Bemis Report of the Webster Trial, 1850 [1897], Image No: 183   Enlarge and print image (71K)           << PREVIOUS  NEXT >>
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Bemis Report of the Webster Trial, 1850 [1897], Image No: 183   Enlarge and print image (71K)           << PREVIOUS  NEXT >>
TRIAL OF JOHN W. WEBSTER. 133 that all the testimony, submitted to you, should be rightly understood, and that a rigid and exact deduction of every just and legitimate con- sequence, which results from it, should lead to a clear and satisfactory conclusion. The deep interest, with which the progress of this solemn investigation is watched, and the intense anxiety with which its result is waited for, are not limited to the contracted circle of the friends of the party who is the immediate object of the prosecution, but they pervade all classes of society, and all parts of the country; and make it far transcend, in the universal estimate of its importance, any criminal accusation which has ever occupied the attention of our judicial tribunals. A few months since, a well-known and highly respectable individual suddenly disappeared from this city. A citizen, allied to a numerous and influential family, himself afuent, and connected with many great pecuniary operations in the place where he had dwelt from his birth,- who had been accustomed, day by day, and month by month, and year after year, to mingle freely with his fellow-citizens in this community, -was suddenly lost; and no known cause could be assigned, to account for his strange and alarming disappearance. That disappearance was followed by inquiries, broad, extensive, almost universal. His friends naturally, inevitably, took the deepest interest in the discovery of his person, if he were alive, or in the recov- ery of his body, if he were no longer living. They enlisted at once, in their behalf, the entire police force, and all the official authority of the city; much more than that,-they enlisted the united sympathies and the united energies of the whole people in one common service of search and inquiry. A full week passed by, without bringing one word of reliable tidings of their departed friend to his anxious and suffering family, or to an eager and excited community. And when, at length, all inquiry, and all effort, and all investigation, seemed to be utterly baffled, and there was no hope left,-when all that pertained to him from the first moment of his disappearance, seemed to be involved in impenetrable darkness, a sudden and astonishing report of the discov- ery of his lifeless body, fell upon us all, filling our hearts with the most fearful apprehensions. His mangled remains, it was believed, were brought to light, The perpetrator of the awful crime, by which life had been taken, and that body reduced to the condition in which it was found, was said also to have been detected; and the individual, to whom was imputed this enormous offence, was one, who, in the ordinary exercise of human judgment, would have been no more likely to have been suspected of such atrocious criminality, than any one of you, or of us, who are engaged in the painful duties of the present trial. These astonishing discoveries were instantaneously followed by a disclosure to the community, in every form in which they could be made, of the various circumstances which were supposed to have a tendency to prove that the mutilated portions of the human body, which were found in the Medical College, were the remains of Dr. George Park- man, and that the prisoner at the bar was present at the scene, and connected with the agencies which were the cause, of his death. Inci- dent after incident was communicated to the public, and everything which could bear against this unhappy prisoner, was spread abroad, as it were, an the wings of the wind. Every sheet that issued from the daily press,-every hour that passed, were fraught with new revelations, which were lavishly diffused through all the avenues of society, as evi- dence at once of the death of Dr. Parkman, and of the guilt of the prisoner. In the mean time he was in the cells of your prison, a solitary and silent sufferer. While every incident tending most injuriously to affect him, was the subject of daily communication and discussion abroad, he was alone, without friends, and without help;--for, what could the feeble efforts of his wife and daughters, from whom he had been separ-