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.

45
which before his imprisonment he had maintained with Gay, and in the very first
interview opened to him the plot, if he is to be believed, to screen a culprit from
punishment, by a false charge of the crime of burning a depot, upon an unoffending
persos. Having drawn Gay into that scheme, he offered himself to the rail road
company to be enrolled, and was accepted, at a regular salary of forty dollars a
month, as a member of their band of spies and informers. His engagement was to
furnish sufficient evidence to bring Abel F. Fitch and his supposed associates to
tral, for some felony against the railroad, out of Jackson County. He is cunning,
plausible, bold and persevering. There he sits. Men imagine that they see his
history written in his form and features. They say that he looks lean and mali
*ious, and that he
"'Will look hollow as a ghost,
"As dim and meagre as an ague's fits."
They say (superstitiously perhaps) that
"So he'll die,
"And rising so again,
"His mother, when she shall meet him in the court of Heaven,
"She shall not know him."
He is impeached by one hundred and twenty-one witnesses, all of whom say his repation for truth and veracity is bad, many say very bad; all say it is so bad they
would not give him credit on oath. He has lived in Sylvan, since he came out of prison.
Sylvan, Grass Lake and Sharon are contiguous. These three towns send one hundred
and eleven of the witnesses. Twenty-five omitted to state the distance of their
homes from Phelps' residence. The average distance of the remaining eighty-six
is two miles and a third. One of these, an honest and sensible German, persisted
in declaring that his reason for discrediting Phelps was, that his heart told him not
to believe a man who had been in state prison. All the others testified from a
knowledge of Phelps' reputation, before he went to prison, or before or after this prosecution began: twenty-seven of reputation since he came from the prison, and before as
well as after the prosecution commenced; eight speak of his character before he
went to prison, and not afterwards; six of his character while in the state prison,
and seventy-seven of his fame, all the way through from 1840 until now.
These witnesses when cross-examined by the Counsel for the People and required
to describe the rumors which have ripened into this withering, blasting impeachment,
say that he is charged with perjury, larceny, employing labor without paying its
hire, travelling under mysterious and suspicious circumstances, swearing through the
Courts causes in which he is employed as an advocate, false pretences of having re covered large sums of money from the State for unjust imprisonment, feeding his
horses with his neighbor's wheat and oats, offering to lend fictitious sums of money
on mortgages, pretending to imaginary contracts for grading the Railroad and building
depots, false pretences about the title and quality of lands, baseless pretences about
an agency of a factory that has no existence, hypocritical pretences to piety, malicious
swearing against his best friends for money, a universal suspicion of dealing in coun terfeit money, and associating with and harboring depraved and abandoned men. Among the witnesses are laborers, mechanics, farmsrs, a lawyer, doctors, constables,
magistrates, judges, members of the House of Representatives, Senators, and many
lay members and officers of various religious societies. One of the witnesses is a
brother in-law of Phelps, and a large number of the witnesses quote his father-in-law
for the reputation which they assign. That father-in-law refused to appear'under
our subpoena, and was not produced to repel the impeachment. When this singular
exposure was made, the learned District Attorney remarked that it was said in the
Scripture that "a man's enemy should be they of his own household." How guilty a
life must that be that forfeits the enjoyment of all the natural affections! When
you consider the number of these witnesses, their occupation and character, their
advantages of acquaintance with the subject of their testimony and their relations
to the witness, and when you consider that 86 of them are drawn from a circle of
les than three miles containing his residence, in a purely rural district in the inte rior of the Peninsula, I think you will admit that an impeachment so effective, so
Naive, was never before prgto4 i a court of justice.