Argument of William H. Seward, in defence of Abel F. Fitch and others, under an indictment for arson, delivered at Detroit, on the 12th, 13th and 15th days of September, 1851.: Phonographically reported by T. C. Leland.

20
Michigan Centre during the three days of the Fair, in which himself or some of his
family or immediate personal friends were not found.
The remark imputed to Filley, that there would be no need of coffins, bears intrinsic evidence of being coined by Wescott,s own turgid imagination. So the remark about the scene, where the survivors should be looking down on the mangled
remains of the dead and the dying, while the conspirators should be feeling of the
mail bags and subjecting the R. R. to damages to Uncle Sam for the detention of
letters, could have proceeded from no other brain; and evidence enough that these
high swelling and gigantic words, with their lame and impotent conclusion, never
proceeded from the mouth of Filley, is found in the fact that Wescott equally draws
the same terrific phrase from off the tongue of Wm. Corwin, a teamster, and from off
the lips of Orlando D. Williams, a common stone mason.
Of course, gentlemen, even though these declarations and admissions were not
made by Fitch and Filley, Corwin and Williams, no one can prove that fact, because they are alleged to have been made to Wescott by these parties in private conversations with him alone. But, fortunately, when a witness stands impeached in
character, his testimony is to be rejected, unless it be confirmed, and when he is contradicted in one essential fact, that one contradiction overthrows his entire evidence.
You have haO his refutation and contradiction in regard to several essential facts.
There are more such refutations. We find onein the celebrated window scene. Wescott testifies that, one evening in August, 1850, he crept into the court-yard of
Fitch's house through the space made by displacing the lower end or base of one
of the pickets, while it hung by a nail on the upper bar, drew himself under the bedroom window, looked through the gauze curtain, saw Mr. and Mrs. Fitch retiring to
bed, and there heard him say to her that "they were watched close; that they must
hold up till the thing settled down a little; that the boys had, within a few weeks
past, knocked the Co. to the tune of $20,000."
You cannot have forgotten, that Wescott, in giving this narrative on his direct
examination, altogether omitted Mrs. Fitch's reply,and with what suspicious promptness he supplied the defect when it was pointed out to him on his cross-examina-e
tion: "Mrs. Fitch said she thought he had better let the railroad company alone,
and mind his own business.' You cannot have forgotten that he saw in the room
the safe, which was a dark object, on one side,while he could not see the bed,which
was a large white one, lying almost before him. The identical fence, through
which he alleges he passed, stands before you. Neither in that panel, nor in any
other is a picket that was loosened, and the whole was new and painted more than
a year before that transaction is said to have occurred. If a picket had been displaced, it would have made a space of only four inches. Wescott is a young Falstaff.
When pursued by dogs into Mud Creek, like his great prototype when cast
in his buckbasket into'he Thames, he could have exclaimed, "if the bottom had been as deep as hell I should have found it." But even Calvin Edson, who was exhibited as a living skeleton, could not have gone through that fence.
Amanda Fitch and Charlotte Beman proved that from July to the middle of Sep tember Mr. and Mrs. Fitch slept in an upper chamber. I waive the testimony of
Miss Clark, because of the confusion into which she fell about dates. An attempt
was made to show that Mr. and Mrs. Fitch occupied the lower bed-room in the
summer, but it totally failed. The witness Burr testifies that on the 29th of August,
at about 8 o'clock in the morning, he found Mr. Fitch in bed in that room, which
might have happened in consequence of temporary illness; but Mrs. Fitch, who
came upon the stand to support the testimony of her daughter and Miss Beman, and
who was denied leave, could not be excluded from contradicting the testimony of
Burr, and so the alibt is sustained beyond dispute or contradiction.
Wescott made a strong point by a conversation, before adverted to, in which Fil,
ley paid Williams money on account of the Gazelle, but this is disproved by Crow ell, who was present, and who testifies that the three dollars, so paid, was paid in
return for so much money borrowed. Again, Wescott testifies that the defendant
Fitch said "he had got Lester clear from the indictment found against him by false
swearing." No such admission could have been made, because we have produced