" Mr. Everett is told by Mr. Sneed that there is likely to be some diffi-
culty. Mr. Everett goes into the bar and by some indications to the judge
meets him in the passage and takes him to his room, where they find Dr.
Wilkinson and Mr. Murdaugh. Judge Wilkinson relates to them what has
happened. The judge, having made this revelation, asks Everett to provide
him with pistols. Why? For what did he want them? Was any one
attacking him there or likely to do it? They were safe in their room. They
could only want pistols for the purpose of descending and making the attack
themselves. But Everett is asked to provide pistols. He said he would
try, and with that avowed purpose, left them. He had not been gone fifteen
minutes, in the opinion of some — in the opinion of others scarcely ten
when Judge Wilkinson, with this lower-county tooth-pick (taking up the
bowie-knife) — not trusting this time to the more merciful weapon with which
he had been practicing, the tailor's poker— with this lower-county tooth pick
he started down. prepared to use it. Did he know Rothwell ? Did he know
any but Redding ? No man had accosted him but Redding. ^Vhy, then,
did he come down with this terrible implement of murder ? Why, sir, just
exactly for this reason, that he had been mortified at the result of what
happened at Redding's store. The judge of the land had been turned over
by a tailor. He had been bearded and abused by a tailor, and he provided
himself with his bowie-knife and went down to have another deal with that
tailor.
" Mr. Prentiss seems to think the judge had a right to go down to his
supper. Why, so he had ; but he had a right to wait for the bell to ring.
He had no right to eat his supper before it was served up — no right to take
his bowie-knife down to the kitchen and terrify the cooks to allow him to
devour the supper while it was cooking. And, had the supper been ready,
there were table-knives wherewith to carve his meat, and he had no right to
carve it with a bowie-knife. But the supper was hardly cooking when he
went down. The bell had to ring over the private passage up-stairs before
it was rung below; and, when rung below, the folding doors had to be
thrown open. But the bell had been rung nowhere ; and Judge Wilkinson,
Dr. Wilkinson, and Mr. Murdaugh, came down before any bells were rung ;
therefore, it was not to supper they came down. Which table had Judge
Wilkinson been in the habit of going to, the large table, or the ladies' table?
There is no proof that he and his companions boarded at the large table ;
and it is known that many gendemen as familiar with the house as they had
308
BEN HARDIN.
been, prefer the private or ladles' table. We have every reason to believe
that was the table at which they boarded. The entrance to the room where
that table is kept is not through the bar-room. One entrance to the large
dinino - room is, indeed, through the waiting-room, and there is a bar in that
waiting-room at which many gentlemen who are not pleaders become suit-
ors, make motions, and put in their i)leas. I sometimes make my appear-
ance at that bar, but I am not summoned by the attachment of the bottles.
I go to hear the politics of the day — for, although I have long since quit
the field, I can not be cured of the curiosity to know what wrangling is
going among the little juntas in every village, as well as among the mighty
ones of Congress.
"When these three gentlemen got into the bar-room, Mr. Redding was at
the counter; Mr. McGrath was inside of it; Mr. Reaugh was at the fire.
Some say Mr. Redding came in immediately after the judge. You must
expect that out of twenty witnesses no two will agree in all the facts; but in
a transaction like this, where several fights were going on— where in every
corner a man was bleeding, or dying, or suffering — that no two men could
see anything or everything alike is to be expected. But, gentlemen, by col-
lecting all the evidence together, contrasting, comparing, and justifying one
by another, we can arrive at the facts of the case clearly and beyond the
probability of a doubt. We can arrive at them with as much certainty as we
can at any other set of facts. And from this manner of collating the facts I
am enabled to present them to you without fear of contradiction.
" One of these facts is that Judge Wilkinson walked across the bar-room,
some twenty-five feet, when he came in. Mr. Trabue, a man whose evidence
is to be depended upon, seems assured that when Judge Wilkinson came in
he walked three or four times across the room, and then stood awhile with his
eyes fixed upon Mr. Redding, his foot advanced, and his right hand behind
in his coat pocket, and, I make no doubt, with his hand grasping the handle
of this very bowie-knife. At that moment Mr. Murdaugh went up to Red-
ding. I will not say, with one of their own witnesses, that in going up to
him he rattled like a viper; but as he went up he addressed Redding, say-
ing, ' I understand that you say I drew a bowie-knife on you in your shop
this evening; if you say so you are a d — d rascal or liar! ' And as he said
so he opened his knife and elevated it, as one said, or held it down, accor-
ding to another. Yes, he accosted Redding in the most insulting terms, and
threw open his knife at the same time. Is there any witness who has said
Redding accosted him in an angry manner? One person said of the knife :
' Lord ! how it gleamed in the candle-light ! '
"The most warlike nation the world ever saw was Sparta. When tlie
Spartans prepared for battle, they polished their arms to glisten in the sun.
They washed their clothes clean, combed their long black hair, and sang the
song of battle. I have no doubt Mr. Murdaugh, if in the ranks, would have
I
SPEECH IN THE WILKINSON CASE. 309
done the same. I make no doubt he would be the last to run. I make no
doubt he would have been among the foremost to make his gleaming blade
glisten in the sun. The highest evidence of a man's dexterity and intent
to use his weapons is the high polish he gives them, and the high state of
preservation in which he keeps them for use. Of Murdaugh's dexterity in
the use of his knife in the work of death we have, unfortunately, too much
proof; of his disposition to use it we have the evidence of the high order
in which he kept it for use, even in that state of Spartan polish, which made
it gleam in the candle light as the sword of a Spartan would glisten in the sun.
"We are told Meeks was determined for a fight; yet Oliver, whose
friendship for these gentlemen seems to have been of the most ardent and
diMuterested kind, gives up to Meeks his knife, after having so easily
obtained possession of it on the small pretense of picking his nails. He has
been invited by Oliver to drink at a ' saloon,' opposite the Gait House.
They dignify these establishments nowadays by the high-sounding title of
' saloons,' but when you enter one of them you find it the vilest groggery
in the world. These dignified groggeries exist to a shameful extent in
Louisville, and why? Because the politicians of Louisville are too busy
with their unimportant bickerings, or too truckling, to put them down. They
are the strongholds of the voting interests of Louisville; and the truckling
politicians, who are ready to sacrifice every principle for the triumph of
party, court the coffee-house keepers and bend in supplication for their elec-
tion to the inmates of the groggeries. Even the municipal government is
either influenced by paltry mercenary motives in its avidity for the revenue
of licenses, or it has not the nerve or public spirit to grapple with the mon-
ster. Talk of our Constitution being the greatest, the purest, and the most
efficient on the face of the earth ! Yet, here is an evidence of its workings in
a duplicate government. The most destructive of vices, because the parent
of most, is licensed, encouraged, fostered, pandered to, by politicians, and,
through their truckling, by the very local government itself, as if the misery
and debasement of the community were more the end and aim of their rule
than encouragement of virtue, industry, sobriety, and rational enioyment.
"We learn that Meeks was unknown to many — a slender, small, and
weakly man, with a bit of a cowhide, the lash of which some one says was
knotted. From what we learn of this cowhide, I verily believe it would
take at least five hundred knocks of it to kill a man ; and I doubt if he could
be well killed, after all, even with five hundred knocks with it. Meeks,
unfortunately for himself, stepped up to Murdaugh and said, ' Yes, you are the
d — d little rascal who did it.' In reply to this, the very first lunge Murdaugh
made at him severed a vital artery and caused his instant death. I am no
physician, and know not technically what effect the cutting of that artery may
have; but I believe it to be as deadly as if the brains were blown out or the
heart pierced. A man stabbed through the heart no longer lives or breathes,
3IO
UEN HARDIN.
but he may stand a minute. Meeks fell, and in attempting to resume his
feet, as he leaned on a chair, pitched forward on his face, and when he was
examined he was dead.
' ' When did Rothwell strike Murdaugh ? Not till Meeks was killed. Then,
it is proven, Rothwell struck with a cane and Murdaugh was beaten back,
and at that instant the tide of battle rolled on to the right corner as you face
the fire, and then Rothwell was seen losing his grip of the cane in his right
hand, and he was seen endeavoring to resume his grasp of it. (jcneral Cham-
bers thinks it was Dr. Wilkinson whom Rothwell was beating at in the right-
hand corner, but every one else says it was Murdaugh. Every witness swears
Rothwell was engaged with Murdaugh in the right-hand corner while Holmes
was engaged with Dr. Wilkinson in the left-hand corner. Let us now con-
sider the wounds received by Rothwell. Dr. McDowell says the puncture
in Rothwell's chest might be made by this knife carried by Murdaugh. The
skin by its elasticity might yield without having an orifice as large as the
blade, afterward apparent.
"Who gave Rothwell that wound? Why, Murdaugh, and nobody else.
This accounts for Rothwell losing the grip of his stick or his cane. The
moment the knife penetrated his chest on the right side, that moment his
arm became paralyzed, and he could not hold his cane. He caught at it,
but did not use it after. Just then Judge Wilkinson came up behind with
his bowie-knife in his hand, and General Chambers says he saw him make a
lunge at Rothwell and stab him in the back. If two men are engaged in a
fight — one with a dirk-knife like this, and the other with a stick — in the name
of God, let another with such a bowie-knife as this stand off; but if he must
interfere on behalf of him who has the deadly weapon, and against him who
has not a deadly weapon, let him do the work of deatli front to front — let
him stab him in the breast and not in the back. But, to come up behind
and stab him in the back, who is already overmatched by his opponent in
point of weapons, evinces a disposition which I shall not trust myself to
dwell upon or to portray. Ossian, in speaking of Cairbar's treachery, says :
" 'Cairbar shrinks before Oscar's sword! he creeps in darkness behind a stone^he
lifts the spear in secret — he pierces my Oscar's side ! '
" By this time Dr. Wilkinson was down in the left-hand corner and
Holmes over him. The fact is, Holmes was the only man that knocked the
doctor up against Trabue, though Halbert boasted of having done it. It
was only a boast in Halbert, for I believe he goes over his foughten fields
more at the fireside than on the battle-ground. In the language of Dryden,
speaking of Alexander :
" ' The King grew vain ;
Fought all his battles o'er again,
And thrice he routed all his foes,
And thrice he slew the slain.'
SPEECH IN THE WILKINSON CASE. 3 II
" (It was now five o'clock, and Mr. Hardin requested an adjournment, as
it would probably take him two hours more to conclude his argument. To
this the Court assented, and an adjournment was made to half-past seven
next morning.)
FIFTH DAY.
Friday, March 15, 1839.
"(The court resumed the trial at a quarter before eight o'clock. Early as
the hour was, there could not have been less than two hundred ladies in the
gallery, and upward of a thousand men in the arena of the court. After
the jury-call and the reading of the minutes, the court required Mr. Hardin
to resume his argument. Mr. Hardin commenced at eight o'clock and spoke
without intermission for upward of two hours.)
" Mr. Hardin Gendemen of the jury, I would endeavor to resume the
few remarks on the evidence which I offered yesterday, as near the precise
place where I left off as possible, if I did not know that in the present case
such particularity is not so requisite as in the case cited by John Ran-
dolph, who once told of a man that was so precise that he could, if inter-
rupted and called off in the middle of his dinner by the sound of a horn,
take up his dinner exactly a:t the identical bite where he had left off. I am
not quite so particular, and shall probably recapitulate some of the evidence I
have already gone over.
"Yesterday evening I attempted to give you the law and the facts of the
case as nearly as possible, as far as I went. I shall now repeat that you are
not to take as facts all that may be sworn in a cause. Although witnesses may
be men of undoubted integrity and veracity, yet all they state are not facts.
They are fallible beings, and likely to misconceive and misinterpret facts
without any intention of doing so. We are to ascertain the facts from the
mass of evidence, and judge of each witness' competency by contrasting his
evidence by that of others, and when it agrees with all or a majority of the
witnesses, we may safely infer he is right. I endeavored yesterday to examine
the facts that occurred at the tailor's shop, for the purpose of showing the
ill blood fomented in these gentlemen's hearts against Redding. I then
showed that they acted in concert, and provided themselves with what
weapons they could, not being able to get all they wanted ; and how, upon
a small occasion, they were prepared to use these weapons. Indeed, there
seems to be no witness as to what occurred when Judge Wilkinson remained
in consultation with his companions in his bed-room.
*' (Here Mr. Hardin made a short recapitulation of the statement he had
gone over before, so nearly alike in substance that it is conceived unneces-
sary here to repeat it. However, some of these points elicited observations
from Mr. Hardin, new or important, which it may be necessary to give. The
repetition of such points of evidence will be excused.)
312
BEN HARDIN.
"We may judge of the shifts the defense is driven to, when it is
forced to rest upon such witnesses as Oliver, a man whom no one in Louis-
ville would listen to ; and Jackson, the Pharisee, who talks of religion with-
out a spark of it in his heart, and who is discredited by men who, as wit-
nesses, are unimpeached.
"If Judge Wilkinson, Dr. Wilkinson, and Mr. Murdaugh were known
to be frequenters of the bar before meal times, why has it not been proved by
one of their witnesses ? That not being proven, I have a right to assume
it could not be done, because it was not the fact.
"Next I have to ask, why these gentlemen come into the bar-room jjro-
vided with arms? Could it be with any other design than to run Redding
out of the room ? Were they going into a room where they commonly
resorted? It is evident they were not. Did they go there on their way to
supper ? It is evident they did not, for supper was not near being ready.
" What disposition for eating a supper merely does it show in Judge
Wilkinson to pace the room three or four times, and then fix the eye of
destruction on Redding, while his purpose kindles, -and he grasps his bowie-
knife behind in his pocket ? ^V hat more eagerness for supper does Murdaugh
exhibit in going straight up to Redding, rattling like a viper, and charging
him with being a liar? Sir, I care not if a man go into any crowd, and,
before an angry word is used to him, he goes up to as meek a man as Job
himself, and says, 'You are a d d liar, or rascal,' and flings open his
blade to inflict mortal injury, as his words indicate, if the person so accosted
strike his insulter, it is not surely any great wonder. And yet Redding did
not strike a blow. Mr. Murdaugh may say, ' I kept within what I thought
was the safe side of the law — I approached with my drawn knife — insulted
the person to draw on the attack from him, that I might have some excuse
for using my knife in the manner in which I came to use it at any rate.'
If any man come up and call you a d d liar, or a rascal, and spring
o])en his knife in the attitude of striking, should you strike or slay such an
assailant, would you not be excusable ? But Colonel Robertson attributes
to acts of this kind nothing but a manifestation of innocence and high spirit.
The colonel is really a gallant man, and judges of others by the fire and
chivalry raging in his own breast. You must not laugh, gentlemen, for if
you could look upon the volcanic mountain, though you would see its head
capped with snow, you would find its bosom, like his, rumbling with fire,
smoke, and brimstone. In former times, the highest honor known to a
Roman soldier was to have saved a man in battle, but here it is argued that
if a young aspirant to fame ])inks and kills his man, he is to be sent home to
his parents in honor, crowned with the chaplets of victory. Nay, it is
believed if Bonaparte, in his youthful prime, in his Italian campaigns, had
had Murdaugh by his side, he would have confided to his ready and unerring
arm the execution of many a hard adventure. Colonel Robertson may say
SPEECH IN THE WILKINSON CASE. 313
what he pleases, but I say it was Murdaugh commenced the assault, and
that all fighting done by him was in the wrong. All fighting done on his
account was in the wrong, because he had commenced in the wrong.
"Well, gentlemen, as I remarked to you yesterday when I stopped — for
I am now returning once more to that point — Murdaugh had given the first
provocation, had killed his man, and stabbed another to the death, when
Judge Wilkinson stepped up and gave Rothwell a stab in the back, while
engaged with and probably receiving the stab in the chest from Murdaugh.
Yes, gendemen, a third man comes up and lunges this beautiful little weapon
into Rothwell's side, and starts back ! Sir, if men are engaged with deadly
weapons, part them if you can, but do not come up behind them and lunge
a bowie-knife into the vitals of one, and then come into a public court and
demand it not only to acquit you, but to do it with shouts of 'Glory, glory,
go, go ! ' And yet, gentlemen, this is the polite invitation given to you by
Mr. Prentiss, to acquit such a man with acclamation. When engaged with
a man who has only a cane no bigger than his thumb, his opponent gives that
man a deadly stab in the chest which paralyzes his arm— a third person —
Judge Wilkinson, for instance — comes up behind and stabs the paralyzed
man in the back, it is, no doubt, high time for you to be called upon to
mark your approval of the deed by shouts of acclamation ? Mr. Prentiss,
by the way of winning your favor by complimentary allusions, thinks Ken-
tucky should no longer be called the 'bloody ground,' because the river
Raisin has carried off the palm in feats of human butchery. But I think the
Mississippi gentlemen, of Vicksburg, have bidden fair of late to obtain for
that part of Louisiana opposite their city the palm of being the ' dark and
bloody ground.' I suppose, in the far-famed Menifee duel with rifles, if
some one had stepped up and lunged a bowie-knife into the vitals of one of
the combatants, the shouts of acclamation that would have arisen in that
quarter of the world would have resounded to the very uttermost ends of the
earth.
"Dr. Wilkinson, by this time, became engaged with Holmes. Holmes
is a stout and large man, but his size has been greatly exaggerated. Like
the Patagonians, the first discoverers thought them ten feet in height; the
next voyagers only eight, and the next but six. I recollect of reading of
Captain Smith, that when he first explored the interior of this country on
his return he represented the inhabitants as all Goliaths, six cubits and a span
in height. Yet, subsequendy, more matter-of-fact men found thev were
only miserable and cowering Indians of ordinary dimensions. Li this man-
ner appearances are magnified.
" We are asked why Holmes is not here ? AA'e echo to the other side,
' Why is Holmes not here ?' Our answer is, because he was not to be had,
being a pilot down the river, and not within the control of the State's attor-
ney or any process issuing from him.
314 BEN HARDIN.
" Mr. Trabue proves that Holmes knocked Dr. Wilkinson against him,
and that Holmes followed up liis blow and knocked the doctor down.
Another witness proves that Dr. Wilkinson had his knife in his hand on the
floor, and Redding proves that he found the knife on the floor, and it had
blood on it. We have, then, evidence that all three were using their knives
for the shedding of blood. Sir, among other appeals made to you for acquit-
ting them, you are told, as a set-off, that there is no State in the Union on
which you are more dependent than that of Mississippi. They take their
cotton South and receive, either through shipping agents or drafts direct,
their money for it from the merchants of Great Britain. True, Kentucky
gets some of these dollars from the Mississipi)ians for what they think better
than their money, or their produce, or they would not buy it. We, in the
rounds of trade, pay these dollars, or what represents them, to the Liver
pool merchants for merchandise that we think better than the money. The
Liverpool merchants in the next turn of the wheel pay the same dollars back
to the Mississippians for their raw cotton, and the Mississippians are nothing
loth to take our produce again for the same dollars. And after several
twists of this kind, when we get them back and recognize one of them as an
old acquaintance, we may say, ' How do you do, friend dollar, I am very
glad to see the face of an old acquaintance ; step into my pocket and warm
yourself; I always give shelter to a tra\eling friend.' We are i)roverbially a
hospitable people, and never refuse a night's lodging to a dollar or its liberty
to travel further next day upon leaving us an equivalent for what we lent it.
But, to be serious, are we not all dependent on each other? I know this,
and can not admit that we owe more to Mississippi than Mississippi owes to
Kentucky; and why there should, in this case, be made any parade about
our indebtedness to that State, not founded in reality, is for you, gentlemen,
to weigh.
" To resume the facts of this case, what does Judge Wilkinson do ? He
stabs Holmes in the arm; but he is not indicted for that. He stabs Roth-
well, when he is engaged with Murdaugh, in the right-hand corner; and
again, when in the left-hand corner, standing over Holmes, and trying to
get hun off his brother. Rothwell has been disabled by two stabs. Judge
Wilkinson, standing at the dining-room door, when Rothwell was saying
nothing except in mercy trying to persuade Holmes to spare Dr. Wilkinson,
comes across the room to the opposite door, finds Rothwell's back turned
to hmi, and then makes the last and second thrust of the bowie-knife into
his victim's back. Mr. Robert Pope says : ' I saw Rothwell's back to Judge
Wilkinson, when the judge stabbed him up to the very handle.' I ask you,
gentlemen, I speak to you not in language other than broad and naked truth,
is there any witness denies this ? Every one that knows Robert Pope knows
that he would not state what he did not know to be a fact. We know that
each and all these wounds contributed to Rothwell's death. The last
SPEECH IN THE WILKINSON CASE. 315
Stab is given by Judge Wilkinson to Rothwell , Dr. Wilkinson and Mur-
daugh retreat out into the passage, and fight their way to the foot of the
stairs. I care not what was done there ; it was done after the offense pre-
viously committed. Suppose Oldham had shot one of them, and not missed
as he did; suppose Murdaugh had been knocked down; and suppose Judge
Wilkinson received blows in the passage; does it lighten the offense previ-
ously committed ? I care not what took place when a man has killed