Strange True Stories of Louisiana
Page 31
IX.
THE EVIDENCE.
We need not linger over the details of the trial. The witnesses for theprosecution were called. First came a Creole woman, so old that she didnot know her own age, but was a grown-up girl in the days of the Spanishgovernor-general Galvez, sixty-five years before. She recognized in theplaintiff the same person whom she had known as a child in John F.Miller's domestic service with the mien, eyes, and color of a white personand with a German accent. Next came Madame Hemin, who had not known theMuellers till she met them on the Russian ship and had not seen Salomesince parting from them at Amsterdam, yet who instantly identified her"when she herself came into the court-room just now." "Witness says,"continues the record, "she perceived the family likeness in plaintiff'sface when she came in the door."
The next day came Eva and told her story; and others followed, whosetestimony, like hers, we have anticipated. Again and again was theplaintiff recognized, both as Salome and as the girl Mary, or MaryBridget, who for twenty years and upward had been owned in slavery, firstby John F. Miller, then by his mother, Mrs. Canby, and at length by thecabaret keeper Louis Belmonti. If the two persons were but one, then fortwenty years at least she had lived a slave within five miles, and partof the time within two, of her kindred and of freedom.
That the two persons were one it seemed scarcely possible to doubt. Notonly did every one who remembered Salome on shipboard recognize theplaintiff as she, but others, who had quite forgotten her appearance then,recognized in her the strong family likeness of the Muellers. This likenesseven witnesses for the defense had to admit. So, on Salome's side,testified Madame Koelhoffer, Madame Schultzheimer, and young Daniel Miller(Mueller) from Mississippi. She was easily pointed out in the throng of thecrowded court-room.
And then, as we have already said, there was another means ofidentification which it seemed ought alone to have carried with itoverwhelming conviction. But this we still hold in reserve until we haveheard the explanation offered by John F. Miller both in court and at thesame time in the daily press in reply to its utterances which were givingvoice to the public sympathy for Salome.
It seems that John Fitz Miller was a citizen of New Orleans in highstanding, a man of property, money, enterprises, and slaves. John LawsonLewis, commanding-general of the State militia, testified in the case toMr. Miller's generous and social disposition, his easy circumstances, hiskindness to his eighty slaves, his habit of entertaining, and theexceptional fineness of his equipage. Another witness testified thatcomplaints were sometimes made by Miller's neighbors of his too greatindulgence of his slaves. Others, ladies as well as gentlemen,corroborated these good reports, and had even kinder and higher praisesfor his mother, Mrs. Canby. They stated with alacrity, not intending theslightest imputation against the gentleman's character, that he had otherslaves even fairer of skin than this Mary Bridget, who nevertheless, "whenshe was young," they said, "looked like a white girl." One thing theycertainly made plain--that Mr. Miller had never taken the Mueller family orany part of them to Attakapas or knowingly bought a redemptioner.
He accounted for his possession of the plaintiff thus: In August, 1822,one Anthony Williams, being or pretending to be a negro-trader and fromMobile, somehow came into contact with Mr. John Fitz Miller in NewOrleans. He represented that he had sold all his stock of slaves exceptone girl, Mary Bridget, ostensibly twelve years old, and must return atonce to Mobile. He left this girl with Mr. Miller to be sold for him forhis (Williams's) account under a formal power of attorney so to do, Mr.Miller handing him one hundred dollars as an advance on her prospectivesale. In January, 1823, Williams had not yet been heard from, nor had thegirl been sold; and on the 1st of February Mr. Miller sold her to his ownmother, with whom he lived--in other words, _to himself_, as we shall see.In this sale her price was three hundred and fifty dollars and her age wasstill represented as about twelve. "From that time she remained in thehouse of my mother," wrote Miller to the newspapers, "as a domesticservant" until 1838, when "she was sold to Belmonti."
Mr. Miller's public statement was not as full and candid as it looked.How, if the girl was sold to Mrs. Canby, his mother--how is it thatBelmonti bought her of Miller himself? The answer is that while Williamsnever re-appeared, the girl, in February, 1835, "the girl Bridget," nowthe mother of three children, was with these children bought back again bythat same Mr. Miller from the entirely passive Mrs. Canby, for the samethree hundred and fifty dollars; the same price for the four which he hadgot, or had seemed to get, for the mother alone when she was but a childof twelve years. Thus had Mr. Miller become the owner of the woman, hertwo sons, and her daughter, had had her service for the keeping, and hadnever paid but one hundred dollars. This point he prudently overlooked inhis public statement. Nor did he count it necessary to emphasize thefurther fact that when this slave-mother was about twenty-eight years oldand her little daughter had died, he sold her alone, away from her twohalf-grown sons, for ten times what he had paid for her, to be thebond-woman of the wifeless keeper of a dram-shop.
But these were not the only omissions. Why had Williams never come backeither for the slave or for the proceeds of her sale? Mr. Miller omittedto state, what he knew well enough, that the girl was so evidently whitethat Williams could not get rid of her, even to him, by an open sale. Whenmonths and years passed without a word from Williams, the presumption wasstrong that Williams knew the girl was not of African tincture, at leastwithin the definition of the law, and was content to count theprovisional transfer to Miller equivalent to a sale.
Miller, then, was--heedless enough, let us call it--to hold in Africanbondage for twenty years a woman who, his own witnesses testified, hadevery appearance of being a white person, without ever having seen theshadow of a title for any one to own her, and with everything to indicatethat there was none. Whether he had any better right to own the severalother slaves whiter than this one whom those same witnesses of his wereforward to state he owned and had owned, no one seems to have inquired.Such were the times; and it really was not then remarkable that thisparticular case should involve a lady noted for her good works and agentleman who drove "the finest equipage in New Orleans."
One point, in view of current beliefs of to-day, compels attention. One ofMiller's witnesses was being cross-examined. Being asked if, should he seethe slave woman among white ladies, he would not think her white, hereplied:
"I cannot say. There are in New Orleans many white persons of darkcomplexion and many colored persons of light complexion." The questionfollowed:
"What is there in the features of a colored person that designates them tobe such?"
"I cannot say. Persons who live in countries where there are many coloredpersons acquire an instinctive means of judging that cannot be wellexplained."
And yet neither this man's "instinct" nor that of any one else, eitherduring the whole trial or during twenty years' previous knowledge of theplaintiff, was of the least value to determine whether this poor slave wasentirely white or of mixed blood. It was more utterly worthless than hermemory. For as to that she had, according to one of Miller's ownwitnesses, in her childhood confessed a remembrance of having been brought"across the lake"; but whether that had been from Germany, or only fromMobile, must be shown in another way. That way was very simple, and wehold it no longer in suspense.