CHAPTER XXVII

DECLARED A LUNATIC

1872-1873

I had hardly got out of the Presidential race before I got into jail again. I passed easily from one kind of life to the other. In fact, the last thing I did in connection with my political campaign had been the indirect cause of getting me into the Tombs. The Tombs has the honor of being the fourteenth jail that has given me shelter for purposes of meditation.

In November, '72, I was making a speech from Henry Clews's steps in Wall Street, partly to quiet a mob, when a paper was thrust into my hand. I glanced at it, thinking it had to do with myself, and saw that Victoria C. Woodhull and Tennie C. Claflin had been arrested for publishing in their paper in Brooklyn an account of a scandal about a famous clergyman in that city. The charge was "obscenity," and they had been arrested at the instance of Anthony Comstock. I immediately said: "This may be libel, but it is not obscenity."

That assertion, with what I soon did to establish its truth, got me into jail, with the result that six courts in succession--afraid to bring me to trial for "obscenity"--declared me a "lunatic," and prevented my enjoyment of property in Omaha, Nebraska, which is now worth millions of dollars.

From Wall Street I hurried to Ludlow Street Jail, where I found Victoria C. Woodhull and Tennie C. Claflin in a cell about eight by four feet. I was indignant that two women, who had merely published a current rumor, should be treated in this way, and took a piece of charcoal and wrote, on the newly whitewashed walls of the cell a couplet suggesting the baseness of this attack upon their reputations. It is sufficient to say here that public feeling was so aroused that these women were soon set free; but I got myself deeper and deeper into the toils of the courts.

In order to prove that the publication was not obscene, if judged by Christian standards of purity, I published in my paper, called The Train Ligue, three columns of quotations from the Bible. Every verse I used was worse than anything published by these women. I was immediately arrested on a charge of "obscenity," and taken to the Tombs. I was never tried on this charge, but was kept in jail as a lunatic, and then dismissed, under the ban of declared lunacy, and have so remained for thirty years. Although the public pretended to be against me, it was very eager to buy the edition of my paper that gave these extracts from the Bible. The price of the paper rose from five cents a copy to twenty, forty, sixty cents, and even to one dollar. In a few days it was selling surreptitiously for two dollars a copy.

I was put in Tweed's cell, number 56, in "Murderers' Row," in the Tombs, where at that time were twenty-two men imprisoned under the charge of murder. I made the twenty-third inhabitant of that ghastly "Row." It is remarkable that not one of these men was hanged. All were either acquitted, or tried and sentenced and got off with varying terms of service.

It was not a select, but it was at least a famous, group of men in "Murderers' Row." Across the narrow hallway, just opposite my cell, was Edward S. Stokes, who had killed James Fisk, Jr. Next to me were John J. Scannell and Richard Croker, both of whom have been prominent in the city administration in later years. There was, also, the famous Sharkey, who might have got into worse trouble than any of us, but who escaped through the pluck and ingenuity of Maggie Jordan. Maggie happened to be about the same size as her lover, and changed clothes with him in the cell. The warden, one morning, found he had a woman in his cage instead of Sharkey. This was the last ever heard of Sharkey, so far as I know.

My chief purpose in jail was not to get out, but to be tried on the charge of obscenity. I had been arrested for that offense, and determined that I would be either acquitted or convicted. But I have never had a trial to this day. I do not believe that any court in the land would face the danger of trying to convict a man of publishing obscenity for quoting from the standard book on morality read throughout Christendom.

However this may be, I was offered a hundred avenues of escape from jail, every conceivable one, except the honest and straightforward one of a fair trial by jury. Men offered to bail me out; twice I was taken out on proceedings instituted by women; but I would not avail myself of this way to freedom. Several times I was left alone in the court-house or in hallways, or other places, where access to the street was easy, entirely without guards, in the vain hope that I would walk off with my liberty. I was discharged by the courts; and I was offered freedom if I would sign certain papers that were brought to me, but I invariably refused to look at them. In all cases I merely turned back and took my place in the cell, and waited for justice.

In '73 I was finally taken before Judge Davis in the Court of Oyer and Terminer. William F. Howe, who died this year, was one of my counsel, and Clark Bell was another. Howe took the ground, first, that obviously there could be nothing obscene in the publication of extracts from the Bible, and, second, if there were, that I was insane at the time of the publication. The judge hastily said that he would instruct the jury to acquit me if the defense took this position. Mr. Bell then asked that a simple verdict of "not guilty" be rendered; but the judge insisted upon its form being "Not guilty, on the ground of insanity." This verdict was taken.

I rose immediately, and said: "I protest against this whole proceeding. I have been four months in jail; and I have had no trial for the offense with which I am charged." I felt that I was in the same plight as Paul. The Bible and the Church, surely, could not condemn me for quoting Scripture; and I had appealed unto Cæsar; but Cæsar refused, out of sheer cowardice, to hear me and try me. I was not even listened to when I made this protest, and I shouted, so that all must hear me: "Your honor, I move your impeachment in the name of the people!"

The sensation was tremendous. "Sit down!" roared the judge. He evidently thought that I would attack him. An order committing me to the State Lunatic Asylum was issued, and I was taken back to the Tombs. But I did not go to the asylum. Another writ of habeas corpus took me out of jail, and I at last turned my back on the Tombs--a lunatic by judicial decree. I hope that the courts, inasmuch as I am their ward, and have been for thirty years, have protected me in my rights, and have safeguarded those interests in Omaha where some millions of dollars depend upon the question of my sanity.

The moment I was taken out of the Tombs, I went down town, had a bath, got a good meal, put on better clothes, and bought passage for England. I went to join my family at Homburg, as my sons were then in Germany, studying at Frankfort.

This Woodhull-Claflin affair had far-reaching effects. Besides leaving me for thirty years in the grip of the court, it affected many other persons. I shall refer here only to one of these, the publisher of a newspaper in Toledo, who printed some of the matter that I had printed in New York. He was prosecuted, and his paper and press were seized. The poor fellow asked me to lecture in his interest. I could not do this, but helped him to raise some money to buy a new printing-press. This was in August, '83, when I was at Vevay, Switzerland.

A worthless piece of paper eventually fell into the hands of another man, who proceeded to prosecute me, and, with the assistance of the courts, kept me in the Charles Street Jail, Boston, for some time. I was arrested for this old debt of another man, and was refused the constitutional relief of habeas corpus by Judge Devins and five other judges of Massachusetts. The amount of the debt had steadily increased, and was $800 in '89. Finally, I went before Judge McKim, and he at once dismissed the case as groundless.

This brought my jail experiences to a close. Was it fitting that Boston, where I had lived and worked; where I had devised the building of the greatest ships the world had known up to that time; where I had projected and organized the clipper-ship service to California, and opened a new era in the carrying trade of the world, and where I had organized the Union Pacific Railway to develop the entire West and draw continents nearer together, should put me in jail for a petty debt that I did not owe, as in some sort an evidence of its gratitude?

My prison experience has been more varied than that of the most confirmed and hardened criminal; and yet I have never committed a crime, cheated a human being, or told a lie. I have been imprisoned in almost every sort of jail that man has devised. I have been in police stations, in Marshalseas in England and in Ireland, in common jails in Boston, in the Bastile of Lyons, in the Prefecture at Tours as the prisoner of Gambetta, Dictator of France, and in the famous old Tombs of New York. I have used prisons well. They have been as schools to me, where I have reflected, and learned more about myself--and a man's own self is the best object of any one's study. I have, also, made jails the source of fruitful ideas, and from them have launched many of my most startling and useful projects and innovations. And so they have not been jails to me, any more than they were to Lovelace:

"Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage."