LI E) R.AR.Y 
 
 OF THL 
 
 UNIVLRSITY 
 
 Of ILLINOIS 
 
 A Bequest from 
 Marion D. Pratt 
 
 
 iu.i,.:3 !'';rrCRY survey 
 
 UBRhRt
 
 Vv 
 
 THE GREAT RAILROAD CONSPIRACY
 
 Charles Hirschfeld 
 
 The Great 
 
 Railroad 
 
 Conspiracy 
 
 THE SOCIAL HISTORY 
 OF A RAILROAD WAR 
 
 The Michigan State College Press 
 1953
 
 Copyright, 1953, by 
 The Michigan State College Press 
 
 i: 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
 AT THE LAKESIDE PRESS 
 
 R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS COMPANY, CHICAGO 
 
 AND CRAWFORDSVILLE, INDIANA
 
 /^/, 73 
 
 '^' 'y PREFACE 
 
 This is a tale of war, a railroad war, such as flared up in the United 
 States in many places during the nineteenth century, when rail- 
 roads were new and fearsome things. The field of battle was the 
 young state of Michigan about one hundred years ago, and the 
 combatants were farmers and the biggest railroad in the state. 
 Violence, arson, intrigue, money, and public opinion were the 
 weapons; life, liberty, and property were the goals that drove men 
 on in this dramatic conflict that stirred the state from lake to lake. 
 The great railroad conspiracy, as this war came to be known 
 locally, has never been truly celebrated in story. The extant ac- 
 counts are partial in every sense of the word and, with few excep- 
 tions, give only the official version. The story is worth retelling, if 
 only the more firmly to establish the facts and present a more rea- 
 sonable approximation of the truth. 
 
 The purpose of this book, however, goes beyond historical ac- 
 curacy and dramatic interest. If only these had been the aims, they 
 could have been realized in much fewer words. The story has been 
 told, rather, in a large way in order to give a picture of an im- 
 portant phase of American life, of a young and rapidly growing 
 community of the West of the 1850's, but one remove from the 
 frontier. The bare outlines have been filled in, the thread of the 
 conflict has been followed into its social, political, and economic 
 ramifications. The narrative of events has been used as a vehicle 
 for presenting something of the social history of a community 
 Tj which was certainly not unique in the development of this country. 
 7^ The result, it is hoped, is a broad and vivid account of what 
 ^ Americans were like in the long process of becoming what they are. 
 On one level, this is a study of the behavior and feelings of Amer- 
 "^ icans, at home, in business, at the crossroads tavern, in court, and 
 ^ in politics. It is a case history of democracy, illustrating the strains 
 of our political development at the grass roots. Its themes are 
 ^j-^merican frontier individualism exploding into violence and 
 
 [V]
 
 agrarian enterprise clashing with an expanding business dynamic. 
 The flavor of the era is sustained by using as far as possible the 
 spoken language of the time and place, from the salty vernacular 
 to polished prose. Here, in short, is a snapshot of mid-nineteenth 
 century America when it was not posing for a textbook illustration 
 against a backdrop of quaint propriety. 
 
 More particularly, the book spells out in one state the conflict of 
 the farmers and the railroads years before the Granger agitation 
 roiled the Midwest scene. It is a good example of a pre-Civil War 
 antirailroad movement, a phenomenon often neglected by Amer- 
 ican historians. These early struggles may have been only the 
 inchoate stirrings of agrarian sentiment against the new public 
 carriers, but they formed the tradition out of which the agitation 
 of the 'seventies grew. Also involved were all the complications of 
 intrastate and sectional rivalries, with Michigan businessmen and 
 eastern capitalists lining up on both sides of the local conflict. 
 
 As a study in railroad and business history, the book also deals 
 with the problems of construction and operation in the salad days 
 of railroading. It throws light on the career of John W. Brooks, an 
 outstanding American railroad builder and enterpreneur who was 
 foremost in the making of the Michigan Central Railroad and 
 other lines further west. 
 
 Seen thus in proper focus, the great railroad conspiracy emerges 
 as more than a ruckus at Michigan Centre in Jackson County, 
 Michigan. Its story rises above the level of melodramatic insig- 
 nificance and becomes, I believe, an addition to our understanding 
 of the American past. 
 
 Specific acknowledgements of help in the preparation of this 
 work are listed in the first footnote, which, like all the others, may 
 be found at the end of the text.* Here, I wish to take the oppor- 
 tunity of thanking Dr. Lewis Beeson, editor of Michigan History, 
 for permission to use material which first appeared in that peri- 
 odical; and lastly, Amanda, for whom, after all, this book was 
 written. 
 
 Charles Hirschfeld 
 East Lansing, Michigan 
 Spring 1953. 
 
 [vi]
 
 PART 
 
 ONE
 
 Th 
 
 .HE STORY of the great railroad conspiraq^ goes back to 1846 when 
 the state of Michigan sold its railroads to private chartered cor- 
 porations. The state had built and operated two railroads since 
 1837 as part of a broad program of internal improvements designed 
 at once to build up the interior of Michigan and advance the com- 
 mercial interests of its cities, particularly Detroit. By 1845 the rail- 
 roads had not reached Lake Michigan from their eastern terminals 
 as required by law, and further public construction and operation 
 seemed to run into an impasse of financial difficulties and not al- 
 together disinterested prejudice. The Central Railroad, which had 
 reached Kalamazoo from Detroit, was the farther advanced in con- 
 struction and the more profitable of the two roads. It was this road 
 that attracted the attention of John W. Brooks, a civil engineer 
 who had helped build and operate railroads in New York and New 
 England, and James F. Joy, a transplanted Yankee who had won a 
 position for himself at the Detroit bar. These two young men, am- 
 bitious and shrewd, saw the immense moneymaking possibilities 
 in a completed transpeninsular railroad that would tap the ex- 
 panding western hinterland and link it with the eastern seaboard. 
 Brooks used his eastern connections to interest a group of New 
 York and Boston capitalists, and Joy worked on the Michigan leg- 
 islature; and in 1846, the Michigan Central Railroad Company 
 received a charter and possession of the railroad from Detroit to 
 Kalamazoo for the sum of two million dollars. At the same time, 
 the other railroad, running through the southern counties from 
 Monroe to Hillsdale, ^vas knocked down to the newly chartered 
 Michigan Southern Railroad Company.^ 
 
 Taking over the Central road in the fall of 1846, Brooks, as su- 
 perintendent of the new company, and Joy, as legal counsel, started 
 immediately to improve their investment and realize their golden 
 vision. Money and men were poured into a concerted drive to reach 
 the lake at New Buffalo. Tracks were laid with sixty-pound T-rails 
 and the latest model engines and rolling stock put into operation.
 
 The old line of the road east of Kalamazoo was improved with new 
 grades and bridges and the old worn strap rails were replaced with 
 the heavier T-rails, By April, 1849, the Michigan Central spanned 
 the peninsula, was paying eight and nine percent dividends on 
 net earnings of almost $200,000 a year, and the trains were running 
 at thirty miles an hour.^ 
 
 The drive for efficiency and profits soon brought the company 
 into conflict with the farmers along the line of the road. The right 
 of way was largely unfenced, and the cattle of the farmers through 
 whose land the tracks ran were easy marks for the heavier and 
 speedier trains. What incensed the farmers was not only the killing 
 of great numbers of cows, sheep, and hogs, but the fact that the 
 company refused to pay what they considered fair damages. Much 
 livestock had, indeed, been destroyed when the railroad had been 
 owned by the state, but the Board of Internal Improvements, the 
 state's operating agency, had not dared to antagonize the electors 
 by paying less than their claims. One official of the board had com- 
 plained in 1845 'h^t the damages paid for cattle maimed and killed 
 had reached extravagant proportions and suggested that in cases 
 where no negligence on the part of the engineers could be proven, 
 the farmers should be made to bear half the loss.^ This impolitic 
 suggestion had, of course, never been adopted. Superintendent 
 Brooks, however, with no concern for the electorate and respon- 
 sible only to the directors and stockholders, was determined to pay 
 as little as he could and make the farmers share the risks. He 
 claimed that the cattle were trespassers; that the negligence and 
 cupidity of the owners were contributory factors; and hinted 
 strongly that the farmers were seeking a ready market at each cross- 
 ing. Brooks denied any legal liability for damages at all, but of- 
 fered, as a measure of expedience, to pay half of the appraised 
 value. The aggrieved farmers took this offer as an admission of 
 liability and demanded full damages. 
 
 When these were not forthcoming, the issue was fully joined. 
 Excitement flared up all along the line of the road from Ann Arbor 
 to Niles in the spring of 1849. Near Niles, where the state had 
 never operated the railroad and where it was reported that one 
 hundred sixty pieces of livestock had been killed in the twelve-mile 
 stretch between Niles and Dowagiac, the farmers retaliated for the 
 half-pay offer by committing serious depredations, going so far as 
 
 [4]
 
 to derail an engine by opening a switch. One infuriated citizen 
 threatened publicly to tie up traffic entirely. West of Kalamazoo, 
 the farmers, under cover of darkness, greased the tracks on the up- 
 grades with lard and tallow salvaged by their wives from the car- 
 casses, to the great annoyance of the train crews who had to get out 
 and sand the tracks before they could proceed. Further east, near 
 Ann Arbor, the tracks were actually torn up, presumably by those 
 who had had cattle killed.^ 
 
 At Marshall, few evening trains passed without being delayed by 
 turned switches or shot at. The violent outbursts there were broad- 
 cast and justified by one of the village's leading citizens, John D. 
 Pierce, in a series of letters to the local Democratic newspaper. 
 Pierce, Michigan's first state superintendent of public instruction, 
 a member of the legislatures of 1847 ^^^ 1848, and a clergyman by 
 training, had recently had some sheep of his own killed on the 
 tracks and now took up the cudgels for the farmers in the area. He 
 denounced the destruction of livestock and the company's dis- 
 claimer of liability and refusal of fair damages. "The road," he de- 
 clared in June, 1849, "has been for a long time one gore of blood. 
 No heathen altar ever smoked more continually with the blood 
 of its victims." And the company dared to charge that the owners 
 of cattle were the trespassers. Resort to legal action cost more than 
 the cattle were worth. The railroad's "reckless policy" had created 
 "an embittered state of feeling along the whole line" and was re- 
 sponsible for the fact that the injured persons resorted to violence 
 "because they know no other way." Pierce warned the company of 
 the consequences of its policy, even though he had "little hope that 
 any reason or argument which was not addressed to its cupidity 
 would induce a moneyed corporation to change its course." Accord- 
 ing to one account, the choleric preacher proved his point. When 
 he championed the cause of a poor widow who had a yoke of oxen 
 killed, and Superintendent Brooks contemptuously sent word back 
 to Marshall to "Tell that parson out there he'd better stick to 
 preaching," Pierce replied that if the company did not pay the 
 woman, he himself would see to it that every mile of track in Cal- 
 houn County was torn up. The parson's triumph was complete and 
 biblical, if momentary, when Brooks paid up in that one case. 
 Pierce concluded as follows: 
 
 Something must be done, the honor of the state,— its good name . . . 
 
 [5]
 
 demand it. The road must be fenced— in the meantime something near 
 the value of the property destroyed must be paid. It is an outrage, and 
 evidences utter recklessness of life and limb of both man and beast that 
 the company should run trains over an unfenced road, where all cattle 
 are by law free commoners, at the rate of thirty miles per hour.® 
 
 Neither at Niles nor Marshall nor anywhere else in the state was 
 the opposition to the Michigan Central Railroad so intensive and 
 so sustained as in the few miles along the line of the road between 
 Grass Lake and Michigan Centre in the eastern part of Jackson 
 County. It was here that collective protest first brought the offer of 
 half pay from Superintendent Brooks, and here that destructive 
 reprisals continued for almost two years to disrupt the railroad's 
 operations. Precisely why it was so seems difficult to ascertain at 
 this distance in time. Perhaps more cattle were killed in Leoni and 
 Grass Lake townships than elsewhere, although the evidence is 
 not conclusive on this point. Perhaps it was that here the farmers 
 found leaders, veritable tribunes of the people, in two men with a 
 stubborn determination to see that justice was done, Abel F. Fitch 
 of Michigan Centre and Benjamin F. Burnett of Grass Lake. Per- 
 haps it was the deliberate choice by Superintendent Brooks of these 
 two townships as the arena in which to break the back of the op- 
 position to the railroad that brought the most violent reaction in 
 the state.^ 
 
 The losses between Grass Lake and Michigan Centre, while sub- 
 stantial, do not seem to have been unusually heavy. One estimate 
 was that forty head of cattle had been killed near the village of 
 Leoni. According to a later estimate, damages to the amount of 
 |8oo had been inflicted on the farmers of the vicinity.''' The editor 
 of a Jackson paper offered the following explanation of the im- 
 broglio some fifty years after the events: East of Michigan Centre, 
 the railroad track crossed a muskeg or sunken lake, "The Dry 
 Marsh" as it was known in the locality, and the cattle in the area, 
 which had previously skirted the marsh, began to use the tracks as 
 a convenient bridge, with disastrous results to themselves. The rail- 
 road, moreover, then brought its own appraisers out from Detroit, 
 and the amount of the damages fixed by a company appraiser who 
 saw the animals after they had been dead for several days was not 
 such as to satisfy the owners.^ 
 
 In any case, by the spring of 1 849, the increasing destruction of 
 
 [6]
 
 livestock and the company's refusal to pay the damages claimed 
 aroused the farmers in the vicinity to action. At a number of public 
 meetings— railroad meetings, they were called— they collectively 
 requested Superintendent Brooks to modify his policy, to direct the 
 engineers to run their trains more carefully, and, until the right 
 of way was fenced, to pay full damages. At one of the meetings, 
 Abel F. Fitch, Benjamin F. Burnett, and one James Courier were 
 chosen as a committee to represent the group's views to the rail- 
 road's superintendent in Detroit. The three accordingly wrote 
 Brooks a letter informing him of the great excitement among the 
 farmers of the region and suggesting the consequences of further 
 inflammation of the popular mind by a policy that was not "more 
 humane." Brooks, in reply, completely denied the validity of the 
 committee's representations. The company, he countered, was not 
 legally liable at all for damages to property along the right of way; 
 he would, however, pay one half of the appraised value of all cattle 
 killed. Meanwhile, he suggested, the company and one of the in- 
 jured parties could take a test case to the Supreme Court of the 
 state to decide the question of liability, with all costs and fees up 
 to $50 to be borne by the company. If the court decided that the 
 company were liable, he would thereafter pay in full the damages 
 incurred by the farmers. Brooks, at the same time, professed to see 
 an implied threat in the committee's letter and went on to add 
 that he would hold Fitch, Burnett, and Courier morally if not 
 criminally responsible for any injury done the railroad in any at- 
 tempts to coerce it.^ 
 
 Brooks' proposal, which was published in the Jackson news- 
 papers, was never seriously entertained. Abel F. Fitch dismissed it 
 on the steps of the American Hotel in Jackson as a "perfect hum- 
 bug." The farmers followed his lead and ignored it and then struck 
 back in the readiest way at hand— by placing obstructions on the 
 tracks, stoning the trains, and even shooting at the engines as they 
 passed in the night. As Fitch, now become their spokesman, argued, 
 the people had had their cattle killed and could not get redress any 
 other way. When someone suggested going to court, Fitch denied 
 that the people could get their rights that way, and went on to 
 attack the whole judicial system in a cynical diatribe of a man who 
 knew the political game. He stated bluntly that every man had his 
 price and that a judge could be bought as well as any other man; 
 
 [7]
 
 that he had no more confidence in the judges o£ the Supreme Court 
 than in those of the lower courts— they knew enough law but could 
 be bought as well as others, though in ordinary cases they were well 
 enough; and that he based his opinions on a certain county judge 
 whom he named. He denounced the railroad company as an aris- 
 tocracy whose influence and money would prevent justice from 
 being obtained in any court. When it was argued that endangering 
 the lives of innocent passengers was not the way to attain the object 
 in view, Fitch heatedly countered that persons who would support 
 such a company ought to be injured. 
 
 Fitch's stand was echoed by William Corwin, a teamster at Mich- 
 igan Centre, who was a young and irresponsible fellow. One morn- 
 ing at the end of May, Corwin was approached by a neighbor, 
 Abram Henry, who mentioned that he had heard some shots fired 
 as the train passed the night before. He asked Corwin if they were 
 firing at the train last night. Corwin casually replied, "Yes, I sup- 
 pose so." Henry asked if anyone was killed. Corwin said, "No." 
 When Henry then pointed out that by and by they would kill 
 somebody, Corwin burst out: "Damn 'em, if they don't want to be 
 shot let 'em pay for the cattle they have killed." Henry told him 
 that it was a bad idea, for they would kill innocent people who 
 paid theit money for riding over the road. Corwin closed the con- 
 versation angrily: "Damn 'em, they need not ride over the road 
 if they don't want to be killed." 
 
 Not long after, the violent agitation brought the attorney gen- 
 eral of Michigan, George V. N. Lothrop, to the scene. He came to 
 Jackson from Detroit to investigate the trouble and try to allay the 
 unrest. On his arrival, he was met by the committee of three who 
 presented the aggrieved farmers' case substantially as they had 
 done to Brooks. When Lothrop suggested a remedy at law, they re- 
 plied that a poor man would have no chance in a law suit with the 
 company. Fitch and Burnett argued with some warmth that the 
 railroad was to blame for the excitement and lawlessness; that as 
 long as it would not pay fair value for cattle killed, it might expect 
 trouble on the road; and that the people were justified in taking 
 matters into their own hands, for it was the only means they had 
 of bringing the company to terms. Fitch even threatened to send 
 handbills to New York, Buffalo, and Chicago, warning the public 
 that it was dangerous to pass over the Michigan Central. Lothrop 
 
 [8]
 
 returned to Detroit and presented the committee's views to Super- 
 intendent Brooks. He then wrote the committee that Brooks in- 
 sisted that his proposal was a just and hberal one and an earnest 
 of the company's solicitude. Brooks gave them every assurance that 
 any engineer found wantonly destroying cattle would be dis- 
 charged. Furthermore, it had always been the practice of the com- 
 pany to pay full value for cattle killed when the owner was too poor 
 to bear the loss. For himself, Lothrop condemned the outrages and 
 promised that the offenders, who were no better than "pirates and 
 wholesale murderers," would be severely punished. Fie then 
 warned the three spokesmen that unless they themselves exerted 
 an active influence to prevent such conduct, they "must expect to 
 be held, in no slight degree, responsible . . ." And like a good poli- 
 tician, Lothrop closed on the note of the necessity of compromise. 
 
 Matters remained, however, at an impasse. The verbal exchanges 
 proved to be only preludes to a violent and embittered battle. As 
 the summer of 1849 advanced and as mutual suspicion and hatred 
 mounted, more cattle were killed and further depredations were 
 committed against the railroad. When Orlando D. Williams, a 
 mason at Leoni, had his cow killed, the company offered him half 
 price for it three or four times. He refused the offers and demanded 
 $25 or nothing. He told his neighbor it would be a dear cow for 
 them. Andrew J. (Jack) Freeland, a successful farmer at Michigan 
 Centre, complained he had a number of sheep killed, five or seven, 
 and the company offered him half price for them, but if they did 
 not pay him full price they would be dear sheep. He slyly said that 
 the cars were getting rather skittish about running through Leoni 
 Township, and "damn 'em, they'd better pay up for cattle if they 
 did not want trouble." 
 
 The railroad did not pay up and it got the trouble. That summer 
 and fall passenger and freight trains were frequently stoned, shot 
 at, obstructed, and derailed in the ten-mile stretch between Grass 
 Lake and Jackson. The assailants would hide in the undergrowth 
 along the right of way during the night and throw stones, bricks, 
 and bottles and discharge pistols at the passing trains. Sometimes 
 they would sally forth to lay rails and logs across the track or throw 
 switches. Once the passenger train was stoned a little east of Leoni 
 village and the conductor heard a woman scream and went back 
 into the cars and a lady handed him a stone which had lodged in 
 
 [9]
 
 her lap. A man in the next car was badly hurt by a stone which 
 hit him in the breast. The conductor went on to find stones in every 
 car and many windows broken. One night, an engineer later re- 
 called, his passenger train was stoned three times, twice near Fitch's 
 house, which stood beside the tracks at Michigan Centre, and once 
 west of Leoni. On investigation, he found the mark of a brick five 
 inches long on the tank and a big dent on his boiler. Another night 
 that summer, the same engineer was shot at as he approached Mich- 
 igan Centre. He saw a flash of guns, some four or five of them, from 
 about thirty or forty feet from the tracks and later found the marks 
 of a ball on one of the engine's feed pipes. This engineer had no 
 taste for these extra hazards of railroading and soon left his job 
 with the Michigan Central for one in another state. Another engi- 
 neer later admitted that he sometimes cowered behind the driving 
 wheel guards as he rode through the badlands at Michigan 
 Centre.io 
 
 The attacks were varied by placing rails, old ties, and the dis- 
 carded strap iron rails across the tracks or jamming them in be- 
 tween the joints of the rails and in the switches. The company 
 had to run a hand car ahead of the trains between Grass Lake and 
 Jackson, but the determined assailants would simply hide along- 
 side the track and then, after the hand car had passed, run out and 
 do their mischief. Traffic was greatly slowed up and the train 
 schedules were knocked awry, for each obstruction meant stopping 
 the train and getting out and clearing the tracks. The run from 
 Grass Lake to Jackson, which normally took forty-five minutes, 
 sometimes took as long as an hour and twenty-five minutes. The 
 crawling pace through the disaffected areas was indeed a necessity 
 if the trains were not to be run off with great loss of life and 
 property. 
 
 Once that summer, the locomotive Dexter was drawing a rack 
 train loaded with timber going west in the late afternoon. The con- 
 ductor, Harmon Spaulding, was in the cab with the engineer and 
 the fireman. The train slowed down after reaching Leoni but then 
 speeded up in order to make way for the eastbound passenger train 
 expected at that time. About a half mile east of Michigan Centre, 
 as the engine rounded a curve running along the Dry Marsh, 
 Spaulding sighted a stick of timber lying across the track. The 
 engineer reversed the engine and then both he and the fireman 
 
 [ lO]
 
 jumped for their lives. Spaulding stayed on as the wheels hit the 
 log, cut it in two, and ground to a stop near the crossing at Mich- 
 igan Centre. A group of men came up to the stalled engine, among 
 whom Spaulding recognized Abel Fitch and Ammi Filley, pro- 
 prietor of the tavern at the Centre. Fitch asked, "Spaulding, what's 
 the trouble?" Spaulding pointedly told him that "some damned 
 hyenas" had put a timber on the track and tried to run the train 
 off. Someone in the crowd shouted they wished they had run it 
 off. To this, Spaulding replied, "I don't see what you have against 
 me, as I have not been running on the road for some time." Filley 
 here chimed in with the remark that they did not care who they 
 killed and would as lief kill him as any one else. Spaulding then 
 asked Fitch what their object was and the latter replied that there 
 had been cattle killed that had not been paid for. Fitch continued, 
 shouting, "Spaulding, by God, the company can never run this 
 road in safety until they come out and pay us our price for killing 
 cattle and damages done to other property." Spaulding then 
 argued that he couldn't see why the obstruction was put on at 
 that time, unless it was intended to catch the passenger train, as 
 they did not know this timber train was coming along. Somebody 
 ans^vered to the effect that the men who put it there knew their 
 business. Spaulding, his temper rising, warned the men that if it 
 had got to that pass that the company could not do business on 
 the road, he for one Avas ready to come out and defend the road 
 with arms if necessary. Fitch threw the threat right back and said 
 they might come on if that was the game— he had two double- 
 barreled guns and some loaded pistols ready for business and men 
 enough to use them. At this point, Spaulding judiciously decided 
 that matters had gone far enough for the moment; the temper of the 
 crowd seemed to be ugly and a strategic withdrawal was in order. 
 The train moved on only to find more obstructions ahead, several 
 bars of strap rail and the skin of a dead cow, and it was Spaulding 
 who went ahead on foot to remove them. 
 
 Yet another form of vicious bedevilment was to set fire to the 
 piles of company lumber stacked along the right of way for the use 
 of the locomotives. Late one night in the fall of 1849, three of the 
 more law-abiding citizens of Leoni were returning from Jackson on 
 foot along the tracks. They came upon two woodpiles burning 
 about a mile west of Michigan Centre, and went to work to put 
 
 [ 11 ]
 
 the fires out. As the train passed, they stopped it and asked for help, 
 but got only an unceremonious damning from the jittery, distrust- 
 ful train crew. As day broke, the little group, still hard at work 
 putting out the fires, was accosted by three friends somewhat less 
 concerned with the preservation of the property of the railroad. 
 They were Fitch, Filley, and Erastus Champlin, a farmer at the 
 Centre, who explained that they had been hailed by the train crew 
 back at the Centre and told that the woodpiles were on fire. The 
 newcomers were content to stand there, taunting and reviling the 
 fire fighters. Champlin sneered that the train crew was perfectly 
 right in damning them, they ought to be damned, and damn those 
 who didn't damn them. Fitch, with wry humor, told them that they 
 ought to be burnt up with the wood, then the company would pay 
 their wives half price for the ashes. When one of the conscientious 
 ones remonstrated that he thought it was his duty to try and save 
 property when it was being destroyed. Fitch answered that he had 
 never put anything on the track and would not take anything off 
 if he saw the cars coming with Brooks and the whole company in 
 them and "it knocked them all to hell." The fires presumably were 
 put out, but certainly without the help of the vindictive Michigan 
 Centreites. At another time. Fitch refused a request for help in 
 putting out a blazing culvert, saying, "You will have to go out of 
 this town to get help to put it out." 
 
 Not all the mishaps that afflicted the railroad in the summer and 
 fall of 1849 could be attributed, directly or circumstantially, to the 
 lawless citizens of Michigan Centre, Leoni, and Grass Lake. Some 
 were simply accidents due to the rather primitive railroading oper- 
 ations. Several engines and trains were derailed after running into 
 cattle grazing on the track, which must have seemed like divine 
 retribution to Fitch and his friends. The negligence of track crews 
 doubtless accounted for a number of accidents. Nor had attacks on 
 the trains disappeared elsewhere along the line of the road. East 
 and west of Niles and between Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor, occasional 
 depredations continued to make travel on the Michigan Central a 
 hazardous venture.^^ 
 
 Superintendent Brooks was soon convinced of the need for 
 strong measures to eliminate the threat to the road's operations. 
 Business during 1849 was none too good in any case, what with the 
 poor crop, an outbreak of cholera in the state, and the continued 
 
 [ 12]
 
 strong competition of the lake boats that took passengers to Chi- 
 cago around Michigan via the lakes. The attacks by those whom 
 Brooks could only recognize as marauding felons were driving 
 passengers to travel around the lakes rather than risk life and limb 
 on the Michigan Central. ^^ 
 
 Brooks' first step was to station company police or watchmen 
 along the track in the troubled area. He then offered a reward of 
 $500 for the detection and conviction of the criminals who had ob- 
 structed or would obstruct the railroad, and circulated printed 
 handbills to that effect along the line. The reward circulars singled 
 out for special consideration those "sundry evil minded persons, 
 in and about the village of Leoni," but also extended its terms to 
 "similar offenders on any part of the road." 
 
 These measvires did not prove effective. Not a single offender 
 was caught nor a single attack discovered in time. If anything, the 
 presence of the police only put the "sundry evil minded persons" 
 on their guard and led them to resort to devious maneuver; they 
 were easily able to spot and outwit the special watch. Once in 
 August, Brooks and Joy, who directed the legal action, thought 
 they had cornered their game and were ready to make an example 
 that would forestall further attacks, but found they had only 
 caught a tartar. One of the special police, Elwood Cook, went to 
 the grand jury of Jackson County and made out an information 
 against one James A. Lester, charging him with obstructing the 
 railroad. Attorney General Lothrop came out to Jackson from De- 
 troit and prodded the grand jury into issuing an indictment 
 against Lester.i^ It seemed as though the law were at last ready to 
 step in and strike down the enemies of the railroad. 
 
 The law, however, reckoned without the determination of Fitch 
 and Burnett. As soon as Lester was arrested, these two came to his 
 defense. They unearthed evidence and brought witnesses to show 
 that it was Cook who had obstructed the railroad and then laid the 
 crime to Lester in the hope of gaining the $500 reward. Fitch and 
 Burnett presented these findings to the not wholly unsympathetic 
 citizens of the Jackson County Grand Jury, which then found a 
 true bill against Cook for perjury four days after it had indicted 
 Lester. With the tables thus turned, Joy had to come to Cook's 
 defense. Neither case, however, came to trial; both were eventually 
 nolle prossed.i^ 
 
 [ 13]
 
 This legal defeat convinced Brooks and Joy that they were using 
 the wrong tactics. They realized that they were not facing a num- 
 ber of lawless individuals but a body of citizens united in hatred of 
 the railroad and belief in the justice of their cause. Public senti- 
 ment in Jackson County was largely ranged against the Michigan 
 Central and convictions by local juries would be difficult if not 
 impossible to obtain. Detection of the guilty by ordinary police 
 methods had proven ineffective. Action against relatively unim- 
 portant individuals, moreover, would not halt the attacks. The 
 company faced the necessity of resorting to extraordinary methods 
 to gain evidence against its enemies and then, of striking at the 
 head and heart of the opposition, at its leaders, at Fitch, Burnett, 
 and the more active of their followers. Brooks and Joy set their 
 sights accordingly. 
 
 Fitch had without doubt emerged as the leader of the road's op- 
 ponents. His position in the community and his opinions had led to 
 his choice on the committee of three that acted for the citizens as- 
 sembled in public protest; he had probably been active in organiz- 
 ing the meetings in the first place. Subsequently, his leadership 
 was reinforced by the promptings of his conscience, by a self- 
 imposed trust as advocate of the cause of his friends and neighbors. 
 It was expressed in his activities on behalf of Lester and his public 
 defense of the attacks on the railroad and denunciation of the com- 
 pany's policies. And Superintendent Brooks could only have con- 
 cluded that Fitch was his nemesis, the gadfly of the opposition, 
 when in the fall of 1849 he received a letter from him complaining 
 of the fact that the trains were not stopping at Michigan Centre 
 to pick up passengers who were giving the usual signal. "Now if 
 this policy," Fitch warned in closing, "comes from you or your 
 legal advisers, as did the insulting half pay proposition for killing 
 cattle, if serious accidents do occur on the road, on your head, and 
 yours alone, must rest the responsibility." Brooks promptly an- 
 swered the letter with maddening politeness, if none too helpfully, 
 by enclosing a handbill with a schedule of train stops. "If any 
 train has passed your station, which according to it, should stop 
 there," he explained, "I would be quite obliged for any informa- 
 tion that will point to a specific train, when I can correct it." With 
 that reply, the incident was closed; it was in itself not of great 
 moment, but served to aggravate ill feeling and convince Brooks 
 
 [ H]
 
 that Fitch was the instigator of all the company's many troubles. 
 
 Abel F. Fitch was an amalgam of shrewdness and idealism that 
 in most other men happily serves or is made to serve their own ag- 
 grandizement. In his case, the two ingredients clashed and eventu- 
 ally led to his downfall. He had come to Michigan with his wife 
 from his native Connecticut in 1832 and located on the Clinton 
 Road near Jackson where he opened a tavern which was soon 
 widely known as the old "Fitch stand." Turning from whiskey to 
 real estate, he took a profitable part in the speculative orgy of the 
 middle 1830's. He invested some of his gains in the stock of the 
 Jackson County Bank and was implicated in the collapse of that 
 wildcat institution and made the target of several indictments for 
 conspiracy in 1838. Like most of the businessmen in that frontier 
 community, he emerged unscathed and unmoved and went on to 
 become a leading public figure. When Michigan was admitted as a 
 state in 1837, Fitch, now living in Michigan Centre, a community 
 he had helped develop to his own profit, was a delegate to the 
 convention which met to organize the Democratic Party in Jackson 
 County. He enlarged his public services by organizing a squadron 
 of cavalry, the Barry Horse Guards, in the state militia in 1843 and 
 was commissioned its captain. Tenders of political trust by his 
 neighbors made him Inspector of Elections in Leoni Township and 
 local representative on the Board of County Canvassers in 1850 
 and 1851. On April 7, 1851, he was elected Supervisor of Leoni 
 Township on the Democratic ticket. He lived in style at Michigan 
 Centre, in a spacious home complete with verandahs and shade 
 trees, on an estate valued at $8,000 with more than five hundred 
 acres of orchards, pastures, gardens, a lake, and a deer park, as well 
 as productive fields. Gifted with a happy family of wife and two 
 adopted children, numerous friends, and a sense of humor, enjoy- 
 ing his books, pictures and music— he played the clarionet— this 
 prosperous country squire, the richest man in the township, could 
 have proudly and thankfully rested on his laurels as he looked 
 back at his full forty-three years. ^^ 
 
 If only he had rested content to be as others in his station— solid 
 law-abiding citizens, members of respectable churches, and vocal 
 but realistic exponents of the ideals of justice and right. But Fitch 
 possessed something of the Yankee conscience that held him to 
 strict account and would take no tittle of compromise, that made 
 
 [ 15]
 
 him a come-outer when silence would have been safer and deeds 
 could have been dismissed as unnecessary and ineffective. In re- 
 ligion, he was, according to Burnett who knew him well, a Uni- 
 versalist, that rather broad humane American sect that was out- 
 side the pale of organized churchdom and orthodox doctrine. His 
 belief in God was strong and real as was his faith in His goodness, 
 though he spoke lightly of His conventional representatives on 
 earth. Once, defending the men of Leoni, Fitch jokingly laid the 
 shootings to a local Baptist clergyman, and to a Congregational di- 
 vine in Jackson whom he called "Priest" Foster, and told how he 
 had remonstrated with them to no avail, such hardened evil-doers 
 were they. On the greatest moral question of the day, slavery. Fitch 
 was on the side of freedom. According to one promoter of the Un- 
 derground Railroad in Michigan, Fitch was its agent in Michigan 
 Centre. When he was elected county supervisor, he was sneeringly 
 classified as a free soil loco by the opposition Whig sheet. And 
 when "Priest" Foster, the Reverend Gustavus L. Foster of the Con- 
 gregational Church in Jackson, delivered a sermon denouncing 
 the Fugitive Slave Law and counselling disobedience, he must have 
 risen greatly in Fitch's esteem. For when Fitch was arrested and his 
 person was searched, the only incriminating evidence found on 
 him was a reprint of the Reverend Foster's "higher law" sermon. 
 And his subsequent notoriety brought him the dubious acclaim of 
 eastern newspapers as one of Michigan's most prominent aboli- 
 tionists.i^ 
 
 Such was the man who had come forward as the advocate of the 
 people's rights in the eastern part of Jackson County— a pillar of 
 society, a shrewd but amiable country squire, and withal, a man of 
 unorthodox bent, with principles, who did not fear to express and 
 act on them. And when he spoke out against Brooks' policies, he 
 was also moved by disinterested principle. "They done wrong," he 
 later explained, "when they took the poor man's last cow without 
 remuneration." His only crime was that he had the "indipendance 
 to tell them [that] to their faces." There is no evidence that Fitch's 
 own interests were at stake or in any way affected or that he stood 
 to gain anything personally by his actions. "If money making was 
 my object," (and Fitch knew well how to achieve that mercenary 
 end), he wrote his wife, "I could sell myself to them for a great 
 price, they have already made advances, but they have waked up 
 
 [16]
 
 the wrong passenger." Nor is there any evidence, as was later al- 
 leged by the press, that Fitch was satisfying an old grudge against 
 the railroad arising from a dispute over payment for a parcel of 
 his land.^'^ 
 
 Fitch did not, however, abandon all caution. Defending and 
 abetting his followers, he never himself took part in any of the at- 
 tacks. Publicly and before outsiders, he did not even approve, 
 though he might extenuate the acts of violence that endangered 
 the lives of innocent people. He preferred himself to fight the 
 railroad where his influence could be most effective: in the courts, 
 in the legislature, among his friends in the East whom he asked 
 to discourage travel on the Michigan Central. And when Lothrop, 
 now in the service of the railroad, saw Fitch helping in the legisla- 
 tive fight against the road in Lansing in 1851, the latter was sure 
 that the former attorney general "had rather see the evel (sic) one 
 than to have seen me . . . here." ^^ 
 
 Fitch's adjutant in the campaign against the Michigan Central 
 was Benjamin F. Burnett, the vocal lawyer from Grass Lake, hon- 
 orifically known as Judge Burnett. The "Judge" was no more than 
 a village lawyer, probably self-trained, a litigant as often as he was 
 counsel, who had garnered neither laurels nor lucre in his profes- 
 sion. A man of some education and ability, he had also tried his 
 hand at surveying, but by 1850, his total assets did not exceed 
 |8oo. His motives in working and clamoring for those who came to 
 be known as the "railroad conspirators" are not clear. He may 
 have been something of a maverick, having unsuccessfully run for 
 county surveyor in 1848 as a Free Soiler. Ambitious, contentious, 
 and not always scrupulous of legal and conventional niceties, he 
 may have been fishing in troubled waters when he adopted the 
 cause of the people. Once having made his choice, however, he 
 stuck to it through abuse and imprisonment. His later journalistic 
 crusade on behalf of the "conspirators," in and out of jail, helped 
 keep the issue "before the people" until a measure of justice was 
 realized.i^ 
 
 The third in the village triumvirate was Ammi Filley, brother- 
 in-law of Fitch and owner of the tavern at Michigan Centre, next 
 to the tracks, across the road from Fitch's house. His relation to 
 Fitch, his comparative wealth, and above all, his control of seem- 
 ingly unlimited supplies of whiskey gave him some standing among 
 
 [ 17 ]
 
 the farmers of the locality, if it tarnished his name in the county at 
 large. He had come to Michigan from Connecticut in 1833, and 
 after unsuccessful business ventures in and around Jackson and 
 some notoriety as the father of "The Lost Boy," William Filley, 
 who disappeared among the Indians, had established himself as 
 the tavern keeper of Michigan Centre. He was not poor: his prop- 
 erty was valued at $4,200 and he employed as many as twelve men 
 on his lands, from which he sent fish and game to the Detroit 
 market. Angered by the railroad's policy in some altercation over 
 the building of fences, he nursed his hurt into vindictiveness and 
 unrestrainedly denounced the road, prodded his friends and em- 
 ployees to violent attacks, and even personally put his hand to 
 stoning the trains and obstructing the tracks.^o 
 
 It was Filley's tavern that served as the natural headquarters 
 where discontent was expressed, allayed, and fortified over the bar 
 or at the card table or the nine-pin alley outside. Here grievances 
 were loudly aired and anger fanned and the escapades hatched, 
 more often than not under the influence of the liquor which Filley 
 had ordered his bartenders to dispense so freely. "They generally 
 drank by platoons," one observer reported of the almost nightly 
 gatherings at Filley's. And if this popular rendezvous by the tracks 
 was later denominated a "low country tavern," it certainly was the 
 poor man's club in Leoni Township.21 
 
 Here Orlando Williams, the stone mason, bibulously boasted of 
 his feats, imaginary and real, in getting back at the railroad. Here 
 Bill Corwin, the shiftless teamster and occasional barkeep, who 
 took his pay in liquid kind, got up his bravado for destructive 
 sorties. Here the Price boys, Eben and Richard, blacksmiths by 
 trade, joined in the roistering that sometimes led to drunken 
 brawls and sometimes to alcoholic feats of derring-do. Here Eras- 
 tus Champlin, farmer, and his two sons, Lyman and Willard, 
 damned the railroad and swore vengeance. And here, too, came 
 the railroad agents to gather their evidence of crimes committed 
 and planned. Sometimes, too, the boys would journey to the tavern 
 at Leoni village for a "ball" or to some "grocery" or hotel at Jack- 
 son where the usual round of quaffing, boasts, threats, and forays 
 would be repeated. 
 
 During the long winter of 1849-1850 or, in railroad parlance, 
 after the close of the season, activity and talk abated with the cold 
 
 [ 18]
 
 weather. Once the lakes were frozen, through traffic fell off greatly 
 if not completely, and the occasions and targets for depredations 
 did not present themselves. But once the thaws came and the trains 
 began to run again, the battle was renewed by both sides with in- 
 creased vigor.22 
 
 During the spring, summer, and fall of 1850, resentment over 
 more cattle killed and Superintendent Brooks' half-pay policy 
 seemed to grow and intensify. Resentment was soon translated into 
 threats and threats into violence. The burden of complaint was 
 the old one: the company would never run over the road in safety 
 until it paid up for property destroyed; if they could not get their 
 revenge in one way, they would get it in another; they would let 
 the company know there was "a. God in Israel; the company would 
 be glad bye and bye to pay up for cattle or if they did not they 
 would catch hell." Lyman Champlin angrily threatened that if 
 they did not pay for the old gray mare they killed, he would keep 
 the railroad wood and fences on fire. In June, Burnett had a cow 
 killed at Grass Lake and when a neighbor joked him for not com- 
 mencing suit and getting pay for it, he declared he would have 
 full pay or full satisfaction before he receipted for the critter. Bill 
 Corwin, in the course of a conversation with a neighbor, pulled out 
 of his pocket a printed pamphlet called "The Railroad Dream" 
 and read aloud of a poor man's cow being killed and how he had 
 sued the company and got nothing. "By Jesus," Corwin exclaimed, 
 "is the people going to stand this? No, by Jesus, they'll catch it 
 before long." 
 
 Sometimes, tongues loosened by alcohol talked in a kind of des- 
 perate confidence of a great coup or some ingenious plan to destroy 
 the road at one blow. Jack Freeland once freely and openly de- 
 scribed a plan for placing powder on the rails with a fuse running 
 from it, so timed as to explode when the trains passed. Another 
 time, Ebenezer Farnham, a dentist in Jackson who was as much 
 given to drink as to the practice of his profession and who sympa- 
 thized with the plight of the Leonians, emerged from a "grocery" 
 in that town, collared a passing friend, pulled him into an alley, 
 and said, "I want to tell you something for I believe you to be a 
 pretty damned good fellow." The friend thought the doctor was 
 pretty well corned as he went on: "The railroad— hell and damna- 
 tion, the railroad will all be blown up in less than a month. . ." 
 
 [ 19]
 
 The happy dentist gloated in drunken glee, "5 10,000 all gone to 
 hell in one minute and I've got the tools to do it," and hung on to 
 his listener for dear life. Orlando Williams promised the assem- 
 bled company at Morrison's grocery in Jackson that he would tear 
 up the track from Michigan Centre to Leoni to make the com- 
 pany pay for cattle killed. At Hadden's grocery in Jackson, ^Vil- 
 liams confidentially offered a fellow barfly a chance to make $500 
 by burning the railroad company's steamers, the Mayflower and 
 the Atlantic, and bringing them to the water's edge. At Filley's 
 one day, between drinks, Williams boasted that the company 
 would be glad to eat salt out of their hands in a few days and that 
 it should be made to pay double value for cattle killed. Bill Cor- 
 win almost matched Williams' big talk about what he was going 
 to do to the company. Once in Jackson, he had swapped horses 
 with Caleb Loud, dealer in "Loud's Celebrated Ointment" for 
 horses, and the two were riding around the sheds by the railroad 
 depot. Loud remarked that a fire there would sweep the whole 
 lower town. Corwin put his hand on Loud's arm and said, "Just 
 remember my word, there will be one here before long." Corwin 
 also felt impelled to seek new recruits in back of Morrison's gro- 
 cery to tear up the track and burn the depot at Jackson, promising 
 large sums of money. 
 
 None of these grandiose plans for destroying the railroad ever 
 materialized. But attacks similar to those of the season of 1849 con- 
 tinued to harass the operation of trains between Grass Lake and 
 Jackson. The summer and fall of 1850 were punctuated with the 
 familiar shootings, stonings, obstructions, and burnings. 
 
 More than one evening, as a bunch of the boys were gathered at 
 Filley's, someone would suggest that they go and give them a few 
 stones or "give them hell again tonight," and a group would sally 
 out to stone the trains amidst the startled cries of the passengers. 
 One dark night in August, Filley, Jacob Wolliver, his devil or 
 handyman, and the two Price boys got an ax and went out to 
 throw the cars off. About three-quarters of a mile west of Leoni, 
 where the tracks crossed a culvert over a six-foot bank, they broke 
 the chairs that held the rails in place and moved them to one side. 
 They then went off forty or sixty rods and lay down and waited. 
 An eastbound train, pulled by the locomotive Gazelle came along 
 and ran into the open track. The Gazelle ran off and capsized and 
 
 [20]
 
 the train crews worked many hours getting her back on. Filley later 
 described the incident as good clean sport: how when they went 
 out cooning, the road was the best ground to go on; the Gazelle 
 was a big coon they caught the other night but they had lost its 
 tail, "but damn 'em," they will have that soon; it had taken a good 
 many men to get the coon on the track again, and he did not want 
 anything better than an ax and a crow bar to shoot a coon with. 
 Fitch, too, indulged in his characteristic humor when he told how 
 the Gazelle had got dry and, having no pump aboard, was forced 
 to go down into the marsh for water. 
 
 During the state fair at Ann Arbor in September, 1850, a conduc- 
 tor later recalled, it seemed almost impossible to get through Leoni 
 and Michigan Centre at night without some trouble. This was de- 
 spite the fact that all train crews had been warned to proceed 
 slowly and with great caution through these places. One night dur- 
 ing the fair, this conductor was running a train west and at Grass 
 Lake told the engineer he could run to Michigan Centre at normal 
 speed. Soon a passenger asked him why they were running faster 
 than usual and the conductor explained: "There is no danger; we 
 have the head devils on board, and the gang will not hurt them." 
 And he pointed down the car to where Fitch and Filley were 
 sitting, on their way back from a visit to the fair. 23 
 
 That same month, a group from the Centre had gone to Leoni 
 village to help Ephraim Barrett in his law suit against the railroad 
 company for damages for a cow that had been killed. Barrett had 
 been offered $15 and would have liked to accept that sum, but his 
 neighbors urged him not to. The suit at Leoni was fruitless, and 
 the men returned to Michigan Centre embittered. After their re- 
 turn, Filley and Wolliver went out and stuck a tie into the culvert 
 west of Fitch's house so that it would strike the lamp on the next 
 engine that came along. They also put a mudsill across the track 
 nearby, and then retired from the scene. The freight train was duly 
 halted and Fitch and Filley came up and innocently inquired what 
 the matter was. Receiving no enlightenment from one member of 
 the train crew, which was busy removing the obstructions, they re- 
 peated their question to another, and got only abuse in reply. "You 
 damned hounds," the train hand cursed, "every one of you should 
 be hung up." Now riled. Fitch and Filley went around to the rear 
 of the train and put on the brakes. The two then went up the track 
 
 [21 ]
 
 a way and hugely enjoyed watching the sparks fly from the wheels 
 as the train struggled up a grade. 
 
 In October, the engine Rocket ran off at Michigan Centre after 
 it had hit an open switch. Although the engine tore up the side 
 track it was not upset, but it took about seven hours to get it back 
 on the tracks. With each successful attack on the road, Filley took 
 great delight in giving the company credit in some imaginary 
 ledger against the unpaid balance for cattle killed— $i for each 
 stoning and proportionately greater amounts for more substantial 
 losses. Fitch, too, made estimates of losses the company had suffered 
 and reckoned that the cattle killed between Grass Lake and Jack- 
 son had already cost the company about I400 per head. These 
 vengeful calculations also included mishaps on the Michigan Cen- 
 tral with which the boys from the Centre had nothing to do, al- 
 though they were later charged with them. Two such accidents 
 must be laid entirely to chance or negligence. In June, 1850, a bag- 
 gage car carrying United States mail took fire and was destroyed a 
 little east of Jackson. Again, a train was thrown off the track at 
 Leoni because a track crew had removed some of the rail at that 
 point and the engineer had not seen their signal in time to stop.^^ 
 
 Fitch, except for the time when he had reversed the brakes on 
 the stalled train, continued to confine his activities to those of 
 public advocate. In Michigan Centre and in Jackson, he made no 
 secret of his unyielding opposition to the railroad's policy and of 
 his opinion that the trouble the road was having was fully de- 
 served; that it was the only means of bringing the company to 
 terms; that the depredations would divert travel from the road and 
 "bring them to their milk." He justified the actions of his friends 
 with an illustration: suppose a man owned a large tract of land 
 near the town and the village cattle troubled him, he could dig 
 pits and get the cattle into them— the land being his own, they 
 could not help themselves— the owners of the cattle, however, had 
 a right to take the law into their own hands and that would be 
 their only remedy. Fitch's analogy is pertinent only if one remem- 
 bers that cattle in that sparsely settled and unfenced country were 
 regarded at law as free commoners and allowed to run at large.^s 
 
 At times. Fitch not altogether jokingly laid the violence to the 
 railroad police, adding that he would like to catch the spies on his 
 land and "fix 'em out." In the same breath, he admitted that ston- 
 
 [22]
 
 ing was "mild means" his friends were using and boasted that "the 
 company was nearly used up now and had gone down with only 
 fifteen passengers on one train." When someone accused Fitch him- 
 self of stoning the cars as they passed his house, he replied with 
 brazen humor that it was "a damned lie" as he was upstairs looking 
 out of the window at the attack. 
 
 To his respectable friends. Fitch talked with more caution and 
 some hypocrisy. That fall, Alonzo Bennett, a merchant of Jackson, 
 warned Fitch that the boys had already gone far enough and that 
 a few words from him or a little labor would stop the depredations. 
 Fitch replied that he knew that what the boys w^ere doing was 
 wrong and that they must look out. But, he went on, he had also 
 told them to get pay for their cattle if they could, and if they could 
 not, they must lay their plans so as not to get caught at it. He con- 
 cluded piously that if the company would only pay full value, 
 "they would have God almighty on their side and be prosperous." 
 About the same time, when the Jackson American Citizen edi- 
 torially condemned both the company for not paying full value 
 and the residents of Leoni for taking the law into their own hands, 
 Fitch personally assured the editor, Charles V. De Land, of his 
 "perfect sympathy" with those sentiments.-^ 
 
 Fitch's advocacy of their cause and the failure of the company 
 to catch any of the offenders gave the Leonians a feeling of con- 
 fidence. Bound together by their grievances and sense of wrong, 
 they were further united in a community of interest by the un- 
 hampered successes of their campaign of retaliation and by the 
 conviction that in Fitch they had a protector and influential inter- 
 cessor with the powers that be. They knew that Fitch was on their 
 side, that he had friends in high political place, that he had a 
 "long head." They were certain "he would stick by them as long 
 as he had any blood left in his body." Too, they were sure that they 
 themselves would stick by one another and find shelter from the 
 law in their common fraternity. They bragged of standing by one 
 another "to swear any hostile witnesses to hell." As Bill Corwin 
 put it: "They could prove that [a] horse was a blacksmith shop 
 and every hair on him a candle if necessary." They counted on 
 their ability to get witnesses of their own to clear them of any 
 criminal complicity. They felt certain that no jury in Jackson 
 County would ever convict them for any act against the railroad. 
 
 [23]
 
 All these acts and declarations did not, however, add up to a 
 conspiracy within the legal meaning of the term, as was later 
 charged by the state. There was no organized gang with consti- 
 tuted leadership that deliberately planned attacks on the railroad 
 for a clearly conceived common end. The opposition to the Michi- 
 gan Central in Jackson County was rather a loose and informal 
 affair, with an open and reckless impulsiveness, entirely lacking in 
 secrecy, compounded of common resentment, illegal intent, alco- 
 holic spontaneity, and criminal acts. It verged on conspiracy but 
 never quite jelled into the necessary consistency of purpose, 
 method, and execution. 
 
 This communal hostility to the railroad also had its roots in com- 
 plaints other than those over the destruction of livestock. The ad- 
 ditional sources of friction did not loom so large in the minds of 
 those who frequented Filley's tavern or went out to stone the trains 
 from Fitch's peach orchard. But elsewhere in Jackson County and 
 in the state at large, they created strong resentment against the 
 railroad, which together with the ill will engendered by the killing 
 of cattle, was the basis of a broad antirailroad movement that 
 sought publicly and legally to regulate and curb the powers of the 
 offending corporation. 
 
 Inevitable sources of friction were the condemnation proceed- 
 ings for lands taken over for the right of way, stations, warehouses 
 and shops, as well as the contract jobs for the construction of fences 
 along the line of the road. Farmers invariably found the company's 
 offers too low and the resultant court proceedings only served as 
 irritants. Fences remained unbuilt or in some cases were even torn 
 down. Even the man of God at Marshall, John D. Pierce, refused to 
 build fence at the company's price of 5i-75 per one hundred rails. 
 In the mind of one young farm laborer, the chief subject of dis- 
 cussion at Michigan Centre during the many months he worked 
 there was the company's wage policies. He remembered that there 
 was something said about the railroad being a monopoly, and that 
 a feeling was getting up against them because they hired help very 
 cheap, did not pay wages enough, and had a tendency to render 
 wages low. Once Fitch, elaborating on the complaints against the 
 company, catalogued the whole list of its sins. He reiterated his 
 charge that it was "a damned monopoly." He said he thought "the 
 road was damned poorly managed and that a boy ten years old 
 
 [24]
 
 would manage it better than Superintendent Brooks." He thought 
 the chief engineer in charge of construction would be a better 
 superintendent than Brooks, for he thought the company ought to 
 pay for cattle killed. Fitch said the road carried produce from Niles 
 as cheap as it did from Jackson, and that it had fixed the price 
 of men at I500, referring to the amount paid to the widow of a 
 man who had been killed by a train the year before at Galesburg.^^ 
 
 It was the charges of unfair freight rates and monopoly practices 
 that were taken up most widely in the state. Jackson County ship- 
 pers had complained of high rates back in 1846 when the state had 
 owned the railroad. Then, in 1848, some shippers in Kalamazoo 
 had protested to Superintendent Brooks against what they thought 
 was unfair discrimination in the rates for carrying their produce to 
 Detroit: the rates from Niles to Detroit were less than those from 
 Kalamazoo to Detroit, a shorter haul by some fifty miles. Brooks, in 
 a published pamphlet, justified the cheaper long-haul rate by the 
 necessity of meeting water-shipping competition at Niles, which 
 had access to Lake Michigan via the St. Joseph River. The cheaper 
 rates and hence the greater volume of business from Niles, he 
 argued, actually enabled the company to charge lower rates from 
 Kalamazoo than would otherwise have been possible. In 1849, after 
 the railroad had been finished to New Buffalo on the lake, the 
 Whig American Citizen of Jackson, with no desire to ignore a pop- 
 ular issue, took up the hue and cry. Its editor fulminated against 
 the "dastardly course" the railroad had pursued in charging the 
 citizens of the interior of the state nearly double the price charged 
 those of other states for half the distance. Brooks evidently was 
 fighting the lake shipping companies for the Chicago and Mil- 
 waukee trade with the weapon of cheaper long hauls. But the 
 Jackson editor could only see the "enormous charges" of the "Cen- 
 tral railroad monopoly" which in his mind were responsible for 
 the lower prices that local products brought and the bad state of 
 business in general in Jackson County. He denounced the road as 
 a "shameful monopoly" and a "humbug concern," and repeatedly 
 urged the necessity of a connecting line from Jackson to the Mich- 
 igan Southern Railroad at Adrian to give Jackson shippers another 
 outlet to the east, at Monroe on Lake Erie, and thus break the 
 monopoly of the Michigan Central.^s 
 
 The accumulated grievances snowballed into a strong anti- 
 
 [ 25 ]
 
 monopoly sentiment. Again and again, in the press, in the legis- 
 lature, at meetings of citizens, and in Filley's tavern, the railroad 
 was attacked as a corporate monopoly whose greed would not be 
 satisfied until it had gobbled up the wealth of the state and the 
 freedom of the people. Fitch and his friends, as we have seen, did 
 not hide their feelings about the absolute corruption of this abso- 
 lute economic power; one of the company's spies, in order to gain 
 their confidence, found it advisable to talk "against the Road" and 
 call it a monopoly. An angr)' citizen wTote a letter to the American 
 Citizen, which, echoing the editorial opinion of the paper, rang 
 the changes on the theme and demanded to know how long the 
 people would suffer the railroad to dominate them. At Coldwater 
 and at Napoleon, the citizens met to protest against the monopoly 
 of the Michigan Central Railroad. In the legislature at Lansing, 
 the drift of public opinion was crystallized in the warning that 
 "the Michigan Central Railroad Company may possibly, sooner 
 or later, discover that they did not make the State of Michigan, 
 but that the State of Michigan made the company." -^ 
 
 Opposition to the Michigan Central's privileged position must 
 have been strengthened by a decision of the Supreme Court of 
 Michigan in July, 1851. A farmer in Wayne County had brought 
 suit for damages against the company for horses that had been 
 killed by a train. The county court sent the case up to the Supreme 
 Court for adjudication, possibly as part of the same plan Super- 
 intendent Brooks had offered to the citizens of Jackson County. 
 The court decided. Judge Abner Pratt of Marshall writing the 
 opinion, that the railroad was not bound by its charter or the 
 common law to fence the right of way for the protection of other 
 persons' domestic animals, and that inasmuch as the operation of 
 trains was entirely lawful, it could not be held liable for accidental 
 damage to property where no negligence on its part was proven. 
 On the face of it, this decision seemed to bear out all of Fitch's 
 accusations against the company and the courts. As one citizen ex- 
 pressed it in a letter to the newspaper: "Railroad gold bought 
 [the] decision." And even the Democratic paper in Jackson, 
 though accepting the court's decision, felt moved to criticize the 
 company for not going beyond the law and paying fair value for 
 cattle killed in a newly settled state where the farmers could not 
 possibly have enclosed pasturages for their livestock.^^ 
 
 [26 ]
 
 Judge Pratt, in denying the validity of one contention of the 
 plaintiffs, suggested a method of redress. He held that the broader 
 argument that the Michigan Central's charter "contains powers 
 and privileges which were improvidently granted by the legisla- 
 ture . . ." had no bearing on the case at hand. In thus limiting the 
 competence of the court, he was suggesting that what the law- 
 makers had given, only the lawmakers could take away. This con- 
 clusion, which the opponents of the road had more than sensed 
 heretofore, was now driven convincingly home. Their future 
 course of action was ineluctably fixed— a campaign to amend or 
 even annul the railroad's charter, and in the name of justice, free- 
 dom, and competition open the way for the general incorporation 
 of all railroads under a system of public regulation. ^^ 
 
 The charter that the legislature had granted, or more precisely 
 sold, to the Michigan Central Railroad in 1846 had indeed con- 
 ferred monopoly power in perpetuity on the corporation. Though 
 not without protest on democratic grounds against the lordly 
 grant, on the one hand, and powerful financial pressures for it, 
 on the other, the legislature had to a degree acted under the influ- 
 ence of an older conception in creating a corporation with 
 monopoly privileges. It had enfranchised a body politic to act for 
 a desirable public end where the state had been unable to achieve 
 that end. The corporation was, in theory certainly, an arm of the 
 state, not yet wholly a mere business form, and as such entitled 
 to the fullest measure of power and protection to enable it to 
 realize its specific corporate aims. The rapid development of eco- 
 nomic forces, the American conception of equality of opportunity 
 for all, and the instinct that the state had no interests aside from 
 those of the people soon brought this mercantilistic conception of 
 the corporation under attack. Monopoly was reviled as oppres- 
 sive and destructive of the rights of freeborn citizens; it stifled the 
 development of a new country; only regulation by the people and 
 competition through the multiplication of corporations were con- 
 sonant with the ideals of this new-found land of liberty.^- 
 
 John D. Pierce was voicing this point of view in 1849 when he 
 coupled his attack on the railroad's policies with the contention 
 that the legislature had no authority to confer on a corporation 
 "rights, the exercise of which would bring them into daily collision 
 and conflict with [the] citizens." In other words, he was arguing 
 
 [27]
 
 that the actions of the company since its incorporation had been 
 such as to invalidate its franchise. The next year, Pierce carried his 
 fight from the newspapers to the constitutional convention where 
 he served as a delegate from Calhoun County. He introduced the 
 resolution which was later written into the article on corporations 
 of the revised constitution, making possible the formation of cor- 
 porations under general laws and forbidding the legislature to pass 
 any individual acts of incorporation except municipal. This pro- 
 vision, while not affecting those special charters already granted, 
 was designed to prevent the issuance of corporate charters with 
 special or monopoly privileges usually wrung from the legislature 
 by political and financial pressures. It was also prompted by dis- 
 gust with the dogfights of opjDOsing lobbies which besieged the 
 legislature at each session, requesting new or protecting old char- 
 ters, amidst loud charges of corruption. Thus, by constitutional 
 action, the status of the corporation in Michigan was transformed 
 from that of a privileged arm of the state to an ordinary business 
 form accessible to all qualified applicants. While the state thereby 
 lost its power of directing economic enterprise to desirable ends, 
 it retained, in principle, its power to regulate business in the 
 name of the public welfare.^^ 
 
 The new constitution as adopted also forbade the renewal or 
 extension of corporate charters previously granted and removed 
 the thirty year period of grace within which these charters could 
 not be amended. With no success, Delegate Pierce tried to make a 
 general incorporation law for all business enterprise part of the 
 constitution in order to give positive effect to the mandatory pro- 
 vision. And he fought generally, though in vain, to curb the powers 
 of the corporate monopolies. He insisted on holding up the public 
 interest as the supreme criterion of the right to a corporate exist- 
 ence. "When a charter becomes detrimental to the public interest," 
 he asserted in the constitutional debates, "it ceases to answer the 
 professed end of its creator, and may and ought to be repealed. . . 
 Those vested rights, created by charters, must yield, when they 
 come in conflict with the supreme law— the public good." Re- 
 membering his own and others' losses of cattle. Pierce also intro- 
 duced a resolution providing that "In all cases where damage is 
 done by any corporation to private property, the corporation shall 
 pay to the full amount of such damage." When this resolution was 
 
 [28]
 
 buried in committee, Pierce later offered an amendment to the 
 article on corporations to the same effect, but that too failed of 
 adoption.^-i 
 
 The railroad interests were also able to fend off regulatory at- 
 tacks in the legislatures of 1850 and 1851. These attacks were led 
 by Michael Shoemaker, who owned a flour mill in Michigan Centre 
 and represented Jackson County in the state senate. As chairman 
 pro tem of the senate and chairman of its committee on incorpora- 
 tions, he was a figure of some importance in Democratic councils. 
 Twice, in 1850 and in 1851, he introduced a bill to provide for 
 police regulations along the line of the railroads, requiring the 
 companies to fence their roads, build cattle guards at crossings 
 and maintain warning signs there, and put bells on the locomo- 
 tives. Shoemaker stated that the object of his bill was to "protect 
 our farmers from the loss of their cattle by being run over by 
 trains of cars." The opponents of the bill necessarily approved of 
 this worthy aim but insisted that it infringed on vested rights, de- 
 spite the opinion of the attorney general to the contrary. The bill 
 passed the senate twice but was twice defeated in the lower house 
 by the influence of the railroad lobbyists.^^ 
 
 Fitch, too, spent two or three weeks in Lansing in 1851 as self- 
 appointed lobbyist for the people, using whatever influence he had 
 to support any measures that would put pressure on the Michigan 
 Central. He undoubtedly worked hard to get Shoemaker's bill 
 passed. He joined forces with those who were trying to get a rail- 
 road built from Jackson to Adrian to give Jackson an alternate 
 outlet for its products. The completion of this railroad, which had 
 been chartered in 1836 as the Palmyra and Jacksonburg and had 
 been built only to Tecumseh, had been required of the Michigan 
 Southern by the terms of its original charter. The Southern, how- 
 ever, had done nothing, and the Jackson interests, led by Amos 
 Root, merchant, now in 1851 exerted themselves to get it to carry 
 out this part of its charter. For its part, the Southern had no par- 
 ticular interest in the Jackson Branch, as the projected road was 
 known. But it was now engaged in a race with the Michigan Cen- 
 tral to push through to Chicago, and the two rival roads were 
 fighting each other in the legislatures of Michigan, Indiana, and 
 Illinois. John Stryker, chief of the Southern Railroad lobby, ac- 
 cordingly held out the bait of the Jackson Branch to the Jackson 
 
 [29]
 
 County people to get their support for his own bill to allow the 
 Southern to leave the state of Michigan on the road to Chicago. 
 Root, Fitch, and the others were not loath to give Stryker this sup- 
 port and use the Southern Railroad as a cudgel in their own fight 
 with the Michigan Central. ^s 
 
 Stryker was not able to muster the necessary two-thirds majority 
 for his amendment to the Southern's charter. He then shifted his 
 strategy and backed a general railroad incorporation law requiring 
 only an ordinary majority vote, planning to get the connection 
 with Indiana under such a law. The Jackson foes of the Michigan 
 Central wholeheartedly supported this move, it being entirely in 
 accord with their own plans too. Shoemaker of Jackson reported 
 out such a bill from his committee, but here too, the Central forces 
 under the leadership of James F. Joy were able to defeat it.^^ 
 
 The Michigan Central Railroad, it seems, had much greater suc- 
 cess in coping with its opponents in Lansing than with those in 
 Jackson County who were determined to bring it to terms by vio- 
 lence. The summer of 1850 had come and almost gone and Super- 
 intendent Brooks had not as yet been able to apprehend any of the 
 criminals. The situation became, if not desperate, measurably ag- 
 gravated as the railroad's troubles were bruited about in the East 
 and began to drive travel to the lake steamers. The whole task of 
 ferreting out the depredators and collecting enough evidence to 
 convict them required more attention than Brooks could spare 
 from his large duties. Different and more thorough methods would 
 be necessary to breach the protective community-consciousness of 
 the men of Michigan Centre, Leoni, and Grass Lake. 
 
 Brooks' first step was to hire, some time in the summer of 1850, 
 Darius Clark of Marshall to undertake the job of catching the 
 felons. Clark was an experienced business man, a member of the 
 firm of Nash and Clark of Marshall, contractors who had done 
 construction work for the railroad in western Michigan. He was a 
 quiet, likable man, not hitherto mixed up in the controversy, and 
 unknown to the "conspirators." He got to work in August and 
 hired a number of agents who were to operate secretly at Michigan 
 Centre. Some were friends or employees of his from Marshall who 
 went to the Centre and worked there in one fictitious capacity or 
 another. Others were men from Jackson and vicinity who were put 
 to watching the tracks at two dollars a night in the troubled area. 
 
 [30]
 
 Still others went to the Centre on a full-time basis and lived and 
 worked there, watching, talking, listening, drinking, and making 
 reports. Clark also used the railroad's money, men, and facilities 
 to seek out persons who had lived in or near Michigan Centre 
 during the trouble and had since moved away, in order to get them 
 to tell what they knew.^^ 
 
 In a short time, Clark was directing a small organization of secret 
 agents or spies, or "colonists," as John Murray Forbes, president of 
 the railroad, liked to call them, who met their chief at intervals in 
 Jackson, Marshall, or Detroit and made reports and affidavits as to 
 their findings. Clark reported on his progress directly to Brooks in 
 Detroit, sometimes in person and sometimes by messenger. His 
 written reports show that he worked slowly and cautiously but 
 determinedly. "Time and deliberation will surely do it," he ad- 
 vised Brooks. "There is nothing gained in pushing this thing fast," 
 he assured his anxious superior, and kept stressing the need for 
 absolute secrecy on the part of all concerned.^^ 
 
 Not being a lawyer, Clark got the judge of the Circuit Court of 
 Jackson County and ipso facto a member of the Supreme Court of 
 Michigan, Abner Pratt, of Marshall, to help him to evaluate the 
 evidence. Pratt, who was to write the Supreme Court decision ab- 
 solving the railroad of liability for property damage little more 
 than a year hence, took hold of the matter "with his usual energy." 
 By the middle of August, he was assuring Clark that he had enough 
 evidence for a strong case, with the latter insisting cautiously that 
 it was not enough. Soon Pratt was saying— with what degree of 
 judicial impartiality is difficult to surmise— that "if it is all right he 
 will guarantee a conviction." Clark still demurred: "I am not so 
 confident yet." By the end of August, as the evidence kept coming 
 in, the judge told Clark that conspiracy charges were the best 
 method of attack and actually drew up the form of an indictment 
 for conspiracy against Fitch and the others, and sent it to the 
 prosecuting attorney of Jackson County to be used before the 
 grand jury at the proper time. By November, Clark was "in hopes" 
 that he had sufficient evidence to spring the trap, and halt the in- 
 creasing number of accidents that now plagued the trains in the 
 vicinity of Michigan Centre. First, however, he wrote Brooks that 
 he would like to show him what evidence he had so far, as though 
 to have Brooks dispel whatever doubts he, Clark, might have, 
 
 [31 ]
 
 adding that he expected more "would be brought out on a trial." ^^ 
 Clark's instinctive caution got the upper hand and no arrests 
 were made at the time. A new and unlocked for contingency, the 
 destruction by fire of the freight depot in Detroit, changed the 
 whole aspect of the case and demanded further and more thorough 
 investigation. In any case, a large part of the evidence thus far ob- 
 tained was indirect, consisting of admissions by Fitch and his 
 friends to the agents, and hence highly vulnerable in court. The 
 amount of direct proof was understandably small, in view of the 
 secrecy in which the road's enemies cloaked their operations. The 
 entire investigation, moreover, was greatly hampered when one of 
 Clark's chief agents was early discovered and exposed as a spy. 
 All the other agents were then sooner or later compromised as the 
 Centreites came to suspect anybody and everybody who had not for 
 years been a resident of the community. And the doubled caution 
 of Fitch and his fellows made the procurement of further direct 
 evidence by other spies commensurately difficult. Fitch, undoubt- 
 edly the brains of the group, became exceedingly cautious, "know- 
 ing as [he] did that large rewards had been ofEered for [his] convic- 
 tion and that secret spyes were laying in wait for [him]."^i 
 
 It was at this point that William D. Wescott, the exposed spy, 
 greatly aided Clark by making available new sources of informa- 
 tion. Wescott was one of the first agents that Clark hired and at 
 the time, in August, 1850, was a clerk in a hotel in Jackson, about 
 to take a job as a guard in the state prison there. He had behind 
 him a nondescript career as barkeep and unsuccessful business man 
 in Nankin, Wayne County, and up north at Mackinac, where he 
 had been under indictment for forgery. Of shrewd though limited 
 intelligence, he had probably been referred to Clark by the rail- 
 road officials in Jackson because he had lived in Michigan Centre 
 in the spring of the year and still went there on Sundays to see his 
 wife who boarded with her father. 
 
 Clark first had to get Wescott temporarily released from his 
 prison job. Brooks wrote Justus Goodwin, superintendent of the 
 prison, asking for Wescott's services for the railroad "for a couple 
 of weeks or so" without revealing the purpose beyond the assur- 
 ance that "he would be of most essential service to us, and prob- 
 ably to the public, in the furtherance of some matters of public 
 interest as well as of the interest of the company." Goodwin oblig- 
 
 [32 ]
 
 ingly released Wescott, pointedly informing Brooks that the 
 "scoundrels" in Leoni Township had aroused nothing but indig- 
 nation in Jackson. Clark thereupon put Wescott on the payroll 
 as a secret agent at S40 a month, even though he could not alto- 
 gether overcome his distrust of the man. He had not been too well 
 impressed in talking to him and doubted his integrity. He sus- 
 pected him of "playing a double game" and did not like the fact 
 that Wescott "call[ed] for money the first thing." ^2 
 
 Wescott went to Michigan Centre on August 19 to live with his 
 father-in-law. He spent his days talking and drinking with the boys 
 and "laying out at nights" in Fitch's and Filley's yards, along the 
 track, or eavesdropping under Fitch's windows. He let it be known 
 that he was taking a long rest at Michigan Centre because he was 
 tired of tending bar and "it was too hard for him to be up so much 
 nights." At the tavern, he talked against the railroad, called it a 
 monopoly, and advertised his hard feelings in order to gain his 
 listeners' confidence. Fitch called him "one of the boys" and the 
 accolade was confirmed by a drink on the part of all present. Wes- 
 cott was soon on quite intimate terms with Fitch; the latter invited 
 him to his parlor to eat fruit and drink cherry whiskey and brandy 
 and confided all that had been done and all that was planned 
 against the railroad. He had so far advanced in the good graces of 
 Fitch that the latter actually proposed to him to take over and run 
 Filley's tavern. Fitch assured him he would make money and said 
 it would accommodate him and his friends to have it kept up bet- 
 ter than Filley kept it. 
 
 Wescott was thus in a position to gather much information for 
 his employer on the sentiments expressed, the crimes committed, 
 and those planned at the Centre. He must have greatly endeared 
 himself to Clark and Brooks when he warned of a projected "grand 
 smash" at the time of the state fair in Ann Arbor in September, 
 1850. He reported to Clark that Fitch had told him that he and the 
 boys were determined to bring the company to terms before the 
 state fair was over; that he. Fitch, meant to show the people of 
 Michigan that the feeling against the company did not exist alone 
 in Leoni by throwing off the cars all the way from west of Jackson 
 to east of Grass Lake; that they hoped to kill 100 to 150 passengers 
 during the fair and if that failed, to burn the railroad depots at 
 Detroit, Ann Arbor, Jackson, and Niles. He further revealed that 
 
 [33 ]
 
 Filley planned to throw off a train at the Dry Marsh where the 
 dead passengers would be buried so deep in the mud that there 
 would be no need of coffins or sexton. The whole murderous plan, 
 according to Wescott, was to be climaxed by a demand of $100,000 
 blackmail from the company to call off the attack. Wescott's hor- 
 rendous report led to immediate action. A special train was sent 
 out before the fair began and nearly a hundred special watchmen 
 were stationed along the track at the threatened points. Clark and 
 Brooks were certain that this timely action forced the conspirators 
 to give up their evil design and credited Wescott with saving the 
 railroad from destruction. 
 
 It was not long before Wescott's real purpose at the Centre was 
 discovered. Once or twice he had narrowly escaped being caught 
 on his nightly prowls, but his luck ran out after he had been at the 
 Centre not more than a few weeks. One evening early in Septem- 
 ber, Benjamin Gleason, who was a friend of Fitch and who worked 
 at the state prison, came down to the Centre to see him. Fitch, 
 Filley, Wescott, and a fourth were playing euchre in the parlor. 
 Gleason called Fitch out of the room and told him that he had 
 seen a letter at the prison in which Brooks asked for Wescott's 
 services and that he was probably a railroad spy. Fitch went back 
 and called Filley into consulation. Wescott sensed that something 
 was up. When Fitch and Filley returned the game was resumed, but 
 there was a coolness in the air and they did not play euchre much 
 longer that night. 
 
 A few days later, Gleason came down once more and this time 
 produced Brooks' letter to Goodwin. It was not certain proof of 
 Wescott's treachery but showed that he was working for the rail- 
 road in some capacity. Gleason summarily accused Wescott of 
 being "a damned railroad spy" who ought to have his throat cut. 
 Filley confronted the suspect the next day with Gleason's evidence 
 but he coolly denied he was a spy. Fitch called Wescott to his house 
 and asked him if Brooks had employed him as a spy. When he 
 denied the accusation. Fitch asked him to explain away the letter. 
 Wescott, thinking fast, answered that Brooks had hired him to 
 trace a trunk that one of the railroad's patrons claimed had been 
 lost. Fitch was incredulous and said the company had bigger busi- 
 ness to look after and that the letter was proof enough for him 
 that he, Wescott, was a spy. The latter then suggested, with more 
 
 [34]
 
 audacity than cunning, that Fitch go to Detroit and check the 
 matter with Brooks. 
 
 Knowledge of Brooks' letter sufficed to convince most of the 
 patrons of Filley's that Wescott was a spy. They avoided him but 
 did not fail to let him know in one way or another what they would 
 do to spies in general and him in particular if he were ever to 
 testify against them. Fitch threatened to shoot him on the stand 
 and if he couldn't do it himself, "by God, he had friends enough 
 that would do it." The boys added their own threats to Fitch's 
 and declared that they would shoot a spy as quick as they would a 
 dog. Later, they discussed a plan to bludgeon Wescott to death and 
 made sure that Joshua Wells, Wescott's brother-in-law, overheard 
 them. Wells, as expected, carried the news to Wescott and the lat- 
 ter immediately informed his employers that his life was in danger. 
 He even told Clark that he himself had crawled under the floor of 
 Filley's tavern and heard his life auctioned off for $100. Clark, 
 realizing that the man's usefulness was at an end, gave him a job 
 in the depot at Detroit. This did not prevent Wescott from carry- 
 ing on officiously as a self-styled detective, but by March, 1851, 
 even Clark had had enough of him. He asked that Wescott be 
 given something to do that would "keep him off the railroad en- 
 tirely," giving as his reasons that the fellow just could not get 
 along with the other men working on the case. A little later, Clark 
 kept the irrespressible Wescott from making a trip east in search 
 of information because he felt that his lack of discretion might 
 harm the whole investigation.^^ 
 
 Before Wescott had left the Centre, he had been able to do a 
 great service for his employers. He persuaded two young men of the 
 place to come out and tell all they knew on the promise of good 
 jobs with the company. In September, he got Horace Caswell, a 
 young laborer who had never had more than odd jobs at the Centre, 
 to go to work at the railroad depot in Detroit. Two months later, 
 Caswell was making out affidavits to help build up the company's 
 case against the conspirators. In November, Wescott told his young 
 brother-in-law, Joshua Wells, of his own work with the railroad 
 and promised him he should have a good situation if he would 
 come out and be a man. Wells accepted the offer and was also 
 placed in the Detroit depot, and soon thereafter began to provide 
 Clark with valuable evidence. Both he and Caswell were able to 
 
 [35]
 
 incriminate Fitch himself by telling how he had given them his 
 pistols to use in shooting at a train, although they never had ac- 
 tually discharged them. 
 
 One other young resident of the Centre, however, proved not so 
 pliable as Wells and Caswell and was to suffer for his obduracy. 
 Miner Lay cock, scarcely twenty-one years old, also jumped at the 
 opportunity to go to work for the railroad in Detroit, but when he 
 found out it meant betraying his friends at Michigan Centre, re- 
 fused to talk and was summarily dismissed. He later was arrested 
 with the other "railroad conspirators" and spent six months in jail. 
 
 Of all those to turn state's evidence, Jacob Wolliver delivered 
 the most damaging blows to Fitch and company. Wolliver had 
 lived at Leoni during the summer of 1850 and worked for Filley 
 most of the time, tending bar, trapping pigeons, fishing for pickerel, 
 and doing odd jobs. Filley called him his "devil" and had always 
 found him ready to go out and tear up a piece of track or stone 
 the trains, especially after he had been fortified by some of Filley's 
 whiskey, to which he had free access with no questions asked. Along 
 about the fall of the year, Wolliver succumbed to the blandish- 
 ments of the railroad and accepted a job at Albion. As he was about 
 to leave, he found himself at odds with his employer, Filley, over 
 the amount of his wages, claiming that he was not being paid 
 enough and that he was being charged for more whiskey than he 
 had consumed. The two finally compromised on a deduction of 
 six to eight dollars for a barrel of whiskey, but Wolliver left dis- 
 satisfied, even after Fitch himself had called him in and tried to 
 mollify him, realizing that Wolliver knew too much to leave the 
 Centre with any ill will. From Albion, word soon came to Filley 
 that Wolliver was going to testify against his former employer and 
 friends. Filley was not too concerned over the prospect of Wolliver's 
 betrayal for he was sure that they "could swear him to hell." He 
 went to Albion, nevertheless, to caution him not to talk, for he 
 felt that a little caution "went a damned ways" sometimes. Filley 
 reinforced his warning vnth a threat, but Wolliver had made up 
 his mind to reveal all and was able to give Clark some direct first- 
 hand evidence of attacks on the road by himself in company with 
 the boys. 
 
 The defection of their own kind and the exposure of Wescott 
 embittered the boys to the point of overweening suspicion. They 
 
 [36 ]
 
 reiterated with vigor their threats against spies and ranted of the 
 murderous means they would use to stop the mouths of informers. 
 At times, the more volatile of them, in the heat of argument or in 
 their cups, even let their hatred and suspicion explode into brutal 
 violence against someone they distrusted or merely disliked. 
 
 One of the strangers in their midst they soon figured to be a spy, 
 and correctly so, was Harvey Dixon, who came from Marshall and 
 posed as a wheat buyer for a Detroit firm. Dixon stupidly gave 
 himself away by paying too much for his purchases and had to leave 
 after a brief and unfruitful stay at the Centre. The morning he 
 left. Jack Freeland sent him off with a bitter tirade. 
 
 There's that damned wheat buyer— you didn't buy my wheat did you? 
 God damn you I didn't mean you should. I thought you was feeding soft 
 soap, and I eat a good deal of that before I came to this country. I didn't 
 speak to you did I? I didn't mean to, for I didn't like your looks. 
 
 Even an innocent like Hiram Dexter, who came to the Centre to 
 build the ball alley outside Filley's tavern, was suspected of spying 
 for the railroad and was warned that he had better be careful and 
 not offend any of the boys lest they knock him over. And when old 
 Alonzo Holmes, who boarded the track hands at his house, of- 
 fended Orlando Williams, that hothead brutally assaulted the help- 
 less old man. There had been some talk of Holmes and his wife 
 being spies and it was proposed to tar and feather the couple. Su- 
 spicion had somewhat abated, when, one day in August, 1850, 
 Williams accused Holmes once more. Holmes was sitting on the 
 steps at Filley's chatting, when Williams came up, pulled the old 
 man off the steps and shouted, "They do say you are a railroad 
 spy." Holmes coolly replied, "It's nobody's business if I am." Sub- 
 sequently, inside the tavern, at the bar, Williams picked up a bottle 
 and yelled at Holmes, "You are a damned pusillanimous." (This 
 can only be the court reporter's substitution for profanity, a la 
 Hemingway.) When Holmes replied, "You are a ditto," Williams 
 threw the bottle at his head and broke the old man's jaw, knocking 
 him unconscious. Williams later boasted in Morrison's grocery at 
 Jackson that he had "nearly laid out one damned spy and wished 
 to God he had killed him." He added he would kill a railroad spy 
 quicker that he would a "massasauger." Another time, Williams' 
 nasty temper brought him to blows with William Dobbs, whom he 
 did not like because he had refused to join the boys in an attempt 
 
 [37 ]
 
 to nail a plank on the track. Even Fitch had afterward sneeringly 
 asked Dobbs if he were going to engage with the company the 
 next season. It was at Warner's grocery in Jackson that Williams 
 and Dobbs got into an argument over the comparative sizes of a 
 gold dollar and a five-cent piece. Williams flared up and dared 
 Dobbs into the back room to fight, calling him a "damned scoun- 
 drel" and telling him he would whip any man engaged with the 
 railroad company. This time, Williams himself was "whaled 
 slightly" and may thereby have had his suspicions of Dobbs dis- 
 pelled. 
 
 One of the spies, Hiram Sherman, was with great cunning able 
 to parry the distrust of the Centreites and neatly turn the tables 
 on them, trapping two of them in a criminal act. Sherman was a 
 longtime resident of Leoni village and was hired by Clark early 
 in October at a wage of I25 a month. He went to the village to 
 work for one of the farmers there and was duly suspected of being 
 a spy. One day, at Filley's, he spoke of quitting his job on the farm 
 and Bill Corwin taunted him, "I suppose you think you can make 
 more by laying out at nights." Sherman's chance to return to grace 
 came not long afterward. He was present at the ball alley outside 
 the tavern when Corwin got into an argument with John Palmer. 
 The two began twitting each other and finally had a clinch, with 
 Palmer backing Corwin against the wall. Sherman stepped in be- 
 tween the two and held Palmer off. After the fight had been broken 
 up, Sherman and his new friend, Corwin, went out to an old rail- 
 road car standing on the track nearby and made up in a burst of 
 mutual confidence. As Sherman later described their conversation: 
 
 I told him I knew he thought I was watching for the railroad, told him I 
 was watching for the road, but that whatever he said to me, he need not 
 fear me going to the road with it, that he knew me well enough for that . . . 
 that I could watch on his side as well as for Mr. Clark and the road, and 
 could tell him what the company was doing . . . told him I watched for 
 money and did not care anything for the road more than to get their 
 money . . . told him I would do anything I could for them. 
 
 Corwin was completely won over by this frank confession. He said 
 all he wanted was that Sherman should let them know what the 
 company was doing and be on their side and didn't care how much 
 money he got out of the company. Sherman then cleverly warned 
 Corwin not to give his game away to Clark for then he would be 
 
 [38]
 
 discharged and would not be paid for what he had already done. 
 Corwin assured him he would tell no one but Fitch. 
 
 Early that November, Sherman's new loyalties were put to the 
 test. As he later told the story, Corwin approached him in Jackson 
 and asked him to help steal some barrels of flour that night from 
 the freight cars sidetracked at the Centre. The plan was to set fire 
 to a pile of lumber as a diversion, and, while the railroad police 
 were busy with the fire, steal the flour. Corwin added that if 
 Sherman did not join him, he must keep still, but that he and Eben 
 Price were going ahead with the plan anyway. Sherman agreed to 
 join the two. Before he returned to Michigan Centre, however, he 
 revealed the plan to the railroad officials in Jackson. 
 
 According to Sherman's account, the three met that night in the 
 tavern at the Centre and imbibed some liquid courage. Filley asked 
 them if they were going fishing and Corwin in reply merely asked 
 him if he had an old ax and then went and got it. Price then com- 
 plained that he hadn't "the first damned thing to fight with" in 
 case of trouble so Filley gave him a knife. As the three left, Filley 
 wished them good luck and told them if they wanted anything after 
 they got back, there was the bottle. On the way to the lumber pile, 
 Corwin suggested turning the switch but realized they had no tools 
 for that task and Price cautioned, "One thing at a time; we will burn 
 the wood tonight." When the little group arrived at the woodpile, 
 they reconnoitered the area a bit. Price nervously suggested, "If 
 any one comes we will run to the woods." Corwin replied he would 
 "be damned if he'd run" and told Price he'd better stick by him 
 and fight it out. As they set the fire, Sherman kept looking around 
 nervously for the police he expected to be on hand. He soon saw 
 what he was looking for— several men crawling along the ground 
 nearby. Relieved, he rejoined Price and Corwin, and a moment 
 later, the three were arrested and taken to the jail in Jackson. 
 
 At long last, it seemed that Clark had the best kind of evidence 
 against at least two of the road's enemies and would be able to send 
 them to jail. The grand jury, after some "higgling," brought an 
 indictment against the three. Corwin and Price pleaded not guilty. 
 Bail was fixed at $1,000 each and loyal Ammi Filley promptly gave 
 bond for his two friends. Sherman, too, was released on bail offered 
 by a railroad official. The trial was set for the March term of 
 court.^* 
 
 [39]
 
 Pending the trial, Sherman returned to the Centre but did not 
 stay long for his treachery was known. Fitch pointed him out one 
 day to a group at the tavern and said, "There is one of the damned 
 railroad spies, just such men as they get to watch the road and bum 
 the company's wood." Turning to Corwin and Price, Fitch sardon- 
 ically continued: 
 
 Boys, I should think you would remember Sherman in your prayers, if 
 you don't go to bed till late. I should, if he had been in company with 
 me and had turned traitor. If he had turned traitor to me, I should like 
 to finger my knife around his ribs. 
 
 Sherman left soon after for the safety of a job in the railroad 
 warehouse at Marshall at one dollar a day. At the Centre, mean- 
 while, alibis were being prepared and public opinion was being 
 educated. Sherman was described as a tool of the railroad who 
 under orders had entrapped innocent men and instigated the 
 whole venture; he had gotten Corwin so drunk that he had had to 
 lead him to the lumber pile and then set fire to it himself. Corwin 
 told Caleb Loud, the dealer in horse medicine, that they never 
 would bring him to trial for burning the wood; if they did, they 
 could not convict him, as they had witnesses enough to swear him 
 clear. He asked Loud to use his influence for him by talking among 
 the farmers south of Jackson before the trial. 
 
 As the day of the trial approached, Clark became convinced that 
 it had better be postponed. He preferred not to "stir up the ire of 
 Michigan Centre" just yet. He had come to share the belief of his 
 new legal adviser whom he had hired in December, John Van 
 Arman, the astute criminal lawyer from Marshall, that these men 
 could never be convicted in Jackson County. James F. Joy, the 
 company's chief counsel, did not share Clark's hesitation and 
 wished to bring the men to trial as scheduled, hoping to draw out 
 information in the course of the trial of the two that could be 
 effectively used against the rest of the group. Clark insisted that 
 nothing new could thus be uncovered that he could not get from 
 his secret agents. He did join Joy, nevertheless, in a bold plan to 
 get the case removed from the jurisdiction of the judge of the 
 Jackson County court. Legislation to effect this change of venue 
 was necessary, and Clark and Joy went to work to get it, the former 
 in his new capacity as member of the house of representatives from 
 Calhoun County. With the aid of the state attorney general and the 
 
 [40]
 
 prosecuting attorney for Jackson County, they pushed through a 
 bill in the 1851 session of the legislature which provided for the 
 removal of criminal cases from the county courts to the circuit 
 courts at the option of the prosecuting attorney as well as that of 
 the defendants.^^ 
 
 Despite this legislative victory, the case of Corwin and Price 
 never was brought to trial. Clark really had bigger fish to fry. His 
 comparative indifEerence to the case of the two who had set fire 
 to some railroad lumber was prompted by his greater interest in a 
 bigger charge of arson which he hoped to pin on the whole cabal 
 at Michigan Centre. As he explained to Brooks in March, 1851, 
 "I think these [two] fellows had better be kept along and come in 
 with the others, it will be less trouble and expense and in making 
 the main thing more sure." ^^ 
 
 The "main thing" referred to the destruction of the freight 
 depot in Detroit less than two weeks after Corwin and Price were 
 arrested. Early on the morning of November 19, 1850, the Mich- 
 igan Central freight house in Detroit, built less than a year before, 
 burned to the ground with all its stores of flour, wheat, and corn. 
 The loss to the company was estimated at $40,000 which was not 
 covered by insurance, and the value of the stored freight was more 
 than $100,000. One Detroit newspaper said the next day that, gen- 
 erally, the cause of the fire remained a matter of conjecture. The 
 report added, however, that 
 
 the more generally prevalent opinion of those employed about the build- 
 ing-s seemed to be that it took from the friction of the elevators, which 
 theory is somewhat strengthened by the locaHty at which the fire burst 
 out. Suggestions have been made that the fire was the work of incen- 
 diaries, but that opinion is not general nor is it materially substantiated 
 by the facts. 
 
 Van Arman later contended for the company that this report to 
 the press had been deliberately falsified and that the depot hands 
 knew full well that the fire was incendiary in origin, the contrary 
 opinion having been circulated in order to allay the suspicion of 
 the criminals. This stratagem may explain, too, the failure of Su- 
 perintendent Brooks publicly to offer a reward for the apprehen- 
 sion of those who burned the depot. The feeling will not down, 
 nevertheless, that the fire may have been an accident and was con- 
 sidered such by the railroad officials until some months later when 
 
 [41 ]
 
 a new recruit to the staff of spies produced evidence to the con- 
 trary.*'^ 
 
 At any rate, Clark's investigations for several months after the 
 fire do not seem to have yielded any information on the origins of 
 the holocaust. Then, in January, 1851, he was put in touch with 
 Henry Phelps, hired him as a secret agent for the railroad, and in 
 the next two months was supplied with enough evidence to link 
 Fitch and his friends with the burning of the depot in Detroit. 
 
 Phelps was a man of high intelligence, clever to the point of 
 cunning, who was reduced to living by his wits. He had come to 
 Michigan from New York in 1836 at the age of twenty-two with his 
 family. He worked on the family farm in Oakland County near 
 Detroit and then in his brother's distillery. He struck out on his 
 own in 1840 when he went to Michigan Centre and rented a dis- 
 tillery. This venture failed after six months when a draft he had 
 offered to cover the rent proved to be worthless. A second attempt 
 to go into business nearer home also failed. He then moved to 
 Sharon, west of Ann Arbor, took up farming, and to supplement 
 his income, pettifogged in the local justice courts. He also dabbled 
 in politics, served as town clerk, and won a commission as captain 
 of dragoons in the state militia. This budding career was nipped in 
 1844 when he was tried for horse-stealing and sentenced to five 
 years in the state prison in Jackson. Pardoned in April, 1849, six 
 months before his term expired, he returned to his farm, and after 
 a profitless year or more, went to work in December, 1850 as a stool 
 pigeon for the United States District Attorney for Michigan, 
 George C. Bates. Phelps' task, at $1.25 per day plus expenses, was 
 to bring to book the numerous counterfeiters who plagued this 
 wild west of the 1850's with their bogus coin. His good working 
 knowledge of the law from both sides of the fence, combined with 
 an unscrupulous boldness in digging up evidence, soon won him 
 the confidence of his employer. 
 
 Not long after he had begun to work for Bates, Phelps reported 
 that he had established contact with the leader of a big counter- 
 feiting ring in Jackson County, Abel F. Fitch of Michigan Centre. 
 He further revealed that in the course of his association with Fitch, 
 he had learned of the latter's connection with the burning of the 
 freight depot in Detroit. Bates undoubtedly relayed this infor- 
 mation to the railroad officials, and Phelps' promotion to Clark's 
 
 [42]
 
 corps of secret agents with a salary of forty dollars a month fol- 
 lowed almost immediately. 
 
 In his new capacity, Phelps went to the Centre to follow up the 
 lead he had uncovered as a federal informer. He spent as much 
 time as he could at Filley's tavern renewing acquaintances and 
 worming his way into the confidence of its patrons. He made a 
 special effort to be with Fitch and talk to him, pretending that he 
 wished to buy his prize twin oxen, and dogging his footsteps at 
 Michigan Centre as well as in Lansing and Detroit. In a short time, 
 Phelps was able to report to Clark that he knew who had burned 
 the freight depot. It was an old friend of his, George Washington 
 Gay, of Detroit, once known as the "Whig Bully of City Hall," 
 possessor of a long police record, and now the proprietor of a 
 brothel in the lower city. Gay had admitted to him, Phelps, that 
 he had set fire to the depot and that he had been hired by Fitch and 
 his friends to do it. The latter had also furnished Gay with the 
 "match" that ignited the building. This match was an ingenious 
 machine, a cylindrical block of wood with holes bored lengthwise 
 and transversely and filled with cotton and camphene (a turpen- 
 tine derivative then used as an illuminant), which would bum 
 slowly for several hours and then flare up into a blaze. Gay had ad- 
 mitted that he had received the match from someone at Michigan 
 Centre, ignited it and secretly placed it in the cupola of the freight 
 house about eight o'clock on the evening of November 18. The 
 match had flared up about two o'clock the morning of the nine- 
 teenth and the resulting fire had destroyed the building and its 
 contents. For his work. Gay said he had received $150, which sum 
 had been made up by Fitch, Filley, Corwin, Williams, and others 
 at the Centre. The latter, according to Phelps, had also admitted 
 to him their participation in the crime substantially as related by 
 Gay and had even boasted of how much each had contributed to 
 the purse of arson. 
 
 If Clark and his legal adviser. Van Arman, were amazed at these 
 revelations, Phelps was prepared to prove them fully. He invited 
 his employers to visit Gay's brothel and see and hear for them- 
 selves. Accordingly, early in April, 1851, the two visited Gay several 
 times in Phelps' company, disguising themselves in rough dress and 
 posing as fellow criminals. To win Gay's confidence, they boasted 
 of their past exploits, flashed counterfeit bills, and said diey were 
 
 [43]
 
 interested in working out a scheme to free Old Sile Doty, the 
 famous criminal, who was then serving a long sentence in the Hills- 
 dale jail. In the course of the conversation, Gay freely admitted 
 that he had burned the depot in November and told just how much 
 he had been paid and who had paid him. Gay also allowed his two 
 new friends to see the match he had in an upstairs room, similar 
 to the one he had used in the old depot and which he was going to 
 use to burn the new one which had been built on the same site. He 
 assured them that he could make more money by burning depots 
 on the railroad than any other way and could get $50 more from 
 Fitch and his friends for burning the new depot than he had re- 
 ceived for the old one. After agreeing upon some future criminal 
 ventures, Clark and Van Arman left with Phelps, fully satisfied 
 that their agent was telling the truth and had given them the 
 means to break up the conspiracy at the Centre. 
 
 Phelps clinched the case against Fitch and company when he 
 informed Clark that they planned to burn the depot at Niles and 
 had asked him, Phelps, to do it. They had offered to supply him 
 with a match and pay him $200 for the job. When he had balked 
 at the risks involved, they had assured him that the match had 
 worked perfectly in Detroit, and that if he were caught, they could 
 easily swear him clear. Phelps then, with the full knowledge of his 
 railroad superiors, agreed after some delay to carry out the task, 
 and set the time. Clark arranged for another agent to be at Filley's 
 tavern on the appointed night when Phelps was to be "fixed out" 
 for the trip to Niles. 
 
 The night of April 11, 1851, Phelps went to the tavern at the 
 Centre. He had with him Heman Lake, a contemporary inmate 
 of the state prison, whom he had persuaded Clark to hire as his 
 assistant and who had fully corroborated all of his reports. After 
 some general talk. Bill Corwin went to a small room in the tavern, 
 unlocked it, and brought out a box with the match in it, and then 
 carried it outside to Phelps' waiting buggy. Falkner, the railroad 
 agent who was present all the time, and had been told to watch 
 for the delivery of a box to Phelps, confirmed all that the latter 
 reported. He had heard only snatches of the conversation between 
 Phelps and Fitch and the others, but had seen Corwin take the box 
 out and put it in the buggy. 
 
 Leaving the tavern, Phelps and Lake drove to Grass Lake where 
 
 [44]
 
 they showed the box and the match to Clark and then started off 
 for Niles. There, Phelps placed the ignited match in the depot, 
 and the railroad men, fully aware of the plot, hastened to extin- 
 guish it before any harm was done. 
 
 Clark was now ready to act. Phelps had proved to his satisfaction 
 that Gay had burned the Detroit depot, that Fitch and others had 
 hired Gay to burn the depot, and that he, Phelps himself, had 
 been hired to burn the Niles depot in a similar manner. Back in 
 February, Clark had reported to Brooks that "the burning of the 
 building [would] be proven beyond a doubt." He was now more 
 than ever certain of his ground. And when he had seen Fitch in 
 March lobbying in Lansing, he could not help gloating: "I think 
 [Fitch] had better save his strength as he has a good deal of labor 
 to do for the state within the next five or ten years without going 
 so far from home. If this does not prove so I am no prophet." Once 
 the Niles trap had been sprung and all the accumulated evidence 
 carefully prepared, Clark was ready to move and make the arrests.^^ 
 
 [45 ]
 
 PART 
 
 TWO
 
 JDY APRIL 19, 1851, four months to the day after the depot fire, 
 all the arrangements for the roundup of the railroad's enemies were 
 completed. A warrant was issued on the complaint of Phelps for 
 the arrest of forty-four men, charging them with the burning of the 
 depot as part of a general conspiracy to destroy the property of 
 the Michigan Central Railroad and with a number of other crimes. 
 The list of accused included Fitch, Burnett, Filley, and almost 
 two score of their friends, anybody in Michigan Centre or Jackson, 
 apparently, who had ever expressed any hostility to the railroad. 
 Also named in the warrant were George W. Gay and his Detroit 
 accomplice, Erastus Smith, as well as a number of known counter- 
 feiters whose inclusion lent substance to the allegations of general 
 villainy. On the afternoon of April 19, one special train started 
 from Niles for Jackson with the sheriff of Berrien County and his 
 deputies aboard, while another left from Detroit and headed west- 
 ward carrying the sheriff of Wayne County and about a hundred 
 deputized railroad hands. As the trains passed through the dis- 
 affected areas a little after midnight, squads of three or four officers 
 were dispatched at intervals, each to get its man. The two trains 
 met near Jackson and waited for the haul. The Wayne County 
 sheriff accompanied by Clark and Van Arman brought in the prize 
 prisoner. Fitch himself. In three hours more than thirty others 
 were routed out of bed and brought aboard. Day had already 
 broken when the trains started on the slow journey back to Detroit 
 with the triumphant posse and its bewildered prey.^^ 
 
 Late Saturday afternoon, the prisoners were marched from the 
 cars through the city streets to the jail in a long column of twos, 
 each man guarded by a deputy. Fitch, at the head of the column, 
 was struck by the wry humor of the scene. 
 
 I being a captain [in the militia] they placed me in front, of course, 
 and we made quite an imposing appearance giving the Detroit folks a 
 good opportunity to take a fair view of us. It looks like a Connecticut 
 general training and must have been great satisfaction to the RR folks. 
 
 In jail, the small mob joined Gay and Smith, who had been ar- 
 
 [49]
 
 rested in the city that morning. Burnett, who had not been at home 
 when the posse called, hearing that there was a warrant out for 
 his arrest, took a train to Detroit and gave himself up to join his 
 friends in jail. In the course of the next week, additional prisoners 
 were brought in from Jackson, Niles, and elsewhere.^*^ 
 
 The law began to move with illegal haste. None of the prisoners 
 was brought for examination before the police justice who had 
 issued the warrant, as required by law. After they were in jail, the 
 grand jury was hurriedly convened, without the required six days 
 notice, and returned five joint bills of indictment against the ac- 
 cused. The first indictment, under which they were later tried, 
 charged them all with burning the depot and specified that Gay 
 had actually set the fire and had been hired by the others to com- 
 mit the crime. The railroad's officials, at the same time, brought 
 civil suit against the prisoners for $150,000 damages and had them 
 held in $50,000 bail each. In time, they were also indicted in 
 Berrien and Calhoun counties for conspiring to burn the depots 
 in Niles and Marshall, and finally, by a Federal grand jury for 
 counterfeiting and for burning the United States mails.^^ 
 
 Staggering under this massed legal assault, the prisoners were 
 arraigned before Judge Benjamin F. H. Witherell in Wayne 
 County Court on April 29. They pleaded not guilty to all the in- 
 dictments. The prosecution announced that it was ready to go to 
 trial on the first indictment and wished to do so quickly. Counsel 
 for the defense, after vain attempts to have the indictments quashed 
 and a mistrial called on technical grounds, held out for a month's 
 delay. When the court refused to grant this motion, the defendants 
 took advantage of their legal option and elected to be tried in the 
 circuit court, which would not sit for two weeks.^2 
 
 Primarily, the defendants desperately sought delay to slow down 
 the judicial mills which were surely grinding them to their doom 
 in jail. Their counsel, neither able nor distinguished, needed time 
 to prepare the case, seek out witnesses, study the evidence, and 
 work out the defense. Representing the accused in court that day 
 were Nehemiah H. Joy of Jackson, and Henry Frink, but lately 
 removed to Chicago from Jackson, two village lawyers who had 
 come forward to help their friends in need. They were aided by 
 Henry H. Wells and William A. Cook, two Detroit lawyers of no 
 great reputation at the bar. Another obscure Detroit lawyer, L. H. 
 
 [50]
 
 Hewitt, appeared for Gay and Smith. Opposing them was a battery 
 of the city's legal lights who had been retained by the Michigan 
 Central to assist David Stuart, the county prosecuting attorney. 
 On behalf of the people, Stuart was joined by James F. Joy and 
 John Van Arman and such outstanding members of the Detroit 
 bar as James A. Van Dyke, Jacob M. Howard, Alexander D. Frazer, 
 Daniel Goodwin, and William Gray. Other law)'ers of reputation 
 were, moreover, interdicted by the hostility of public opinion from 
 taking the case of the "conspirators"; only one of them, William 
 A. Howard, showed his independence and volunteered his services 
 to the defendants, justifying his action by explaining that "there 
 was more real danger to the community from allowing a heartless 
 monied corporation to crush at their will any number of men in 
 the manner pursued than by any depredations of the prisoners." 
 For his act, Howard was charged with treason to law and order and 
 the welfare of the people among whom he lived. His gesture was 
 more spirited than effective, for he was noted as a good business 
 counsellor rather than as a trial lawyer.^^ 
 
 The case was called up for trial on May 14 before Judge Warner 
 Wing in the Wayne County Circuit Court. The defense continued 
 to spar desperately for time, fearful of the massed power of the 
 state and its wealthiest corporation. Fitch, undoubtedly the main- 
 spring of defense strategy, vowed he would not be forced to trial 
 until he was fully prepared. First, his lawyers filed a motion for 
 separate trials for him and four other defendants, a stratagem of 
 delay and obstruction. Then, on behalf of Fitch alone, a motion 
 was made for a change of venue to a neighboring county on the 
 ground that the public had been so prejudiced against the defend- 
 ants that a fair trial in Detroit was impossible. In support, counsel 
 submitted affidavits containing extracts from the three Detroit 
 daily newspapers. Judge Wing denied this motion on the technical 
 giound that if Fitch were tried in another county under this indict- 
 ment, the rest of the defendants could never be tried, as there was 
 no provision for the return of the indictment to Wayne County. 
 The next day, the defense filed a new motion for a continuance to 
 the November term of court so that three absent witnesses could 
 be procured. When the prosecution showed that this request was 
 unreasonable and factitious, the judge denied it, but relented 
 enough to grant an adjournment until May 28.^^ 
 
 [51 ] 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 ILLINOIS LIBRARIO
 
 Meanwhile, the case was being tried in the court of public opin- 
 ion, to the great detriment of the accused. From the moment of 
 the triumphal procession through the streets and the first press re- 
 ports of the mass arrests, great excitement gripped the city. One of 
 Fitch's close friends barely escaped a drubbing in a public bar 
 when he defended the prisoners against vicious abuse. The news- 
 papers played on the fears of the people. They accepted the charges 
 as true and proven and added a few of their own. In reporting the 
 arrests, they alluded to the "gang of desperadoes" and hinted 
 darkly at the existence of a diabolical criminal organization op- 
 erating in several states and possessed of an infernal machine for 
 blowing up trains. The Advertiser added blackmail to the official 
 charges and referred to Jackson County as the home of drunks, 
 counterfeiters, and other criminals. The Free Press maintained a 
 correct attitude for more than a month, but then attacked the de- 
 fendants as an "organized band of desperadoes— congregated 
 around a drunken rum-hole in Jackson County." When the in- 
 dictments were issued, the Tribune called for suspended judgment 
 and went on to print a story, probably supplied by one of the rail- 
 road's spies, of a secret meeting of the "gang of ruffians" to auction 
 off Wescott's life to the highest bidder— all of which proved "the 
 depths to which [the accused] were ready to sink themselves in 
 crime and depravity." Assuring its readers that the prisoners could 
 expect full justice in Wayne County and that it would not even 
 publish the indictment lest it create prejudice, the Daily Tribune 
 pilloried the defendants as "a lawless gang of monsters in human 
 shape" and called on Mayor Zachariah Chandler to provide the 
 city with additional police protection against the dangers threat- 
 ened by those of the criminals still at large. It gave prominence to 
 reports of fires in different parts of the city and cautioned the police 
 to be on the alert against the incendiaries. Finally, it revealed for 
 the benefit of the public, which it counseled to withhold judg- 
 ment, that the accused had a long history of criminal activity and 
 that Fitch in particular had long meditated lawless vengeance 
 against the railroad."^ 
 
 Other newspapers in the state and elsewhere, took up the hue 
 and cry and descanted with horror on what they regarded "as 
 evidence of the universal demoralization in Michigan; and de- 
 manded immediate punishment of the accused" as well as the 
 
 [52 ]
 
 restoration of capital punishment in the state. The press alarm 
 moved one terror-stricken Presbyterian clergyman in New York 
 City to claim that he and other passengers had had their drinking 
 water poisoned while traveling through the state on the Michigan 
 Central Railroad.^^ 
 
 Fitch protested this campaign of calumny to one of the Free Press 
 reporters who visited him in jail but apparently to no effect. "Such 
 false and wicked statements," he wrote his wife, "as was published 
 in the newspapers is enough to craze anyone." Burnett struck back 
 in a long letter to the Ypsilanti Sentinel, which the editor printed 
 with the explanation that "as a portion of the press has been very 
 free, to say the least, in pronouncing judgment in the case," com- 
 mon justice dictated that the other side be given a hearing. Writing 
 from jail, Burnett gave his story of the highhanded proceedings 
 and protested against the "unwarrantable statements [that] have 
 been made . . . concerning us, contrary to the just rights of free- 
 men." The Jackson American Citizen reprinted Burnett's letter 
 and editorially commented on the extravagant tone of the Detroit 
 and eastern neAvspapers, whose published disclosures it felt, "have 
 proved too much for the gullibility of any acquainted with the 
 matter." ^^ 
 
 In time, the excitement died down as the press showed proper 
 restraint in reporting the trial. But irreparable harm had been 
 done the cause of the defendants. They had been branded as 
 criminals who had wished to destroy "our young and beauteous 
 city" and the presumption of their guilt had been fixed in the 
 minds of the citizens. The effects of the public hysteria had been 
 compounded when the city fathers, responding to the fearful agita- 
 tion, had called out a large night watch to protect the city from 
 destruction by fire and assigned additional guards to each business 
 block. Echoes of the civic "great fear" had resounded in Federal 
 Judge Ross Wilkins' charge to the grand jury of the United States 
 District Court: the judge, in presenting the case against the alleged 
 counterfeiters including Fitch, Filley, and six of their friends, 
 pointedly referred to that "malignant spirit" and "depravity of 
 heart" of these enemies of society. The officials of the Michigan 
 Central, taking advantage of the excitement and adding to it in 
 their own way, put a twenty-four hour guard in and around the 
 county jail at their own expense. Fitch thought they did this merely 
 
 [53]
 
 "to make a great display." This action seemed to him, besides, a 
 vicious and unfair form of harassment. He protested. 
 
 And now how in the name of common sense can we ever prepare for 
 
 trial that is a fair and impartial one when all such we say or do is carried 
 to our enimies and they allowed to use it as they please, besides it seems 
 to me an unheard of procedure that a party complainant should have 
 persons arrested at their instigation and then treat them in such an in- 
 solent manner as they do us.™ 
 
 When court convened again on May 28, William A. Howard 
 announced that he had been east and had retained Senator 
 William H. Seward of New York for the defense. He himself and 
 Cook, Howard explained, had been ill and unable to take hold of 
 the case properly. Howard did not, however, touch on the decisive 
 reason for procuring more eminent counsel. Undoubtedly, it was 
 Fitch's determination to get the very best lawyers to defend himself 
 and his friends and oppose the legal array of the prosecution. He 
 had been depressed by the way things had been going for the 
 defendants, reviled everywhere, stymied in court again and again, 
 and confined in jail without bail. And while he believed Frink and 
 the others were doing the best they could, he strongly felt, as he 
 wrote his wife, that 'Sve have a hard enimy to fight" and need "to 
 get good counsel." It was not strange that in his plight he should 
 turn to Seward for succor. The senator had but recently uttered 
 his "higher law" sentiments and become the idol of the antislavery 
 people everywhere. The repute of his efforts as a criminal lawyer 
 on behalf of the lowly could not have been lost on the astute Fitch, 
 Seward, appealed to in the name of the common man against a 
 powerful corporation which had bought up the best legal talent in 
 the state, and offered on Fitch's behalf a fee of $2,000, agreed to 
 come west and take the case. Attempts by influential eastern friends 
 of the railroad to dissuade him failed, for he believed that as an 
 American lawyer, he had to assist those who most needed assistance. 
 When word came to Fitch that Sew^ard had agreed to come to 
 Detroit and take the case, his spirits rose greatly. He assured his 
 wife, and himself, "He is a big gun no mistake." ^^ 
 
 Unfortunately, Sew^ard could not arrange his affairs to arrive in 
 Detroit until June 5. Would the court, pleaded Howard, postpone 
 the case until then, particularly since the defendants now withdrew 
 their requests for separate trials. Judge Wing refused to grant the 
 
 [54]
 
 postponement without good legal reason. Opposing counsel, how- 
 ever, finally did agree to a compromise, whereby the defendants 
 would be tried jointly, a jury would be empaneled, two or three 
 witnesses examined on a specific point, and then the case allowed 
 to rest until Seward's arrival. 
 
 The trial got under way the next day, May 29. The number of 
 defendants had been reduced to thirty-seven; some had been dis- 
 charged for lack of evidence, some not arrested for the same reason, 
 and one had died in jail. The deceased was none other than Gay, 
 who was charged with burning the depot at the behest of the 
 others. He had died on May 8 of what Fitch described as a "loath- 
 some and disgusting" disease. When the ofl&cials accused one of the 
 prisoners, who was a doctor by profession, of poisoning Gay, a 
 charge soon dispelled by a post-mortem. Fitch winced as though 
 lashed.60 
 
 First, a jury was chosen in short order. The twelve men, selected 
 from a panel of names taken from the tax assessment rolls of the 
 city, were representative of the substantial and respectable portion 
 of the community. They included such outstanding political and 
 business figures as Levi Cook, Horace Hallock, Alexander C. Mc- 
 Graw, Buckminster Wight, and Silas A. Bagg. The others on the 
 jury were relatively unknown, but most had served as minor mu- 
 nicipal functionaries. Fitch thought it was a "good jury" and did 
 not consider the possibility that it might be swayed by the civic 
 interests so closely bound up with those of the city's great com- 
 mercial outlet, the Michigan Central Railroad.^i 
 
 Van Arman then opened the case for the prosecution. He said 
 the state would prove that Gay had burned the depot and that the 
 defendants had paid him $150 to do it and furnished the "match." 
 Henry Phelps was the first witness called and told how Gay had 
 confessed his crime to him and incriminated the men from Mich- 
 igan Centre. Darius Clark and Van Arman then took the stand in 
 turn and told of their visits to Gay's house, where the latter had 
 repeated his confessions, thus substantiating Phelps' testimony in 
 this respect. After hearing these witnesses, the court adjourned, as 
 agreed, for one week until June 5. 
 
 All this while, the defendants were languishing in the crowded 
 Wayne County jail, spied on by the railroad guards, prevented 
 from taking any effective action in their own defense, fearful and 
 
 [55]
 
 hopeful by turns of the outcome. Fitch, in particular, was subject 
 to these emotional fluctuations, as may be clearly seen in a series 
 of letters he wrote his wife, Amanda, from jail. His first reaction 
 to arrest and imprisonment was one of incredulity and indignation 
 buoyed by hope. The day after his arrival in jail, he wrote, almost 
 lightly, "This is the first time I ever addressed you from such a 
 place and I hope to God it will be the last." The next day, he was 
 somewhat chagrined at having to write from the same place, but 
 repeatedly asserted his innocence and assured his wife: "We know 
 that the truth is mighty and believe will prevale, RR influence 
 and money to the contrary notwithstanding . . . We shall all of us 
 be delivered in due time unharmed from the hands of our enimies, 
 false swearing bribery and corruption to the contrary notwith- 
 standing." He and his fellow prisoners felt "injured and abused, 
 insulted and wronged" but were quite sure that all would end well. 
 "I feel to (sic) indignant to feel meloncholly," he concluded his 
 second letter from jail, "I shall be home before long." All the same, 
 he was bewildered by the vindictiveness of the railroad officials, 
 though he was inclined to think that they were deceived by 
 Phelps, Wescott, and the other spies, "who gather round them for 
 the purpose of getting their money and they care not how." He 
 vented his spleen against these spies, accusing them of concocting 
 a monstrous plot. "When they found they could not draw me by 
 any pretext what ever in to any of their scheems," he explained, 
 "they finally pitched upon this depot scheem made by themselves 
 so far as I am concerned out of whole clothe and now seek to con- 
 vict me and others." But, he was sure, they "will be worse con- 
 founded than those who undertook to build the tower of babel," 
 and called "Divine vengeance" down upon them.^^ 
 
 After two weeks of uninterrupted confinement, of writhing un- 
 der the lash of public condemnation, the note of defiant hope be- 
 gan to fade. Fitch now found his quarters "very uncomfortable" 
 and began to worry about his health and what would happen to 
 him if he came down with his old stomach ailment. He was soon 
 writing, "It does not seem as though I could stand it here much 
 longer." Gloomily expecting the worst, he told Amanda that he 
 would send for her if he had an attack, as he did not think he could 
 live through one without her "kind attention." He had been so 
 much troubled with "Dispepshi," he was afraid he could not sur- 
 
 [56]
 
 vive long with the best of care, and after a month in jail, concluded 
 hopelessly that "no man can long enjoy health in this uncomfi table 
 place." ^3 
 
 Gloom deepened into despair as he felt the full force of legal 
 pressure and hatred. Only occasional flashes of desperate hope lit- 
 up the murk of his cell and then were followed by a sense of 
 martyrdom. On May ii, he reflected sadly, "I have always been 
 taught that money is power but I never felt it so sensibly as I do 
 now." Three days later, he cried out to Amanda, 
 
 I am still in jail and how long I am to be kept here I know not, but if 
 nothing but the pound of flesh nearest my heart will satisfy my enimies 
 and they seem to be determined not to be satisfied with anything less, 
 I dont know but with their power and influence they will compell me 
 to yeald it to them ... I fear that many of us will be obliged to sacrifice 
 our lives to appease the wrath of this soulless corporation. 
 
 In another two weeks. Fitch was prepared for martyrdom. He could 
 not understand how innocence could be so wronged, but "if they 
 can with all their cunning devise such damnable scheems and carry 
 them through and convict us, why it is time that their power was 
 known and guarded against, for no mans liberty is safe." And then, 
 in a sentimental vision, he returned to his dear Amanda, his com- 
 panion of twenty years. 
 
 This is a fine May morning and although my boddy is surrounded by 
 bars and bolts yet my spirit, thank God, is left free to roam and hold 
 sweet communion with those I hold near and dear here on earth, and 
 were I permitted to be with you and sis in person as heretofore to take 
 strawberry walks and roam over fields and landscape, as we were wont 
 to do at this delightful season, what untold pleasures might we not injoy. 
 But this may be ordered for some wise purpose, for God in his providence 
 does all things well, we should not know how to appreciate and injoy 
 happiness did we not occasionally taste of misery.** 
 
 Above all. Fitch fumed because he and his friends could not get 
 free on bail. Efforts to do so ran up against the negligence of court 
 officials and the huge sums set at the behest of railroad counsel. 
 The good citizens of Detroit and perhaps even the railroad officials 
 really feared to let the criminals described by their newspapers 
 loose in their midst. Fitch raged helplessly as week passed week in 
 crippling confinement. He wanted to go home and organize his 
 defense. He knew he could raise any reasonable amount of bail. 
 Indignant and bewildered, he could not understand why the rail- 
 
 [57 ]
 
 road showed such a "fiendish disposition" toward him and accused 
 the authorities of lacking one spark of humanity and trampHng 
 "on all laws, constitutions and justice." He was soon convinced 
 that they fully intended to keep him from preparing adequately 
 for the trial, "that our enimies would be glad to keep us here untill 
 our enigies were all impaired or weakened so that we would fall 
 an easy prey." Finally, as June 5 and Seward's arrival neared, and 
 Judge Wing announced he would set bail for the criminal pro- 
 ceedings. Fitch took heart. He asked Amanda to tell his friends to 
 come to Detroit to stand bail for him. He explained somewhat 
 optimistically that "they feel ashamed to think that they have acted 
 so heretofore" and openly expressed his fears, now happily dis- 
 sipated, that if he had had to be in court days and in jail nights, 
 it would have killed him. He was sure his bail would not be set 
 very high because public opinion had changed in his favor. He 
 noted that King Strang's Mormons had been arrested for treason 
 and that their bail had been set at only $2,000 each. His own bail 
 would, of course, be higher, "so you see that treason against the 
 RR is a much greater crime than treason against the government." 
 But, he was certain, "the day of retributive justice is at hand. This 
 company will yet learn that they cannot trample upon the dearest 
 rights of Freemen without bringing down on their heads retribu- 
 tive justice." ^^ 
 
 Fitch was wrong. On the resumption of the trial on June 5, 
 with Seward leading the defense, he soon found out how wrong 
 he was. Without delay, Frink requested that bail be set for Fitch 
 and Burnett. Prosecuting Attorney Stuart demanded that the 
 amount of bail be fixed at $15,000 for the indictment being tried 
 and half as much in each of the four other indictments, a total of 
 $45,000 for each defendant. Frink's objections that these amounts 
 were excessive were brushed aside. The presecution dwelt on the 
 enormity of the offenses charged and threw up to the defendants 
 their boasts that they could give bail in the sum of $100,000, if 
 necessary. Here, Seward, speaking for the first time, said that al- 
 though he knew little of the merits of the case, he considered the 
 amounts requested excessive, and vehemently declared that if he 
 were the defendants, "he would rot in jail . . . before he would 
 submit to such persecution and oppression." Counsel for the state 
 then explained with amazing frankness that bail was deliberately 
 
 [58]
 
 set high to prevent the prisoners from being bailed at all, for if 
 one of them absconded, the whole trial would be halted and all 
 proceedings would be voided. The railroad officials, it seems, had 
 at last got their hands on their enemies and were not going to re- 
 lease them even for a moment on a legal nicety until they had all 
 been duly disposed of. As Stuart declared, "There were insuperable 
 objections to allowing bail" at all, for the prisoners were liable 
 to be arrested under the other indictments and taken to another 
 county to be tried. Seward in turn insisted on the constitutional 
 rights of his clients: "This was a court of justice and . . . these de- 
 fendants were prisoners at the bar and . . . the constitution of the 
 country was not a fiction ..." The prisoners were entitled to rea- 
 sonable bail and $45,000 for each of thirty-seven defendants, or a 
 total of nearly two million dollars, was plainly exorbitant. After 
 further argument, during which Seward called the attention of the 
 court to the higher law, "a proper sense of its obligations to God 
 and humanity, and love of liberty for the oppressed under all cir- 
 cumstances," Judge Wing announced his compromise figure— 
 $20,000 for Fitch and $10,000 for Burnett. The sureties for each, 
 friends and neighbors from Jackson County, then stepped forward 
 and answered as to their ability to stand bail. 
 
 The prisoners were not however to be released. Stuart reminded 
 the court that they were also being held in $50,000 bail in the civil 
 suit of the company against them for damages. The defense tried 
 to have the capias by which they were held in the civil suit quashed 
 in open court, but to no avail. And except for brief interludes for 
 selected defendants, the prisoners were to remain in jail during the 
 whole length of the trial, "held fast," as Seward later put it, "as 
 in a cage of iron." ^e 
 
 With the matter of bail disposed of, the trial really got under 
 way. For three months, through the blazing heat of a midwest sum- 
 mer, the court heard the testimony of nearly five hundred wit- 
 nesses. Judge Wing's minutes of the evidence covered five hundred 
 ten closely written pages of legal foolscap and the printed report 
 of the testimony fills more than five hundred fifty octavo pages in 
 small type. It had been expected that the trial would be over in a 
 few days, but by the end of June, all were resigned to a long-drawn 
 battle. When one of the witnesses was asked if he knew when the 
 case had begun. Judge Wing sardonically interjected, "Can you 
 
 [59]
 
 tell when it will end?" and laughter greeted the sally. By the mid- 
 dle of July, there were demands for longer sessions. The prosecu- 
 tion suggested evening sessions and the jury asked that proceedings 
 begin an hour earlier in the morning. The judge did nothing, but 
 declared the matter was a serious one and impressed counsel with 
 the necessity "of urging this trial through to an ending." 
 
 It was not until September 2 that the parade of witnesses came 
 to a halt. Each side had taken more than a month to present its 
 case, and the prosecution then had called additional witnesses in 
 rebuttal. Of the elapsed time, however, only some forty-seven days 
 had been used in the actual taking of testimony. At least one month 
 had been wasted when one or another of the defendants and 
 jurors was stricken by disease in that stifling summer heat and 
 could not make an appearance in court. At first, opposing counsel 
 had agreed to let the proceedings continue without prejudice to 
 either side. But by the end of July, the defense lawyers, stung by 
 repeated adverse decisions of the court, stubbornly refused to enter 
 into any further stipulations to waive their clients' rights. Court 
 had therefore to adjourn from day to day until the absent defend- 
 ant or juror was able to return. Almost two weeks were thus lost 
 at the end of July when two of the prisoners came down with 
 diarrhea, and two more in August when two others succumbed to 
 the heat and filth of the crowded jail and died of dysentery. The 
 long delays wearied the survivors and frayed the professional court- 
 room courtesy of the lawyers, who began snapping at each other 
 in their heated legal wrangles. Not until September 4 did counsel 
 begin their closing arguments to the jury and then for three weeks 
 matched the heat of Indian summer with their perfervid oratory. 
 These addresses were concluded on September 25 when the case 
 went to the jury— an issue welcomed by the judge on behalf of all 
 with joyous relief. 
 
 The prosecution in presenting its case first established the corpus 
 delicti, namely, that a crime had been committed, that the depot 
 fire had not been an accident but had been deliberately set. Several 
 witnesses, most of them employees of the railroad company, stated 
 that the fire could not have resulted from the overheating of the 
 machinery used to elevate wheat and other freight to storage bins 
 on the second story. They also declared that they had first seen the 
 flames in the cupola of the building, high above the stored freight, 
 
 [60]
 
 where Gay was alleged to have secreted the ignited "match." The 
 cross-examination of these witnesses by the defense brought out the 
 possible accidental causes of the fire, particularly the fact that work 
 in the depot continued until midnight and that ordinary tallow 
 candles in sconces fixed to posts throughout the building and over 
 the wooden storage bins had been used for illumination. Seward 
 and Frink insisted that the corpus delicti had not been proven by 
 any means. 
 
 The prosecution then brought its secret agents and informers to 
 the stand to describe the hostility of the defendants to the com- 
 pany, their secret meetings in Filley's tavern, and their criminal 
 attacks on railroad property in Jackson County. The defense im- 
 mediately offered strong objections to the admission of such evi- 
 dence. Frink argued that the indictment was for a single offense and 
 that the state could not seek to prove other offenses or go beyond 
 proof of the agreement to hire Gay to burn the depot. Van Dyke, 
 in reply, admitted that the indictment before the court was for 
 the single offense of burning the depot in Detroit, but asserted that 
 it was proper to introduce evidence tending to show the existence 
 of a conspiracy generally to destroy the property of the railroad 
 and embracing within it the design to burn the depot as charged. 
 The crimes in Jackson County, he explained, were part of a grand 
 scheme culminating in arson in Detroit. Seward countered by in- 
 sisting that the defendants were being tried for one crime and one 
 crime only, not for conspiracy, or treason, or larceny, but for arson; 
 because they may have committed other crimes elsewhere and at 
 other times did not prove that they burned the depot. After hear- 
 ing both sides argue at length. Judge Wing decided in favor of the 
 prosecution, ruling as admissible the testimony to prove all acts 
 done under the general combination against the railroad. He did 
 not think the introduction of such evidence would prejudice the 
 defendants' case. As he later explained to the jury, the evidence 
 thus received was not for the purpose of showing the defendants 
 capable of committing the crime as charged; as such, it was in- 
 admissible and irrelevant. "It was admitted," he made clear, "to 
 show the original combination between the defendants, having 
 in view the ultimate, though contingent, burning of the depot at 
 Detroit; to show that as defendants were still working out their 
 original plan, they had not abandoned it up to the period when the 
 
 [61]
 
 depot was burned, and thus show— or raise a presumption— that 
 their scheme was in full force when the depot was burned." That 
 the jury of laymen could always appreciate the legal distinction 
 and not allow themselves to be impressed by the guilt of the de- 
 fendants in committing crimes in another jurisdiction for which 
 they were not being tried was open to question. And the lawyers 
 for the defense continued to take exception to the ruling of the 
 court admitting such and similar evidence. 
 
 The prosecution had, without doubt, won an important victory: 
 all the evidence so carefully gathered by Clark and his agents for 
 many months in Jackson County could now be used against the 
 defendants. Witnesses were paraded before the court who detailed 
 every expression of hostility, pointed or implicit, uttered by the 
 defendants, drunk or sober, against the railroad and its policies. 
 Every mishap along the line of the road between Grass Lake and 
 Jackson was minutely recounted and by imputation fastened on 
 the "conspirators." The meetings at Filley's tavern were blown up 
 into "secret conclaves" of a deep conspiratorial nature. The wit- 
 nesses emphasized the strong mutual loyalty of the defendants, 
 their repeated boasts of how they would stand by each other and 
 swear each other clear if any fell afoul of the law. And guiding 
 them all, encouraging all, the state contended, was Fitch, shrewd 
 and unscrupulous, hating the railroad and Brooks, and using his 
 friends in his own personal war with the monster corporation, 
 while he kept his own hands clean. 
 
 On cross-examination, the defense pointedly brought out the 
 casual and public nature of the meetings in a tavern open to all. 
 It tried to discredit those witnesses who were in the pay of the 
 company by suggesting that their motives were mercenary and that 
 their wages were dependent on their providing the desired infor- 
 mation. Some of the witnesses were also brought to admit that they 
 had sometimes been accomplices and participants in attacks on 
 railroad property. 
 
 Wescott was one of the key witnesses for the prosecution. Under 
 the skillful guidance of Van Arman, he related what he had heard 
 and seen during the four months he had been at Michigan Centre 
 as a spy. He underlined the testimony of previous witnesses about 
 the determination and cohesion of the defendants in their hostility 
 to the railroad. They had said many times in his presence, "Yes, we 
 
 [62]
 
 are banded together and will stick together," and, "So long as we 
 stick together all hell can't convict us." He told of his intimacy 
 with Fitch and how the latter had confided in him and told him 
 of the exploits of the boys at the Centre. He clearly pictured Fitch 
 as the mastermind of the conspiracy, who with Filley had actually 
 paid off the boys for each criminal task assigned. Wescott carried 
 the state's case a great step fonvard by telling how Fitch had re- 
 vealed to him his plan to climax the attacks on the railroad by 
 burning the depots at Detroit, Ann Arbor, Jackson, and Niles, 
 off ering $ 1 ,000 to anyone who would bum all four, or $250 for any 
 one of them. Fitch, he said, had actually tried to get him to burn 
 the Detroit depot. Conspiracy, motives, methods, intent— Wescott 
 happily supplied all the ingredients necessary for a conviction. He 
 also for the first time linked Fitch with Gay and told how in dis- 
 guise, he had trailed Fitch and Joe Dows, a notorious criminal, 
 to Gay's house in Detroit in February, 1851. 
 
 Frink and Seward could not shake Wescott's testimony on cross- 
 examination. All they could do was to try and impeach his credi- 
 bility by bringing out that he had once been indicted for forgery 
 and again by suggesting that he had a direct financial stake in the 
 case, that he expected a 1 1,000 reward if the defendants were con- 
 victed by his testimony. 
 
 The star witness for the prosecution was, of course, Henry 
 Phelps. For a day and a half, under Van Arman's questioning, 
 he cleverly and coolly wove a net of guilt around the defendants. 
 He brought home the crime of arson to them. He revealed how 
 they had hired him to burn the depot in Niles and "fixed him out" 
 for the expedition in arson on the night of April 11, 1851, at 
 Filley's tavern. They had supplied him that night with a "match" 
 similar to the one they had given Gay to burn the depot in Detroit. 
 Fitch, Filley, Price, Corwin, Williams, and Freeland had severally 
 admitted to him that they had contributed to the purse raised for 
 Gay. Gay on his part had confessed to him, Phelps, that he had been 
 furnished the match by the men from the Centre and that on the 
 night of the fire he had placed the ignited match in the cupola of 
 the depot and that the boys had paid him for the job. Phelps 
 further confirmed by personal knowledge that Fitch had been ac- 
 quainted with Gay. 
 
 Phelps was subjected to a severe probing cross-examination by 
 
 [63]
 
 Frink and Seward for another day and a half. They tried in vain 
 to get him to contradict himself, for he stuck to his story and 
 parried all thrusts with great finesse. Defense counsel had to resort 
 again to bringing out the details of his unsavory past, his business 
 defaults, and his five year term in the state prison for horse-stealing. 
 They impugned Phelps' motives by trying to show that he hated 
 Fitch and wished to take revenge on him, but the witness denied 
 any such feelings and insisted that Fitch had been one of his best 
 friends. Phelps denied any and all villainies that the defense im- 
 puted to him. 
 
 Following Phelps on the stand, Heman Lake confirmed substan- 
 tially all the testimony of his mentor. When counsel tried to im- 
 peach his character, they incidentally revealed the main lines of 
 the defense and offered too an amusing little byplay. Frink asked 
 Lake where he had been lodging during the trial. Lake answered 
 that he had boarded with Wescott most of the time he had been in 
 Detroit but had also spent some time at the home of Gay's widow. 
 When Frink followed this up by asking whether he had slept at the 
 brothel, Stuart objected for the prosecution that the question was 
 immaterial. Seward contended that the question was very much to 
 the point, inasmuch as Lake was one of the state's chief witnesses 
 and the defense was entitled to investigate him thoroughly. He 
 added that his clients were charged with conspiracy, but he in- 
 tended to prove that they were themselves the victims of a con- 
 spiracy hatched by Phelps, Lake, and others in Gay's house; it was 
 highly important, therefore, to show the conduct of one of the 
 principals in such an atrocious plot. Van Dyke then pointed out 
 that Lake had the privilege of refusing to answer the question if 
 his reply tended to incriminate or degrade him. The judge upheld 
 the point and Lake accordingly refused to answer. He was then 
 asked: "Have you not since the death of Gay been in the constant 
 practice of sleeping with the widow Gay?" Again the question was 
 objected to on the ground that it involved a crime and could not 
 be asked any more than a witness could be asked if he had com- 
 mitted a murder. The court again upheld the objection and Lake 
 did not answer. 
 
 He did admit under further questioning, however, that he had 
 taken Mrs. Gay to Marshall and then to Royal Oak to keep her 
 from being called as a witness for the defense. Prosecuting Attorney 
 
 [64]
 
 Stuart later admitted that Lake had done so at his suggestion. He 
 explained that some of the lawyers for the defense had been "in the 
 nightly practice of visiting and making improper approaches to this 
 woman" and hoped to get her to testify for them, and that the 
 prosecution therefore had taken measures to protect her from de- 
 fense counsel so that "she might not be induced to become a witness 
 in this case for the purpose of defeating the ends of public justice." 
 Lake accordingly had been instructed to escort Mrs. Gay out of 
 town. 
 
 Strangely enough, the defense did not then rise to object to the 
 ethics of the prosecution in spiriting away such a material witness. 
 Seward resented, rather, the implication that he, as one of the law- 
 yers for the defendants, had been the one who had frequently 
 visited Mrs. Gay at the bawdy house. Van Dyke said he would 
 freely exonerate Mr. Seward from the charge. William A. Howard 
 also proclaimed his innocence. Hewitt finally came out and ad- 
 mitted that he was the lawyer referred to, but assured the court 
 that he had visited the widow purely in a professional capacity, 
 believing that she knew something about the case. He had good 
 reason, he explained, to believe from what Gay, his client, had told 
 him before his death in jail, that Phelps and Lake had schemed 
 with Gay to charge the defendants with the crime of arson and 
 divide a $1,000 reward between them, and that Mrs. Gay was aware 
 of the plot. He had therefore visited her several times to elicit this 
 information from her but had been balked in his efforts by the 
 presence of railroad agents. 
 
 The prosecution completed its case on July 8 and rested. Frink 
 immediately announced that he would present a motion, under the 
 common law as well as the statute, to discharge twenty-four defend- 
 ants against whom no criminal evidence had been adduced. On 
 the advice of the court, however, he waited almost two weeks, and 
 then after the defense had begun to present its case, asked the 
 court to discharge or direct the jury to render a verdict in favor of 
 six minor defendants against whom there was slight or no evidence. 
 After lengthy arguments, the judge instructed the jury to find a 
 verdict of "not guilty" for three, but decided to hold the rest for 
 continued trial. The purpose of the defense, in making this move, 
 was, no doubt, to gain a point with the jury by forcing it to realize 
 the weakness of the prosecution's case. More important, they hoped 
 
 [65]
 
 to get many of the defendants discharged at this stage so that they 
 could serve as witnesses for the defense: while they were defendants 
 they could not be called to the stand to testify, according to Mich- 
 igan law. The purpose of the common law ruling allowing de- 
 fendants to be freed before a trial was over was to prevent the 
 prosecution from including in the indictment important witnesses 
 against whom there was no real evidence in order to deprive the 
 defense of their testimony. Fitch suspected that this was precisely 
 so in the present case. "They have taken," he wrote his wife, "many 
 these folks prisoners to exclude their testimony in my trial so I 
 could not prove where I was so that their lying devils would not 
 be detected in their false swearing ..." And though Van Dyke 
 now argued that there was sufficient evidence against these defend- 
 ants to hold them and the court agreed, it is noteworthy that at 
 the end of the trial, he did not even ask for the conviction of twenty 
 of the defendants originally named in the indictment.^'^ 
 
 With most of Fitch's and Filley's neighbors and friends thus dis- 
 qualified from testifying, the defense found it almost impossible to 
 dispute the incriminating evidence of Wescott, Phelps, and Lake. 
 It had to try to catch up the hostile witnesses on circumstantial con- 
 tradictions in their own testimony. Above all, as Fitch put it, "our 
 whole effort must be made to impeach Phelps." But even this plan 
 of defense was beset with unusual difficulties. Counsel felt ham- 
 pered in their conduct of the defense by the difficulty of private 
 access to their imprisoned clients. The latter, confined to jail and 
 laid low by disease, could do almost nothing in their own behalf. 
 Fitch, the target and the leader, could only call on his wife and his 
 free friends to come to his aid. Money was needed to pay the 
 lawyers and round up witnesses, and it was Fitch who raised the 
 necessary sums, borrowing on mortgages, selling equipment, call- 
 ing in a note, even giving a mortgage on his land, and eventually 
 bankrupting his estate. At the very beginning of the defense's case, 
 Frink and Howard had to write Superintendent Brooks asking for 
 passes on the railroad for witnesses they wished to bring to Detroit, 
 in the same manner as the prosecution witnesses had been "passed" 
 over the road. "The defendants," they explained, "with one or two 
 exceptions are too poor to pay for procuring the witnesses necessary 
 to their defense." ®^ 
 
 Despite all these difficulties, the defense was able to produce a 
 
 [66]
 
 great number of witnesses and present a strong case. Some witnesses 
 from Jackson and Washtenaw counties, having read about the case 
 in the newspapers or heard it discussed, recalled pertinent informa- 
 tion and came forward voluntarily, out of sympathy for the de- 
 fendants or dislike for Phelps and the railroad. Most of them, 
 however, were rounded up by Fitch's devoted friends: Anson Dela- 
 mater, Henry S. Holcomb, Edward Higby, and Isaac D. Toll, farm- 
 ers and merchants of Jackson, Michigan Centre, and vicinity. 
 These men did the field work, tracking down leads, interviewing 
 prospective witnesses, taking down their depositions, and bring- 
 ing them to Detroit to court. 
 
 In opening the case for the defense, William A. Howard tried 
 to surmount another great handicap with which the prosecution 
 had hobbled its opponents. He referred to the "ingenious at- 
 tempts" to prejudice the jury by the introduction of evidence 
 that the defendants had boasted that no jury would ever convict 
 them, that they could bring any number of witnesses to swear 
 them clear. The prosecution, Howard charged, wished the jury 
 to look "with a jealous eye" on all defense witnesses. He said that 
 "the prosecution reminded him of the invention of a pair of yellow 
 glass spectacles which caused lard to look like butter. They viewed 
 everything through colored glass and the acts of all the prisoners 
 looked bilious in their visions." 
 
 Howard's counterattack may have helped the defense in over- 
 coming the stigma of premeditated perjury, but it eventually 
 proved futile when one of the defense witnesses broke down and 
 confessed to that very crime. John Hawley of Indiana testified on 
 July 15 that Phelps had in the previous September come to see him 
 and offered him $50 to burn the Detroit depot and swear it on to 
 some men who lived on the railroad and thus share the reward that 
 the company would offer. If true, Hawley's testimony would have 
 gone a long way toward destroying Phelps' credibility and raised 
 the presumption that it was he who was guilty of conspiracy. Un- 
 fortunately for the defense, Hawley was arrested the next day and 
 charged with perjury. Stuart announced in court that Hawley had 
 admitted that his testimony had been entirely fabricated and that 
 he had never seen Phelps until he had come into the courtroom. 
 After the defense had closed, Stuart cleverly produced Hawley in 
 court and there the latter made a complete confession of how he 
 
 [67 ]
 
 had been bribed by Elder Billings, the minister at Jackson prison 
 who had been active on behalf of the defense, to commit perjury. 
 He now declared that his conscience had bothered him and he 
 wished to make a clean breast. At one blow, the statements of every 
 defense witness was placed under a dark cloud. True, Seward in 
 his closing argument to the jury, disclaimed responsibility for 
 Hawley and stated that he had been maliciously imposed on the 
 defense by enemies of Phelps. He disowned Hawley as a "silly 
 fool" and declared that others with like testimony had been re- 
 jected by the defense itself. On the whole, however, the Hawley 
 incident must have greatly harmed the defense, and the prosecu- 
 tion, in its final pleas to the jury, hammered away strongly at the 
 point. 
 
 The case for the defense or at least its impact on the jury was 
 further weakened by the relentless and highly eflEective cross- 
 examination to which its witnesses were subjected by the prosecu- 
 tion lawyers, Van Arman and Van Dyke. With the canny Phelps 
 at their elbows, advising and giving them leads, the two were able 
 to trip up the country bumpkins who appeared for the defense. 
 Some of these farmers spoke of the two lawyers as being "rather like 
 badgers" and complained of being browbeaten. Van Arman, in 
 particular, savagely and skilfully plied the witnesses with a barrage 
 of questions on circumstantial details that confused and exasper- 
 ated them and must have raised some doubts in the jury's minds 
 about their general credibility. Van Arman here laid the basis for 
 his reputation as a highly skilled cross-examiner. Thickset and 
 swarthy as an Indian, with a magnificent head and a strong lower 
 jaw, he overawed the witnesses he faced. But one witness amusingly 
 turned the tables on his tormentor. Asked by Van Arman what he 
 and a friend had been talking about, he replied, "He said . . . that 
 there was one dark-skinned, ugly-looking specimen that was a 
 pretty saucy fellow for whom a man had better keep his eye 
 skinned, that he was rather a scabby fellow . . . and told me to 
 look out for him." The witness then coyly added, "He didn't tell 
 his name, but he was one of the lawyers." Laughter in the court- 
 room greeted the exchange as Van Arman asked again, "Didn't 
 he say that Van Arman was the man?" Came the reply, "He didn't 
 say who he was— only he was a scabby man and told me to look out 
 for him as he would browbeat me pretty well." A moment later, 
 
 [68]
 
 this witness tried to prove he would not be browbeaten when, in 
 answer to Van Arman's insistent questioning on some point, he 
 said, "I might or might not; don't remember as I did; I won't want 
 to be humbugged any longer; I told you all about it." Directed by 
 the court to answer, he replied non-committally and then parried 
 the next question, "If he did say anything, he may have said so; 
 if he said so— why he said so." And the court again had to order 
 him to answer properly. Other witnesses were badgered and con- 
 fused on cross-examination to the point of helplessness. As one 
 said to Van Dyke: "You keep rattling around so that I can't find 
 what you are at . . . You mix it up so I can't tell when the day 
 was I saw [him]." ^^ 
 
 The defense lawyers by comparison were not nearly so effective. 
 Seward and Frink, who did most of the courtroom work for the 
 defense, were overshadowed by their opposites in this respect. 
 Frink's sympathy for his clients was no substitute for ability. And 
 Seward, for all his astuteness and driving logic, which sometimes 
 verged on sophistry, just did not shine in cross-examination. Slight 
 and wiry, with his long narrow head and big nose, thick grizzled 
 hair, and careless dress, the Senator impressed those who agreed 
 with him with his rugged honesty and ability, his calm dignity. As 
 Henry Adams once remarked: "There's no shake in him. He talks 
 square up to the mark and something beyond it." To a less sympa- 
 thetic observer in that courtroom, he seemed like "a pet fox made 
 vain by adulation. . ." "He sits," this acidulous reporter continued, 
 "pursing his mouth like a toothless old lady, his twinkling grey 
 eyes see all in the room. When speaking to a witness, he rubs his 
 hands in exultation; then gives his head a toss. . ." Nor did the 
 prosecution lawyers hesitate to taunt the Senator from New York, 
 whose public office and peculiar political views laid him open to 
 attack. They made slighting references to the "higher law" and to 
 the morals of men in public life. Van Arman, a Democrat, brazenly 
 accused Seward of vanity inflated by "the fulsome adulation of 
 partizan editors and the interested flattery of partizan friends. , ." 
 Even Judge Wing could not resist joining in such hardly proper 
 depreciation. One Saturday afternoon, while court was met on the 
 second floor of the city hall, Seward requested an early adjourn- 
 ment because of the noise from the market below. Wing replied 
 that as the noise might make it difficult for Seward to be under- 
 
 [69]
 
 iwotty 
 
 loons
 
 April 1 1, the day they said they had come to the Centre to get the 
 match and be "fixed out" for the trip to Niles to burn the depot 
 there. According to the story now brought out in court, Phelps 
 and Lake had brought the match encased in a box to Michigan 
 Centre themselves, deposited it with Filley for safekeeping, had 
 then inveigled the boys to the tavern at the Centre on the pretext 
 of free drinks and a game of bowls, and finally that evening asked 
 for and received the box from Filley. The railroad agent who had 
 been sent there by Clark for the purpose of witnessing the "fixing 
 out" had seen only a box being delivered to Phelps. The whole 
 series of events related by Phelps and Lake had been nothing but 
 a clever fabrication of circumstances to make it seem as if Filley, 
 Fitch, and the rest had provided the two informers with a match 
 to burn the Niles depot. On the stand a second time, Phelps and 
 Lake denied everything and stuck to their original story. 
 
 The defense also brought evidence into court to contradict Wes- 
 cott. The picket fence around Fitch's house, through which Wes- 
 cott had said he had crawled to eavesdrop, was produced in order 
 to show that no pickets had been removed and that nobody could 
 have crawled through or under it. The Fitches' adopted daughter, 
 Amanda, and their hired girl further showed that W'escott could 
 not have overheard Fitch and his wife discussing the campaign 
 against the railroad, as he said he did, in bed in their first-floor 
 bedroom, for they had slept upstairs on the second floor that sum- 
 mer. Little Abel Fitch, the adopted son, further testified that the 
 hole under Filley 's barroom was too small for him to crawl into, 
 let alone the adult Wescott. 
 
 The whole case against Fitch and company, the defense now con- 
 tended, was nothing but a conspiracy on the part of Phelps, Lake, 
 and Wescott. The three had cleverly contrived a chain of circum- 
 stance that pointed to the guilt of the men from Michigan Centre 
 in burning the depot and then strengthened it with their own testi- 
 mony of criminal admissions. But there was evidence, "dead, cold 
 mute, inanimate matter" that they had overlooked, that spoke in 
 "thunder tones" of the innocence of the defendants. The defense 
 then exhibited a log of whitewood which had been found buried 
 under the hay in an old shack on the farm that Phelps had lived 
 on till shortly before the arrests. The log was of the same kind of 
 wood and of the same dimensions as the match which Phelps said 
 
 [71 ]
 
 the defendants had given him. The inference that Phelps had made 
 the match himself and used it to incriminate the innocent, the 
 prosecution waved airily aside on cross-examination, by suggesting 
 that the defense itself had placed the log on Phelps' land. But other 
 witnesses then testified that two or three weeks before the match 
 had first been seen by Clark and Van Arman, Phelps and Lake had 
 borrowed augers the identical size of the holes drilled in the match 
 from one of their neighbors and that Lake had been seen at work 
 with the augers on a log of whitewood, with the shavings lying on 
 the floor about him. 
 
 And why had Phelps and Wescott conspired against Fitch? Be- 
 cause they hated him. Phelps, while still serving his term in Jack- 
 son, had told the foreman of the prison machine shop that "he was 
 in prison through the influence of Fitch and others, and that, if he 
 lived to get out, he would make them sweat for it, and give them 
 the same feed they had given him." Another prison official told, 
 on the stand, how once when Fitch had been visiting the jail, 
 Phelps had pointed to him and said: "If you knew him as well as 
 I do, you would not think much of him; he was the means of my 
 being here and I'll have revenge or satisfaction." 
 
 Phelps, recalled to the stand, said he did not remember having 
 said any such thing and insisted that Fitch was a good friend of his. 
 Another witness, however, brought out that the previous January, 
 when Phelps and his wife had spent the night in his home, he had 
 overheard the couple whispering in another bed in the same bed- 
 room. Mrs. Phelps had asked her husband if he was going to see 
 Fitch the next day and if he thought he could do as he calculated to 
 do. Phelps had replied that if Wescott would do as he had agreed 
 to do and stick by, he thought he would "come a good drive." It 
 certainly seemed as if Phelps and Wescott were working in concert 
 to make money from the railroad by swearing a crime against their 
 common enemy. For Wescott, too, according to one witness, had 
 once openly declared that Fitch was a notorious scoundrel who 
 would appear as a friend to your face, and the moment you turned 
 your back would run a dagger through your heart and that he 
 (Wescott) would see him "peeping through the grates yet." 
 
 Having proved to its satisfaction that Phelps, Lake, and Wescott 
 had fashioned a broad net of lies to entrap Fitch and his friends, 
 the defense then delivered what it felt to be the coup de grace to 
 
 [72]
 
 the prosecution's case. It produced witnesses to show that the cele- 
 brated match simply would not burn when ignited. The witnesses 
 told of experiments conducted by Seward, Howard, Frink, and 
 others on a match made according to the specifications Phelps had 
 given in court: the cotton soaked in camphene had been placed in 
 the holes in the log and ignited, but the log had never caught fire, 
 even after four or five attempts. The whole case of the prosecution, 
 the defense suggested, was not only false; it could not have possibly 
 been true. It had not been convincingly proven, moreover, that the 
 fire in the depot had been deliberately set. Several witnesses testi- 
 fied for the defense that they had first seen the flames elsewhere 
 than in the cupola, where they should have been if Gay had really 
 put the match there. Gay, besides, had been disabled at the time 
 and had to use crutches and could not have carried the match all 
 the way up to the cupola. His unwonted prosperity in the month 
 of the fire had not been due to his payment by the "conspirators," 
 but, as his own son now swore, to the payment of several notes that 
 he had held. 
 
 In rebuttal, the prosecution brought 118 witnesses who testified 
 that they had never heard Phelps' reputation for truth questioned 
 and that they would believe him under oath. A county judge, mem- 
 bers of the legislature, lawyers, doctors, ministers, merchants, and 
 farmers, as well as other prison officials, appeared in behalf of the 
 state's star witness, asserting that from 1840 to the time of his sen- 
 tence for horse stealing they had generally found Phelps trust- 
 worthy and had not been aware of any reflections on his truthful- 
 ness in the communities in which he had lived. Many of them ad- 
 mitted, however, on cross-examination, that they had not known 
 Phelps too well and most of them revealed that since the trial 
 had begun, they had heard some people speak "very hard" of 
 Phelps, that "enough [had been] said of him to hang the devil," 
 that they had "heard a general bark about him lately." 
 
 Mrs. Phelps herself denied on the stand that she and her husband 
 had ever whispered in bed about a scheme with Wescott to "come 
 a good drive" over Fitch. Indeed, Henry had always looked on 
 Fitch as his friend. She explained, moreover, that Lake had bor- 
 rowed the augers solely for the purpose of mending the springs on 
 their buggy and had returned them the same day. Additional wit- 
 nesses then contradicted important points established by the de- 
 
 [73]
 
 fense: the flames had been first seen issuing from the cupola of the 
 depot; Fitch had been abed in the downstairs room when a tenant 
 of his had come to see him one morning in the summer of 1850. 
 As for the log of whitewood found on Phelps' premises, it had been 
 unearthed at the suggestion of the crafty Burnett and, by implica- 
 tion, had probably been planted there. Furthermore, the prosecu- 
 tion now brought out. Elder Billings, who had bribed one witness 
 to perjure himself, had tried to get a match made in order to 
 secrete it in Phelps' house. While this plan had not been carried 
 out, was it not likely that the whitewood log had been the next best 
 substitute? The state then put Dr. Edmund G. Desnoyers, a Detroit 
 chemist, on the stand to prove that the match if ignited would 
 burst into flame. The experiment took a long time and much effort, 
 and a substitute for camphene, which would not work as specified, 
 had to be used, but there was no doubt that the match was the 
 incendiary instrument used to burn the depot. 
 
 At this point, Van Arman launched a sharp attack on the cred- 
 ibility of all the defense witnesses. One farmer and his son had 
 testified for the defense that on April 1 1 they had seen Phelps and 
 Lake part company on the way to Michigan Centre and that the 
 latter had carried a bundle the size of the match wrapped in red. 
 The prosecution had sent men out to the farm in question, and 
 they reported that from where the farmer and his son had stood, 
 no one could see passers-by on the road much less a bundle carried 
 under the arm. Van Arman suggested that the jury go out to the 
 farm and see for itself. He urged haste, for as the place was so near 
 Leoni, "the defense will bring twenty or thirty to swear away every 
 fence and tree about the place. . ." Seward objected strongly to 
 these personal aspersions and countered with some slighting re- 
 marks about Van Arman's dual role as counsel for the people and 
 agent of the railroad, who had "descended to the haunts of vice" 
 to secure evidence. With regard to a visit to the field near Leoni, 
 Seward charged that the prosecution lawyers had already inspected 
 the place in the company of one of the jurors, and sarcastically 
 added that, this time, he hoped defense counsel would be per- 
 mitted to go along. Van Arman, standing on his dignity, said he 
 would not reply "to the tirade of the counsel, which he presumes 
 is meant merely for the public." Being thick-skinned, he was not 
 at all wounded by the pointed remarks. True, he had visited a 
 
 [74]
 
 "haunt of vice," but he had "testified to truth he knew, while the 
 other counsel was here for months seeking to screen guilt. . ." 
 
 At this point, the court interrupted with the remark that the 
 matter had gone far enough. Prosecuting Attorney Stuart inter- 
 jected that he thought Van Arman had not gone "near so far" as 
 the defense counsel in rude and indecent personal attacks. Judge 
 Wing replied that he had no wish to prevent counsel from reply- 
 ing to any attack on his integrity but merely desired to prevent 
 excitement. Van Arman would not, however, remain silent. He 
 defended his own actions by citing his high motives, to prevent the 
 destruction of life and property on the railroad. He insinuated 
 that Seward's motives in endlessly delaying the trial had not been 
 so pure, that he hoped to break up the trial by the death or illness 
 of a juror or give the defendants time to concoct perjury. Such 
 conduct, he sneered, could not be distinguished "in point of 
 morality from helping the defendants out of prison by handing 
 them a file." 
 
 After this bitter contretemps the prosecution recalled Phelps and 
 Lake to the stand to deny that they had made any matches, or knew 
 anything about the log of whitewood found in the hay, or had sep- 
 arated on April n, or brought any box to Michigan Centre that 
 day. With this, the state completed its rebuttal and rested. 
 
 In many respects, the climax of the trial had already been passed. 
 On August 24, Abel F. Fitch had died in the Sisters of Charity Hos- 
 pital to which he had been removed from his cell in moribund con- 
 dition. He had been taken sick with dysentery on August 12 and 
 by August 15 could no longer appear in court, which then ad- 
 journed from day to day for almost two weeks. After his death, the 
 trial continued to its appointed end, but the proceedings were 
 something of an anticlimax. The chief defendant was no longer on 
 trial; he had gone, as the piety of the time would have it, to appear 
 before a higher tribunal. The prosecution persisted in its efforts of 
 getting a conviction and setting an example to other opponents of 
 the railroad, but the defense lost its spark with the death of a sick 
 and lonely man. 
 
 All during the long hot days in court and the miserable hot 
 nights in jail. Fitch's hope and health had wasted away. In his now 
 sporadic letters home, disease and despair were the keynotes. He 
 continued to proclaim his innocence to Amanda and took some 
 
 [75]
 
 comfort from the fact that Seward, "the old guv," as he fondly 
 called him, was convinced of it too. He felt sure that the railroad 
 lawyers knew he was not guilty and was all the more appalled at 
 their determined efforts to secure a conviction. It all seemed so 
 unreal to him, so like a dream. "It does not seem possible," he told 
 his wife, "that we can be sworn to States Prison by such devils, 
 [but] they say I shall never breath one half hour of free air while I 
 live." Resigning himself to a martyr's fate, he cried: 
 
 If this RR company must rule this State why the sooner we know 
 it the better and perhaps I may as well be the first victim as the last. . . 
 If this is all due and in accordance with the principals of our government 
 and the people of Michigan are wilhng to submit to it why I must of 
 course suffer but God only knows whos turn will come next. 
 
 Again in that dark hour, his mind turned to his dearest Amanda. 
 On August 12, his yearning burst forth: "How much I want to see 
 you and be again at my peaceable home with my quiet little family, 
 language cannot express." It was his last letter home.'^^ 
 
 Two days later, on August 14, Fitch took to his bed, never to 
 leave it. A week later the dying man was removed from his cell to 
 the hospital. Amanda came from Michigan Centre to be with him 
 in his last moments. An eyewitness wrote the following account 
 of the end: 
 
 At 3 o'clock P.M. yesterday, Mr. Fitch became conscious that he could 
 not live, and talked calmly and firmly of his approaching death. He 
 desired that Mr. Frink might be sent for, to consult about his worldly 
 matters. Prosecuting Attorney Stuart and Doctors Rice and Pitcher 
 arrived about 10 o'clock. An examination and consultation was had, and 
 the opinion expressed that he could not survive the night. Mr. Stuart 
 went to the bedside of the dying man when he (Fitch) inquired, "What 
 is to be done now?" and said, "I shall die a martyr to liberty." Soon 
 after, he remarked that he put his trust in God, and desired that he might 
 be baptised. He received the solemn rite at the hand of one of the Sisters 
 of Charity; and whilst in the midst of the ceremony, while committing 
 his soul to God, he declared his entire innocence of the crimes with 
 which he was charged— said he had never violated the laws of his country 
 —that he had simply expressed his opinions, as he supposed he had a 
 right to do, and thought it not just that he should be punished. 
 
 Mr. Fitch then called his wife to him, bid her good bye, saying, 
 "Farewelll it is hard to part with the only being I ever loved"; and then 
 bidding adieu to other friends around him, closed his eyes for a moment. 
 Recovering again, he exclaimed, "There is poor, dear little Amanda— I 
 had nearly forgotten her— remember me to her. I dread to die with this 
 
 [76]
 
 charge resting upon me. Will not the truth come out and my character 
 be vindicated?" Being assured by Mr. Frink that his character should be 
 vindicated, he expressed himself prepared to die; and taking the hand of 
 his wife, and pressing it to his lips, he said, "Amanda, it is hard to part— 
 I die of a broken heartl" and fell back, asleep in death.''^ 
 
 That night the body was brought to Michigan Centre, and to 
 Jackson the next morning for the funeral. A procession of carriages 
 and teams nearly a half mile long accompanied the coffin from the 
 Centre. The Congregational Church of Jackson, where the last 
 services were held, was filled to overflowing, with people crowding 
 around the doors and windows. The Reverend Gustavus L. Foster 
 preached the funeral sermon, taking his text from Job lo: 22, 
 "Without any order." Death and affliction often seemed to men as 
 without any order, the preacher pointed out; and Fitch's death 
 seemed to his many friends who believed in his innocence to be so. 
 In God's wisdom and knowledge, however, nothing was without 
 order. Mr. Foster, with characteristic boldness, then proceeded to 
 attack the authorities and the railroad company as being largely 
 responsible for Fitch's death. He condemned "in the name of hu- 
 manity" the refusal of the courts to grant Fitch bail and character- 
 ized the treatment he had received in prison as "an arbitrary rigid- 
 ity, amounting well-nigh to the infliction of cruelty. . ." Nor could 
 one expect more from "heavy monied corporations" that existed 
 only for gain and violated the Sabbath by running trains on Sun- 
 days. "Many of the men composing the company owning this Rail 
 Road may be good men, spending much of their time in Psalm 
 singing in eastern churches," but their minions in Michigan reck- 
 lessly trampled on civil and divine law every Sabbath day. Such a 
 corporation was bound to act as it did to defend its rights, but indi- 
 viduals too had rights, especially when "arraigned before a civil 
 tribunal which should never feel the bias of a moneyed anxiety." 
 The preacher did not shower the deceased with immoderate praise. 
 Fitch, he said, had been neither a saint nor a vile creature, but a 
 worthy man, who had never turned the poor away from his door 
 and whose generosity had won him more friends than any other 
 man in the region.^^ 
 
 The death of Fitch, though it shook the defense, brought it fresh 
 accessions of public support and sympathy. As the astute James F. 
 Joy discerned, it was bound to have repercussions that might affect 
 
 [77]
 
 the outcome of the trial. The day of the funeral, Joy was writing 
 to Superintendent Brooks that Fitch's death would "undoubtedly 
 have a great effect on the public mind" and cautioned against al- 
 lowing anybody connected with the railroad to make "injudicious 
 remarks." He added cannily, 
 
 if anything be said, it should be to express regret at the course taken 
 by the defendants' counsel which has protracted the trial through the hot 
 season and sympathy for the family of Fitch. Better however say nothing 
 and give no occasion for any invidious remark." 
 
 Sympathy needed, however, no new occasion for invidious re- 
 marks. As the wife of one of the other prisoners informed her hus- 
 band with almost hysterical unbelief: "News has just reached us of 
 Mr. Fitch's death and my God can it be true. . . This company I 
 believe means to keep you there till they kill you all." The Jack- 
 son American Citizen spoke of the "universal sadness thrown over 
 our community" by the death of "one of the victims of the jealousy 
 and malice of the Central Railroad monopoly. . ." For the editor 
 of this Whig antirailroad paper, the death of Fitch only under- 
 lined his opinion, expressed earlier, that the trial and the charges 
 were a mesh of lies; though other newspapers on the line and north 
 of the road had been constantly manufacturing opinion in favor of 
 the corporation, he would not be deterred from honest criticism 
 by fear of a monopoly of a few foreign capitalists and their local 
 political hucksters. Now, he reprinted in full the eyewitness ac- 
 count of Fitch's death which the Detroit Daily Tribune had 
 printed and added the charge that Fitch had not been treated 
 fairly in his last illness. William Gunn, another prisoner who had 
 died of the same disease a day or so later, had been removed to the 
 hospital at the first sign of illness, while Fitch had not been taken 
 there until he had been pronounced incurable. The editor then 
 followed this charge up by publishing the whole of the Reverend 
 Foster's funeral sermon on the front page and preparing copies 
 of it for distribution in pamphlet form. A little later, sentiment 
 bubbled over into bad verse when there appeared in the columns 
 of the American Citizen the following anonymous "Lines Written 
 Upon the Occasion of the Death of Abel F. Fitch:" 
 
 Malice, hate, envy, all combined. 
 His peace they would destroy, 
 
 [78]
 
 They tore him from the sacred arms 
 Of home and all its joys. 
 
 They dragged him to a felon's cell- 
 There in that evil hour. 
 His heart was crushed, the strong man fell 
 Beneath oppression's power. 
 
 Worn out at last with dire disease 
 And anguish's keener smart. 
 Faintly in death's cold arms he said— 
 I die of a broken heart. 
 
 Ye men of monied power and might, 
 Hear ye those dying words. 
 Look at the lonely widow's form. 
 And see the wreck that ye have made.'^ 
 
 Sympathy for the deceased and doubts of his guilt were not con- 
 fined to Jackson County. The official organ of the Baptists of Mich- 
 igan, published in Detroit, did not hesitate to celebrate Fitch's vir- 
 tues and, while withholding comment on the trial, declared that 
 the public mind was divided on the question of his guilt. The De- 
 troit Daily Tribune itself, which four months previously had led 
 the pack in the outcry against the desperados from Jackson County, 
 now called Fitch a man who had been known in his community as 
 kind, conscientious, and charitable, and printed the dramatic 
 deathbed account. This newspaper's reversal was neither as sudden 
 nor as capricious as it seemed. Voicing the views of Free-Soil Whigs, 
 it could no longer escape the conclusion that the interests of the 
 railroad and the political fortunes of the Democratic administra- 
 tion were closely bound together in the prosecution. Early in 
 August, after the defense had already presented most of its case, 
 the Tribune had begun to express editorial doubts about the guilt 
 of the defendants. A week later, it affirmed "that there is a con- 
 spiracy on one side or the other" and warned that if other news- 
 papers "enlisted" on the side of the railroad, the Tribune would 
 not "be awed by wealth— no matter how great— into silence." It 
 cautioned the prosecution that monied power must be used pru- 
 dently and "never to control public opinion. Courts, Juries, the 
 Press, or oppress the weak and the poor." Journalistic attacks on 
 the defendants and their counsel would not help the railroad's 
 cause, for there was too much respect for law and justice in the city 
 
 [79]
 
 of Detroit, "too much hatred of oppression and tyranny whether 
 manifested by governments or corporations." "^^ 
 
 Sympathy for the defendants strengthened the feeling of the 
 righteousness of their original cause— opposition to the Michigan 
 Central Railroad. Antirailroad sentiment, set back by the sudden 
 strike of the arrests and held at bay by the judicial proceedings, 
 now flared up once more, fueled by the passions arising out of the 
 trial. The focus of this opposition was naturally in Jackson County. 
 Four days after Fitch's death, an "indignation meeting" was held 
 at the courthouse in Jackson to allow the citizens to vent their 
 feelings about the trial and "to ask," as one sympathizer expressed 
 it in a letter to the editor, "if our hardy yeomanry stand ready to 
 be humbled at the beck or nod of the agents of a great monied 
 monopoly." The speakers at the crowded gathering were careful 
 to blame both parties, the men of Leoni as well as the Michigan 
 Central. The company had precipitated the trouble by not paying 
 enough for cattle killed, but this was no excuse for damaging rail- 
 road property, and those who did so should be punished. Resolu- 
 tions were passed protesting the company's use of spies, the manner 
 of the arrests, the excessive bail, the filthy conditions of the jail, 
 and the treatment of the prisoners in a way "as would have dis- 
 graced an Austrian Bastille." It was charged, too, that many in- 
 nocent persons had been arrested to keep them from appearing as 
 witnesses for the defense. Finally, the hope was expressed that the 
 opposition to the railroad in the future would stay within legal 
 limits and would not descend to criminal violence, but would up- 
 hold the right and further all means to encourage competition 
 with the Michigan Central. At the close of the meeting, a com- 
 mittee was selected to prepare for a larger mass meeting on Sep- 
 tember 13 which would give in resounding tones "the verdict of the 
 People as to Right in the unholy war." '^'^ 
 
 The judicious tenor of the indignation meeting, culminating in 
 the proposal to restore competition, suggests an inspiration far 
 removed from the violent anger of farmers whose only piece of live- 
 stock had been killed on the tracks. This first gathering obviously 
 laid the ground for the well-organized and well-publicized mass 
 meeting of September 13, which was dominated by outstanding 
 merchants and politicos of the community who were not averse to 
 using the resentments aroused by the trial to further their own 
 
 [80]
 
 ends. The second meeting, heralded by the American Citizen as 
 "5000 Freemen in Council," condemned the authorities for their 
 conduct of the trial in the same terms as its predecessor. It too re- 
 gretted the criminal attacks on the railroad on the one hand, and 
 the policies of the company on the other. It heard William T. 
 Howell, an old antimonopoly man who had voted against the sale 
 of the railroad by the state back in 1846, call the Michigan Central 
 "the curse of an insolent and overgrown monopoly on the people." 
 It agreed unanimously that "the Central Rail Road [had] been 
 using our laws and Government as a means of outrage, oppression 
 and injustice." A course of action was advised for the future— to 
 keep an eye on the railroad, elect honest men to office, and work 
 to build a branch road from Jackson to the Michigan Southern 
 Railroad at Adrian in order to create competition. Another reso- 
 lution called on the Southern Railroad to carry out its pledges to 
 build this branch road and pledged the assembled citizens to "meet 
 it frankly and half-way." Here was the voice of the men who were 
 eager for a connection between Jackson and Adrian and hoped 
 then to carry the line through to Grand Rapids as part of the 
 Grand River Valley Railroad. These were the potential investors in 
 new railroads in the interior of the state who found their efforts 
 blocked by the monopoly sections of the special charter granted 
 the Michigan Central Railroad. In closing, the meeting inscribed 
 the name of the deceased leader on its banner and resolved that it 
 would "ever cherish the memory of the virtues of our lamented 
 friend and fellow-citizen, Abel F. Fitch, the victim of a foul con- 
 spiracy of unjust oppression and cruel wrong." "^^ 
 
 The same issue of the Whig American Citizen which printed the 
 detailed story of the mass meeting also contained a two-column 
 discussion of the whole conflict of the farmers and the railroad, 
 defending the prisoners and attacking the policies of the company 
 and its local supporter, Wilbur F. Storey, publisher of the Demo- 
 cratic Jackson Patriot. Editor De Land carefully explained his 
 own position: he wished "to preserve the sovereignty of the State 
 in the hands of the people and keep it from the grasp of foreign 
 capitalists and their lickspittles"; he did not wage war against the 
 company and its rights— it had in fact greatly benefited the county 
 and the state— "but a war as lasting as life is waged against its 
 despotism, as displayed by its agents." Broadening his attack, De 
 
 [81 ]
 
 Land called the railroad monopoly a "locofoco bantling" which 
 received its special charter from a Democratic legislature and which 
 subsequent Democratic legislatures had "tinkered up ... to suit 
 Boston capitalists and remove them from the reach of the people." 
 The corporation in return had given the Democrats funds and 
 votes which enabled them to continue in office. ^^ 
 
 The shift in opinion even brought defection in the ranks of the 
 prosecution. Jacob M. Howard, the Whig politician who had been 
 hired by the company to assist in the prosecution, became con- 
 vinced that he had made a mistake in taking the case and withdrew 
 from all active participation in the trial, explaining that he no 
 longer believed Henry Phelps was telling the truth.^o 
 
 The railroad and its supporters began to fight back. The Demo- 
 cratic organ, the Free Press, and the old-line Whig Advertiser, in a 
 nonpartisan spirit, continued their attacks on the defendants and 
 their counsel in defense of the Michigan Central and the interests 
 of the city of Detroit. The company itself tried to curry whatever 
 favor it might by placing a special train at the disposal of the court 
 for a visit to the scenes of the alleged crimes. The train carried the 
 party of judge, jury, and lawyers all the way to Marshall where 
 they were dined and lodged overnight at the company's expense. 
 Largesse was extended to the point of cajolery by offering free rides 
 on the cars to anyone who lived between Jackson and Detroit to 
 come and hear the closing arguments of counsel. One of the eastern 
 directors of the company resorted to threats while on a visit to 
 Detroit. He reportedly said: "These prisoners must be convicted 
 and unless they are, there is over ^7,000,000 of property rendered 
 worthless. If they are not convicted, I will sell my stock for what 
 I can get, for it will not be worth a cent in two years." This in- 
 judicious outburst, if true, was calculated to coerce the public into 
 demanding a conviction, and certainly did not reflect the realities 
 of the railroad's situation.^i 
 
 This battle for public opinion was carried over into the lawyers' 
 final arguments to the jury. For two full weeks, the big oratorical 
 guns boomed away at the judge, jury, and each other, and at the 
 public within and without the courtroom. To accommodate the 
 large audiences of nearly a thousand who came to revel in the fes- 
 tival of oratory, the sessions of court were held in the great hall on 
 the third floor of the new Fireman's Hall. Here, Stuart, Van 
 
 [82 ]
 
 Arman, and Van Dyke summed up the case for the state and refuted 
 the arguments of the defense, while Frink, Hewitt, William A. 
 Howard, and Seward sought to destroy that case and establish the 
 innocence of their clients by pinning the crime of conspiracy on 
 the prosecution's chief witnesses, Phelps, Lake, and Wescott. Van 
 Arman spoke for two-and-a-half days, hammering and slashing 
 away at the defendants with vicious invective and pulling all the 
 stops in his maudlin appeals to the jury. Seward replied for three 
 days in a masterful harangue compounded of logic, learning, melo- 
 drama, and cutting sarcasm, which even the hostile Free Press 
 found uncommon, though it sneered at the speech as a mixture of 
 "appropriate quantities of the dough, the sugar and the spices." 
 Van Dyke met the challenge admirably and more than matched 
 Seward's forensics. Tall, dignified, elegant, this "Chesterfield of the 
 Michigan Bar," made the final plea for the state, suavely and skill- 
 fully demanding a conviction on the highest moral and patriotic 
 grounds. The other lawyers delivered addresses of lesser length and 
 force, and by September 25 the case was ready to go to the jury.82 
 Almost as much as on the merits of their respective cases, counsel 
 dwelt on those issues and charges which were agitating the public. 
 Echoes of the excitement of the early days of the trial, of anti- 
 corporation sentiment, of the death of Fitch, and of the resurgence 
 of sympathy for the defendants bounded around the walls of the 
 crowded courtroom. Now it was the defense which conjured up the 
 ogre of an omnipotent monopoly, which had whipped the public 
 into a lather of vengeful delirium and was intent on crushing 
 valiant, humble citizens fighting only for their rights under the law. 
 And it was the prosecution that counseled the members of the jury 
 to mistrust and ignore that fickle guide, public opinion, and follow 
 only their consciences. Van Dyke admitted innocently that right 
 after the arrests for an atrocious crime that almost burnt the whole 
 city to the ground, "it was natural that for a time, the public pulse 
 should beat the quicker," and then rhetorically flung the charge of 
 arousing the public back at the defense: 
 
 Have the prosecuting counsel run through the streets pledging their 
 honors to the innocence or guilt of the prisoners? Have they sought, day 
 after day, to raise an influence that might be brought to bear on your 
 deliberations? Have they sown distrust broadcast in the community, or 
 gathered public meetings for the purpose of denouncing these judicial 
 
 [83]
 
 proceedings? Have they got up deathbed scenes . . .? Have they pub- 
 lished sermons of doubtful morality and perverted taste, for distribu- 
 tion . . . ? Have they passed through the streets, stating that they knew, 
 and could v^^ager, that certain of the jury they might name, would never 
 agree to convict? 
 
 The lawyers for the defense accused the state of hasty circumven- 
 tions of the law and of virtually depriving their clients of the right 
 to bail, of using spies with criminal records to collect evidence. To 
 these charges, Van Arman and Van Dyke replied that the trial had 
 been a free and fair one, according to law, such as the defendants 
 could not have had anywhere else in the world. As for bail, it was 
 the court that had fixed the amount, not the prosecution. It was, 
 furthermore, by no means excessive, considering the enormity of 
 the crime. If the bail had been any less, these dangerous criminals 
 would have been set free to continue their attacks on life and prop- 
 erty. "Would you have sent your wife and family upon that [rail-] 
 road," Van Arman asked the jury, "with these men at large?" And 
 in using spies of shady backgrounds, the company had only fought 
 fire with fire; their work had been necessary and useful and hence 
 honorable. Besides, who were these men who now appealed for 
 their rights at law? "Have not these men for two years been in open 
 and avowed rebellion against all law . . ., trampled upon all legal, 
 social and moral obligations and become and proclaimed them- 
 selves most openly, mere pirates, outlaws, robbers and murderers?" 
 By their crimes, have they not forfeited "all protection and con- 
 sideration from their fellow citizens?" 
 
 Counsel for the people went on in this vein, thoroughly to black- 
 guard the prisoners in the dock. Seward had pictured his clients 
 as simple, honest farmers and mechanics, "pioneers of the State," 
 poor struggling settlers in a new land, in the rural hamlet of Leoni, 
 who were seeking justice at the hands of powerful wealth. The 
 prosecution lawyers dismissed this idyllic portrait as ridiculous. 
 These men were an organized group of reckless and depraved 
 felons who would stop at nothing to gain their ill-conceived ends. 
 "Rural hamlet, indeed," Van Dyke sneered. Leoni was a benighted 
 sink of iniquity which had steadily been declining in population. 
 It was not strange that its people were ready to burn and kill. Van 
 Dyke explained: 
 
 There is no accounting for the actions of men who begin by believing 
 
 [84]
 
 in the utter corruption of all who surround them, even of those whose 
 virtue and wisdom have placed them to preside over the most sacred 
 institutions; and who end by adopting vengeance as their guiding star, 
 and hugging that hideous passion to their heart. They become blind to 
 reason, justice and humanity. Every feeling turns to morbid hatred; 
 every pulse throbs with bitter passion, and innocent and guilty are alike 
 sacrificed to minister to an insatiate appetite for revenge. 
 
 Some of the defendants had died, but, ah, sighed Van Dyke, he 
 could not but wish "that while yet in their childhood they had 
 sank sweetly into their last repose, long before vice and crime 
 stained their youth and subjected their manhood to this ordeal 
 at the bar of their offended country." Nothing was sacred to them, 
 shouted Van Arman, "not even the holy Sabbath. Look at their 
 moral character, playing cards, gambling, drinking and carousing 
 Sabbath after Sabbath. Listen to their horrid oaths— their blas- 
 phemies. . . Is not crime the natural and appropriate sequel of such 
 a history?" Not merely the actual crimes of the defendants, but all 
 the possible horrors of their actions were spelled out for the jury 
 in fascinating detail verging on bathos. The Leoni villains had 
 once obstructed the tracks, meaning to throw off a scheduled pas- 
 senger train into the Dry Marsh, but by chance a freight train 
 had been stopped. Van Arman would not, however, let the occasion 
 slip by; he wrung every drop of sentiment from it. 
 
 Little did the thoughtless and merry company who left your city on 
 that bright summer day . . . dream of the deadly perils which beset their 
 path. Little did the admiring traveler deem, as he gazed upon the smiling 
 landscapes . . . that such a land could harbor the bloody assassin— that 
 beneath the shade of those sunny groves crept, with stealthy tread, the 
 murderer, against whose wiles and snares the arm of the law was power- 
 less to protect his life. Little deemed the mother, as she fondly played 
 with infant slumbering upon her breast, that its winding sheet, and hers, 
 was prepared in the cold bosom of that sunless and dismal lake! And 
 yet it was for them— for that fated train, thus heavily laden with human 
 beings, that the fatal toils were set. In the silent depths of those stag- 
 nant waters, where the blessed light of heaven could never smile upon 
 them, their grave was dug. 
 
 Van Dyke was not to be outdone by his colleague. He too dwelt 
 tearfully on the catastrophe that had been averted. "Fancy," he 
 begged the jury, 
 
 fancy that doomed train approaching, with its precious freight— fami- 
 lies returning from long and painful absence— visions of home and hap- 
 
 [85]
 
 piness flashing before them; on they rush unconscious of the fate 
 prepared for them; there is a sudden stop— one mighty bound of the 
 engine— one shrill whistle, one wild scream, and all is over. They are 
 sunk, entombed— not in the beautiful cemeteries where mourning friends 
 may weep over their ashes— not even in the bright clear waters of our 
 lake; but amid the slime and mud that ages have accumulated in that 
 dismal spot. 
 
 The defense lawyers could not match these fanciful previsions of 
 doom, but were not altogether inept at similar pathetic excursions. 
 They did not hesitate to play up the death of Fitch for all it was 
 worth, presenting him as a martyred hero, a victim of greed and 
 cruelty. Frink perorated on the theme: "His life has been sacrificed 
 in the midst of his days. God in his providence has permitted him 
 to fall upon the altar of freedom— a victim of injustice and oppres- 
 sion." Fitch was a fine man, a gentleman, whose innocence counsel 
 never doubted. And, Frink concluded, soberly prodding the jury, 
 "a higher and holier tribunal has ere this judged him in mercy." 
 Seward chimed in, in turn, "Death. . . has invested the transaction 
 with the dignity of tragedy." In a voice husky with emotion and 
 constant snuff-taking, and without showy oratorical grace, he de- 
 livered his own peroration, which must have left the jury floun- 
 dering in its own tears. "Fitch," he exclaimed, 
 
 who was feared, hated and loved most of all, has fallen in the vigor of life 
 
 "hacked down 
 His thick summer leaves all faded!" 
 When such an one falls, amid the din and smoke of the battlefield, our 
 emotions are overpowered— suppressed— lost in the excitement of public 
 passion. But when he perishes a victim of domestic or social strife— when 
 we see the iron enter his soul, and see it day by day, sinking deeper and 
 deeper, until nature gives way and he lies lifeless at our feet— then there 
 is nothing to check the flow of forgiveness, compassion and sympathy. 
 If in the moment when he is closing his eyes on earth, he declares, "I 
 have committed no crime against my country, I die a martyr for the 
 liberty of speech, and perish of a broken heart"— then, indeed do we feel, 
 that the tongues of dying men enforce attention, like deep harmony. 
 Who would willingly consent to decide on the guilt or innocence of one 
 who has thus been withdrawn from our erring judgment, to the tribunal 
 of eternal justice? Yet it cannot be avoided. If Abel F. Fitch was guilty 
 of the crime charged in this indictment, every man here may nevertheless 
 be innocent; but if he was innocent, then there is not one of these, his 
 associates in life, who can be guilty. Try him, then, since you must- 
 condemn him, if you must— and with him condemn them. But remember 
 that you are mortal and he is now immortal; and that before that tribunal 
 
 [86]
 
 where he stands, you must stand and confront, and vindicate your judg- 
 ment. Remember, too, that he is now free. He has not only left behind 
 him the dungeon, the cell and the chain; but he exults in a freedom, 
 compared to which, the liberty we enjoy is slavery and bondage. You 
 stand, then, between the dead and the living. . . You will, I am sure, be 
 just to the living, and true to your country; because, under circumstances 
 so solemn— so full of awe— you cannot be unjust to the dead, nor false to 
 your country, nor to your God.^ 
 
 Van Dyke, immediately following Seward, could not let the ap- 
 peal go unchallenged. He opened his address with ironic modesty: 
 
 While I feel pleased in beholding the laurels which this trial has en- 
 twined around other brows, I will seek to gather none for my own. I 
 will neither wander into the paths of fancy, nor address myself to those 
 who sit without the jury box. . . I shall not seek or hope to leave the 
 impress of oratorical power upon your imagination. . . You must expect 
 from me, gentlemen, no eloquent declamations. . . I will not weave a 
 single wreath of fancy. . . I [shall] refrain from pursuing the meteoric 
 fancies, eloquent philippics and sublime apostrophes. . . 
 
 He then struck back at the defense's dramatic evocation of death 
 and innocence. What had the deaths of some of the defendants to 
 do with the case? Because two of them had died, was that any rea- 
 son to infer the innocence of the remainder? "Permit me to ask you 
 gentlemen— what have you to do with death bed scenes— false in 
 fact, morbid in taste and wholly irrelevant to this issue." The death- 
 bed drama was fiction. Fitch was without doubt delirious in his last 
 moments. His dying words, "dressed up as they now are . . ., would 
 meet from the deceased, could he hear them, no sign of recog- 
 nition. . . They might serve to adorn a page of some yellow covered 
 novel— they have served to grace two elegant perorations," but 
 were out of place here in a court of law. 
 
 Even more reprehensible. Van Dyke thought, were the strictures 
 on the railroad corporation delivered by his opponents. They had 
 described the railroad company as a grasping monopoly that would 
 brook no criticism or interference in its relentless pursuit of gain, 
 that sought to dominate the state and the people with its power and 
 crush all who opposed it. The trial, according to the defense, was 
 no longer an issue between the state and the defendants, but as 
 Frink put it, between Fitch and "the monetary power" of a corpora- 
 tion with seven million dollars capital, "a power behind and above 
 the government— a power that is seldom regulated by humane and 
 
 [87 ]
 
 just sentiments; that always seeks to crush those it cannot cajole. . ." 
 Seward, though he had disclaimed hostility to corporations and 
 support for illegal methods to fight them, had also dwelt on the 
 abuse of the people by the Michigan Central. "Corporate wealth," 
 he had warned the jury, 
 
 cannot long oppress the citizen in such a country and under such a gov- 
 ernment as this. Your verdict against these defendants, if it shall appear 
 to be well grounded upon the evidence, will abate a rapidly rising popu- 
 lar commotion; but, if it shall not be so sustained by the evidence, a 
 people which make the wrongs of each one the common cause of all, will 
 pick strong matter of wrath out of the bloody finger ends of a successful 
 conspiracy. 
 
 At this. Van Dyke was shocked. He assailed such demagogic 
 appeals to bend justice to popular clamor. He defended and lauded 
 the corporation as a harbinger of endless prosperity and universal 
 bliss. It was not true that strife had come into Michigan when the 
 state sold the railroad to a corporation. It was, on the contrary, a 
 "fortunate hour," for 
 
 where heaven's light was once shut out by dense forests, it [now] shines 
 over fertile fields and rich luxuriant harvests . . . ; hope and energy 
 sprung from their lethargic sleep, labor clapped her glad hands and 
 shouted for joy; and Michigan, bent for the moment like a sapling by 
 the fierceness of a passing tempest, relieved from the debts and burthens, 
 rose erect, and in her youthful strength, stood proudly up among her 
 sister states. . . A detestable monopoly! These railroads built by united 
 energies and capital are the great instruments in the hand of God to 
 hasten onward the glorious mission of Religion and Civilization. 
 
 Van Dyke sorely regretted that "the eminent counsel" had per- 
 mitted his "energetic bile" to gush forth for "sinister purposes" 
 and had talked about sacrificing citizens at the behest of dangerous 
 monopolies. Worst of all, Seward had intimated that if the verdict 
 were not satisfactory, the people would take things into their own 
 hands. These were "poisoned and dangerous sentiments" ap- 
 propriate not for a court of law in the state of Michigan but for 
 some bloody Paris tribunal. "Ah, gentlemen," Van Dyke warned 
 the jury, "there is a worse evil abroad through this land, than the 
 overshadowing power of corporations. These are isms of dreadful 
 and fearful import around us. They menace our public institutions 
 and private rights. There is a spirit of disloyalty to law and coun- 
 try." There are attacks on the revered traditions of our land in the 
 
 [88]
 
 name of a "higher law," in which public clamor is placed above 
 the law and the people are aroused to sit in judgment over courts 
 and juries. This evil can lead only to the destruction of civili- 
 zation. Beautiful, prosperous, peaceful Michigan— it has come into 
 being and flourished mightily under the aegis of the law. Disregard 
 the law and you destroy all this. But enough! What he said surely 
 did not apply to the law-loving citizens of Michigan, but rather 
 to "some foreign district, some land where anti-rent and anti-law 
 make part of her history," like Mr. Seward's state of New York. 
 
 Finally, Van Dyke, like Van Arman, called for a conviction not 
 merely on the intrinsic merits of the case but equally on its all- 
 embracing importance. "This cause," he pointed out, 
 
 has spread through the confines of our State and beyond its limits, and 
 a world is looking on to see if there is here strength, and virtue sufficient 
 to assert the integrity of the law. . . The dignity, the honor, and the 
 character of Michigan are in your keeping. . . We are called upon by 
 every high consideration to do our duty in this case . . . Gratitude for the 
 lovely heritage God has given us; patriotism, love for the beautiful pen- 
 insula, in which is fixed our destiny and centered our all of earthly good 
 and hope ... all unite in one voice, and ask that you be firm, free and 
 steadfast on this occasion. For if these dangerous doctrines which pro- 
 duced the outrages we are considering, are to spread from the hamlet of 
 Leoni, throughout the breadth of the land, and even to the jury box of 
 our courts; if men animated by deep hate against a corporation, feel and 
 think that they are justified in redressing their own real or fancied 
 wrongs, in their own way; if courts are to be scouted at, laws to be 
 trampled on, order rushed into wild confusion, and crime sympathized 
 with and left to stalk unpunished; then indeed have evil days come upon 
 us. Capital, virtue, peace and property will be trodden over, and crushed 
 by mob violence and all the dire evils which will follow in its train. . . 
 The first jury which renders a verdict, tainted by the unhallowed spirit 
 of fear, or public opinion, or prejudiced by loud clamors against monopo- 
 lies and tyrannical corporations, will have stricken a death blow at this 
 country's honor and welfare. 
 
 Van Dyke was confident, however, that Michigan would be "loyal 
 to the Union and to the law." 
 
 These solemn appeals for loyalty to God and country over- 
 shadowed in large measure the summing up of the evidence. In 
 elaborating the legal case against the defendants, the lawyers for 
 the prosecution stressed the fact that they had been engaged in a 
 conspiracy. The men of Leoni, it was clearly pointed out, hated the 
 railroad, swore to get redress, obstructed the tracks and attacked 
 
 [89]
 
 the trains, threatened to burn depots, met and discussed their 
 plans, and took oaths of mutual loyalty: all of which was evidence 
 enough that they were conspiring to destroy railroad property 
 until their demands were met. It all raised more than a pre- 
 sumption that they also burnt the depot in Detroit. The later at- 
 tempt to burn the Niles depot was equally part of the over-all plan. 
 True, each of the criminal acts against railroad property at or 
 near Michigan Centre had not been brought home to a particular 
 defendant. But it was not necessary to prove who committed each 
 and every crime. If one act was proved against one man, the pre- 
 sumption was that all were guilty of all the acts, unless proven 
 innocent. All the defendants, moreover, need not have aided and 
 abetted in each outrage nor even have been present. It was suf- 
 ficient that they had been cognizant of the offense and consented 
 to and approved of it. That was the essence of conspiracy or com- 
 bination: the necessary elements of "unity of motive, purpose and 
 design" were all present. 
 
 As to the crime charged in the indictment, the burning of the 
 depot, there was no doubt that the building had been destroyed by 
 an incendiary. The place where the flames had first been seen by 
 reliable witnesses, in the cupola, high above the elevating machin- 
 ery and the storage bins, proved that the fire had not been an ac- 
 cidental one. Too, the depot had been shut down at midnight and 
 all the candles extinguished. In any case, Gay had admitted to 
 Phelps that he had set the fire with a match. Experiments con- 
 ducted by the chemist, Dr. Desnoyers, proved that the match would 
 burn for several hours, as Gay said it had done. Van Arman had, 
 nevertheless, to admit that it had not been proven beyond a shadow 
 of a doubt that the depot fire had not been an accident, for, as 
 he explained, "There never was a case of burning where the proof 
 was certain that it did not take place by accident." 
 
 Van Dyke and Van Arman then stoutly defended the veracity 
 of Phelps and Wescott, their star witnesses. Of Phelps, Van Arman 
 said, in all candor: 
 
 He is either the most execrable villain that has ever appeared in mod- 
 ern times, either the vilest and most abandoned wretch that Providence 
 has ever permitted to pollute the earth ... or he is the most deeply 
 wronged man on the face of the earth. If he has deceived us, there is no 
 penalty too heavy for his crime. 
 
 [90]
 
 But he could not have possibly deceived all the counsel for the 
 state as well as Superintendent Brooks and Mr. Clark. "You must 
 see," Van Arman argued, "that we all have fully believed [him] or 
 we had not dared to commence these proceedings." The prose- 
 cution had not, moreover, accepted Phelps' testimony, crucial as 
 it was, without corroboration. Clark and Van Arman had con- 
 firmed Gay's confessions, and an independent witness had been 
 present when Phelps had been "fixed out" for burning the Niles 
 Depot at Michigan Centre the night of April ii, 1851. Nor had 
 Phelps' testimony, or Wescott's, been shaken on cross-examination. 
 Both of their stories were so long and so complicated, they could 
 not have possibly been fabricated, and the defense's attempts to 
 contradict them had utterly failed. On the contrary, it was the de- 
 fense witnesses who were tainted with perjury. Van Arman pointed 
 out that Hawley himself had confessed to that crime, and added, 
 "It would be rashness after the experience we have had of the skill 
 and resources of these defendants to doubt for a moment that they 
 could prove anything they wish." The charge that Phelps, Lake, 
 and Wescott had themselves conspired to pin the crime on Fitch 
 and company was equally baseless. They had no cause to injure 
 Fitch; they were indeed his friends and accepted as such until 
 exposed as railroad agents. Phelps and Wescott could not have 
 schemed together, for they had not been acquainted until after they 
 had made their separate reports to Clark, who had not let one see 
 the other's reports. Phelps and Lake could not have made the 
 matches: they had not seen one until Fitch had shown them one. 
 The log of whitewood had probably been planted on Phelps' va- 
 cated premises, for whatever he was, Phelps was no fool who would 
 have left it there to be found and used as evidence against him. 
 
 It was the defendants who had conspired, prosecution counsel 
 contended, to destroy the property of the railroad and who had 
 hired Gay to burn the depot in Detroit. There was no doubt that 
 Fitch knew Gay and had negotiated with him in the summer of 
 1849. Had not Gay mentioned his name and that of others at the 
 Centre? Aaron Mount, one of the defendants, had, according to 
 Lake, admitted being associated with Gay in crime and had brought 
 Fitch and Gay together. Too, Wescott had testified that he had 
 followed Fitch to Gay's house in Detroit and seen him enter it. 
 
 On this point, the prosecution made much of the testimony of 
 
 [91 ]
 
 Dr. James A. Hahn, mayor of Marshall, who had been on the train 
 that had brought the prisoners to Detroit. According to Dr. Hahn, 
 Fitch had asked to see the warrant for his arrest. As he read it, he 
 said that he had a slight acquaintance with Phelps some years be- 
 fore the latter had gone to prison but since then had had little to do 
 with him. Fitch had then added that he saw that he was charged 
 with being an accomplice of a certain Mr. Gay, but that he did 
 not know Gay and had never heard of him. And then, after a pause, 
 he said, "I believe that old Gay has turned state's evidence." This 
 last remark. Van Dyke insisted, unquestionably proved that the 
 squire of Michigan Centre knew the bawdy-house keeper of 
 Detroit; otherwise, why should Fitch call him "old Gay," and 
 what state's evidence was there to turn. 
 
 In concluding his argument. Van Dyke briefly reviewed the evi- 
 dence against each of the thirty-two defendants. Against seventeen 
 of them, he admitted that, thoua:h there was evidence to show that 
 they were involved in the general conspiracy to destroy railroad 
 property, there was none implicating them in the crime of burning 
 the depot. He said he would be satisfied if the jury acquitted these 
 and told them "to go and sin no more." Against three of the de- 
 fendants, the evidence was doubtful, and the jury would have to 
 consider their cases carefully and then decide as it saw fit. Against 
 twelve of them, whom he named, he had no doubt that the evi- 
 dence was strong and true that they were clearly guilty of being 
 accomplices before the fact. For these, he demanded a conviction, 
 so that history might record the fact that "a firm and able judge, 
 an intelligent and honest jury, unawed by fear and prejudice, and 
 unawed by threats, vindicated the violated law." 
 
 In their closing arguments, Frink and Seward denied completely 
 the guilt of their clients and tried to prove that there was no basis 
 in fact or in law for the case against them. The charge of con- 
 spiracy was false and even ludicrous. The criminal acts against 
 railroad property in Jackson County had indeed and unfortunately 
 been committed, but they were "individual, casual, unpremed- 
 itated crimes," in which it was proven that only three or four of 
 the defendants had been involved and only those present had been 
 implicated. The expressions of hostility had been legitimate indivi- 
 dual opinions, and the threats uttered, "individual, impulsive, 
 passionate, but idle." All the meetings cited as evidence of a con- 
 
 [92 ]
 
 spiracy had been accidental, not preconcerted, irregularly and 
 openly held in the public barroom, "open to all comers, whether 
 village gossips or travelers." All the criminal acts and gatherings 
 had, moreover, taken place in Jackson County, in another juris- 
 diction, and were no concern of the jury in Wayne County. In vain 
 the defense had opposed the admission of such testimony on the 
 ground that those crimes, even if committed by the defendants, 
 could not be proven under the present indictment; that if the de- 
 fendants did or did not burn the depot, it mattered not whether 
 they conspired to do so. The prosecution had offered this mass of 
 evidence, promising to prove a conspiracy to destroy all the prop- 
 erty of the railroad, including the depot. This they had not done. 
 They had succeeded, however, Frink charged, in their design "to 
 subserve the same unholy purpose of the declarations, made not 
 only in the streets, and in public journals, but in the presence of 
 this court, denouncing in advance, as outlaws, and as their per- 
 jured abettors, every man who should be a witness for, the de- 
 fendants." 
 
 Seward then attacked Wescott and his testimony, on which the 
 charge of conspiracy was largely based. Wescott, Seward charged, 
 who had told of the alleged declarations made to him by the de- 
 fendants and to him alone, in the presence of no one else, was noth- 
 ing but a "hireling informer," of dubious repute, a coward, with a 
 grudge against Fitch. He had been contradicted in many parts of 
 his story. Most of the remarks he attributed to the defendants 
 showed nothing more than hostility to the railroad. Wescott tried 
 to supply this deficiency by adding that Fitch, Filley, and Corwin 
 had called themselves "The Leoni Band"; that Filley had angrily 
 declared, "Leoni against the world"; that other Leonians had said 
 to him that they were banded together for the destruction of the 
 road unless they were paid for their cattle. Seward pointedly asked: 
 
 Do you not see how admirably this testimony is adapted to the exigen- 
 cies of the prosecution? I imagine I hear the counsel. Van Arman, say, 
 wanted— proof of a conspiracy. Wescott: They called themselves the 
 Leoni Band. . . Van Arman: Wanted— proof that the band was banded 
 together. Wescott: Fitch said— we are banded and conspired together 
 against the railroad company. Van Arman: Wanted— proof that the ob- 
 ject of the conspiracy was the destruction of the railroad. Wescott: Fitch 
 said, we are banded and conspired together for the entire destruction of 
 the railroad. . . . 
 
 [93 ]
 
 Seward then reduced to absurdity the whole notion of a con- 
 spiracy: 
 
 What a solemn and fearful scene that must have been when these 
 conspirators threw off the mask— "Leoni against the world." Where and 
 what was this Leoni? It was a hamlet among the oak openings of Mich- 
 igan. What was its magnitude? It consisted of a country tavern, a store 
 house, a school-house, a church, a dozen humble tenements. Who were 
 the members of this band? One country gentleman, one keeper of a 
 tavern and ball-alley, one drinking teamster, one backwoodsman, and one 
 village mason; and they acted their parts with as much boldness, and 
 even more, than the clowns in the interlude in Midsummer Night's 
 Dream. For when Bottom proposed to act the part of Lion, he was over- 
 ruled lest he might roar too loudly, and so "frighten the duchesses and 
 the ladies." No such timidity distinguished the clowns of Leoni. They 
 proclaimed themselves the unterrified— "Leoni against the world." 
 
 With this, he mockingly dismissed the witness: "Adieu, Mr. 
 William D. Wescott." 
 
 Coming closer to the heart of the case, Seward blasted the evi- 
 dence purporting to connect the defendants with Gay in the burn- 
 ing of the depot. In the first place, at least nineteen of the defend- 
 ants had not been shown to have had any connection with Gay. 
 Against the rest, there were only the reported admissions by Gay 
 and the defendants themselves, "the most uncertain and unsat- 
 isfactory of all testimony," because it consisted of mere repetition 
 of oral statements of others, liable to be misunderstood or in- 
 correctly heard or reported. All the alleged declarations and admis- 
 sions, Seward insinuated, bore the mark of falsehood, for they were 
 all couched in the language of the witnesses who reported them. 
 It reminded one of the "Grecian oracles" or the "Rochester rap- 
 pings," where the ghosts "were learned in the languages of the 
 conjurors." 
 
 Such admissions, moreover, meant nothing in the face of the 
 fact that the crime could not have been committed in the manner 
 supposedly confessed. The match as described by Phelps would 
 not burn. It could not have burst into flame several hours after it 
 had been lighted in Gay's house and then carried through the 
 streets in a covered box. Even if it had, Gay could not have de- 
 posited it unseen in the cupola at 7 or 8 p.m., as he reportedly 
 said he did, with the guards and employees busy all about the 
 depot. Why had no one seen Gay? Why had the prosecution not 
 
 [94]
 
 brought Gay's wife to testify that he had left his home with the 
 match that evening? Why had they spirited her away? Nor had 
 it been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the fire had been 
 incendiary and not accidental. Even if it had first been seen in the 
 cupola, as the prosecution contended, that still did not prove it 
 had not been accidental. 
 
 More important, Seward continued, it had not been incontro- 
 vertibly established that any of the defendants actually knew Gay. 
 Fitch had not been in Detroit in the summer of 1849. Wescott's 
 testimony that he had followed Fitch to Gay's house early in 1851 
 had been contradicted by witnesses who had been in Fitch's com- 
 pany all the time he was in the city. The meeting Wescott referred 
 to had, in any case, taken place after the fire. As for Dr. Hahn's 
 testimony about Fitch's remarks on the train after the arrests. Fitch 
 certainly was truthful in denying all knowledge of Gay before the 
 arrests. After the arrests and after he had read the warrant, "old 
 Gay's" name must have become as "familiar as household words." 
 No evidence had been brought to show that Fitch had ever nego- 
 tiated with Gay to undertake the crime. When and where had this 
 been done? Fitch was dogged by spies and certainly any meeting be- 
 t\veen him and Gay would not have remained unknown. Ab- 
 solutely no proof had been offered that any of the defendants had 
 made the match and then delivered it to Gay, or that any payment 
 had ever been made for the crime. Had all this been done by mes- 
 senger or correspondence? Why had not Phelps testified to any 
 of these crucial transactions? Why had not the defendants revealed 
 these important matters to Phelps and the other spies as they had 
 the other details of their crime? 
 
 The charge that the defendants had hired Gay to burn the depot 
 rested entirely on admissions, that is, on what Phelps and Lake said 
 Gay and Fitch and others had told them. And Phelps and Lake 
 and Gay were utterly unworthy of credit. Gay, Seward specified, was 
 
 a man . . . who had been convicted of more than twenty crimes, ranging 
 from petit larceny to murder . . ., a man who lived in daily association 
 with culprits, and who at the time kept a house of ill-fame, and thus 
 subsisted by the debasement of one sex, while he harbored the most 
 depraved of the other. 
 
 His purported admissions as to the complicity of the defendants in 
 the crime, moreover, were not admissible as evidence. Gay was 
 
 [95 ]
 
 dead and no longer on trial. As a principal, his admissions could 
 not be evidence against his accessories until he himself had first 
 been convicted. Hence, Frink argued, the whole trial had been 
 invalidated on the technical ground that Gay had not been found 
 guilty and the indictment of accessories alone must charge the 
 ofEense in substantive language and not in a dependent manner. 
 Seward did not go along with his colleague in charging a mistrial. 
 He merely contended that the testimony of Gay's declarations had 
 been allowed to come in unadvisedly, on a promise by the prose- 
 cution that had not been kept, and should therefore now be 
 stricken from the record. 
 
 As for Phelps and Lake, both were convicted criminals. Phelps 
 had, in addition, been impeached by over a hundred witnesses. 
 The witnesses brought by the prosecution to uphold his reputation 
 had not destroyed that impeachment. Some of them knew nothing 
 of Phelps' character after 1842, and all of them without exception, 
 when testifying favorably as to his reputation, had declared "not 
 that they [had] heard it discussed and then pronounced good, but 
 simply that they [had] not heard it discussed at all . . ." And by the 
 very neighbors who had come into court and said that his character 
 and reputation were bad! 
 
 "I ask you now to consider," Seward reminded the jury, 
 
 the circumstances under which [Phelps] appears. He testifies under the 
 impulse of an overpowering necessity. A stipend of $40 a month as an 
 informer is his only resource for support. . . His fortune involves two 
 alternatives; one that he carry the prosecution through and cause these 
 defendants to be sent to the State Prison and thus establish a claim to 
 be restored to that social confidence which he so early lost; the other that 
 he shall be convicted of wilful and malicious conspiracy against these 
 defendants with perjury and subornation of perjury, and return, after a 
 guilty respite of two years and six months to the State Prison whence he 
 came. 
 
 Phelps was motivated, besides, by an "impulse of a studiously con- 
 cealed but malevolent and persevering revenge against Abel F. 
 Fitch, who was originally the chief mark of this fearful prosecu- 
 tion . . ." Vehemently, Seward dismissed the state's star witness: 
 "Enough then for Henry Phelps. 'Room for the leper! Room!' " 
 
 Phelps' testimony, Seward also pointed out, had been contra- 
 dicted again and again in its circumstantial details by many wit- 
 nesses. He had testified to appointed meetings with Fitch in Mich- 
 
 [96 ]
 
 igan Centre and in Detroit, in which the latter had allegedly talked 
 of his great success in burning the depot, and asked Phelps to burn 
 the Niles depot and engage in counterfeiting. Witnesses, however, 
 had merely heard Phelps and Fitch converse about such common- 
 place subjects, as Fitch's twin oxen or where fish and provisions 
 could be bought in Detroit. The imputation was clear that Phelps 
 had simulated a close acquaintance with Fitch under various 
 pretexts, reporting the while a farrago of incriminating admissions, 
 of which the witnesses had heard nothing. There was, too, a sus- 
 picious identity in the language of the admissions reported by 
 Phelps and Lake, an identity "as harmonious as in the ritual of a 
 Free Mason's Lodge or in the liturgy of the Episcopal Church," and 
 which smacked of their sinister purpose and falsity. 
 
 The whole case, the defense reiterated in conclusion, was a false 
 and diabolical conspiracy by Phelps and his accomplices. The 
 motives of the conspirators were hatred of Fitch and the hope of 
 sharing the large reward offered by the railroad company. To this 
 end, the three testified falsely that Fitch and the others from Leoni 
 had admitted hiring Gay to burn the depot. Phelps and Lake had 
 made the matches themselves and pretended to have received them 
 from Fitch. They had brought a match themselves to Michigan 
 Centre the day they left to burn the Niles depot. They had given 
 a match to Gay so that Clark and Van Arman could see it in his 
 possession. Phelps had induced Gay to admit that he had burned 
 the depot, and the latter was precisely the kind to confess to a crime 
 on the promise of immunity and a share of the reward. Or Gay had 
 perhaps been duped by Phelps and had been arrested to keep him 
 from testifying. The conversations between Gay and Phelps, re- 
 ported on the witness stand by the latter, showed that some such 
 conspiracy had been in the minds of the two. Phelps had testified 
 that he had met Gay in Detroit in the Palo Alto saloon shortly after 
 the depot fire. The two had discussed a scheme to free a mutual 
 friend who was in jail for counterfeiting. They were to burn the 
 railroad depot, get witnesses to swear the crime on some third per- 
 son they disliked, and then have their friend in jail inform against 
 the hapless victim. Their friend would as a result be freed and 
 all three would share the reward received from the railroad com- 
 pany. Phelps had then suggested that the plot to free their friend 
 be based on the fire that had already taken place rather than on 
 
 [97 ]
 
 some future one. These conversations, Phelps had revealed in 
 court, had gone on over a period of weeks, and it was in the course 
 of them that Gay had admitted that he burnt the old depot. 
 "What," Seward asked after repeating Phelps' story, "what are all 
 the pretended admissions of Gay and Fitch now produced here but 
 the fabrications thus early foreshadowed?" 
 
 Seward then referred to Prosecuting Attorney Stuart's plea that 
 Erastus Smith be acquitted, as further proof of the existence of a 
 conspiracy. Smith was one of the defendants, a Detroit friend of 
 Gay's, who, according to Phelps, had admitted knowing of the plan 
 to burn the depot and receiving part of the $150 Fitch had paid 
 for the crime. Now, Stuart in his closing argument had asked for 
 the acquittal of Smith on the grounds that he had been seduced by 
 Phelps into falsely admitting his complicity in a crime of which 
 he had no knowledge. "When I heard [Stuart] submit this extra- 
 ordinary proposition," Seward triumphantly declared, 
 
 I thanked God and took courage. It revealed the secret of this entire 
 prosecution. It showed that Smith had been fraudulently made a defend- 
 ant that he might utter without oath, false allegations to convict the 
 defendants at Michigan Centre, under an assurance that he should be 
 acquitted himself. And now, gentlemen, since Smith's allegations are 
 admitted to be false, are Gay's averments, made under the same circum- 
 stances, true? ... If Smith was seduced so easily by Phelps, Gay had 
 even less virtue to resist his seduction. I declare, gentlemen, my profound 
 conviction that the whole prosecution was conceived in fraud; that George 
 W. Gay never burned the depot; that he and Smith falsely accused them- 
 selves of that crime under a promise from Phelps to share in the reward 
 of a conviction of the defendants . . . ; and that Gay, if he had lived to 
 go through a trial and conviction, would have been recommended for a 
 pardon, and would have shared that reward. 
 
 Seward, in brief, charged that Smith was a partner to the conspir- 
 acy, an accomplice of Phelps in the plot to convict the defendants, 
 and that Stuart's plea for Smith's acquittal proved that charge. 
 Van Dyke, too, must have thought that Stuart's plea was a mistake 
 for, in closing for the prosecution, he ignored it and asked for 
 Smith's conviction along with the rest. 
 
 After the counsel had concluded their arguments. Judge Wing 
 delivered his charge to the jury. He reviewed the history of the 
 case, but forebore to summarize the evidence, referring the jury 
 to the printed transcript that was made available to them. He 
 
 [98 ]
 
 lectured them with all the usual admonitions to impartiality and 
 spelled out the usual legal precepts that were to guide them. On 
 the technical questions raised by counsel in the course of the trial, 
 he ruled against the defense. He admitted that, in law, Gay's de- 
 clarations were evidence neither of his guilt or that of his ac- 
 complices. The defense had erred, however, in waiting too long to 
 object to them and it was now too late to strike them out. Pre- 
 sumably, the defense should have objected when the declarations 
 had been first introduced in evidence after Gay's death. The testi- 
 mony of \Volliver and other railroad spies who were clearly ac- 
 complices in some of the crimes committed in Jackson County was 
 valid, because they had dissociated themselves from the defendants 
 some time before the arrests. As to the impeachment of Phelps, 
 Judge Wing told the jury that any evidence of his reputation for 
 truth based on what was said of his testimony at the trial was not 
 admissible. Further, if some witnesses said they had not heard 
 Phelps' reputation discussed at all, nothing could more clearly 
 uphold and establish it. Finally, the judge warned the jury to 
 ignore the counsel's appeals to their emotions. If the Michigan 
 Central Railroad were indeed a monopoly buying up judges and 
 juries, that fact ought to have nothing to do with the decision in 
 this case. "Large interests are dependent on your verdict," Wing 
 reminded the jury, only to ask them to dimiss that consideration 
 from their minds. He emphasized that no thought of the conse- 
 quences must be allowed to influence their verdict, which must be 
 one they could reasonably arrive at on the basis of the evidence 
 and not one of whose truth they would have to swear. 
 
 On September 25, at 11:30 a.m., the case went to the jury. The 
 jurors, according to one report, started their deliberations with 
 prayer, at the suggestion of one of their number who found himself 
 bewildered by the impenetrable jungle of conflicting evidence 
 and dismayed by the importance of the case. That evening, more 
 than nine hours later, the jury returned with a verdict. It found 
 twelve of the defendants guilty as charged and exonerated the re- 
 maining twenty, recommending two of the guilty ones, Erastus 
 Smith and Dr. Ebenezer Farnham, to the mercy of the court. The 
 next morning, the prisoners, surrounded by their families, were 
 brought into court to be sentenced. Their lawyers, in a last-ditch 
 maneuver, moved for a new trial and for suspension of sentence 
 
 [99]
 
 for a short time, but both motions were overruled. Judge Wing 
 then asked the guilty defendants why sentence should not be passed 
 on them. Some arose and protested their innocence. The judge in 
 turn lectured them severely on their crime and pronounced sen- 
 tence. Ammi Filley and Orlando Williams received ten years at 
 hard labor in the state's prison at Jackson. William Corwin, Eben 
 and Richard Price, Andrew J. Freeland, Dr. Ebenezer Farnham, 
 and Aaron Mount were sentenced to eight years each, and the three 
 Champlin brothers, Lyman, Erastus, and Willard, and Erastus 
 Smith, to five years each. All twelve were then taken to Jackson 
 prison by a special train provided by the Michigan Central Rail- 
 road.8* 
 
 The verdict was received by the Detroit press with gratitude 
 that the city's reputation as a "Christian community" had been 
 upheld against the attacks of base criminals. In Jackson, Editor 
 De Land, in the Citizen, expressed his surprise and, he believed, 
 that of the entire community. He felt that truth and justice had 
 been "cheated of their prey," that the wrong men had been con- 
 victed. In explanation, he could only conclude that not even 
 "great legal talent could prevail against adverse public opinion 
 backed by the almost . . . almighty power of a monied corporation." 
 And he later cited the Ypsilanti Sentinel, the Jonesville T.elegraph, 
 and the Battle Creek Journal as sharing his opinion.^^ 
 
 At this distance in time, it matters little whether the defendants 
 were guilty or not. It is more important to view the trial as an 
 example of the way in which the railroad company moved to de- 
 fend itself against its enemies. The company officials urgently 
 needed and were determined at all costs to secure a conviction 
 in order to halt the attacks on the trains in Leoni and Grass Lake 
 townships. That conviction, they were certain, could not have been 
 gotten in Jackson County in the face of a hostile public opinion. 
 After the depot burned and Phelps presented them with evidence 
 that the Leonians were responsible for the fire. Brooks, Joy, and 
 Clark eagerly seized the opportunity to try the road's enemies in 
 another, more friendly jurisdiction. With a largely favorable press 
 and public opinion, they pushed their advantage to the limit. The 
 prosecution lawyers successfully appealed to the patriotism and 
 sense of social order of the jury of Detroit businessmen and poli- 
 ticians and convinced them that the defendants, who were clearly 
 
 [ 100 ]
 
 guilty o£ criminal offenses in Jackson County, could reasonably be 
 presumed to have burnt the depot in Detroit. The whole trial thus 
 seems to have been part of a larger conflict of force between the 
 Michigan Central and the farmers of Jackson County rather than 
 a legal action of the people of the state of Michigan against some 
 criminals who had burnt down a building. And the triumph of 
 the company was signalized when Joy, after having paid Van Dyke 
 and Van Arman $2,000 each for their services, and lesser sums to the 
 other lawyers, rewarded Prosecuting Attorney Stuart with the sum 
 of $500 for his services to the state.^^ 
 
 The feelinsf will not down, nevertheless, that the defendants 
 had not burnt the depot. To a layman unversed in the law, it 
 seems that the voluminous and conflicting evidence does not prove 
 beyond a reasonable doubt that Fitch and company were guilty 
 of the crime with which they were charged. And subsequent events, 
 too, raise some doubts about the justice of the jury's decision. 
 
 Four months after the trial, in January, 1852, the Michigan 
 Central shops in Detroit were destroyed by fire, and two years after 
 that, the passenger offices also burnt down. These later fires were 
 undoubtedly accidents, contingent hazards of the early days of 
 railroad operations. Was it not likely that the earlier fire in the 
 freight depot was of similar origin and that no crime had been 
 committed at all? ^'^ 
 
 Almost two years after the trial, Erastus Smith, one of the con- 
 victed defendants, was pardoned and after his release, made out 
 an affidavit, which was published in Burnett's Grass Lake news- 
 paper, in which he revealed in great detail his relations with Phelps 
 before the aiTests. Smith affirmed that he had been duped by Phelps 
 and had had no connection with the burning of the depot. He 
 declared that Phelps had approached him many times to swear 
 falsely and involve Fitch and the others in the crime. Phelps had 
 also suggested that the two of them go to Michigan Centre and talk 
 to the boys at Filley's tavern "about something, no matter what," 
 while he, Phelps, would take notes. Thus, the arch-plotter craftily 
 argued, "one of us could talk and the others could swear that they 
 saw it, and in this way, we can back one another up." When Smith 
 refused to go along, insisting that he was "not smart enough to go 
 into such an operation as that," Phelps retorted, "God damn it, 
 you are smart enough to tell a story and stick to it," adding that 
 
 [ 101 ]
 
 that was all Smith had to do. He, Phelps, would make the state- 
 ments and write them down and Smith would swear to them. 
 Smith still refused, but was present at a meeting with Gay when 
 when the latter agreed to go into the scheme with Phelps. Later, 
 he received other propositions from Phelps, such as to pass counter- 
 feit money, but declined these too. The next thing he knew he was 
 arrested with Gay. The clear implication of Smith's whole story 
 was that Phelps had turned on him when he had refused to join the 
 conspiracy and had had him arrested so that he could not reveal 
 the sordid details of the plot on the witness stand. It is, of course, 
 possible that Smith concocted this version of his relations with 
 Phelps to put his own role in the best possible light, and present 
 himself as a victim rather than an accomplice of Phelps, as Seward 
 had suggested in his closing address. Whatever Smith's role, it is 
 not unreasonable to suspect that Phelps had been guilty of perjury 
 and subornation of prejury as part of his plot to swear the Leoni 
 people to jail. ^8 
 
 In a broader sense, all the actions of the railroad company in this 
 savage conflict may perhaps be understood more clearly in the 
 light of contemporary business policy. Superintendent Brooks con- 
 ceived the role of the company as one of pioneer development 
 in a new land involving risks for which the investors were to be 
 duly paid. He and his advisors accepted no broad social responsi- 
 bility other than the efficient and profitable transportation of peo- 
 ple and goods. The public as consumer or shipper or as voter en- 
 tered little into any considerations of policy. The result was a 
 shortsighted ruthlessness that accorded ill with the populist Amer- 
 ican ethos and inevitably brought heated protest, which Super- 
 intendent Brooks felt justified in ignoring. Not until the company 
 felt that its strategic position in the state legislature as against 
 rival pressure groups was threatened, did it act to turn aside and 
 blunt the edge of protest. It thus received its first limited lesson in 
 the conduct of public relations, a subject in which American in- 
 dustry was to undergo a long and expensive process of education. 
 The Michigan Central in the 1850's faced only its worried political 
 henchmen who advised it to mollify public sentiment if continued 
 favorable legislative action was expected. Later American corpora- 
 tions were to face continuous bureaucratic regulation by self-acting 
 defenders of the public interest brought into being by the clamor 
 
 [ 102 ]
 
 of a mass electorate. American industry today has, in response, 
 evolved in its publicity a rationale of social utility designed to 
 minimize postive regulation. The Michigan Central, attacked by 
 a combination of antimonopoly opinion and rival railroads, had 
 to backtrack on its intransigeance and resort to conciliation in 
 order to protect its favored economic and political position in the 
 state. 
 
 In Jackson County, outraged feelings and political strategy 
 combined to keep alive the animus against the Michigan Central. 
 The Whig American Citizen kept sniping at Brooks and the rail- 
 road and their political allies. Whatever the specific occasion, 
 whether attacking the company's political influence or bringing 
 charges of monopoly, it lost no chance to drag in the fate of the 
 convicted twelve and the martyred Fitch. Once, it concluded a re- 
 port of a train crash in which many westbound immigrants had 
 been killed with the reminder that other victims of the company's 
 greed and overweening lust for power were also languishing in 
 state's prison. Local excitement and hatred flared up to a new in- 
 tensity late in 1852 around the person of Henry Phelps, who made 
 the mistake of showing his face in Jackson County. While visiting 
 friends in Grass Lake, he was arrested on a warrant sworn out by 
 the indefatigable Burnett and charged with conspiracy to convict 
 the men of Leoni. In the face of a loud clamor to jail the traitor 
 and informer, the railroad station agent at Jackson hired a lawyer 
 to defend him, reporting to Detroit that "all Leoni and Michigan 
 Centre is after [Phelps]," and asking if the company wished to 
 undertake the defense. The company evidently did, for it supplied 
 the heavy bail of $5,000 fixed by the local justice, "a hot anti Rail 
 Road man," according to the agent. The Jackson County grand 
 jury indicted Phelps for conspiracy and the trial was set for March, 
 1853. When the case came up, the company exerted itself to get 
 its employee off. Phelps' lawyer asked for a change of venue to an- 
 other county. The judge, after some hesitation based on his fear 
 of the public reaction, was prevailed upon to grant the motion 
 and the case was transformed to Washtenaw County. Then, the 
 prosecuting attorney for Jackson County, Austin Blair, was per- 
 suaded "to slide the whole thing by quietly" by Moses A. Mc- 
 Naughton, a Free Soil state senator from Jackson, acting on behalf 
 of the railroad. McNaughton, in reporting on the negotiations to 
 
 [ 103 ]
 
 Joy in Detroit, explained that Blair was honest and could not be 
 bribed, but since "his ambition far exceeded his avarice . . .," he 
 could be appealed to on that basis. Blair obligingly dropped the 
 case against Phelps on the ground that the indictment was tech- 
 nically deficient, and the latter was for the moment safe from the 
 toils of his enemies. A year later. Van Dyke advised Joy that Phelps 
 had better disappear from the Michigan scene altogether, at least 
 long enough for the statute of limitations to operate, because 
 otherwise, the "Jackson County patriots" would continue to hound 
 him and the company would be put to great expense to protect 
 him.89 
 
 "Has anyone sounded Burnett as to whether he can be induced 
 to haul off?" McNaughton had asked Joy in exasperation while 
 arranging for Phelps' rescue. For it was the irrepressible lawyer 
 from Grass Lake who had emerged as Fitch's successor as the gadfly 
 of the opposition to the railroad in Jackson County. After his 
 acquittal in the trial, Burnett had seemingly taken a vow of 
 eternal hostility to the Michigan Central and its officials for what 
 he felt was their baseless persecution of innocent men and devoted 
 himself to proving that justice had miscarried. It was he who had 
 hounded Phelps with arrest. And in January, 1853, he changed his 
 vocation and embarked on a career as publisher and editor of a 
 fortnightly newspaper, Public Sentiment, dedicated to the cause 
 of his comrades who were still in jail. "Five months imprisonment," 
 he declared, "has given us a keen and fiery disposition," and every 
 issue of the paper, which appeared for more than a year, was filled 
 with slashing attacks on the railroad company and everybody con- 
 nected with the trial. As the self-proclaimed defender of justice, 
 Burnett charged that the great railroad conspiracy was in fact a 
 conspiracy against the men of Leoni for a crime which was never 
 committed; that the company's agents and spies had been guilty 
 of kidnapping, arson, and perjury as well as conspiracy; that Sup- 
 erintendent Brooks knew that Phelps' testimony about the burning 
 of the depot was false and paid for in "railroad gold"; and that 
 Fitch had been murdered under color of law at the instigation 
 and by the agency of the Michigan Central. To support his charges, 
 Burnett reviewed and analyzed the evidence brought out at the 
 trial with his sharp lawyer's mind and published new damaging 
 evidence and displayed altogether, as one contemporary later re- 
 
 [ 104 ]
 
 membered, "an acumen, audacity, and mendacity that astonished 
 the bench and bar of the whole state." Fearless and even reckless 
 in his exposures of the alleged machinations of Brooks and Stuart, 
 he was threatened wath a libel suit but managed to stay clear of 
 the law. In addition, Burnett struck out at the railroad as a mo- 
 nopoly whose persecution of its opponents was only part of a 
 general policy of ruthless exploitation of the people of Michigan. 
 Any action against the company, any expression of hostility any- 
 where in the state, found a place in Public Sentiment alongside of 
 his own highly vituperative excoriations. To some, like the editor 
 of the American Citizen, it seemed that Burnett had gone too far. 
 De Land, for all his sympathy for the cause, editorially rebuked 
 his colleague from Grass Lake for reflecting unjustly on the reputa- 
 tion of individuals, even hinting that he was close to blackmail, 
 and in August, 1854, obligingly reported that Public Sentiment 
 had ceased publication.^^ 
 
 One of Burnett's chief aims in his foray into journalism had 
 been to win a pardon for the convicted "conspirators" who were 
 serving their terms in Jackson prison. And despite or even because 
 of his dogmatic one-tracked sensationalism, he did perhaps as 
 much as anyone to bring about this end. There had been some 
 sentiment for a pardon right after the trial, but nothing came of it. 
 Superintendent Brooks was reported as saying that "it had cost 
 $50,000 to convict these men and that he would not consent that 
 the governor should pardon a single man." As the issue was thrown 
 into the political pond and spread wide circles of antirailroad 
 sentiment, the company's officials became more seriously concerned 
 with the matter. In the gubernatorial election campaign of 1851, 
 the Whigs and the Democrats charged each other's candidates with 
 promising, if elected, to pardon the "conspirators," and with 
 posing as railroad men in Detroit and antirailroad men in Jackson 
 County. The incumbent Democrat won the election, but Town- 
 send E. Gidley, the Whig candidate who lived in Jackson County, 
 won his home county, solely because the voters in Leoni and Grass 
 Lake townships, who had the year before given the Democrats 
 small majorities, now turned on the railroad-dominated admini- 
 stration and gave large majorities to the Whigs.^i 
 
 The next year, in the First Congressional District, which in- 
 cluded Wayne, Livingston, Washtenaw, and Jackson counties, 
 
 [ 105 ]
 
 David Stuart, Democrat, opposed William A. Howard, Whig. As 
 far as Jackson County was concerned, the contest was one between 
 the prosecuting attorney who had sent the innocent "conspirators" 
 to jail and the man who had courageously defended them. Ac- 
 cording to the American Citizen, it had been necessary to offer 
 large sums of money "to conciliate the opposition of certain prom- 
 inent democrats in this county to Stuart." Stuart realized his handi- 
 cap and worked hard to overcome it. He signed, in company with 
 prominent local citizens, a petition to the governor for the pardon 
 of the prisoners. He personally tried to mollify the antirailroad 
 men. He visited Benjamin F. Gleason, one of the defendants who 
 had been acquitted, and who was a Democrat, and asked him to 
 vote for him and tell others to do so. Stuart argued that it was he 
 (Stuart) that had secured the acquittal of some of the "conspir- 
 ators" and now sought a pardon for the rest. He promised Gleason 
 a job with the state. The visit backfired when Gleason wrote a letter 
 to the American Citizen revealing Stuart's machinations and bit- 
 terly attacking him. He declared: 
 
 Now he is fooled, for I cant lie for him, after being rode and made a 
 cripple of by his lies, I cant vote for him. I defy him and the Michigan 
 Central Railroad Company to fetch an illegal act of mine, done to him 
 or that company. 
 
 Gleason went on to proclaim the innocence of all the defendants 
 and the falsity of the charges against them. "And you (Stuart) 
 know it . . . ," he concluded, "and if you are an honest man, you 
 will come out and tell the truth. That we ask at your hands before 
 we can vote for you." Stuart's supporters were more successful in 
 getting a letter from Orlando Williams, still serving his ten-year 
 sentence, urging his friends to work for the Democrat, because if 
 elected he would get a pardon for the prisoners. Stuart won the 
 election because Wayne and Livingston counties gave him large 
 majorities, but Jackson County went to Howard, even though it 
 gave Franklin Pierce, the Democratic presidential candidate, a 
 majority over Winfield Scott. Of course, many Jackson County 
 voters, who shared some of Abel F. Fitch's antislavery sentiments, 
 also voted for Howard because he freely expressed such views. In 
 the next congressional election, in 1854, Stuart was soundly beaten 
 by Howard, who this time ran as a candidate of the newly organized 
 Republican Party.^^ 
 
 [ 106]
 
 The campaign for a pardon for at least three of the prisoners 
 against whom there had been little or no incriminating evidence 
 came to a climax when the legislature met in January, 1853. 
 Governor Robert McLelland had been favorably considering the 
 petition presented the previous fall and was awaiting the session 
 to issue a pardon. Additional petitions from almost one thousand 
 legal voters of Oakland and Jackson counties were presented to 
 the House and Senate requesting a pardon for the "Central Rail- 
 road prisoners." Joy himself, faced with mounting attacks in the 
 legislature on the company's monopolistic privileges, finally saw 
 the wisdom of pardoning some of the "conspirators." He and 
 Superintendent Brooks had talked to three of them in jail and 
 gotten assurances from them that, if pardoned, they would not re- 
 new their attacks on the railroad. Joy realized, too, how tenuously 
 implicated in the crime these men had been and, above all, that a 
 pardon "would have a tendency to obliterate those feelings which 
 unhappily seem to prevail to a considerable extent in that portion 
 of the state against the company." At this point, progress bogged 
 down in the political jockeying connected with the fight in the 
 legislature between the Michigan Central and Michigan Southern 
 forces. A special committee of the House had been appointed to 
 consider the numerous petitions and report on them. The com- 
 mittee, in a move to embarrass the governor and the Michigan 
 Central, issued a report attacking the entire prosecution of the 
 conspiracy case and presented a resolution recommending a pardon 
 for all the "conspirators." A motion to adopt the report and the 
 resolution and print five hundred copies was passed 39 to 23. On 
 reconsideration, however, the house reversed itself and laid the 
 matter on the table by a vote of 46 to 20. There the matter rested, 
 until March 4, when Governor McLelland, just before resigning 
 to take up his post as Secretary of the Interior in Pierce's cabinet, 
 issued a pardon for Farnham, Erastus Champlin, and Smith. In 
 support of his actions the governor cited the following: the favor- 
 able application of the Michigan Central Railroad and its attorney, 
 James F. Joy; the recommendation of David Stuart and prominent 
 citizens of Jackson County; the petitions of more than 2,500 cit- 
 izens; and finally, the good behavior of the prisoners.^^ 
 
 After the prison gates had swung open for the first three "con- 
 spirators," the pardon of the rest soon followed. Governor Andrew 
 
 [ 107 ]
 
 Parsons, McLelland's successor, pardoned one prisoner in October, 
 1853, and five more in December, 1854. The reasons he gave were 
 essentially the same as McLelland's: the petition of thousands of 
 people, the request of prominent citizens of Jackson County as well 
 as David Stuart and the attorney of the Michigan Central, plus 
 the recommendation of the jury that had convicted them. The 
 governor also cited "the deep interest which reliable men of all 
 parties and interests have taken in these cases, and the general pre- 
 vailing opinion that the ends of justice have been fully met." Ammi 
 Filley and Orlando Williams, who had received the longest sen- 
 tences, had to wait for their freedom until the victorious Repub- 
 lican governor, Kinsley S. Bingham, came into office.^^ 
 
 The policy of conciliation, thus begun in 1853, also included 
 the payment of indemnities to some of the defendants who had 
 been acquitted at the trial. Before authorizing this step, Joy had 
 a thorough investigation made to be sure that none of them had 
 been guilty of any offenses against the railroad property or had any 
 guilty knowledge of such. And when Wilbur F. Storey, editor 
 of the Democratic Jackson Patriot.who had made the investigation, 
 further assured him that "the effect on the public mind would be 
 salutary," Joy made some financial restitution to them "for the 
 lost time and other sacrifices arising from their arrest and de- 
 tention." He was careful to insist, however, that this action was 
 entirely gratuitous and that, as of right, these men were not en- 
 titled to any compensation.^^ 
 
 It was at this time, too, that Joy entered into the arrangement 
 with Senator Moses A. McNaughton of Jackson to act as his secret 
 representative and adviser in matters involving the railroad in 
 Jackson County. McNaughton, it is important to note, was not an 
 administration Democrat but a Free Soiler who joined the fusion 
 Republican Party the following year, and his employment reflected 
 the company's growing concern with the political revolution then 
 going on in Michigan. McNaughton, it will be recalled, arranged 
 for the dropping of the case against Phelps. He had also urged on 
 Joy the wisdom of procuring a pardon for the "conspirators" solely 
 as a matter of policy, to mollify public feeling. After the first par- 
 dons had been issued, the senator also furthered the railroad's new 
 policy of conciliating the opposition by arranging with De Land, 
 the antirailroad Whig editor of the Jackson American Citizen, to 
 
 [ 108 ]
 
 publish a favorable article or two in his newspaper in return for 
 a payment of fifty dollars. "With the ready" McNaughton assured 
 his employer, "I can do anything I please." ^'^ 
 
 The pardon of the conspirators and the payment of indemnities, 
 if meant to assuage outraged sentiments of neighborly loyalty and 
 blunt the charges of injustice, were something less than effective. 
 The old hurt continued to rankle, and a lively hatred of the Mich- 
 igan Central still flourished in Leoni in 1854.^"^ The policy of 
 conciliation also failed because the feeling against the railroad 
 had become something more than local resentment over the per- 
 secution of the innocents. It had burgeoned once more into a 
 widespread opposition to the company as a monopoly which still 
 refused to pay fairly for the cattle its trains killed, which fixed 
 higher rates for short hauls than for long, and which prevented 
 new and necessary railroads from being built in the state. Tangled 
 in this skein of the antimonopoly movement was the feud between 
 the Michigan Central and its rival, the Michigan Southern Rail- 
 road, itself a giant corporation using every political and economic 
 weapon to attack and gain an advantage over its competitor. Out of 
 this juncture of interests and ideals emerged the movement for 
 the enactment of a general railroad incorporation law to break 
 the power of the Michigan Central Railroad. 
 
 The demand that the railroad be made to pay for damages to 
 property was heard again when the legislature met in 1853. As a 
 public meeting in Birmingham stated in a resolution: "It is the 
 duty of the law-making powers of the state to provide a code of 
 laws, which will enable the most humble citizen to obtain his just 
 right of property against incorporated wealth." Shoemaker's old 
 bill, defeated in 1851, providing for a minimum of protection of 
 property along the line of the railroads, was introduced again. 
 This time, it was the House that passed the bill, with only one dis- 
 senting vote, while the Senate turned it down. Not until 1855, 
 when the legislature was under the control of the Republicans, 
 were laws passed requiring the Michigan Central and the Michigan 
 Southern railroads to take safety measures at all crossings and fence 
 the right of way and making the companies liable for all cattle 
 killed until the fences were erected.^s 
 
 Criticism of the high freight rates that the Michigan Central 
 charged farmers along its line also continued to be heard and led 
 
 [ 109 ]
 
 to a renewed demand for the construction of a branch line between 
 Jackson and Adrian as the only way of bringing down the rates. 
 Businessmen and investors of Jackson who were financially inter- 
 ested in the Grand River Valley Railroad, which they hoped would 
 open up the interior of the state north of the Central Railroad 
 and make Jackson a commercial center, also advocated the con- 
 struction of the Jackson branch in order to connect their proposed 
 line from Grand Rapids to Jackson with Adrian, Toledo, and the 
 East. And all efforts were now concentrated on getting the Mich- 
 igan Southern to build the Jackson-Adrian link, as it was legally 
 required to do by its charter, but to no avail. The American Citizen 
 faithfully supported the campaign through 1852 and warned that 
 if the line were not built, "the Central Company [could] still filch 
 the life blood from the business veins of the community and op- 
 press and imprison and martyr our citizens at will." Not until 
 the spring of 1853 did the directors of the Southern Railroad agree 
 to undertake the construction of the Jackson branch, but, as will 
 presently appear, entirely for their own reasons. Amos Root, a 
 Jackson merchant and big investor in the Grand River Valley Rail- 
 road, who was now a member of the lower house of the legislature, 
 was the leading spirit behind the negotiations and finally got 
 Elisha Litchfield, one of the Southern directors, to give his word 
 that the line would be built in three years. Litchfield insisted, 
 however, that his company be given without cost the right of way 
 extending ten miles south of Jackson. The eager promoters agreed 
 and three of them immediately gave personal bonds in the amount 
 of $15,000 to secure the right of way. They started to buy up the 
 necessary land, opened books for the sale of additional Southern 
 Railroad capital stock to finance the project, and advertised for 
 bids on construction material. At this point, the venture ran head- 
 on into the opposition of the Michigan Central, whose agents 
 bought up strategic parcels of land along the proposed right of way. 
 This obstacle, too, was finally overcome and the land was secured, 
 though at a cost of about $5,000 greater than planned, and several 
 hundred men were put to work grading the right of way. To rally 
 public support to the venture and raise additional funds, plans 
 were made to hold a large mass meeting in Jackson on August 20, 
 1853.99 
 On the appointed day, two thousand citizens met at the court- 
 
 [110]
 
 house in Jackson, with delegates attending from Lenawee, Hills- 
 dale, Ingham, Eaton, Barry, Ionia, and Jackson counties. Speeches 
 and resolutions all strongly demanded the construction of the Jack- 
 son branch and the Grand River Valley Railroad. The courthouse 
 rang with attacks on the monopoly maintained by the Michigan 
 Central for its own benefit and that of the city of Detroit at the 
 expense of the farmers of central Michigan. Singled out for attack 
 were the measures taken by the Central Railroad to prevent the 
 construction of the Jackson branch, which, it was declared, were 
 cause enough for the forfeiture of the company's charter. It was 
 resolved, too, that if the two proposed lines could not be built 
 under the existing special charters, the people should seek passage 
 of a general railroad law by the terms of which any group of in- 
 vestors could build any lines they wished and could finance. The 
 meeting closed with the appointment of a committee on permanent 
 organization to carry on the good fight, another to raise additional 
 funds, and a third to see the governor about the forfeiture of the 
 Michigan Central's charter.^oo 
 
 The company did not wait long to take countermeasures. Within 
 the week, Superintendent Brooks and Joy filed a bill of chancery in 
 the Wayne County Circuit Court in Detroit, complaining that 
 the construction of the Jackson branch without their consent 
 violated the terms of the company's charter and would tap its 
 business and destroy its profits, and asking for an injunction to 
 halt the work on the proposed line. In support of the plea, the bill 
 cited section 5 of the company's charter, which provided that no 
 railroad could be built from the eastern or southern boundary of 
 the state, any part of which came within five miles of the line of 
 the Michigan Central. The defense, representing the Michigan 
 Southern and the backers of the Jackson branch, argued a pre- 
 liminary motion that the suit should not have been brought in 
 Wayne County but in Jackson County, where the alleged violation 
 had taken place. After this motion was denied, the defense went on 
 to argue that the Michigan Southern was only doing what it was re- 
 quired by its charter to do, that is, complete the line from Adrian 
 to Jackson. Judge Samuel Douglass maintained, however, that the 
 actions of the defendants were clearly in conflict with the charter 
 of the Michigan Central and in his decision ruled in favor of the 
 complainants and granted the injunction. The work on the Jack- 
 
 [ 111 ]
 
 [ 112 ]
 
 [ 1^3]
 
 son branch was thus effectively stopped and its promoters could 
 now look forward only to a general railroad law for relief.^"^ 
 
 The directors of the Michigan Southern had come perforce to 
 the same conclusion. The two rival railroads had entered Chicago 
 in the spring of 1852 and were engaged in a running fight to 
 capture the through east-west traffic. Joy and Brooks labored 
 mightily to gain an overland connection through Canada with 
 Buffalo and the East to match the Southern's lake shore line. Late 
 in 1852, the Southern carried the fight to the enemy by seeking an 
 amendment to its charter allowing it to extend its line from Mon- 
 roe to Detroit. Such a line would tap the Central's business and 
 feed it, through the already-built Monroe-Toledo spur, into the 
 Southern's through route from Chicago to Buffalo. When the 
 Southern presented its petition to the legislature in 1853, J<^y ^'^' 
 mediately wheeled his minions into line against it. The Detroit 
 Free Press attacked the proposal as a blow to the commercial inter- 
 ests of Detroit and a boon only to the through shippers of other 
 states. The lawmakers took no action and gave Joy time to counter- 
 attack with a petition for an amendment to the Michigan Central's 
 charter to build its own line from Detroit to Toledo via Monroe. 
 Faced with a deadlock in its efforts to get into Detroit from Toledo 
 by an amendment to its charter, the Southern Railroad shifted its 
 tactics and once again swung behind the movement for the passage 
 of a general railroad incorporation law.^02 
 
 Sentiment for such a law was steadily growing. Its popularity 
 was reflected in Governor McLelland's annual message to the 
 legislature in 1853. The Democratic governor recommended the 
 passage of the law because "the growing necessities and increasing 
 business of the state require the construction of new lines of rail- 
 roads." The problem of amending the special charters to extend 
 and change the lines of the existing roads, he added, could also 
 be met by a general law. And even the correspondent of the Free 
 Press reported from Lansing that most of the members of the legis- 
 lature were in favor of the law in order "to open the way for the 
 full competition of capital" and thus bring cheaper rates and 
 other benefits.1^3 
 
 When Joy heard from his agents in Lansing that the Southern 
 Railroad was pushing the general railroad law, he marshaled all 
 his forces once again to oppose it. In January, 1853, the Southern's 
 
 [ 114]
 
 agents organized a large public meeting in Detroit to support the 
 law, as the only way to give Detroit a connection with Toledo. Joy 
 himself and his colleagues appeared in person to counteract the 
 move, but the Southern supporters gained the day and a favorable 
 resolution was passed. The second day, however, Joy and Van Dyke 
 were successful in getting the meeting to reverse itself and approve 
 a resolution opposing a general railroad law and endorsing an 
 independent line to Toledo. Subsequently, the two rivals arranged 
 meetings in other parts of the state to support their respective 
 positions. The Free Press ran a series of long articles which argued 
 that the law was detrimental to the interests of Detroit and would 
 encourage unhealthy speculative ventures. The upshot of all these 
 moves and countermoves as well as legislative intrigues was a vic- 
 tory for the Michigan Central forces. The House passed the law but 
 it was lost in the shuffle of unfinished business in the Senate. It was 
 at this point that the Southern Railroad agreed to build the Jack- 
 son branch in a flanking attack on their rivals, only to see this 
 effort too stopped by the courts.^o^ 
 
 The victory of the Michigan Central, however, was only tem- 
 porary, for the tide was running strongly against it. The supporters 
 of the general railroad law greeted the setback in the legislature 
 with charges that it had fallen victim to the rapacity of the Central 
 Railroad and that Detroit and the railroad had defeated the wishes 
 of the rest of the people of the state. They resumed the agitation 
 at the end of 1853 with a series of public meetings in Detroit and 
 Adrian culminating in another great mass meeting in Jackson on 
 December 28. At these meetings. Governor Andrew Parsons was 
 requested to call a special session of the legislature to act on the 
 general railroad law in accordance with the wishes of the people. 
 The governor managed to resist the pressure, explaining that there 
 was no urgency in having the law passed, since the state of the 
 money market was such that no new railroads could be built at 
 this time anyway.i^^ 
 
 By 1854, even the Free Press was admitting editorially that most 
 of the people wanted a general railroad law. And the issue became 
 one of the ingredients in the bubbling political cauldron in the 
 state. The Free Soil Democrats, meeting in convention in Jackson 
 on February 22, 1854, wrote into their platform a plank on state 
 affairs which called for a prohibition law, free schools, and a "gen- 
 
 [ 115]
 
 eral law under which capital may be associated and combined for 
 the prosecution of works of public improvement and of various 
 industrial pursuits." The Detroit Daily Democrat, the Free Soil 
 organ, later spelled this out to mean that the party favored a 
 general railroad law. When the merger between the Free Soil Dem- 
 ocrats and the antislavery Whigs took place the following July 
 under the oaks in Jackson, the platform of the new Republican 
 Party also demanded the passage of such a law. This plank was 
 not, however, adopted without opposition. Jacob M. Howard, of 
 Detroit, chairman of the resolutions committee, presented the 
 majority report of the committee to the convention which said 
 nothing of a general railroad law. It was Austin Blair of Jackson, 
 also a member of the committee, who presented a minority report 
 embodying planks on state affairs calling for reform in the ad- 
 ministration of the state's finances and a general railroad law. This 
 last resolution stated: "that in our opinion the commercial wants 
 of the State require the enactment of a general railroad law, which, 
 while it shall secure the investment, and encourage the enterprise, 
 shall also guard and protect the rights of the public and of in- 
 dividuals . . ." Blair's resolutions were considered too radical by 
 the sixteen members of the committee and had not been accepted. 
 When Blair presented his minority report to the convention at 
 large, the chairman, David S. Walbridge of Kalamazoo, considered 
 by some a tool of the Michigan Central, refused to put the question 
 to a vote. Trying to bury the resolutions, he unceremoniously left 
 the chair and started for his hotel before the convention had ad- 
 journed. Angry delegates pursued him, brought him back and 
 forced him to put the question, which was then carried by a large 
 majority. Two months later, the Democratic state convention also 
 included a plank for a "judiciously framed" general railroad law 
 in its platform.1^6 
 
 Although both parties had officially come out in support of the 
 general railroad law, the issue was overshadowed in the ensuing 
 campaign by the heated arguments over slavery. In Jackson, how- 
 ever, the American Citizen repeatedly urged the election of Austin 
 Blair, who was running for the Senate on the Republican ticket, 
 as a true supporter of such a law. It declared that the election 
 would decide whether Michigan would have the law or not and 
 accused the Democrats of giving it only sham support.^or 
 
 [ 116]
 
 When the Republicans swept the state in November, the way 
 was cleared for the passage of the law in the new legislature. Even 
 Governor Parsons, in his last message before going out of office, 
 now recommended the law. The new governor, Kinsley S. Bingham, 
 claimed in his inaugural address that the law was demanded by 
 nearly unanimous public sentiment and was necessary for the rapid 
 development of the state's economic resources. Austin Blair, now 
 the majority leader in the Senate, introduced the bill and managed 
 its progress through the upper house. In a last ditch stand, James 
 A. Van Dyke, now counsel for the Michigan Central, presented a 
 memorial to the Senate, opposing the law and claiming that it 
 violated the terms of the company's charter by allowing competing 
 railroads to be built. He argued that the company had paid two 
 million dollars to the state, not for the mere physical property and 
 tangible assets, but for the valuable but intangible monopoly 
 privileges. If the state was weary of the contract into which it had 
 entered, he queried, why did it not repurchase the railroad at the 
 terms provided in the charter? The Senate ignored Van Dyke's 
 appeal and passed the bill unanimously. Before the month was out, 
 it had passed the lower house too and become law.^^^^ 
 
 The new law was certainly no panacea for Michigan's railroad 
 problems. It did, however, register adequately contemporary 
 thought on this important economic issue. Under its terms, any 
 group of investors who met the minimum conditions could secure 
 a charter and organize a corporation to build and operate a rail- 
 road. Railroad companies thus received the same privileges that 
 had been extended to plank road, telegraph, and mining com- 
 panies in 1851 and to all manufacturing enterprises in 1853. Al- 
 though the state thereby relinquished in large part the right to 
 direct economic enterprise, it did not abandon its right to regulate 
 such activities. It is significant that the opposition to the general 
 railroad law had not been based on the principle of laissez faire 
 but on the practical arguments that it favored the Michigan South- 
 ern Railroad and thus harmed the interests of Detroit. Only Van 
 Dyke had, when it was already too late, brought up the issue of 
 breach of contract. And the regulations written into the new law, 
 though relatively ineffective because little or no means of enforce- 
 ment were provided, were positive enough. All new railroads 
 organized under the act were required to install such safety meas- 
 
 [ 117 ]
 
 ures as bells on locomotives, a steam whistle to be sounded before 
 all grade crossings, "stop, look, and listen" signs at the crossings, 
 fences along the right of way, and special farm crossings with cattle 
 guards where necessary. Maximum passenger fares were fixed, 
 though at the high rate of three cents a mile. The legislature was 
 also given the right to reduce all rates but not to an extent that 
 would produce less than a 15 per cent annual return on capital 
 stock paid in.^°^ 
 
 The passage of the law in 1855 was followed in short order by 
 the construction of the new lines previously proposed. The Jackson 
 branch was completed to Manchester within the year and to Jack- 
 son in 1857 under the auspices of the Southern Railroad, by then 
 known as the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana. The 
 Grand River Valley Railroad was completed in 1870. Stockholders 
 of the Southern Railroad also organized the Detroit, Monroe and 
 Toledo Railroad which connected its two termini in 1857. But 
 the much hoped for competition between the two major rival lines 
 did not materialize. In 1857, the Michigan Central and the Mich- 
 igan Southern and Northern Indiana entered into an agreement 
 to pool all through passenger and freight traffic on a percentage 
 basis.^i^^ 
 
 After the passage of the general railroad law, public agitation 
 and antagonism faded temporarily in the sequel of war and boom, 
 to revive again in the crisis of the 1870's. And time and circum- 
 stance removed the chief actors in the great railroad conspiracy 
 from the scene. Some of the key witnesses at the trial met sorry ends. 
 Phelps, who had been given a job on the railroad, went to Texas 
 and was killed in a brawl, while Wescott died in Dearborn of 
 delirium tremens. Wolliver succumbed in an Illinois jail where he 
 was serving time for highway robbery. Lake saw the inside of Jack- 
 son prison again before he passed on.m 
 
 Quite different fates befell the railroad officials and lawyers. 
 Superintendent Brooks relinquished control of the operations of 
 the Michigan Central and moved upstairs to the presidency, and 
 he and Joy turned their organizing efforts further west. Darius 
 Clark was rewarded with an appointment as general ticket agent 
 of the Michigan Central Railroad in New York City. He returned 
 to the state once but was quite reticent about the part he had played 
 in convicting the "conspirators." Van Dyke became one of the 
 
 [ "8]
 
 lawyers for the Michigan Central in 1852, while Van Arman left 
 for Chicago in 1858 and was there appointed to the legal staflE of 
 the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, which Joy and 
 Brooks had such a large part in organizing and promoting.1^2 
 
 Most of the defendants returned to their homes to spin out their 
 lives in welcome obscurity. But Ammi Filley, embittered and 
 restless, shook the dust of Leoni from his heels and moved to 
 Illinois and then to Nebraska, where he died in the i88o's.ii3 
 
 In Jackson County, however, the great railroad conspiracy re- 
 mained a focus of resentment that was elaborated in the course of 
 time into a legend of injustice and heroism. A directory of the 
 city of Jackson, published in 1869, recorded that the people had 
 outlived the unhappy effects of the railroad troubles, "though the 
 convictions in the minds of the surviving parties as to who was 
 right and who wrong, remain now about the same as then." When 
 a Jackson newspaper in later years retold the story of the arrests 
 and trial, it concluded the account with a touch becoming an an- 
 cient epic: "And thus were the ends of justice defeated and money 
 and power and villainous craft triumphed over innocence and 
 helplessness." By that time, the Michigan Central had become "a 
 growing and thriving corporation" which had made mistakes 
 "which wiser members in sober moments have acknowledged and 
 deplored ..." The spies, Phelps, Gay, Wescott, and Lake, were the 
 villains in this morality play and on them the writer poured his 
 wrath. As for Fitch, he wrote: 
 
 Abel F. Fitch died a crushed and heart-broken but guileless man, and 
 an honest Christian gentleman. The fact that the prisoners were all 
 pardoned at the suggestion of the railroad company and their lawyers, 
 that a tender of damages was made to them after being released, and that 
 the witnesses, to this day, all stand convicted for perjury, is, of itself, 
 vindication enough for all.^* 
 
 By 1881, the gray of truth had darkened into the black myth 
 of villainy. A history of the county published in that year told the 
 story of how the spies, "disreputable scoundrels . . . cowards and 
 villains . . . reptiles," had failed to discover any of the culprits who 
 had been obstructing the tracks and had resolved to swear to any- 
 thing to collect the reward offered by the railroad company. They 
 had set fire to the depot in Detroit and then had sworn that inno- 
 cent citizens living sixty miles away had hired one of them to do it. 
 
 [ "9]
 
 At the trial, these scoundrels had been "willing instruments in the 
 hands of the railroad company" and one unprincipled lawyer, 
 Van Arman, who coached them in the art of perjury.^^^ 
 
 Colonel De Land, onetime editor of the Jackson American 
 Citizen, in his history of Jackson County compiled in 1903, re- 
 peated the same story. He inveighed against the villainy of the 
 railroad's agents and spies and assured the world "that their victims 
 were in prison for a crime they never committed," And concluded 
 his tale thus: "A beautiful marble monument stands over the grave 
 of Captain Fitch and the story is still told of the wickedness of 
 his taking off." ^^^ 
 
 [ 120 ]
 
 NOTES 
 
 * Most of the research for this book was made possible by a grant from the 
 Committee on the Study of Midwestern Life and History, of Michigan State 
 College. The author also wishes to acknowledge the aid and cooperation of 
 the following: the officials of the New York Central System in Detroit and New 
 York who allowed unrestricted use of the records of the Michigan Central 
 Railroad, and particularly Mr. Robert Barrie of the Detroit office; Mrs. El- 
 leine H. Stones and her assistants at the Burton Historical Collection in the 
 Detroit Public Library; Dr. F. Clever Bald, assistant director of the Michigan 
 Historical Collections at the University of Michigan; the librarians of the 
 Michigan State Library and the Law Library in Lansing, and of the public 
 libraries of Jackson, Marshall, Adrian, and Grand Rapids; the county clerk 
 of Jackson County for permission to consult the county records; and finally, 
 Harry Brown, Madison Kuhn, and John A. Garraty of Michigan State College, 
 who read and criticized the manuscript. 
 
 For the general accounts of the great railroad conspiracy, see Michigan as a 
 Province, Territory and State. . . . 3:319-24 (New York, 1906); Silas Farmer, 
 The History of Detroit and Michigan, 1:900 (Detroit, 1884); Alvin F. Harlow, 
 The Road of the Century, 223-24 (New York, 1947); History of Jackson 
 County . . . , (Chicago, 1881); Charles V. DeLand, DeLand's History of Jack- 
 son County. . . . , 153-60, (n.p. 1903). 
 
 ^ For the early history of railroads in Michigan see Harlow, The Road of the 
 Century, chapter 10; "James F. Joy Tells How He Went into the Railroad 
 Business," in the Detroit Free Press, May 1, 1892, reprinted in the Michigan 
 Historical Collections, 22: 297-304 (Lansing, 1894). 
 
 ^Report of the Directors of the Michigan Central Railroad to the Stock- 
 holders, June, 18^1, 31 (Boston, 1851); Memorandum Book, unpaged, in the 
 Law Library of the New York Central System, Detroit. 
 
 * "Annual Report of the Board of Internal Improvements 1845," Michigan 
 Joint Documents, 1846, number 4: 11 (Lansing, 1846). 
 
 *Niles Republican, June 2, 16, August 25, 1849; John Gilbert, "The Great 
 Conspiracy," in the Michigan Historical Collections, 31:234 (Lansing 1902); 
 George Sedgwick to John W. Brooks, May 12, 1849, Charles Vail to John W. 
 Brooks, May 11, 1849, in Letters Received Superintendent's Office, Michigan 
 Central Railroad, May, 1849, volume 11, in the Archives of the New York 
 Central System, Detroit; Detroit Daily Free Press, June 21, 1849; E. Lakin 
 Brown, "Autobiographical Notes" in the Michigan Historical Collections, 
 30:491-92 (Lansing, 1906). 
 
 ° Marshall Statesman, June 13, 1849; Marshall Democratic Expounder, 
 August 17, 1849; Charles O. Hoyt and R. Clyde Ford, John D. Pierce, Founder 
 of the Michigan School System, 134-36 (Ypsilanti, 1905). 
 
 [ 121 ]
 
 ' The account of the conflict between the farmers of Jackson County and the 
 Michigan Central Railroad is, unless otherwise specified, based on the evidence 
 taken and the addresses made at the trial of the Jackson County farmers, 
 which are to be found in Report of the Great Conspiracy Case: The People 
 of the State of Michigan versus Abel F. Fitch and Others, Commonly called 
 the Railroad Conspirators . . . , 3 parts (Detroit, 1851), hereafter cited as 
 Report; and in George R. Lilibridge, Report of the Conspiracy Trial in the 
 Wayne County Circuit Court . . . (Detroit, 1851), hereafter cited as Lili- 
 bridge. These two transcripts of the proceedings at the trial differ somewhat 
 and have been used to supplement each other. 
 
 ''Grass Lake Public Sentiment, March 1, 1854. 
 
 ® De Land, History of Jackson County, 153. 
 
 'Detroit Daily Advertiser, June 19, 1849; Grass Lake Public Sentiment, 
 March 1, 1854. 
 
 ^° "Sketch of the Life and Experience of Charles H. Frisbie, for Forty-seven 
 Years a Locomotive Engineer," in C. H. Salmons, The Burlington Strike, 473 
 (Aurora, Illinois, 1889). Frisbie was an engineer on the Michigan Central 
 Railroad in the 1840's and 1850's. 
 
 ""Sketch of Frisbie" in Salmons, The Burlington Strike, 471-72; Report, 
 part 1:70; Detroit Daily Free Press, June 21, 1849. 
 
 ^ Minutes of Directors' Meeting, Michigan Central Railroad, DecemTier 24, 
 1849, in the Archives of the New York Central System, Detroit; John Murray 
 Forbes to Joshua Bates, August 17, 1850, in Letter Book Michigan Central 
 Railroad, in the Archives of the New York Central System, New York; Detroit 
 Daily Free Press, July 3, 1849. 
 
 " Criminal Docket County Court Jackson County, 1848-1856, 26, 27, in 
 the county clerk's vault, Jackson County Building, Jackson; Benjamin F. 
 Burnett to editor, Ypsilanti Sentinel, April 27, 1851, cited in the Jackson 
 American Citizen, May 7, 1851; Grass Lake Public Sentiment, March 1, 1854. 
 
 "Grass Lake Public Sentiment, March 1, 1854. 
 
 "De Land, History of Jackson County, 84, 101, 108, 155, 426; Jackson 
 County Land Records, Deeds, liber 1-6, passim, in Land Record Office, Jack- 
 son County Building; Jackson County Circuit Court Docket, 1838, in the 
 county clerk's vault, Jackson County Building; History of Jackson County, 
 402; County Canvass 1850, 1851, in Election Returns 1849-1852, in the 
 county clerk's vault, Jackson County Building; Jackson American Citizen, 
 April 9, 1851; United States Census 1850, Population Schedules for Mich- 
 igan, volume 4, Jackson County, Leoni Township, 118, microfilm in Michigan 
 State Library, Lansing; Report, part 2:67, 68; part 3: 231-32. 
 
 ^^ Grass Lake Public Sentiment, May 15, 1853; Abel F. Fitch to [Mrs.] 
 Amanda Fitch, March-June 1851, passim, microfilm copy at Michigan State 
 College of the originals in Michigan Historical Collections, Ann Arbor; 
 Charles E. Barnes, "Battle Creek as a Station on the Underground Railway," 
 in the Michigan Historical Collections, 38:282 (Lansing, 1912); Jackson Ameri- 
 can Citizen, October 6, 1850, April 9, 1851; Detroit Daily Free Press, April 26, 
 1851; Detroit Daily Tribune, May 22, 1851. 
 
 ^" Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, March 21, May 14, 1851. 
 
 [ 122 ]
 
 ^ Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, March 21, 1851. 
 
 "United States Census 1850, Michigan, volume 4, Jackson County, Grass 
 Lake Township; De Land, History of Jackson County, 276; History of Jackson 
 County, 334. 
 
 -"De Land, History of Jackson County, 404; Life and Adventures of Wil- 
 liam Filley (Chicago, 1867); United States Census 1850, Michigan, volume 4, 
 Jackson County, Leoni Township, 118. 
 
 ^ According to Mr. Orrin Blackman of Jackson, the building now standing 
 on the northeast comer of the New York Central Railroad crossing at Mich- 
 igan Centre is, with some additions and alterations, the original tavern that 
 stood there in 1850. 
 
 ^ "Sketch of Frisbie," in Salmons, The Burlington Strike, 474. 
 
 ® Gilbert, "The Great Conspiracy," in the Michigan Historical Collections, 
 31:236; Harmon L. Spa[u]lding to John W. Brooks, September 13, 1850, in 
 Letters Received Superintendent's Office, September, 1850, volume 29. 
 
 ^Detroit Daily Free Press, June 7, 1850; Report, part 3: 98. 
 
 ^Ann Arbor Michigan Argus, July 16, 1851. 
 
 ^De Land, History of Jackson County, 154. 
 
 "Marshall Statesman, June 13, 1849; Marshall Democratic Expounder, 
 August 17, 1849. 
 
 ^"Annual Message of the Governor 1846" in the Joint Documents of the 
 Senate and House of Representatives, 1846, p. 27 (Detroit, 1846); History of 
 Jackson County, 477; John W. Brooks, Reply to a Communication from 
 Mitchell Hindsill Esq. and Others of Kalamazoo Concerning Comparative 
 Rates of Transportation of Freight over the Michigan Central Railroad (De- 
 troit, 1848); Jackson American Citizen, September 19, October 24, November 7, 
 14, December 5, 1849, January 2, 1850. 
 
 ^Jackson American Citizen, March 12, September 24, 1851; Harlow, The 
 Road of the Century, 253; Adrian Michigan Expositor, March 18, 1851; Senate 
 Documents 1850, number 33: 2 (Lansing, 1850); House Documents 1851, num- 
 ber 9: 3 (Lansing, 1851). 
 
 ^ Michigan Reports, 2 Gibbs 259-60; Jackson American Citizen, September 24, 
 1851; Ann Arbor Michigan Argus, July 16, 1851. 
 
 ^^ Michigan Reports, 2 Gibbs 261. 
 
 ^^ For a discussion of this development in another state, see Oscar and Mary 
 F. Handlin, Commonwealth: A Study of the Role of Government in the 
 American Economy: Massachusetts, 1^^4-1861, 194, 261-62 (New York, 
 
 '947)- 
 
 ^ Hoyt and Ford, John D. Pierce, 135; Report of the Proceedings and 
 Debates of the Convention to Revise the Constitution of the State of Mich- 
 igan, i8$o, 29, 30 (Lansing, 1850); Debates and Proceedings of the Consti- 
 tutional Convention of the State of Michigan, i86j, 1:145, 146 (Lansing, 
 1867); James V. Campbell, Outline of the Political History of Michigan, 538- 
 39 (Detroit, 1876); Detroit Daily Free Press, February 11, 1853. 
 
 ** Report of the Proceedings and Debates, 18^0, 29, 30, 586-go, 734. 
 
 ^Portrait and Biographical Album of Jackson County, Michigan, 189 (Chi- 
 cago, 1890); Detroit Daily Free Press, February 17, 1851; House Journal 1850, 
 520, 710 (Lansing, 1850); House Journal 1851, 104, 574 (Lansing, 1851); 
 
 [ 123 ]
 
 Senate Journal 1850, 262, 470 (Lansing, 1850); Senate Journal i8$i, 20, 69, 
 422 (Lansing, 1851); House Documents 1851, number 14 (Lansing, 1851). 
 
 ^Report, part 1: 135, 136, 152; part 3: 245; Lilibridge, 79; Fitch to Mrs. 
 Fitch, March 21, 1851; Darius Clark to John W. Brooks, March 21, 1851, in 
 Letters Received Superintendent's Office, March 1851, volume 35; James F. 
 Joy to George F. Porter, March 2, 1850, in Joy Manuscripts, transcripts in the 
 Michigan Historical Collections; Adrian Michigan Expositor, March 18, 1851. 
 
 *' Detroit Daily Free Press, March 10, March 25, April 2, 1851; Adrian 
 Michigan Expositor, April 9, 1850; Senate Journal iS^i, 234, 305. 
 
 ^ Gilbert, "The Great Conspiracy," in the Michigan Historical Collections, 
 31:235; Marshall Statesman, December 5, 1848; Michigan Biographies, 1:172 
 (Lansing, 1914); Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, May 11, 1851; Report, part 3: 76. 
 
 ^» Clark to Brooks, August 17, August 22, August 30, 1850, in Letters Re- 
 ceived Superintendent's Office, August 1850, volume 28; Henry G. Pearson, 
 An American Railroad Builder: John Murray Forbes, 37, 38, (Boston, 1911). 
 
 ^ Clark to Brooks, August 22, November 1, 2, 1850, in Letters Received 
 Superintendent's Office, August, 1850, volume 28, November, 1850, volume 
 31; Grass Lake Public Sentiment, March 15, 1854. 
 
 *^ Report, part 3: 44-45; Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, May 6, 1851. 
 
 *^ Clark to Brooks, August 15, 17, 1850, in Letters Received Superintendent's 
 Office, August, 1850, volume 28; Report, part 2: 86-87. 
 
 ^ Clark to Reuben N. Rice, March 15, 1851; Clark to Brooks, March 29, 
 1851, in Letters Received Superintendent's Office, March, 1851, volume 35. 
 
 ** Criminal Docket County Court Jackson County, 1848-1856, 83; Jackson 
 American Citizen, November 13, 1850. 
 
 «> Clark to Brooks, February 26, March 21, 1851; James F. Joy to Reuben N. 
 Rice, February 26, 1851; James F. Joy to Brooks, March 28, 1851, in Letters 
 Received Superintendent's Office, February, 1851, volume 34, March 1851, 
 volume 35; Laws of Michigan, 1851, number 128. 
 
 "Clark to Brooks, February 26, 1851, in Letters Received Superintendent's 
 Office, February, 1851, volume 34. 
 
 *' Detroit Daily Advertiser, November 20, 1850; Detroit Daily Free Press, 
 June 7, 1851; Report, part 2: 7. 
 
 ^ See footnotes 45 and 46. 
 
 ** Detroit Daily Advertiser, April 21, 22, 1851; Detroit Daily Free Press, 
 April 21, 1851; Niles Republican, April 26, 1851; Gilbert, "The Great Con- 
 spiracy," in the Michigan Historical Collections, 31:237-38. 
 
 ^° Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, April 21, 1851; Detroit Daily Advertiser, April 26, 28, 
 1851; Jackson American Citizen, May 7, 1851. 
 
 ^Report, part 2: 140; part 3: 163, 388; Wayne County Circuit Court Crim- 
 inal Calendar, November 26, 1847, to February 23, 1878, numbers 1632-36, 
 in Wayne County Courthouse, Detroit; Law Papers, Wayne County Circuit 
 Court, case number 4971, in Wayne County Courthouse, Detroit; Detroit Daily 
 Advertiser, April 25, 30, June 5, 1851; Jackson American Citizen, May 7, 1851. 
 
 ^The account of the trial is, unless otherwise specified, based on the two 
 reports of proceedings cited in note 6; Detroit Daily Tribune, April 29, 1851. 
 The author has searched through the records in the Wayne County Circuit 
 Court record room but the original papers in this trial were not to be found. 
 
 [ 124 ]
 
 '^Report, part 3: 93, 94; Jackson American Citizen, September 3, 1851; 
 Charles I. Walker, "The Detroit Bar," in the Michigan Law Journal, 2:9 
 (January, 1893). 
 
 ^* Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, May 11, 1851; Detroit Daily Advertiser, May 15, 17, 
 1851; Detroit Daily Tribune, May 16, 1851. 
 
 ^Detroit Daily Advertiser, April 21, May 2, 7, 1851; Detroit Daily Free 
 Press, April 21, May 26, 1851; Detroit Daily Tribune, April 25, 26, 28, May 3, 
 1851; Jackson American Citizen, April 30, May 14, 1851. 
 
 ^Report, part 3: 163; Adrian Michigan Expositor, June 3, 1851; Detroit 
 Daily Advertiser, May 26, 1851. 
 
 "Detroit Daily Free Press, April 29, 1851; Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, May 14, 
 1851; Jackson American Citizen, May 7, 1851. 
 
 ^Jackson American Citizen, September 3, 1851; Detroit Daily Free Press, 
 May 30, 1851; Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, May 11, 1851. 
 
 ™ Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, May 18, May 25, June 1, 1851; Frederick Bancroft, 
 Life of William H. Seward, 1:181 (New York, 1900); Jackson County Mort- 
 gages, liber 10, 401, in Land Record room, Jackson County Building. Seward's 
 fee was secured by a mortgage on Fitch's land, which was discharged in 1855. 
 
 *° Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, May 6, May 11, 1851. 
 
 ®^The occupations of the jurors were ascertained in Farmer, History of 
 Detroit and Michigan, volume i, using the index; Shove's Business Advertiser 
 and Detroit Directory for 1852-18$^ (Detroit, 1852); Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, 
 May 30, 1851. 
 
 '^ Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, April 21, 22, May 6, 1851. 
 
 ** Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, May 6, 14, 18, 1851. 
 
 ** Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, May 11, 14, 25, 1851. 
 
 ** Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, May 6, 14, 18, June 1, 1851; Detroit Daily Advertiser, 
 May 22, 1851. 
 
 *^Law Papers, Wayne County Circuit Court, case number 4971, 4976. 
 
 «^ Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, May 18, 1851. 
 
 ^* Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, May 25, June 29, 1851; Henry Frink and William A. 
 Howard to Brooks, July 7, 1851, in Letters Received Superintendent's Office, 
 July, 1851, volume 39. 
 
 ^^ Anson De Puy Van Buren, "Sketches, Reminiscences, and Anecdotes of 
 the Old Members of the Calhoun and Kalamazoo County Bars," in the Mich- 
 igan Historical Collections, 11:281 (Lansing 1888); Cyrenius P. Black, "Legal 
 Reminiscences of Forty Years," in the Michigan Historical Collections, 35:138- 
 39 (Lansing, 1907). 
 
 ™Lucien B. Proctor, "William H. Seward as a Lawyer," in the Albany Law 
 Journal, 35:284-89 (April 9, 1887); Bancroft, Life of Seward, 1:184; Worth- 
 ington C. Ford, ed.. Letters of Henry Adams (i8$8-iSpi), 62 (Boston, 1930); 
 Detroit Daily Tribune, August 25, 1851. 
 
 "Fitch to Mrs. Fitch, June 20, 29, August 1, 12, 1851. 
 
 "Detroit Daily Tribune, August 25, 1851. 
 
 ■^Jackson American Citizen, August 27, September 3, 1851. 
 
 '* Joy to Brooks, August 26, 1851, in Letters Received Superintendent's OfiBce, 
 August, 1851, volume 40. 
 
 ''"Matilda Freeland to Andrew J. Freeland, August 25, 1851, transcripts of 
 
 [ 125]
 
 original letters, in Michigan Historical Collections; Jackson American Citizen, 
 July 16, August 27, September 3, October 1, 1851. 
 
 ''^Michigan Christian Herald, August 28, 1851; Detroit Daily Tribune, 
 August 8, 15, 23, 25, 1851. 
 
 "Jackson American Citizen, September 3, 1851. 
 
 ''^ Jackson American Citizen, September 17, 1851. 
 
 '» Jackson American Citizen, September 3, 1851. 
 
 «» Grass Lake Public Sentiment, December 1, 12, 1853. 
 
 81 Detroit Daily Tribune, August 15, 23, 25, 1851; Jackson American Citi- 
 zen, August 6, September 3, October 15, 1851; Detroit Daily Advertiser, July 29, 
 1851; Gilbert, "The Great Conspiracy," in the Michigan Historical Collections, 
 31:238; E. Lakin Brown, "Autobiographical Notes," in the Michigan Historical 
 Collections, 30:491. 
 
 ^Detroit Daily Free Press, September 4, November 7, 1851; Detroit Daily 
 Tribune, September 16, 1851; J. W. Donovan, Modern Jury Trials and Advo- 
 cates, third revised edition, 116 (New York, 1885). The closing arguments 
 were interrupted for a week, September 18-25, because of a juror's illness. 
 The addresses of Stuart and William A. Howard have not been preserved. 
 
 *^J. N. W., "William H. Seward at the Bar," in the Albany Law Journal 
 35:399 (May 14, 1887); Proctor, "Seward as a Lawyer," in the Albany Law 
 Journal 35:285. Parts of Seward's closing address were reprinted in school 
 elocution books. 
 
 8* Detroit Daily Tribune, September 25, 26, 1851; Jackson American Citizen, 
 October 1, 15, 1851; Detroit Daily Advertiser, September 27, 1851; Niles 
 Republican, October 4, 1851. 
 
 *« Detroit Daily Advertiser, October 11, 1851; Detroit Daily Free Press, 
 November 7, 1851; Jackson American Citizen, October 1, 15, November 26, 
 1851. 
 
 ^ Joy to Brooks, October 2, 1851 in Letters Received Superintendent's Office, 
 October, 1851, volume 42. 
 
 ^Farmer, History of Detroit, 1:900; Detroit Daily Advertiser, January 24, 
 1852, January 24, 1854. 
 
 *« Grass Lake Public Sentiment, May 2, 1853. 
 
 ^Jackson American Citizen, June 9, October 6, 1852, April 6, 1853; Crim- 
 inal Docket County Court Jackson County, 1848-1856, 124; William Norris 
 to Reuben N. Rice, October 4, 1852, in Letters Received Superintendent's 
 Office, October, 1852, volume 54; Grass Lake Public Sentiment, December 10, 
 1853; Moses A. McNaughton to Joy, March 22, 25, 1853; Van Dyke to Joy, 
 April 22, 1854, in Joy Manuscripts, transcripts in the Michigan Historical 
 Collections. 
 
 8° Moses A. McNaughton to Joy, March 25, 1853, in Joy Manuscripts, 
 transcripts in the Michigan Historical Collections; Grass Lake Public Senti- 
 ment, January 1, 15, February 1, March 15, July i, September 1, 1853; Jackson 
 American Citizen, November 30, 1853, August 16, 1854; De Land, 276, 290. 
 *i Marshall Democratic Expounder, October 10, 1851; Jackson American 
 Citizen, October 1, 29, November 5, 12, 26, 1851; Grass Lake Public Senti- 
 ment, April 1, 1853; George B. Cooper to Brooks, October 1, 1851 in Letters 
 
 [ 126 ]
 
 Received Superintendent's Office, October, 1851, volume 42; Detroit Daily 
 Free Press, November 7, 1851; Detroit Daily Advertiser, October 9, 10, No- 
 vember 4, 6, 1851; Election Returns, 1849-1857, in County Clerk's OEBce, 
 Jackson County Building, Jackson. 
 
 *2 Jackson American Citizen, October 6, 20, November 3, 24, December 29, 
 
 1852, March 9, 1853; Early History of Michigan: Biographies of State Officers 
 . . . , 360 (Lansing, 1888). 
 
 *^ Jackson American Citizen, January 26, March 9, 1853; Joy to Unknown, 
 January 8, 1853 in Joy Manuscripts, transcripts in the Michigan Historical Col- 
 lections; House Journal 185^, 83, 136, 165, 185, 273, 322, 342, 375, 376 
 (Lansing, 1853); Senate Journal i8j}, 185 (Lansing, 1853); Michigan Joint 
 Documents 18^4, number 1: 47 (Lansing, 1854). 
 
 ** Michigan Joint Documents 18^4, number 1: 36, 46; House Documents 
 iSyj, number 20: 1, 7 (Lansing, 1857). Aaron Mount died in jail. 
 
 *^ Wilbur F. Storey to Joy, January 12, 1853, in Joy Manuscripts, transcripts. 
 
 *® Moses A. McNaughton to Joy, February 23, March 15, 1853, in Joy Manu- 
 scripts, transcripts. 
 
 ^Michigan as a Province, Territory and State, 3:321. 
 
 ** Grass Lake Public Sentiment, July 1, 1853; House Journal 18^^, 367; 
 Senate Journal 18$^, 303; Laws of Michigan 18^5, number 82, 138, 139. 
 
 *® Jackson American Citizen, September 24, October 8, November 5, 1851, 
 February 25, May 5, 1852, April 6, August 10, 17, September 14, 1853; Marshall 
 Democratic Expounder, October 17, 1851; Portrait and Biographical Album of 
 Jackson County, Michigan, 732 (Chicago, 1890). 
 
 ^•^ Jackson American Citizen, August 24, 1853; Detroit Daily Free Press, 
 August 24, 1853; Adrian Michigan Expositor, August 23, 1853; Adrian Daily 
 Watchtower, August 26, 1853. 
 
 ^'* Jackson American Citizen, August 31, September 14, November 30, De- 
 cember 21, 1853; Adrian Daily Watchtower, September 1, 1853; Detroit Daily 
 Free Press, December 2, 1853; Report of a Case . . . in the Circuit Court of 
 the County of Wayne, entitled the Michigan Central Railroad Company versus 
 the Michigan Southern Railroad Company, (Detroit, 1853). 
 
 ^°2 Detroit Daily Free Press, January 13, 15, 17, 1853; Adrian Michigan 
 Expositor, November 16, 1852. 
 
 ^"^ Detroit Daily Free Press, January 7, 22, 1853. 
 
 ^'^ J. R. Williams to Joy, January' 15, 1853; C. C. Jackson to Joy, January 20, 
 
 1853, in Joy Manuscripts, transcripts; Detroit Daily Free Press, January 24, 
 25, 26, 28, February 2, 3, 11, March 3, 1853; Detroit Daily Advertiser, January 21, 
 22, 24, 26, 1853; Jackson American Citizen, February 9, 1853; House Journal 
 i8y^, 353; Senate Journal 18$^, 356. 
 
 ^•^ Jackson American Citizen, February 16, 1853, January 4, 1854; Adrian 
 Michigan Expositor, February 22, 1853, January 3, 1854; Detroit Daily Ad- 
 vertiser, January 4, 1854; Detroit Daily Free Press, December 28, 29, 30, 1853, 
 January 11, 1854. 
 
 ^•^ Detroit Daily Free Press, January 12, September 15, 1854; History of 
 Jackson County . . . , 328, 330; William Livingstone, History of the Repub- 
 lican Party, 1:37, 41, 53 (Detroit, 1900); De Land, 178, 180; Jackson American 
 
 [ 127 ]
 
 Citizen, July 6, 1854; Albert Williams, "The Republican Party— The True 
 History of Its Birth," in the Michigan Historical Collections, 28:480 (Lansing, 
 1900); Adrian Michigan Expositor, July 15, 1854. 
 
 ^•"The author has gone through the files of the Detroit Free Press and 
 Advertiser for July-November, 1854; Jackson American Citizen, October 4, 
 11, 18, November 1, 1854. 
 
 ^•^ Jackson American Citizen, January 3, 10, 17, 31, February 7, 1855; Senate 
 Journal 1855, 4, 51, 151; House Journal 18^5, 291; Senate Documents i8$$, 
 number 3. 
 
 ^'^ Laws of Michigan iS$$, number 82. 
 
 "" Michigan Railroad Commission, Aids, Gifts, Grants and Donations to 
 Railroads, including Outline of Development . . . , 98-101 (Lansing, 1919); 
 Farmer, 1:899. 
 
 "^ Henry Phelps to Darius Clark, December 9, 1851, in Letters Received 
 Superintendent's Office, December, 1851, volume 44; De Land, 160; Jackson 
 American Citizen, September 8, 1852, August 17, 1853. 
 
 *^ Michigan Historical Commission, Michigan Biographies, 1:172; Friend 
 Palmer, Early Days in Detroit, 348, 350 (Detroit, 1906); Farmer, 2:1037; A. T. 
 Andrews, History of Chicago, 2:468 (Chicago, 1885). 
 
 ^^ Life and Adventures of William Filley, 13; Michigan Historical Collec- 
 tions, 4:270 (Lansing, 1883). 
 
 ^* James M. Thomas, Jackson City Directory for 1869-yo, 97 (Jackson, 1869); 
 History of Jackson County . . . , 449-50. 
 
 "^History of Jackson County . . . , 446-49. 
 
 ^'De Land, 153-60. 
 
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