Days of Darkness (25 page)

After the wedding, the couple went to live in the home of Daniel Bates, a prosperous salt maker who had married Abner's sister Mary, though they were separated at the time and were soon divorced. The fact that the newlyweds did not build their own home or move into one of the White or Baker residences suggests that their parents were not supportive.

At any rate, soon after the wedding Abner began to show signs that he was playing with less than a full deck. He began accusing Susan, in public and with increasing vehemence, of adultery with any number of men, including Daniel Bates, her own father, casual visitors, and even household servants. He swore that his mother assisted Susan in these liaisons and described in lurid detail how she sat by approvingly while Susan was boarded by her various lovers—or customers, as he charged.

As can be imagined, the Whites took a dim view of such goings on and tried to persuade Susan to return home. Daniel Bates, as well as Abner's brothers, begged Abner to see a doctor. Instead, he stormed out of the house and moved to Knoxville (without Susan, needless to say). But on September 13, 1844, he rode back into Manchester, went directly to Daniel Bates's salt furnace, crept up behind his friend, and shot him in the back.

Bates fell, turned, and, recognizing Abner, uttered a despairing cry as Abner fled the scene. As he lay dying, Bates dictated a will in which he freed his personal servant, Pompey, and his slaves Joe Nash and Joe's wife Lucy. He directed his son to take revenge on Baker and see that he was prosecuted, and to see that if the courts did not hang him, he was killed. He left $10,000 to make sure this was done.

The murder split the community between those who didn't think a crazy man should be hanged and those who thought he should be strung up with the least fuss possible. But after hiding out in the hills for a few days, Abner surrendered to General Garrard. The Bakers, like the Garrards, were Democrats, and the two families had fought several election campaigns together. The Whites and Bateses, who demanded punishment, were Whigs.

Unsure of the legalities involved, Garrard refused to hand Abner over to the sheriff or to the Bates family and, on September 24, took him before two magistrates, one of whom was a Garrard, to decide whether he was sane and should be bound over to the grand jury for a possible charge of murder. This was obviously not a court, nor could the proceedings be called a trial. It was a competency hearing. Neither the Commonwealth's attorney nor witnesses for the Bates family were called, though witnesses appeared both for and against Abner. The magistrates reasonably ruled that Abner was legally insane
and released him to his two brothers, both of them doctors, who promised to place him under a doctor's care.

They tried, but Abner, after spending some time in Knoxville with his brothers, left abruptly and went to Cuba, where someone had told him he would have the best chance of recovering his sanity. The Whites and Bateses were not amused and persuaded the Commonwealth's attorney to indict Abner, in absentia, for murder. Governor William Owsley offered a reward for his arrest, and Bates's estate added $850 to it. It was never paid, however, for Abner suddenly and without explanation returned of his own will. It proved an unwise move.

Abner Sr. was heartbroken. He insisted that his son was not a fugitive, pointing out that he had been found insane by a competency hearing. He announced that he would ask for a change of venue, since the powerful White and Bates families had poisoned public opinion against Abner. But for some reason he failed to tell his sons of his intentions, and they brought Abner Jr. directly back to Manchester, where his reception was not cordial. The brothers too might have obtained a change of venue but concluded that it was not necessary, assuming that any sane jury could see the Abner Jr. was crazy as a loon.

The trial was a sensation that rocked the state and became a minor cause célèbre throughout the courts and medical circles of the country, since Abner's attorneys were pleading him innocent not only by reason of insanity but specifically by reason of monomania, insanity on a single subject. The nature of monomania and its validity as a defense were being hotly debated in judicial circles at the time.

The trial began on July 17, 1845, with a bank of prominent attorneys on both sides and the state's outstanding medical authorities on hand to testify concerning Abner's state of mind. George Robertson, considered the premier attorney in Kentucky, led the corps of defense lawyers, among whom was a Garrard. The Whites and Bateses brought in other prominent men to assist in the prosecution, as was the custom.

Defense attorneys offered testimony from doctors across the nation that monomania did exist. Other doctors affirmed that Abner was indeed suffering from the disorder, insanity on a single subject, in this case Susan's lack of chastity and her desire to dishonor him. The jury was not moved. The Bakers were shocked and outraged when Abner was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged.

The Kentucky statutes at the time contained no provision for appeal of felonies, including murder convictions, and efforts were begun
to win a pardon from Governor Owsley. Petitions were circulated in Clay and surrounding counties, and a panel of physicians visited the governor to ask clemency. From the Whites and Bateses came other petitions asking the governor to refuse Abner a pardon and to send in troops to make sure that the convicted man was not taken from the jail and freed. In Manchester there were rumors that an army of Bakers and their friends had plans to storm the jail.

And the Bakers were indeed planning to free Abner by force if pleas for a pardon failed. Freeing him would not have been a great undertaking; the jail was a flimsy shack, and the jailer had placed Abner in an upstairs room behind a thin wooden door. The upper porch had been removed, but a ladder had been left, conveniently, against the wall. Abner's brothers slipped him a pen-knife with which he hoped, in extremis, to cut an artery and bleed to death, thus cheating the gallows, but he cut only a vein before fainting. He lost enough blood, however, to make the brothers conclude that he was too weak to ride should they manage to rescue him.

It was all for naught. Governor Owsley said he had no intention of pardoning Abner, and on the morning of October 3,1845, he was led to the gallows. Despite the barbarity of the practice, public hangings were popular events in those days. A huge crowd filled the square, and 200 armed men surrounded the gallows to block any attempt at a last-minute rescue. Abner, gazing wildly about him, was led up the steps, struggled briefly with his captors, and then cried, as the noose was drawn about his neck, “Go on! Go ahead! Let a whore's work be done.”

The hangman obliged. And a hard wedge had been driven between the powerful families of Clay County.

The Bakers wept with rage against the Whites for helping the Bates family bring Abner to trial when he was so obviously insane. The Whites felt justified in demanding retribution for the ruin of Susan's name and took it as a family affront when the Garrards stepped in to help the Bakers. Because both families considered it their duty to maintain the peace of the community, no further violence resulted. But the lines were clearly drawn, and the resentment bred by competition over salt hardened into hostility.

At the time, however, the case was not seen as a benchmark event. Other matters involved the city fathers. The lack of roads was proving a huge handicap both economically and culturally, and delegations went regularly to Frankfort in hopes of getting help. Merchants had to bring in merchandise over rocky trails from Barbourville or London, while salt, timber, and crops had to be hauled out the same way or floated down the Kentucky River.

Such handicaps were momentarily forgotten when, in 1847, the Mexican War erupted and there was a general exodus of young men as they rushed to join the army. (It would become a grim joke that Eastern Kentuckians flocked to the colors without being drafted when they discovered that they could get pay for what they had been doing for free—killing people.) T.T. Garrard was among the first to enlist, was given a commission, and returned to Manchester a captain. He appears to have enjoyed his military service and his first views of the American West.

But he had been a widower for more than a decade, and the family rejoiced when, a few weeks after his return, he met and married Lucinda Burnam Lees. But then a strange thing happened. Ten days after the wedding, T.T. and his brother William and two slaves became Forty-Niners and set out for the gold fields of California. This did not indicate, as one might suspect, a honeymoon rift; in his memoirs T.T. explained that he simply did not want to miss the excitement of the historic gold rush, a desire his new wife understood.

The brothers joined a wagon train out of St. Louis, had a fine time crossing the country, marveled at the great mountains, the buffalo, the clear rivers, and finally the majestic Pacific, and in California bought a share of a gold mine. For a while T.T. hauled provisions to the mine, but the venture showed little profit, and T.T. showed little enthusiasm for mining. He sold his share and left. His brother William, however, had taken a fancy to the coast, and spent the rest of his life in California and Seattle.

T.T. went down to San Francisco and caught a ship for Panama. But before he left, one of the slaves begged to be allowed to stay and promised, in return for his freedom, to send T.T. $500 as soon as he could earn it. T.T. agreed, indicating considerable generosity of spirit or compassion for a pathetic plea; a male slave was worth many times $500, and T.T. must have suspected that he had scant chance of ever getting that. But he wished the man well, and several years later received a letter with $500 enclosed. The former slave had done well and had developed a business of his own. T.T. was delighted. The other slave, William Tillet, was apparently impressed with neither freedom nor California and chose to return to Clay County.

The two of them caught a ship to Panama, crossed the mountains on foot, and took a dugout canoe down the Chagres River to the Atlantic, where they caught a freighter to New Orleans. There they booked passage on a steamboat to Louisville and rode home to Manchester, arriving on February 5, 1850. T.T. had kept a diary, noting the “Panama cane” that grew eighty feet high and was so strong that
people made houses from it (bamboo, obviously). He had had a good time and had, as usual, learned a great deal from the experience. T.T. was marked by a lively curiosity and a wide-ranging intelligence. But he said he was glad to be home, settled down to the salt business, and was soon once more a candidate for public office.

Unfortunately, only days before his return, another incidence of violence had shaken the community and further damaged relations between the leading families. For almost four years relations between the Whites and Garrards had been chilly but peaceful and might have remained those of typical political rivals had not another Baker been accused of murder. In the fall of 1849 William Baker, the first child of Sarah and Boston Bob Baker, was arrested for the murder of Frank Prewitt, an itinerant shoemaker.

There was widespread doubt that William was the guilty party. Some thought that Matilda, his wife, had killed Prewitt when he made advances. Others suspected that Matilda's brother had finished him off after Matilda knocked him out with a shoe last. The sheriff, though, testified that bloodstains led him to believe that William had come home, found Prewitt there, killed him for any of several reasons (they had had a dispute over a piece of land; some hinted that Matilda and Prewitt were more than casually involved), threw the body across an ox, and hauled it to the woods, where he buried it under some brush.

Matilda was arrested along with her husband, but her trial was for some reason transferred to Owsley County, and she was cleared of the charge. William was tried in Manchester, and though the Garrards came to his defense and hired outside legal help, he was found guilty and sentenced to hang. Prewitt was a cousin of the Howard family of Clay County, and now that large family was drawn into the trouble.

On the gallows, on the afternoon of January 15, 1850, Baker was completely serene, though John Gilbert, hangman and sheriff, was in tears, as were many in the huge crowd. Baker repeated his declaration of innocence, spoke kindly of Mrs. Prewitt, but asked his friends not to forgive Job Allen, Adoniram Baker, and Robert Hays for testifying falsely against him. (Hays was so fearful of Baker retribution that he left the county.) Significantly, Baker said, “James White has too much money for a man such as me to live.” That didn't improve feelings between the families.

William Baker was buried in Owsley County. Five years later, on her deathbed, Matilda confessed to the murder of Prewitt. (Why she had let her innocent husband go to the gallows poses interesting questions.)
Too late. Another wedge had been driven, and this time not only between Whites and Garrards but between Bakers and Howards.

Local politics did nothing to improve matters. In 1856 the Garrards backed John Bowling for jailer. Bowling won, but within six months he was found shot to death. The evidence pointed to John Ed White, and he was arrested, tried, and acquitted for lack of evidence, to the surprise of no one. T.T. Garrard ran for the state senate and was elected but resigned and ran for Congress against Greene Adams of Harlan County. He lost, ran against Carlo Brittain of Harlan for the state senate, won, and served until he again entered the army at the outbreak of the Civil War.

Although a staunch Democrat, T.T. joined the Union army, startling his father, who was a hot Confederate. (“I never had a thought of going against the good old Union,” T.T. said.) He was named a colonel by President Lincoln, helped to raise ten thousand men in Eastern Kentucky, fought with distinction throughout the war, and emerged a brigadier general. At one point his father heard that T.T. was going to lead his troops against Confederate General Felix Zollicoffer and snapped, “I hope he gets a good whipping.” He didn't. But T.T later said that he would never have fought for the Union had he known that Lincoln was going to free the slaves. Like many Kentuckians, he was concerned with preserving the Union, not with ending slavery. And he had been told, and believed, that Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation applied only to those states in rebellion. Since Kentucky had remained loyal to the Union, he considered it a breach of faith when Washington would not reimburse slave owners.