she was sure to be condemned, because the condemnation would bring considerable sums of money to all concerned in her capture and condemnation. She was sold, on October 4th of the same year, at auction, for $7,823.25, showing she was a right good ship, for she measured but five hundred tons. To punish Gordon as a pirate under the law of 1820 was another matter, and when he was first brought to face the charge there was a mistrial. But in the meantime a new administration had come in, and a District Attorney, E. Delafield Smith, who respected his oath of office, had been appointed. Gordon was once more put on trial on November 6, 1861. He was defended by ex-Judge Dean and P. J. Joachimson, who were experienced in such cases. Judge Nelson presided. In two hours a jury was obtained. The papers of that day say that but few spectators were in court during the trial. The public showed very little interest in the case. The Civil War was in progress, and how could anyone stop to consider the trial of a ship captain who had been on trial once before, had secured a disagreement of the jury, and, if precedent counted for anything, was likely to go free in the end? Even the most sensational papers of the day gave the trial but scanty space. So, with never a thought that they were making important history, the Judge and the lawyers and the jury worked away. The plea, as was usual in such cases, was that Gordon was a passenger, having turned the command over to a foreigner carried along for the purpose. On the afternoon of Friday, November 8, the attorneys ended their part of the trial, Judge Nelson delivered his charge, and at 7 o'clock in the evening the jury retired. Twenty minutes later they came back with the verdict. "Guilty." "Gordon heard the verdict without emotion," so the reporters described the scene, and they were about the only spectators outside of those directly interested in the case. But when that verdict had appeared in print, next day, the people of New York woke up to the importance of what had occurred. On Saturday, November 30, when motions for a new trial had been denied, and Gordon was commanded to stand up and hear his doom, he arose to his feet in a court-room "densely packed" with people who had come to hear the sentence of the first American slaver convicted as a pirate. As Gordon heard the command to stand up his face changed color rapidly, but once on his feet he recovered his composure, and in reply to the usual question said, with a forced smile, "I have nothing to say whatever." At that Judge Nelson began to speak. He recited the facts in the case, warned the prisoner that as he had shown no mercy to the unfortunate he could expect none now from the Court, and ended by ordering that the slaver be, on February 7, 1862, between the hours of noon and three in the afternoon, hanged by the neck until he was dead. When February 7 came Gordon had been respited for two weeks by the President. "It was currently reported that the President had commuted the sentence," said one paper, but Marshal Murray knew better, and when Gordon looked in his face, on receiving the respite, he saw his fate. "Mr. Marshal, then there is no hope?" he asked. "Not the slightest," replied Murray. There was no lack of effort, however, to save the pirate. Even on the last day of his life, one of his attorneys telegraphed that the Governor of the State had appealed to the President, and asked for a delay for a reply, but Murray explained that an arrangement had been concluded with the President by which no telegram from any source whatever should interfere. Nor was that all that was done to save him. Threats were made that a rescuing mob to storm the jail would be raised-threats that were really ominous, for that was a day when innocent negroes were hanged to lamp-posts by a New York mob. But a guard of eighty marines from the navy-yard filed into the yard of the city prison on the morning of February 21, 1862, and there loaded their muskets with ball cartridges, and fixed their bayonets. that ended the possibility of mob attacks. And Meantime Gordon had passed the early part of the night in writing letters. At one o'clock in the morning he went to sleep and slept for two hours. On waking he managed to swallow a dose of strychnine he had obtained for the occasion. As it began to work he gnashed his teeth at the guards and shouted, "I've cheated you! I've cheated you!" But he was mistaken, for physicians saved him alive and conscious for the gallows. Two or three notes were written by him after his recovery from the poison, and then, just before the noon hour, the Marshal came to the cell and in the usual course read the death warrant and asked Gordon if he had anything, to say. For a moment the prisoner was silent, and then in a firm voice he replied: "My conscience is clear. I have no fault to find with the treatment I have received from the Marshal and his Deputy, Mr. Thompson; but any public man who will get up in open court and say to the jury, ‘If you convict this prisoner, I will be the first man to sign a petition for his pardon,' and will then go to the Executive to prevent his commuting the sentence, is a man who will do anything to promote his own ends, I do not care what people may say.' It was a remarkable speech to make in the shadow of the gallows, for the charge it contained against District Attorney Smith was untrue. The reporters hunted up the stenographic report of the speech to the jury and found no such words in it. At noon, on February 21, 1862, Nathaniel Gordon, with a slanderous lie on his lips, started for the gallows. "He was deathly pale with terror [says the New York Tribune of February 22, 1862], his head hung over his shoulder, and his limbs almost refused their office. He tottered as he stood beneath the fatal beam, [so that] he had to be supported. At a given signal the cord was snapped asunder by the executioner's axe and Nathaniel Gordon was hoisted aloft into mid-air. A few convulsive twitches of the body followed. The veins of his neck and hands swelled and stood out hard; then the limbs lost their rigidity, the flesh assumed a livid hue, and the slave-trader, now a lump of dishonored clay, swung slowly to and fro in the frosty air." |