by John Bailey
Grymes asked him how Mrs. Canby treated Bridget. As a servant, he said. She treated the girl kindly, but as a servant. In my view, she was a quadroon.
Kohn said that he had plenty of opportunity to hear Bridget speak, because sometimes she would come by herself carrying messages from Mrs. Canby about what she had to purchase. There was nothing Dutch or German in her appearance, or in her accent; if there had been, he, being German himself, would decidedly have observed it.
And, inquired Grymes, what was her color like, compared to some of Miller’s other slaves?
It was a question designed to inject a tincture of black blood into Sally Miller’s veins, and shopkeeper Kohn was prepared to assist. Miller had several servants who were whiter than that girl, he replied. One of them Miller owned even up to the present day.
Upton tried the same approach with Kohn as he had with every other defense witness. It was true, wasn’t it, that his only reason for believing Sally to be a quadroon was because she was treated as a slave? Amazingly, Kohn agreed. Upton then challenged him on the assertion that Miller was holding another slave even whiter than Sally Miller. It’s true, maintained Kohn. I’ve met him, and his name is John Pickett and he lives with Miller in Attakapas.
So little did each side trust the other that two doctors were required to inspect the marks on Sally Miller’s legs. The plaintiff chose Dr. Warren Stone, who was professor of surgery at the University of Louisiana; Miller chose the equally distinguished Dr. Armand Mercier, a graduate of the College of Louis le Grand in France. Both were somewhat overqualified for the simple task they were being asked to perform—in the words of the court order, “to examine the moles or marks upon the thighs of the plaintiff and to report in writing to the court on or before the 11th June on the nature, appearance and cause of the same.” The inspection, the parties agreed, would take place in a room above the courtroom on June 4.
Meanwhile, the defense case ground on, Grymes calling witness after witness, each confirming the other: they hadn’t seen Mary Miller in Miller’s possession earlier than 1822; no one had heard her speak with a German accent; she had never complained about being a slave; as far as they knew, Miller never owned land in Attakapas earlier than 1830.
The other witness to the power of attorney, Cornelius Hurst, gave evidence. He recognized his own signature, but he had no recollection of this particular document. Nor did he recall anything about Anthony Williams. But then, it was over twenty years ago.
William Turner said that he had been Miller’s partner for three years, between 1834 and 1837. He now ran a rival sawmill down on the levee. Turner said he had run into Sally Miller about eight or nine months ago, wandering below the French Quarter, in the Faubourg Marigny, and had asked her what she was doing there. She had told him that she was a free white woman. That had somewhat surprised Mr. Turner, because when he had met her in 1834, she had called herself Mary Brigger, from the name of the colored boy she was living with, and had several slave children underfoot.
Another witness, Mr. H. B. Stringer, a commissary of the Third Municipality, said he had lived for almost two years with Miller, from 1834 to 1836. Seeing that she was so very white, he had once asked Mary where she was from. She had replied that she came to the country young, and believed she came from Georgia, or Mobile in Alabama. Stringer said he had no doubt that she was a slave—he had only asked her the question because her light color had excited his sympathy.
After rejecting Sally Miller’s request to be a witness for her, Daphne Crawford appeared in court to give testimony on Miller’s side. The laws of Louisiana, although allowing free men and women of color to give evidence, required that on the court record they be designated as f.m.c. or f.w.c.*, the intention being to warn juries and judges not to give their testimony the same weight as the word of a white person. Madame Crawford recounted how, during the summer of 1822, Miller had paid her to nurse a little girl named Bridget who was suffering from yellow fever. Bridget had told her that a man had brought her to New Orleans from Mobile.
Upton asked the witness about Bridget’s color.
She was no fairer than me, said Crawford. When she had the yellow fever she looked white, but when she recovered she was darker.
She looked like a white person?
I never thought Bridget was anything but a mulatto.
It wasn’t the answer Upton wanted. He persisted. But when you first saw her, what did she look like?
She looked sunburned, but when she recovered from the yellow fever, she looked no clearer than I do. She looked dark.
Opinions of this sort needed rebutting and Upton found, of all people, a slave trader to do it. Mr. A. Piernas had acted as the broker for Belmonti in purchasing Mary from Miller in 1838. Although the defense hadn’t completed its evidence, Buchanan allowed Upton to interpose Piernas’s testimony. Piernas told the court that Belmonti had commissioned him to approach Miller to see if he would sell Mary. He said he had always known that Mary was Miller’s slave, but he had an opinion of his own.
And what was that? Upton asked.
She didn’t look like a colored person to me. I know my slaves, and I never observed anything in her face which resembled the African race.
To which, Grymes asked only one question: That is a mere opinion of yours, isn’t it, and not based on any fact you can bring to this court?
Piernas agreed that was the case.
Belatedly, and as his final witness, Grymes produced someone who was able to bring Anthony Williams into the proceedings, although, it must be said, not in a totally convincing way. William Johnson said that he was crippled during the war against the British, but in 1823, when he was still working as a carpenter, he had placed orders for timber at Miller’s sawmill. He saw the plaintiff there and he thought she was about twelve or thirteen. She spoke English fluently enough. One day he asked her where she had come from, and she told him Mobile. She had been brought to New Orleans by Mr. Williams, who had sold her to Mr. Miller.
Upton’s cross-examination hardly helped his cause. He challenged Johnson on his recall that Sally Miller had ever mentioned Williams to him, only to have Johnson repeat the claim, and then add that she had mentioned it to him many times. Upton asked him if Sally spoke with an accent, only to be told that he never knew Miller to have had a Dutch girl in his family. If he’d had one, he would have known about it, he said. He knew all Miller’s house servants. There was another one called Mary—a tall quadroon girl, just as fair as the plaintiff and with hair just as straight.
So, the case drew to a close. Grymes announced that he had no further witnesses. There was only one more piece of evidence, and that was the doctors’ report.
On the following Tuesday, Sally Miller, escorted by Eva Schuber, presented herself at the old Presbytere building. The two women followed the sheriff up the stairs, through the crush of lawyers and litigants, past the courtroom that was now so familiar to them, to steps that led to the third floor. They waited nervously on a bench for half an hour until Drs Stone and Mercier arrived. Sally was immediately beckoned inside one of the rooms. Eva was told to stay where she was.
The next day, Upton received a message from the clerk of court that the doctors’ report had been filed. Did he want to look at it? Upton hurried to the courthouse. With a broad smile on his face, Mr. Gilmore handed the report to Upton and watched as the lawyer untied the tape around the cover sheet. Upton read it quickly. It couldn’t have been better. The doctors had written:
We, the undersigned … did, on the 4th June, proceed to a room situate above the court, examine the said Sally Miller and did find:
1. On the middle of the internal part of the left thigh, a mark of the size of a lentil, of an irregular form, of a brown color, and presenting on its surface three small nipples of a deeper color, with strong and black hair.
2. About the superior third of the right thigh, a mark presenting a slight prominence on the skin, of the size of a coffee bean, of an oval form, being composed en
tirely of small protuberances of about the same dimensions of a blackish color, in one word, resembling a blackberry.
Conclusion
1. These marks ought to be considered as Navi materni.
2. They are congenital, or in other words, the person was born with them.
3. There is no process by means of which artificial spots bearing all the characters of these marks, can be produced.
New Orleans, 4th June, 1844.
Mercier, D.P.
W. Stone, M.D.
When Eva Schuber came to Upton’s office the next day, he showed her what the doctors had written. It can’t be challenged, he assured her. Grymes and Miller had to accept that the moles had been with Sally from birth. It was very good news. The case was almost over. The evidence was all in. He would present his final arguments on Tuesday, Grymes would reply, and then it was finished. They had done their best. Then it would be up to Judge Buchanan.
Not quite. Eva said that she had another witness for him. She went outside and ushered a middle-aged man into the room. She introduced Upton to the son of Locksmith Müller, a cousin of Salomé Müller. A farmer, Upton judged from his appearance. He now lived in Mississippi, she said, but just by chance he was in New Orleans for a few days. His name was Daniel Müller. Eva’s two sons had taken Daniel to meet Sally Miller at her lodgings in Lafayette only the previous night and he had recognized his cousin the moment he had set eyes on her. He had to give evidence, she said firmly. He could talk about the moles as well.
Upton explained the difficulties. The testimony part of the case had ended and Grymes would be sure to oppose any attempt to enter further evidence. It would then be up to Buchanan, and he might not allow it. But he could try, couldn’t he? Well, it depended on what Daniel had to say. Was his evidence worth the effort?
Upton spent several minutes talking to Daniel Müller. He seemed smart enough and he was convinced that the woman he had seen the previous evening was his cousin. Perhaps his evidence might help if Buchanan was still undecided. Anyway, it couldn’t hurt. Upton told Eva to bring Daniel along when the hearing resumed and he would see what he could do.
Upton spent the next few days preparing his final address. As he read over what he had written, he became even more convinced that victory must be theirs. It wouldn’t matter if Buchanan refused to hear Daniel Müller. He was sure that they had made their case as it was.
As Buchanan took the bench, Upton readied himself to ask for leave to introduce Daniel Müller’s evidence, but in a moment of hesitation, the opportunity was lost. Grymes was on his feet. Upton was surprised to hear that it was his opponent who wanted to reopen. He had some vital, important, new evidence, which must be heard if justice was to be done. Grymes handed Buchanan a deposition from John Fitz Miller. He explained that it had been composed only that morning— as a matter of utmost urgency. Of course, he had a copy for his opponent, and with a gracious bow, he placed it in Upton’s fingers. It was half a page in length, written in Miller’s hand and in evident haste. Since his counsel had “announced the closing of the evidence,” Miller had written, he “had discovered that the first child of the plaintiff was baptised and a record of it exists.” Annexed to the affidavit was an extract of the Register of Baptism from the St. Louis Cathedral of New Orleans.106 It was in French. As Upton struggled to understand what it said, he had his ear cocked, listening to Grymes explain that a Mrs. Labarre, the godmother to the baby, was waiting to give evidence, if His Honor so allowed. Grymes turned to point to an elderly, colored woman sitting on a bench behind him.
Upton looked at the document in confusion. Where was this leading? Grymes guided Buchanan through the contents of the extract. It showed that within the archives of the church could be found a record of the baptism of a boy named Jean, to a mother named Marie, a quadroon enslaved to John Miller. The godmother was, as Grymes had suggested, Rosalie Labarre, and the godfather was someone called Célestin Médecin. The child was born on December 29, 1825, and the baptism took place on May 9, 1826.
Perhaps so, but it still made no sense to Upton. What did it have to do with the case? Who was Marie? Who was Jean? The vital paragraph of the certificate read:
L’an 1826 et le 9 de Mai a été baptisé Jean, né le 29 Décembre 1825, fils naturel de Marie, quarteronne, esclave John Miller, le parrain a été Célestin Médecin et la marraine Rosalie Labarre.
Presumably, Grymes would argue that “Marie, quarteronne, esclave John Miller” was Mary Miller. Her child, according to this, was Jean.
Buchanan was also puzzled. Grymes assured him that Madame Labarre would explain all. It would only take a few minutes, and she was ready to take the stand. Upton objected, his main point being that evidence coming from a public record, as this obviously was, should have been found by the defendants earlier and presented before they closed their case. Even as he spoke, he could see it was a lost cause. Buchanan wanted to know more about this cryptic new document that Grymes thought was so important.
Madame Labarre was noted in the court record as being a free woman of color. Under Grymes’s guidance, she told the court that in 1825 she lived in the area in the front of Miller’s sawmill. She knew Mary Miller very well. She was made the godmother of Mary Miller’s child during a baptism at the St. Louis Cathedral. The godfather was Célestin Médecin. He now lived in Mexico.
Grymes asked her to explain who Jean was. The explanation was simple. Jean was Lafayette. The vicaire of the cathedral had said he couldn’t be baptized Lafayette, unless they had the general’s permission, and of course they couldn’t get that, so he had to be Jean.
This was all Grymes had to ask. He thanked her and turned to Upton for his cross-examination.
Even as he was getting to his feet, Upton began to realize the implication of this woman’s evidence and it horrified him. He paused, his mind racing in several directions at once. He needed time to think. Looking up at Buchanan, he asked for a short adjournment. He needed to consider what Grymes had sprung upon him. Buchanan, now beginning to appreciate where Grymes had led the case, agreed.
Upton sat at the bar table, took a deep breath, then counted the years off on his fingers. There was no getting away from it. If Madame Labarre’s evidence was allowed to stand, Sally Miller had given birth to Lafayette at around the age of ten.
Upton instantly understood the dreadful problems his case now faced. A succession of his own witnesses had sworn that Salomé Müller was either two or three when she arrived in New Orleans in March 1818. His chief witness, Eva Schuber, had claimed she was aged two years and three months when she left Alsace in the spring of 1817. This made her ten when she had Yellow Jim’s child and perhaps nine when he was conceived.
He knew that Grymes would claim that, as a matter of accepted biological knowledge, it was most unlikely that a child of such tender years would be capable of giving birth—unless she had black blood in her veins; it being a matter of common knowledge in the South that Negro women were much more sexually precocious than white women. Wasn’t it everyone’s experience that slave girls had babies while they were still children themselves? The heat of Africa had made women fertile at an earlier age.
Grymes would then point out that Miller’s witnesses had said that Sally Miller was twelve when Anthony Williams left her with Miller in August 1822, making her fifteen when Lafayette was born. Surely, this was the more likely scenario. The only logical conclusion to draw from the disparities in their ages was that Salomé Müller and Sally Miller were not the same person.
Upton took Sally into the corridor outside the courtroom. Well, was it true? he asked. No, it wasn’t, she replied. Lafayette was born much later than 1825. She couldn’t say when, but it was much later. He was never called Jean. The midwife at Lafayette’s birth was Madame Bertrand and she would confirm what she was saying. She would know when Lafayette was born, because she kept a book of all the births she attended.
Well, what about the baptism? Upton asked. She had never been to any baptism
for Lafayette, she replied. She knew nothing about him being baptized. Upton examined his copy of the certificate. There was nothing to suggest that either she or Yellow Jim had been present. He recalled Rosalie Labarre’s evidence—she hadn’t claimed that the parents had been there. This didn’t surprise him. In Louisiana, a master might well arrange for slave children to be baptized without the knowledge of their parents. A baptism, in addition to its religious significance, had the secondary and important purpose of creating a record of ownership on a document of impeccable authority.
When the court resumed, Upton began his cross-examination of Rosalie Labarre. He asked her why she had been chosen as the godmother of Lafayette. She didn’t know; perhaps it was because she lived closest to the sawmill. Upton suggested that she had given evidence against Sally Miller because she bore her ill will. This, she denied. She was a friend and still was. Never had she quarreled with her. He asked her how old Mary was when she gave birth to Lafayette. Madame Labarre replied that she was about thirteen. How could she be sure? Because she was there when the child was born. And so was Mrs. Canby. Another woman, whose name she didn’t know, was also present. Upton asked her if she knew who the father was. It was Jim Miller, she said. Had she seen any marks on the legs of Mary Miller while the baby was being born? No, she hadn’t.
Upton sat down. He realized that he hadn’t greatly diminished Madame Labarre’s evidence but he could think of nothing more to ask her.
Grymes then proposed that the extract of the record of the baptism of Lafayette Miller be accepted into the court record. Upton objected, but Buchanan received it anyway.
Grymes had only one question of Madame Labarre in reexamination. He asked her to look at the woman seated next to Mr. Upton. Could she be sure she was the same person she knew as Mary Miller?
Madame Labarre looked at Sally Miller. Yes, she said, it was the same person.