Strange True Stories of Louisiana

  VIII.

  THE TRIAL.

  It had already become famous. Early in April the press of the city, thoughin those days unused to giving local affairs more than the feeblestattention, had spoken of this suit as destined, if well founded, todevelop a case of "unparalleled hardship, cruelty, and oppression." TheGerman people especially were aroused and incensed. A certain newspaperspoke of the matter as the case "that had for several days created so muchexcitement throughout the city." The public sympathy was with Salome.

  But by how slender a tenure was it held! It rested not on the "hardship,cruelty, and oppression" she had suffered for twenty years, but only onthe fact, which she might yet fail to prove, that she had suffered thesethings without having that tincture of African race which, be it ever sofaint, would entirely justify, alike in the law and in the popular mind,treatment otherwise counted hard, cruel, oppressive, and worthy of thepublic indignation.

  And now to prove the fact. In a newspaper of that date appears thefollowing:

  Hon. A.M. Buchanan, _Judge_.

  Sally Miller _vs_. Belmonti. }--No. 23,041.

  This cause came on to-day for trial before the court, Roselius and Upton for plaintiff, Canon for defendant, Grymes and Micou for warrantor; when after hearing evidence the same is continued until to-morrow morning at 11 o'clock.

  Salome's battle had begun. Besides the counsel already named, there wereon the slave's side a second Upton and a Bonford, and on the master'sside a Sigur, a Caperton, and a Lockett. The redemptioners had made thecause their own and prepared to sustain it with a common purse.

  Neither party had asked for a trial by jury; the decision was to come fromthe bench.

  The soldier, in the tableaux of Judge Buchanan's life, had not dissolvedperfectly into the justice, and old lawyers of New Orleans remember himrather for unimpeachable integrity than for fine discrimination, a man ofalmost austere dignity, somewhat quick in temper.

  Before him now gathered the numerous counsel, most of whose portraits havelong since been veiled and need not now be uncovered. At the head of onegroup stood Roselius, at the head of the other, Grymes. And for this therewere good reasons. Roselius, who had just ceased to be the State'sattorney-general, was already looked upon as one of the readiest of allchampions of the unfortunate. He was in his early prime, the first fullspread of his powers, but he had not forgotten the little Dutch brig_Jupiter_, or the days when he was himself a redemptioner. Grymes, on theother side, had had to do--as we have seen--with these same redemptionersbefore. The uncle and the father of this same Sally Miller, so called, hadbeen chief witnesses in the suit for their liberty and hers, which hehad--blamelessly, we need not doubt--lost some twenty-five years before.Directly in consequence of that loss Salome had gone into slavery anddisappeared. And now the loser of that suit was here to maintain thatslavery over a woman who, even if she should turn out not to be the lostchild, was enough like to be mistaken for her. True, causes must haveattorneys, and such things may happen to any lawyer; but here was a causewhich in our lights to-day, at least, had on the defendant's side no moralright to come into court.

  One other person, and only one, need we mention. Many a New York Citylawyer will recall in his reminiscences of thirty years ago a small,handsome, gold-spectacled man with brown hair and eyes, noted forscholarship and literary culture; a brilliant pleader at the bar, andauthor of two books that became authorities, one on trade-marks, the otheron prize law. Even some who do not recollect him by this description mayrecall how the gifted Frank Upton--for it is of him I write--was one dayin 1863 or 1864 struck down by apoplexy while pleading in the well-knownPeterhoff case. Or they may remember subsequently his constant, patheticeffort to maintain his old courtly mien against his resultant paralysis.This was the young man of about thirty, of uncommon masculine beauty andrefinement, who sat beside Christian Roselius as an associate in the causeof Sally Miller _versus_ Louis Belmonti.

  FOOTNOTES:[27] Long since burned down.[28] The similarity in the surnames of Salome and her master is odd, butis accidental and without significance.