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.

I come next to consider Overt Actz in which defendants are claimed to be identified'
as offenders, and of which the attending circumstances are given or claimed to be gives
Of this I notice first, the breaking of a hand car as alleged by the witness Horace
Caswell. He states it thus: Filly in May'49 wanted to borrow a hand car of Miller,?
agent of the Company to go to Leoni. Miller refused. Filly said that a hand car should
not stay at Michigan Centre, it would be broken every night, Caswell adds that "a hand
car was found broken in the morning. Filly,who had gone out before daylight, returned
and asked who they laid thebreaking of the hand car to." I answered "nobody." Hereplied "never mind; the man who broke it knows who did it, and he probably is the man
who lives nearest to it." Although I think this witness will be found unworthy of credit,
I assume, for arguments' sake, that this transaction occurred as proved, and I grant also
that Filly admitted sufficiently the breaking of the hand car. Nevertheless it wa an
act of peevish, personal retaliation for a present unkindness. It proceeded from that act
of unkindness. It had no origin before; certainly not in any combination with any other
party. It had an immediate object and end-retaliation for that unkindness. Nobody:
advised it beforehand, nobody had any knowledge that it was to be committed, nobodyknew when it was committed nor participated in the trespass; nobody knew of it or aup
proved of it afterwards. The act was unjustifiable but Filly alone was responsible for it. He
was responsible elsewhere not here; in another way, not in a trial for arson. It is simply
absurd to claim that this is evidence of a plot or conspiracy between Filly andl other de?
fendants to burn the depot at Detroit six months afteiwards.
2. An obstruction of the railroad late in'49 or early in'50, claimed to be proved by,,
Isaac S. Smith. He says the "cars had stopped at the Whlaite Bridge by reason of the
obstruction of a mad-sill, as I supposed. I went down with Marsh, Terrill, Earl and
Grant." Terrill and Grant are defendants. The proof does not show that the cars were
obstructecby a mnudsill, If that was the case, Terrill and Grant, the only defendants
implicated, certainty did not lay the mud-sill on the track. But Smith says farther that,
on returning from the railroad, Terrill fell behind, and that he (Smith) saw Terrill putting
a-piece of strap rail on the track. Marsh says that Smith pointed out to him the strap
iron lying on the track, and he saw Terrill walking away from it. You remember, Gentiemen, that the track of the railroad was strewed with broken pieces of the fiat or strap,
rail. It may well be doubted whether Smith did not mistake what Terrill was doing
These broken straps lying about the track were l.able to be thrown upon it, by the cars,
when passing. Such a piece of iron could not throw the cars off nor impede their mo —
tion. But if that were the case, the mischievous act was one of sudden or, at least, immediate impulse. It was Terrill's own act, and no other person was concerned in it at
the time, nor before, nor afterwards,
3. Amos Van Valen and George Knox relate, that on a summer afternoon, when theywere driving their cows near the railroad in the vicinity of Marshall, they saw Dr. Ebenezer Farnham, one of the defendants who resided at Jackson, 40 miles distant from Marshall, but who was then at that place, walking on the track and swinging a piece of strasp-.
iron for the purpose, as they supposed, of knock)ing out the wedges. They deseribed the
motion of the Dr.'s arm in such a manner as to leave no doubt that they mistook his.
cane for an iron bar, and its playful motion for a trespass. However that may have been,
the defendant even with an iron bar, under such a motion, could not have displaced a
wedge that would not have been shaken out by a passing, engine.
4, The prosecution dwell upon the burning of a culvert east of Filley's house in June,
'51, proved by W. P. Stanton. He says that he was at Filley's, "that Mrs.Filley came im -w
and gave the alarm, that the culvert was on fire. Stanton and Fitch went up to see it
Stanton proposed to get water and put out the fire. Fitch with his usual smile (for be
was always pleasant to me) answered,'you' will have to go out of this town to find:
anybody to put it out."' Fitch's remark certainly does not show that he or any other per son fired the culvert. It was a suggestion naturally arising from the aggravated state of public feeling in that town, but it proves no previous knowledge nor design on thepart of Fitch, much less of any other defendant. The transaction, however, was one capable of being perverted to the use of the informers, and so it was noted in the diary of
Phelps and Lake, to be the subject of admissions or declarations made by the defendants.
Lake says that Phelps asked Filley how it was done. Filley replied "we can say the
wind blew the rails in the culvert and the engine dropped fire upon them," but Lake in forms us that Filley said that the culvert was burned one or two days before his conver cation with Filley, that is to say in Feb.'51, whereas the culvert was burned in June'Son
Phelp's stumbled into the same error. He says "we talked about the culvert that was:.
I