? ' I've been in prison five years for stealing a horse, and I didn't do it; and the people, wont pay me — made up my mind, ought to kill somebody.' Are you not sorry ? ' No.' How much pay do you want ? ' Don't know — good deal.' If I count you out a hundred dollars, would that be enough ? He thought it wouldn't. How much would be right ? • Don't know.' He brightened up, and finally sziid he thought • about a Hiousand dollars uoidd be about right.' " WILLIAM FREEMAN. 47 It would be tedious to gather all the evidence of similar import. Let it suffice, that the witnesses who have conversed with the prisoner, as well those for the people as those for him, concur fully in the same state- ment of facts, as to his reasons and motives for the murders. We have thus not merely established the existence of an insane delusion, but have traced directly to that overpowering delusion, the crimes which the pri- soner has committed. How powerful that delusion must have been, may be inferred from the fact that the prisoner, when disabled, desisted from his work, and made his retreat to his friends in Oswego county, not to escape from punishment for the murders ; but, as he told Mr. E. A. Warden, to wait till his wounded hand should be restored, that he might resume his dreadful butchery; and, as he told Dr. Bigelow, because he couldn't " handle his hand." The intenseness of this delusion exceeds that under which Hatfield assailed the King ; that which compelled Henriettk Corkier to dissever the head of the child entrusted to her care ; and that of Rabello, the Portuguese, who cut to pieces with his axe, the child who trod upon his fe§t. The next feature in the cause, which will claim your attention. Gen- tlemen of the Jury, is the manner and circumstances or the act it- self. In Ray's Medical Jurisprudence, at page 224, are given several tests by which to distinguish between the homicidal Maniac and the Murder- er. We shall best consider the present case by comparing it with those tests : I. " There is the irresistible motiveless impulse to destroy life." Never was homicide more motiveless, or the impulse more completely irresisti- ble, than in the present case, as we have learned from the testimony al- ready cited. II. " In nearly all cases the criminal act has been preceded, either by some well marked disturbance of the health, or by an irritable, gloomy, dejected, or melancholy state ; in short, by many of the symptoms of the incubation of mania." How truly does this language describe the con- ' dilion of the prisoner during the brief period of his enlargement ! III. " The impulse to destroy is powerfully excited by the sight of murderous weapons — by favorable opportunities of accomplishing the act — by contradiction, disgust, or some other equally trivial and even im- aginary circumstance." While we learn from Hersey's testimony, that the prisoner kept a store of knives fit for such a deed, we find in the denial of his demands for settlement, for pay, and for process, by Mrs. Godfrey, and the ma- 5I strates, the contradiction and causes of disgust here described. 48 DEFENCE OP IV. *^ The victims of the homicidal monomaniac are either entirely un- known or indifferent to him, or they are amongst his most loved and cher- ished objects." Freeman passed by his supposed oppressors and persecutors, and fell upon a family absolutely indifferent, and almost unknown to him, while he reserved the final stroke for his nearest and best friend, and brother- in-law. V. "The monomaniac sometimes diligently conceals and sometimes avows his purpose, and forms schemes for putting it into execution, tes- tifying no sentiment of grief." The prisoner concealed his purpose from all but Hersey. He pur- chased the knife which he used, in open day, at a blacksmith's shop, in the presence of persons to whom he was well known, and ground it to its double edge before unsuspecting witnesses, as coolly and delibe- rately as if it were to be employed in the shambles. He applied at another black-smith's shop where he was equally well known, to have another instrument made. He shaped the pattern in a carpenter's shop, carried it to the smith, disagreed about the price, and left the pattern, upon the forge, in open sight, never thinking to reclaim it, and it lay there until it was taken by the smith before the coroner's inquest , as an evidence of his design. So strange was his conduct, and so mys- terious the form of the knife which he required, that Morris, the smith, suspected him, and told him that he was going to kill somebody ; to which he answered with the nonchalance of the butcher, " that's nothing to you if you get your pay for the knife" On the two days immediately preceding the murder, he is found sharpening and adjusting his knives at a turner's shop, next door to his own dwelling, in the presence of per- sons to whom he is well known, manifesting no apprehension, and af- fecting no concealment. The trivial concerns of his finance and occupation are as carefully attended to, as if the murder he was contemplating had been an ordinary and lawful transaction. Hyatt demands three shillings for the knife. The prisoner cheapens until the price is reduced to eighteen pence, with the further advantages that it should be sharpened, and fitted to a han- dle. Hyatt demands six pence for putting a rivet into his knife. He compromises, and agrees to divide the labor and pay half the price. He deliberately takes out his wallet and lays down three cents for Simp- son the turner, for the use of the grindstone. On the very day of the murder, he begs some grease at the Soap Factory to soften his shoes, and tells Aaron Demun that he is going into the country to live in peace. At four o'clock in the afternoon he buys soap at the merchant's for Ma- rt Ann Newark, the poor woman at whose house he lived. He then goes cautiously to his room, takes the knives from the place of their WILLIAM FREEMAN. 49 concealment under his bed, throws them out of the window, to avoid ex- posure to her observation, and when the night has come, and the bells are ringing for church, and all is ready, he stops to ask the woman wheth- er there is any chore to be done. She tells him, none, but to fill the tub with snow. He does it, as carefully as if there were no commotion in liis mind, and then sallies forth, takes up his instruments, and proceeds on his errand of death. He reconnoiters the house on the north of Van Nest's, Van Nest's house, and Brooks' house on the south, and finally decides upon the middle one as the place of assault. It does not affect his purpose that he meets Mr. Cox and Mr. Patten, under a broad bright moonlight. He waits his opportunity, until Williamson, the visitor, has departed, and Van Arsdale, the laboring man, has retired to rest. With an energy and boldness that no sane man, with such a purpose, could possess, he mortally stabs four persons, and dangerously wounds a fifth, in the incredibly shorP- space of five minutes. Disabled, and therefore desisting from further destruction, he enters the stable, takes the first horse he finds, mounts him without a saddle, and guiding him by a hal- ter, dashes towards the town. He overtakes and passes Williamson, the visitor, within the distance of three-fourths of a mile from the house which he had left in supposed security. Pressing on, the jaded beast, worn out with age, stumbles and brings him to the ground. He plunges his knife into the breast of the horse, abandons him, scours forward through the town, across the bridge and on the middle road to Burring- ton's ; there seizes another horse, mounts him, and urges forward, until he arrives among his relations, the Depuys, at Schroeppel, thirty miles distant. They, 'suspecting him to have stolen the horse, refuse to enter- tain him. He proceeds to the adjoining village, rests from his flight, offers the horse for sale, and when his title to the horse is questioned, announces his true name and residence, and refers to the Depuys, who had just cast him off, forj)roof of his good character and conduct. When arrested and charged with the murder, he denies the act. Now the SIXTH test given by Ray is, that " while most maniacs having gratified their propensity to kill, voluntarily confess the act,, and quietly give themselves up to the proper authorities, a very few only, and those to an intelligent observer show the strongest indications of insanity, fly, and persist in denying the act." Vn. " Murder is never criminally committed without some motive ad- equate to the purpose in the mind that is actuated by it, while the insane man commits the crime without any motive whatever, strictly deserving the name." VHI. " The criminal never sheds more blood than is necessary for he attainment of his object. The monomaniac often sacrifices all within his reach, to the cravings of his murderous propensity." ft0 DEFENCE OF IX. The criminal either denies or confesses his guilt ; if the latter, he sues for mercy, or glories in his crimes. On the contrary, the maniac ' after gratifying his bloody desires, testifies neither remorse, repentance, nor satisfaction." X. " The criminal has accomplices, the maniac has none.** XI. " The murderer never conceives a design to murder without pro- jecting a plan for concealing his victim, effecting his escape, and baffling pursuit. The maniac prepares the means of committing the crime with calmness and deliberation, but never dreams of the necessity of conceal- ing it when done, or of escape, until his victim lies at his feet." Dr. BiGELOw and others state that the prisoner told them, as obviously was the case, that he sought no plunder, that he thought not of escape or flight, until his things were broken, and his hand was cut, so that he could not continue his work. He seized the nearest and the most worth- less horse in the stable, leaving,two fleet animals remaining in their stalls. He thought only of taking Burrington's horse, when the first failed : all he cared for was to get out of the county, there to rest, until his hand was cured, so that he could come back and do more work. He rested from flight within thirty miles from the scene of his crimes, and in sell- ing his horse, was depriving himself of the only means of making his escape successful. When the person of Van Nest was examined, his watch, pocket-book, money, and trinkets were found all undisturbed. Not an article in the house had been removed, and when the prisoner was searched upon his arrest, there was found in his pockets nothing but one copper coin, the one hundredth part of a dollar. Without further detail, the parallel between the prisoner and the tests of madness established by Medical Jurisprudence, is complete. It remains. Gentlemen, to conclude the demonstration of the prisoner's insanity, by referring to the testimony of the witnesses who have given their opinions on that question. Cornelius Van Arsdale and Helen Holmes, the survivors of the dreadful scene at Van Nest's house, did not think the prisoner insane. The latter had only seen him for a moment, during the previous week, when he called there and asked for work. — The former had never seen him before that fatal night. Both saw him there, only for a moment, and under circumstances exhibiting him as a ruthless murderer. Williamson thinks he was not insane, but he saw the prisoner only when he swept past him, fleeing from his crime. James Amos, Alonzo Taylor, George Burrington, and George B. Parker, say they read no indications of insanity in his conduct when arrested ; but neither of them ever saw him before, or has seen him since. BoBERT Simpson, the turner, George W. Hyatt, and Joseph Morris, the blacksmiths, did not suspect him to be insane, when he purchased WILLIAM FREEMAN. 51 and sharpened his knives. Neither of them ever knew him before or has known him since. Nathaniel Lynch, though he furnishes abundant evidence of the prisoner's insanity, is himself unconvinced. Aaron Demun, a colored man, does not think him insane, but stands alone, of all who knew him in his youth. Israel G. Wood and Stephen S. Austin' do not think him insane. They were his jailers six years ago, but they have not examined him since his arrest. Vanderheyden and Monroe think him sane, but each testifies under feelings which disqualify him for impartiality. Jonas Brown thinks him not insane, but never saw him, except when he was buying a pound of soap at his store. John P. Hujlbert, and Benjamin F. Hall, had brief conversations with him in the jail, after his arrest, but made no examination concern- ing his delusion. Lewis Markham and Daniel Andrus think him not insane, but they have made no examination of the subject ; while both give evidence that he was once as- bright, active, and cheerful, as he is now stupid, sense- less, and imbecile. Benj. Vankeuren, Aretas a. Sarin, Silas E. Baker and, James E. Tyler, all keepers in the State Prison, and Alonzo Wood, the Chap- lain, did not suspect him of insanity in the State Prison. Their conduct towards him while there, proves their sincerity; but his history under their treatment will enable you to correct their erroneous judgments. It was their business, not to detect and cure insanity, but to prescribe his daily task, and to compel him by stripes to perform it in silence. Michael S. Myers, the former District Attorney, who prosecuted the prisoner lor stealing the horse, looks at him now, and can see no change in his personal appearance ; but he has never thought the subject wor- thy of an examination, and has not in six years spoken with, or thought of the accused. Lyman Paine and James H. Bostwick, to whom he applied for pro- cess, continue now as well convinced of the prisoner's sanity, as they were when he applied to them for warrants, which it was absurd for him to ask. Neither of them has examined him since his arrest, or stopped to compare his conduct in the murder with his application for a warranty or with the strange delusion which brought him before them. Such and so feeble is the testimony as to the prisoner's sanity, given by others than the medical witnesses. Nor is the testimony of the medi- cal witnesses on the part of the People entitled to more respect. Dr. GiLMORE pronounces a confident opinion that the prisoner is sane ; but the witness is without experience, or any considerable learning on 59 DEFENCE OF that subject, and his opinion is grounded upon the fact, that the accused had intellect enough to prepare for his crime, and sense enough to make his escape, in the manner so often described. I read to the Doctor the accounts of several cases in Bedlam, and without exception be pronounced the sufferers, sane criminals. Dr. Hyde visited the prisoner twice in his cell, perhaps thirty minutes each time, and as the result of those visits, says he was rather of the opinion that he was sane. Dr. Hyde expressly disavows any learning or experience on the subject of insanity, and does not give the details of his examination. Dr. David Dimon visited the prisoner several times in jail, but could not discover anything that he could call insanity. He thinks there can he no insane delusion in this case, because he thinks that an insane de- lusion is the thorough conviction of the reality of a thing, which is op- posed by the evidence of the sufferer's senses. The Doctor claims nei- ther study nor experience ; pronounces the prisoner to be of a grade of intellect rather small for a negro ; thinks he has not as much intellect as a child of fourteen years of age, and in regard to knowledge, would com- pare him with a child two or three years old, who knows his A. B. C. but cannot count twenty- eight. Those who seek the extreme vengeance of the law, will, if successful, need all the consolation to be derived from the sanity of the accused, if, at the age of twenty-three, he be thus im- becile in mind and barren in knowledge. Dr. Jedediah Darrow has read nothing on the subject of insanity for forty years, and has never had any experience. He declares that his conclusion is not to be regarded as a professional opinion. He talked with the prisoner once in jail, to ascertain his sanity and thought it im- portant to avoid all allusion to the crimes he had committed, their motives causes, and circumstances. He now thinks that it would have been wise, where monomania was suspected, to examine into the alleged delusion. He contents himself with saying, he did not discover insanity. Dr. Joseph L. Clary visited the prisoner in jail : cannot give a decided opinion ; his prevaf/mg impression is, that the prisoner is not insane, but he has not had opportunities enough to form a correct opinion. He has never seen a case of Dementia, and knows it only from definitions in books, which he has never tested. Dr. BiGELow, Physician to the Prison, discovered nothing in his ex- aminations which led him to suspect insanity. The Doctor has a salary of Five Hundred Dollars per annum ; his chief labor in regard to insanity is to detect counterfeits in the Prison; and although he admits that the prisoner has answered him freely, and unsuspectingly, and fully, he ac- counts for the condition of his mind, by saying that he regards him *' as an ignorant, dull, stupid, degraded, debased and morose, but not insane person.' WILLIAM FREEMAN. 53 Dr. Sylvester Willard, without particular experience or learning in this branch, concurs in these opinions. Dr. Thomas C. Spencer, Professor in the Medical College at Geneva, brings up the rear of the People's witnesses. I complain of his testimo- ny, that it was covered by a masked battery. The District Attorney opened the cause with denunciations of scientific men, said that too much learning made men mad, and warned you therefore against the edu- cated men who might testify for the prisoner. I thought at the time that these were extraordinary opinions. I had read "A little learning ia a dangerous thing, Drink deep or taste not the Pierian Spring : These shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, But drinking largely sobers us again." What was my surprise to find that all these denunciations against learning and experience, made by the Counsel for the People, were only a cover for Dr. Spencer. He heralds himself as accustomed to teach, and informs u^ that he has visited the principal Hospitals for the Insane in London, Paris, and other European capitals. How unfortunate it was that on his cross-examina- tion, he could not give the name or location of any Asylum in either of those cities ! Even the names and locations of the " Charenton '* and " Bicetre " had escaped his memory. But it is no matter. The doctor overwhelms us with learning, uni- versal and incomprehensible. Here is his map* of the mental faculties, in which twenty-eight separate powers of mind are described in odd and even numbers. The arrows show the course of ideas through the mind. They b^in with the motives in the region of the highest odd numbers in the south- west corner of the mind, marked A-, and go perpendicularly north- ward, through Thirst and Hunger to Sensation, marked B. ; then turn to the right, and go eastward, through Conception, to Attention, marked C, and then descend southward, through Perception, Memory, Understand- ing, Comparison, Combination, Reason, Invention, and Judgment, wheel to the left under the Will, marked D., and pass through Conscience, and then to v., the unascertained center of Sensation, Volition, and Will. This is the natural turnpike road for the ideas when we are awake and sane. But here is an open shun-pike X. Y. Z., on which Ideas, when we are asleep or insane, start off and pass by Conscience, and so avoid paying toll to that inflexible gate-keeper. Now all this is very well, but I call on the doctor to show how the fugitive idea reached the will at D., after going to the end of the shun-pike. It appeared there was no other way but to dart back again, over the shun-pike, or else to go cringing, at last through the iron gate of Conscience. *See next paga. i4 DEFENCE OP SPENCER'S INTELLECTUAL CHART. THE BRAIN, LITTLE BRAIN, SPINAL MARROW. AND NERVES. Are the Instruments or Media connecting the Mind with Material Things, and are the seat of Disease in Insanity. THREE CLASSES— THIRTY-SIX FACULTIES. I. Involuntary Faculties, II. Intermediate III. Voluntary Actions or Feelings of Mind. Faculties. Faculties. t|B 1 Sensation. -+• 31 Conception. -+ 2 Attention. 3Hu nger. tl 5 Thirst. 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 2& 27 I I 32 Imagination. I I •*- P 4 Perception SO( nation. 6 Memory. w >(^ r/j 8 v; 3 ^ 10 cr *-< 12 s c 14 3 p » 16 rt) £- 18 CO Or 20 rn o S 22 ^ 24 ^ 26 p p ^ s 28 Y X H- WILLIAM FREEMAN. 94 EXPLANATIONS OF THE FOREGOING CHART. 7 Love of society. 8 Understanding. 9 " children. 10 Comparison. 11 " money. 12 Combination. 13 " combat. 14 Reason. 15 " fame. 16 Invention. 17 " Nature's laws. IS Judgment. 19 " Divine things. 20 Sense of justice. 21 Revenge, \ 22 Pleasure in right. 23 Anger, f And other passions, , propen- 24 Horror of wrong acts. as Joy, Hope, \ sities and molircs. 26 Intention, co-ordination. 27 Fear. ) 2S Other volitions, mental and moral. V. Unascertained centre ofThought, Sensation, V. A. B. C. D. Unio.i of all the Mental Facul and Volition. ties, as if by Electric Wires, as one whole X. T. Z. Dreaming or Insane road of Thought around Conscience and Will. Then there was another difficulty. The doctor forgot the most impor- tant point on his own map, and could not tell from memory, where he had located ** the unascertained centra." The doctor pronounces the Prisoner sane because he has the chief in- tellectual faculties, sensation, Conception, Attention, Imagination, and Association. Now here is a delicate piece of wooden cutlery, fabricated by an inmate of the Lunatic Asylum at Utica, who was acquitted of mur- der on the ground of insanity. He who fabricated it evinced in the man- ufacture. Conception, Perception, Memory, Comparison, Attention, Adaptation, Co-ordination, Kindness, Gratitude, Mechanical Skill, In- vention, and Pride. It is well for him that Dr. Spincee did not testify on his trial. Opposed to these vague and unsatisfactory opinions is the evidence of Sally Freeman, the prisoner's mother, who knew him better than any other one ; of John Depuy, his brother-in-law and intimate friend ; of Ethan A. Warden, his employer in early youth ; of Deborah Depuy, his associate in happier days : of Adam Gray, who knew him in child- hood, and sheltered him on \^is discharge from the State Prison ; of Ira Curtis, in whose family he resided seven years ago ; of David Winner, the friend of his parents : of Robert Freeman, his ancient fellow ser- vant at the American Hotel ; of John R. Hopkins, an intelligent and practical man, who examined him in the jail ; of Theron R. Green, who discovered his insanity in the State Prison ; of the Rev. John M. Aus- tin, the one good Samaritan who deemed it a pastoral duty to visit even a supposed murderer in Prison ; of William P. Smith, who has correct- ed now the error or his Judgment while in the State Prison ; of Philo H. Perry, a candid and enlightened observer, and of Warren T. Worden, Esq., a Lawyer of great shrewdness and sagacity. Then there is an overwhelming preponderance of medical testimony. The witnesses are. Dr. Van Epps, who has followed the accused from his cradle to the present hour, with the interest of a humane and sincere friend ; Dr. Fosgate, who attended him in the jail, for the cure of his 56 DEFENCE OF disabled limb ; Dr. Briggs, equal in public honors to Dr. Bigelow, and greatly his superior in candor as well as learning, and who compares the prisoner now with what he was in better days ; Dr. McNaughton, of Albany, and Dr. Hun, of the same place, gentlemen known throughout the whole country for eminence in their profession ; Dr. McCall, of Utica, President of the Medical Society of the State of New York ; Dr. Coventry, Professor of Medical Jurisprudence in Geneva College, and one of the Managers of the State Lunatic Asylum at Utica, and Dr. Brigham, the experienced and distinguished Superintendent of that Insti- tution. This last gentleman, after reviewing the whole case, declares that he has no doubt that the prisoner is now insane, and was so when his crimes were committed : that he should have received hira as a pa- tient then, on the evidence given here, independently of the crime, and should now receive him upon all the evidence which has been submit- ted to you. Dr. Brigham pronounces the prisoner to be a Monomaniac laboring under the overwhelming progress of the delusion I have described, which had its paroxysm in the murders of which he is accused ; and declares that since that time he has sunk into a deep and incurable Dementia, the counter-part of Idiocy. In these opinions, and in the reasons for them, so luminously assigned by him, all the other medical gentlemen concur. You may be told, Gentlemen, that Dr. Hun and Dr. McNaughton tes- tified from mere observation of the prisoner without personal examina- tion. Yes ! I will thank the Attorney General for saying so. It will recall the strangest passages of all, in this the strangest of all trials. This is a trial for murder. A verdict of guilty will draw after it a sentence of death. The only defence is Insanity. Insanity is to be teste! by examining the prisoner as he now is, and comparing him with what he teas when the crime was commmitted, and 4uring all the intervening pe- riod, and through all his previous life. Dr. Hun and Dr. McNaughton were served with subpoenas, requiring them to attend here. They came, proceeded to the jail, and examined the prisoner on Wednesday night during the trial. Early on Thursday morning they proceeded again to the jail to resume their examination, and were then denied ac- cess. It is proved that the Attorney General instructed the Sheriff to close the doors against them, and the Attorney General admits it. Dr. Hun and Dr McNaughton are called to testify, and are ready to testify that the examination they did make, satisfied them that the prisoner is insane, and that he was insane when he committed the homicide. The Attorney General objects, and the Court overrules the evidence, and de- cides that these eminent physicians shall testify only from mere exter- nal observation of the prisoner, in court, and shall expressly forget and lay aside their examinations of the prisoner, made in jail, by conversa- "WILLIAM FRBEMAV- 57 tions with him. Nor was the process by which the Court effected this exclusion less remarkable than the decision itself. The Court had ob- tained a verdict on the sixth of July, on the preliminary issue, that the prisoner was sufficiently sane to distinguish right from wrong. That verdict has been neither pleaded nor proved on this trial, and if it had been, it would have been of no legal value. Yet the Court founds upon it a Judicial Statute of Limitations, and denies us all opportunity to prove the prisoner insane, after the sixth of July. I tremble for the jury that is to respond to the popular clamor under such restraints as these. I pray God that these Judges may never experience the conse- quences which must follow such an adjudication. But, Gentlemen, Dr. Hun and Dr. McNaughton bear, nevertheless, the strongest testimony that the prisoner is an idiot, as appears by observation, and that the evi- dence, as submitted to them, confirms this conviction. There is proof. Gentlemen, stronger than all this. It is silent, yet . speaking. It is that idiotic smile which plays continually on the face of i the maniac. It took its seat there while he was in the State Prison. In \ his solitary cell, under the pressure of his severe tasks and trials in the work-shop, and during the solemnities of public worship in the chapel, it appealed, although in vain, to his task masters and his teachers. It is a smile, never rising into laughter, without motive or cause — the smile of vacuity. His mother saw it when he came out of Prison, and it broke her heart . John Depuy saw it and knew his brother was demented. Deborah Depuy observed it and knew him for a fool. David Winner read in it the ruin of his friend, Sally's son. It has never forsaken him in his later trials. He laughed in the face of Parker, while on con-^ fession at Baldwinsville. He laughed involuntarily in the faces of War- den, and Curtis, and Worden, and Austin, and Bigelow, and Smith, and Brigham, and Spencer. He laughs perpetually here. Even when Van Arsdale showed the scarred traces of the assassin's knife, and when Helen Holmes related the dreadful story of the murder of her patrons and friends, he laughed. He laughs while I am pleading his griefs. He laughs when the Attorney General's bolts would seem to rive his heart. He will laugh when you declare him guilty. When the Judge shall proceed to the last fatal ceremony, and demand what he has to say why the Sentence of the Law should not be pronounced upon \ him, although there should not be an unmoistened eye in this vast as- i sembly, and the stern voice addressing him should tremble with emotion, ; he will even then look up in the face of the Court and laugh, from the ;• irresistible emotions of a shattered mind, delighted and lost in the con- fused memory of absurd and ridiculous associations. Follow him to the scaffold. The executioner cannot disturb the calmness of the idiot. He \ will laugh in the agony of death. Do you not know the significance of j do DBFENCH OF this strange and unnatural risibility ? It is a proof that God does not forsake even the poor wretch whom we pity or despise. There are in every human memory, a well of joys and a fountain of sorrows. Dis- ease opens wide the one, and seals up the other, forever. You have been told, Gentlemen, that this smile is hereditary and ac- customed. Do you think that ever ancestor or parent of the prisoner, or , even the poor idiot himself, was in such straits as these ? How then ican you think that this smile was ever before recognized by these wU- iing witnesses ? That chaotic smile is the external derangement which signifies that the strings of the harp are disordered and broken, the su- perficial mark which God has set upon the tabernacle, to signify that its immortal tenant is disturbed by a divine and mysterious commandment. If you cannot see it, take heed that the obstruction of your vision be not produced by the mote in your own eye, which you are commanded to remove before you consider the beam in your brother's eye. If you are bent on rejecting the testimony of those who know, by experience and by science, the deep affliction of the prisoner, beware how you misinter- pret the hand writing of the Almighty. I have waited until now. Gentlemen, to notice some animadversions oi the counsel for the People. They say that drunkenness will explain the conduct of the prisoner. It is true that John Depuy discovered that those who retailed poisonous liquors were furnishing the prisoner with this, the worst of food for his madness. But the most laborious inves- tigation has resulted in showing, by the testimony of "'^Adam Gray, that he once saw the prisoner intoxicated, and that he, with some other per- son, drank spirits in not immoderate quantity, on the day when Van Nest was slain. There is no other evidence that the prisoner was ever intox- icated. John Depuy and Ada'm Gray testify that except that one time he was always sober. David Winner proves he was sober ail the time he witness lived at Willard's, and Mary Ann Newark says he was en- tirely sober when he sallied forth on his fatal enterprise. The only val- ue of the fact of his drunkenness, if it existed, would be to account for his disturbed nights at Depuy's, at Gray's, and at Willard's. It is clearly proved that his mind was not beclouded, nor his frame excited, by any such cause on any of those occasions ; and Doctor Brigham truly tells you that while the maniac goes quietly to his bed, and is driven from it by the dreams of a disturbed imagination, the drunkard completes his revels and his orgies before he sinks to rest, and then lies stupid and besotted until nature restores his wasted energies with return of day. Several of the prisoner's witnesses liave fallen under the displeasure of the Counsel for the People. John Depuy was asked on the trial of the preliminary issue, whether he had not said, when the prisoner was arrested, that he was no more crazy than himself. He answered. WILLIAM FREEMAN. 59 that he had not said "in those words," and asked leave to explain by stating what he had said. The Court denied him the right and obliged him to answer, Yes or No, and of course he answered No. On this trial he makes the explanation, that after the murder of Van Nest, being informed that the prisoner had threatened his life he said, " Bill would do well enough if they wouldn't give him liquor ; he was bad enough at any time, and liquor made him worse." By a forced construc- tion, this declaration, which substantially agrees with what he is proved by other witnesses to have said, is brought in conflict with his narrow denial, made on the former trial. It has been intimated on this trial, that the Counsel for the Prosecution would contend that John Depuy was an accomplice of the Prisoner and the instigator of his crimes. This cruel and unfeeling charge has no ground, even in imagination, except that t^relve years Eigo Depuy labored for six weeks on the farm of the late Mr. Van Nest, then belonging to his Father-in-law, P^ter Wyckoff, that a misunderstanding arose between them, which they adjusted by arbitra- tion and that they were friends always afterwards. The elder Mr. Wyc- koff died six years ag«. It does not appear that the late Mr. Van Nest was even married at that time. John Depuy is a colored man, of vig- orous frame, and strong mind, with good education. His testimony, con- clusive in this cause, was intelligently given. He claims your respect as a representative of his people, rising to that equality to which it is the tendency of our institutions to bring them. I have heard the greatest of American Orators. I have heard Daniel O'Connell and Sir Robert Peel, but I heard John Depuy make a speech excelling them all in eloquence : " They have made William Freeman what he is, a brute beast ; they don't make any thing else of any of our people but brute beasts ; but when we violate their laws, then they want to punish us as if we were men." I hope the Attorney General may press his charge ; I like to see per- secution carried to such a length ; for the strongest bow when bent too far, will break. Deborah Depuy is also assailed as unworthy of credit. She calls her- self the wife of Hiram Depuy with whom she has lived ostensibly in that relation for seven years, in, I believe, unquestioned fidelity to him and her children. But it appears that she has not been married with the pioper legal solemnities. If she were a white woman, I should regard her testimony with caution, but the securities of marriage are denied to the African race over more than half of this country. It is within our own memory that the master's cupidity could divorce husband and wife within this state, and sell their clildren into perpetual bondage. Since the Act of Emancipation here, what has been done by the white man to lift up the race from the debasement into which he had plunged it ? Let us impart to negroes the knowledge and spirit of Christianity, and share 60 DEFENCE OP with them the privileges, dignity and hopes of citizens and Christians, hefore we expect of them purity and self respect. But, Gentlemen, even in a slave state, the testimony of this witness would receive credit in such a cause, for negroes may be witnesses there, for and against persons of their own caste. It is only when the life, liberty or property of the white man is invaded, that the negro is dis- qualified. Let us not be too severe. There was once upon the earth a Divine Teacher who shall come again to judge the world in righteous- ness. They brought to him a woman taken in adultery, and said to him that the law of Moses directed that such should be stoned to death, and he answered : *• Let him that is without sin cast the first stone." The testimony of Sally Freeman, the mother of the prisoner, is ques- tioned. She utters the voice of nature. She is the guardian whom God assigned to study, to watch, to learn, to know what the prisoner was, and is, and to cherish the memory of it forever. She could not forget it if she would. There is not a blemish on the person of any one of us, born with us or coming from disease or accident, nor have we committed a right or wrong action, that has not been treasured up in the memory of a mother. Juror ! roll up the sleeve from your manly arm, and you will find a scar there of which you know nothing. Your mother will give you the detail of every day's progress of the preventive disease. — Sally Freeman has the mingled blood of the African and Indian races. She is nevertheless a woman, and a mother, and nature bears witness in every climate and in every country, to the singleness and uniformity of those characters. I have known and proved them in the hovel of the slave, and in the wigwam of the Chippewa. But Sally Freeman has been intemperate. The white man enslaved her ancestors of the one race, exiled and destroyed those of the other, and debased them all by corrupt- ing their natural and healthful appetites. She comes honestly by her only vice. Yet when she comes here to testify for a life that is dearer to her than her own, to say she knows her own son, the white man says she is a drunkard ! May Heaven forgive the white man for adding this last, this cruel injury to the wrongs of such a mother ! Fortunately, Gentle- men, her character and conduct are before you. No woman ever ap- peared with more decency, modesty, and propriety, than she has ex- hibited here. No witness has dared to say or think that Sally Free- man is not a woman of truth. Dr. Clary, a witness for the prosecution, who knows her well, says, that with all her infirmities of temper and of hab- it, Sally *• was always a truthful woman." The Roman Cornelia could not have claimed more. Let then the stricken mother testify for her son. " I ask not, I care not, if guilt 's in that heart, I know that I love thee, wiiatover thou art." The learned gentlemen who conduct this prosecution have attempted WILLIAM FREEMAN. 61 to show that the prisoner attended the trial of Henry Wyatt, whom I de- fended against an indictment for murder, in this Court, in February last ; that he listened to me on that occasion, in regard to the impurity of crime, and that he went out a ripe and complete scholar. So far as these re- flections affect me alone, they are unworthy of an answer. I pleaded for Wyatt then, as it was my right and my duty to do. Let the Counsel for the People prove the words I spoke, before they charge me with Freeman's crimes. I am not unwilling those words should be re- called. I am not unwilling that any words I ever spoke in any re- sponsible relation should be remembered. Since they will not recall those words, I will do so for them. They were words like those I speak now, demanding cautious and impartial justice ; words appealing to the reason, to the consciences, to the humanity of my fellow men ; words calculated to make mankind know and love each other better, and adopt the benign principles of Christianity, instead of the long cherish- ed maxims of retaliation and revenge. The creed of Mahomet was pro- mulgated at a time when paper was of inestimable value, and the Koran teaches that every scrap of paper which the believer has saved during his life, will gather itself under his feet, to protect them from the burn- ing iron which he must pass over, while entering into Paradise. Re- gardless as I have been of the unkind construction of my words and ac- tions by my contemporaries, I can say in all humility of spirit, that they are freely left to the ultimate, impartial consideration of mankind. But, Gentlemen, how gross is the credulity implied by this charge ! This stupid idioti who cannot take into his ears, deaf as death, the words which I am speaking to you, though I stand within three feet of him, and who'even now is exchanging smiles with his and my accusers, re- gardless of the deep anxiety depicted in your countenances, was stand- ing at yonder post, sixty feet distant from me, when he was here, if he was here at all, on the trial of Henry Wyatt. The voice of the District Attornej'^reverberates through this dome, while mine is lost almost with- in the circle of the bar. It does not appear that it was not that voice that beguiled the maniac, instead of mine ; and certain it is that, since the prisoner does not comprehend the object of his attendance here now, he could not have understood anything that occurred on the trial of Wy- att. Gentleman, my responsibilities in this cause are discharged. In the earnestness and seriousness with which I have pleaded, you will find the reason for the firmness with which I have resisted the popular pas- sions around me. I am in some degree responsible like every other citi- zen, for the conduct of the community in which I live. They may not inflict on a Maniac the punishment of a Malefactor, without involving me in blame, if I do not remonstrate. I cannot afford to be in error, 62 DEFENCE OP abroad, and in future times. If I were capable of a sentiment so cruel and so base, I ought to hope for the conviction of the accused ; for then the vindictive passions, now so highly excited, would subside, the con- sciences of the wise and the humane would be awakened, and in a few months, the invectives which have so long pursued jne, would be hurled against the Jury and the Court. You have now the fate of this lunatic in your hands. To him as to me, so far as we can judge, it is comparatively indifferent what be the issue. The wisest of modern men has left us a saying, that " the hour of death is more fortunate than the hour of birth," a saying which he signalized by bestowing a gratuity twice as great upon the place where he died as upon the hamlet where he was born. For aught that we can judge, the prisoner is unconscious of danger and would be insensible to suffering, let it come when it might. A verdict can only hasten, by a few months or years, the time when his bruised, diseased, wandering and benighted spirit shall return to Him who sent it forth on its sad and dreary pilgrimage. The circumstances under which this trial closes are peculiar. I have seen capital cases where the parents, brothers, sisters, friends of the ac- cused surrounded him, eagerly hanging upon the lips of his advocate, and watching, in the countenances of the court and jury, every smile andfrown which might seem to indicate his fate. But there is no such scene here. The prisoner, though in the greenness of youth, is withered,, de- cayed, senseless, almost lifeless. He has no father here. The descen- dant of slaves, that father died a victim to the vices of a superior race. There is no mother here, for her child is stained and polluted with the blood of mothers and of a sleeping infant ; and " he looks and laughs 80 that she cannot bear to look upon him." There is no brother, or sis- ter,, or friend here. Popular rage against the accused has driven them hence, and scattered his kindred and people. On the other side I notice the aged and venerable parents of Van Nest and his surviving^ children, and all around are mourning and sympathizing friends. I know not at whose instance they have come. I dare not say they ought not to be here. But I must say to you that we live in a christian and not in a sav- age state, and that the affliction which has fallen upon these mourners and us, was sent to teach them and us mercy and not retaliation ; that although we may send this maniac to the scaffold, it will not recall to life the manly form of Van Nest, nor reanimate the exhausted frame of that aged matrom, nor restore to life, and grace, and beauty, the murder- ed mother, nor call back the infant boy from the arms of his Savior. — Such a verdict can do no good to the living, and carry no joy to the dead. If your judgment shall be swayed at all by sympathies so wrong, al- though so natural, you will find the saddest hour of your life to be that WILLIAM FREEMAN. 63 in which you will look down upon the grave of your victim, and "mourn with compunctious sorrow" that you should have done so great injustice to the " poor handful of earth that will lie moulderin'g before you." I have been long and tedious. I remember that it is the harvest moon, and that every hour is precious while you are detained from your yellow fields. But if you shall have bestowed patient attention throughout this deeply interesting investigation, and shall in the end have discharged your duties in the fear of God and in the love of truth justly and inde- pendently, you will have laid up a store of blessed recollections for all your future days, imperishable and inexhaustible. t 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED I ^\ k %. t rvr- m"T* RETURN TO: CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT 198 Main Stacks LOAN PERIOD 1 Home Use 2 3 4 5 6 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS. Renewals and Recharges may be made 4 days prior to the due date. Books may be renewed by calling 642-3405. DUE AS STAMP^^^ELOW. %^ '/fi(v Q 2^ <:UulJ FORM NO. DD6 50M 5-03 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY Berkeley, California 94720-6000 / M20ri819 THE UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORNIA LIBRARY