Bemis Report of the Webster Trial, 1850 [1897], Image No: 398   Enlarge and print image (47K)           << PREVIOUS  NEXT >>
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Bemis Report of the Webster Trial, 1850 [1897], Image No: 398   Enlarge and print image (47K)           << PREVIOUS  NEXT >>
iv PREFACE. It may serve to give a further idea of the probable interest of the present volume to the reader, to state that it contains at least a quarter part more evidence, in compass, given at the jury-trial, than any other report in print. Much of this additional evidence will be found under the heads of the testimony of some of the most important witnesses at the trial, particularly Dr. Keep, Prof. Wyman, Mr. Littlefield, and Mr. Clapp. Besides the opportunity which the undersigned has enjoyed for a personal knowledge of most of the matters which he undertakes to report, he has been favored with the manuscript-notes of the Judges and of the other counsel In the cause, and has had access to the original papers and sources of proof produced at the jury-trial. His Honor, the Chief Jus- tice, also favored him with his charge to the jury, now for the first time written out and revised with care for this publication. In reference to a statement in the preface of Messrs. Phillips, Sampson & Co.'s phono- graphic report of the jury-trial, that the Chief Justice had "carefully corrected" his charge for that report, it is proper to say, that when called upon to revise it after it was in print, and preparatory to its being imme- diately stereotyped, he attempted to correct only some of the most obvious errors it contained, in the imperfect manner in which it was then prac- ticable so to do. In reference to the arguments of his associates on the jury-trial, the undersigned would say, that those gentlemen have done him the favor to revise them for the present volume; two of them never having attempted that undertaking with reference to any other report, and the Attorney General having only partially, and in a very imperfect m~nnor, performed that office with reference to a portion of his address to the jury as reported in the phonographic publication just referred to. In preparing the work, the undersigned has derived much assistance from the contemporaneous reports of the Boston and New York daily newspapers, and also from the phonographic report of Dr. Stone, just alluded to, which, however, it is understood, did not profess to report, in that method, much if any of the evidence, but to be confined mainly to the charge of the Chief Justice, the arguments of counsel, and some of the interlocutory discussions. These contemporaneous reports have occa- sionally afforded valuable aid in presenting more literally the phrase- ology used by witnesses or speakers than that which the undersigned found upon his own manuscript-minutes or those to which he had re- course. But it is probably no unjust disparagement of these temporary y transcripts of proceedings,-prepared as they were for daily publication without an opportunity for revision, and when the reporters, at their dis-