Stephen H. Branch's Alligator, Vol. 1 no. 06, May 29, 1858 — Context and Discussion

urt of Sessions to defend him; but that he would certainly be there on the following day, and save him. As he had got the thirty dollars in his relentless grasp, I deemed it expedient to restrain my anger, and try his integrity once more. The morning came, and the thieves were again driven like cattle into the Court Room, and I soon discovered the bright eyes and noble features of my young friend among the hideous and wretched criminals. But Mr. Russell was not there, and I inquired for him, and a young lawyer told me that he was in the ante-room, whither I literally flew, and asked him why he did not come into the Court Room, and he prepared to defend the boy, as the Judge was in his seat, and the prisoners were about to be called and tried. He told me not to be in such a flurry, and that he should come when he pleased, and not before, which so exasperated me, that I cried out: “Then give me the thirty dollars I gave you to effect his liberty.” He stared at me with his bad and revengeful eyes, like an owl in a midnight tempest, but he breathed not a syllable. Several persons heard my voice in the Court Room, and came into the ante-room. I then exclaimed: “You black looking rascal, restore the thirty dollars instantly, or I will tear you to pieces.” This terrified him, and he gently took my arm, and besought me, in God’s name, to be silent, and not expose him, and most solemnly declared that he would go immediately into the Court Room, and have the boy’s trial postponed, and that he would get his sacred friend, Frederick A. Tallmadge, the Recorder, to permit him to be discharged on bail in a few days. This pacified me, and he went into the Court Room, where I watched his movements as a cat does a rat, and presently he caught the eye of the Judge, and smiles and winks were simultaneously exchanged, and the boy’s trial was postponed, and he was again conducted to his gloomy cell. On the second day following, Mr. Russell, myself, the boy’s aunt, and a well clad, and very genteel one-arm man, went to the office of Frederick A. Tallmadge, the Recorder, and the Straw Bail Court was opened, in whose infamous proceedings I enacted as vile a part as Russell or Tallmadge, or the neatly attired, and otto-perfumed, and sleek haired one-arm man, who was engaged by Russell to be the spurious bail, although my motives were on the side of humanity, and theirs on the side of gilded lucre. The Recorder said: “Well, Mr. Russell, please state your case,” and Russell said: “A lad is confined in the Tombs on a charge of stealing clothing. That he is guilty of theft is not yet proved, as he has not had his trial. But his aunt and friends are here in deep affliction, in whose name I most devoutly pray that your honor will release the boy on bail, with a solemn pledge from his aunt and friends that he will immediately be sent to sea.” A few winks, and blinks, and intelligent smiles, graced the eyes, and lips, and cheeks, and temples of several persons present, while the Recorder was considering the merits of the case, with his perturbed and thoughtful visage buried within his hands, which he anon removed, and desired the friend of the boy to come forward, who was prepared to be his bail, and presto! the long-haired, and smiling, and smooth-faced, and fragrant, and well dressed one-arm man, appeared in front of the Recorder, and with a great display of New York or London assurance, he signed the document that restored to liberty one of the shrewdest little rogues of the age. The boy’s aunt thanked Mr. Russell and the Recorder, and the one-arm man and myself went through the same formality, (I apologising to Russell for my harsh words at the Tombs,) and we separated, and the boy’s aunt went home in an omnibus, and I went to the Tombs, to witness the discharge of the culprit captive boy. He was released from his cell, and both Turnkey and Russell warned me to beware of the Judge, and we descended the prison steps, and I shall never forget the shock we received as we were passing through the prison yard, at meeting the Sessions Judge, who had just got information of Russell’s operations, and would doubtless have detained the boy until he got his share of the thirty dollars from Russell. But the boy adroitly, and like lightning, turned his head, and the Judge passed on without recognising or suspecting that the boy was already on his way to liberty. We paused a moment at the prison gate and desk, where the boy’s name was carefully examined on the books, and the boy severely scrutinised, and the clerks imparted their sly and extremely expressive leers, and the last prison gate was opened, and the boy was free, and went to his aunt’s boarding house, and rushed into her arms, who swooned, and fell like a corpse to the floor, and was with difficulty restored to consciousness. Like the pure and noble Socrates, I always conceived it a monstrous crime to illegally effect the liberation of captives, and I repeat, that in all this violation of law, and stupendous villainy, I knew that I was enacting as vile a part as Russell and Tallmadge, and the One-Arm Straw Bail Scamp, but it has always been a pleasing solace to know that sympathy, and not money, led me to embark in a plot to effect the liberation of a notorious little convict. Lawyer Russell and Recorder Tallmadge subsequently became (and are now) the City Judge and Superintendent of Police of the great commercial metropolis of the Western World, and the one-arm man I recently saw in Broadway, and on the steps of the Tombs, as glossy as ever with sweet oil and broadcloth, and who always reminded me of that class of conspirators under the monster Cataline, whom Cicero describes as past all hope of a restoration to private or public virtue. I subsequently learned that the one-arm man was a penniless and cunning and thievish vagabond, and had subsisted for years from what he got from straw bail lawyers, for being bail to prisoners. I do not positively know that the Recorder knew he was utterly irresponsible, and even if he did, he may have accepted him as bail, from motives of the purest humanity, although, in doing so, he must have known that he was violating and degrading his position as a leading City Magistrate, and that he was treacherous and ungrateful to the people who kindly elected him to protect their lives and property from the thieves and murderers of the metropolis. But we are of the opinion that Russell powerfully aided Tallmadge in his election as Recorder, and that there was collusion between them, and that they both knew what a miserable scamp and outcast the straw bail one-arm man was and is to this day. It now devolved on me to send the boy to sea, and the aunt signified her readiness to aid me, and to procure his sea clothes, and the boy was willing to go, and I went on board of several vessels, and at last obtained him a situation as cabin boy, but his health was very delicate, and I feared he would die, and I could not let him go to sea. I then proposed that he should visit the village in Connecticut, where he went to school before his grandmother died, in order to recruit his health, and his aunt gave him some money, and he left for the country, to return in the autumn, and obtain a situation in some respectable pursuit. His aunt left the city, to join her theatrical company, and I continued in my business as teacher of colored and Irish and other servants. I soon received a letter from the boy, informing me that he was in a very melancholy mood—that his old school mates had all left the village, and the people with whom he formerly boarded had learned of his thefts through the newspapers, and he desired to return to the city. I wrote immediately, and directed him to come to the city, and I would strive to get him a place to learn a trade, and did so, but he soon left, and got into vicious society, and I had to let him pursue his own course, as I was very poor and ill, and he had nearly worn me to the grave. The next I heard of him, was that he had been arrested in Philadelphia, and taken to Boston, where he had committed forgery, in connection with an old convict. He wrote me several letters from the Boston jail, which I could scarcely read, in consequence of their melancholy character. I wrote to his aunt in vain, as she either did not receive my letters, or, if she did, concluded to leave him to his awful fate. He turned State’s evidence, and thus got his term of punishment reduced from five to three years. I visited him at the prison in Charlestown, and I was the only person of his acquaintance, who went to see him during his long imprisonment. I also, by his request, sent him the New York _Evangelist_ and _Observer_, and other New York papers. The kind Superintendent of the Prison often wrote me, that the boy was popular with the officers of the Prison, and also with the prisoners in the Sunday school, and prayer meetings, and in the debating Society of the captives, and was a leader in all the religious and musical and literary exercises of the prison. His time expired, and he came to New York, and immediately flew to me. I gave him money, and he soon ascertained in what part of the country his aunt was engaged in her profession of theatricals, and he soon found her, and became an actor, although he had promised his Grandmother on her dying bed that he would never be an actor. He subsequently performed in this city, at Burton’s in Chamber street, and Burton discharged him and leveled a revolver at his head, for a suspected intimacy with an actress. He went to Providence, where we saw him perform at the Theatre in Westminster street. The New York _Police Gazette_ attacked him and exposed his antecedents, whose publication he assured me Burton obtained and paid for, to injure him and drive him from this section of the country, and I told him he had no right to cast affectionate glances at Burton’s actress; that Burton was justified in his revenges even unto death, and I advised him to leave New England and the central States, and he did, and got married, and had children, and I recently saw his affable and accomplished aunt, who told me that her nephew had risen to the summit of his profession, and that he was a good husband and father, and that he was rapidly accumulating a splendid fortune. And now, dear reader, you may enjoy this exciting and truthful narrative, but I do not. And I will tell you the reason why. This boy has become a valuable member of society, and entertains multitudes of his species, and excites their mirth and grateful sadness, and arouses their hatred of dishonor and oppression, and is, like every meritorious actor, an honor and a benefactor of his race. And hence it is most acutely painful to array his past sad career before his vision and the world. And yet I had to disclose his melancholy story, in order to expose the rascality of the officials of this Metropolis. And here again I am in sack cloth. For Judge Russell is the ardent friend of James Gordon Bennett, who has clung to me in days of illness and penury and gloom, when I often expected to drop dead in the streets of New York. And then again, Wm. Curtis Noyes married the favorite daughter of Superintendent Frederick A. Tallmadge, and Mr. Noyes has been like a brother to me, and has loaned me money to buy bread and shoes during my recent pecuniary calamities, when nearly every being on the face of God’s earth refused to loan me a farthing to save my trembling frame from starvation. I weep (as few ever wept, over these melancholy lines), to find myself compelled to hold up to wasteless scorn, the friends and relatives of Wm. Curtis Noyes and James Gordon Bennett, but I would trample the bones and ashes of my father in his coffin, if I knew that he died with the odium on his forehead, that will pursue Russell and Tallmadge to their graves, and forever degrade their unfortunate posterity. If murder is never out-lawed, these crimes are still fresh, and the culprits should be punished. And shall friendship screen those public monsters, who render New York a purgatory, through their official protection of thieves and assassins, and the whole catalogue of human devils? Nothing but a voice from Heaven could have saved the head of Benedict Arnold, if George Washington had got him in his clutches. And shall Russell and Tallmadge and other traitors to justice and the people, be screened from the public execration, because I love the humanity and private succor of their friends and kindred? No, no. In tones of thunder and earthquakes, and the crash of a trillion worlds, no, no, no. I now have a Press to expose the public villains, and I will stab down to ignominious graves, and to hell itself, all the plunderers and murderers and accursed traitors of my adored country. And I defy the Universe in arms to paralyze the Will that dissects the precocious monsters of this pernicious age.