Celia, a Slave Read online

  On the following morning, Monday, June 25, the official case of the State of Missouri versus Celia, a Slave began. Because all of the individuals involved in the official proceedings were on hand early on the morning of June 25, it is evident that preparations for an inquest had been made sometime during the evening of Sunday, June 24. Two justices of the peace from neighboring Cedar Township, D. M. Whyte and Isaac P. Howe, conducted the inquest. Howe was the son of a wealthy Presbyterian minister and farmer who upon his death had willed over $20,000 to Fulton’s Presbyterian church. Isaac had inherited his farm from his father. Sixty-three years of age at the time of the inquest, Isaac Howe in 1850 owned land valued at over $1,600. He also owned six slaves, four males aged 13 to 52, and two females, aged 35 and 65, some, perhaps all, of whom he continued to hold in 1855. As the probable owner of female slaves, Howe, like William Powell, could hardly have been an objective judicial official. About D. M. Whyte little is known, although his office indicates that he was a man of some means, and very likely also a slaveholder.9

  The inquest was held after David Newsom filed an affidavit with Whyte and Howe on the morning of June 25. The affidavit charged that David Newsom “has cause to suspect and believe and does suspect and believe that one Negro woman named Celia a Slave of the said Robert Newsom did at the county aforesaid feloniously, willfully and with malice aforethought with a club or some other weapon strike and mortally wound the said Robert Newsom, of which wound or wounds the said Robert Newsom instantly died.” Acting upon David Newsom’s affidavit, the justices issued a warrant for the arrest of Celia, which was “on the same day executed by bringing the body of said defendant before the court.” That same morning Whyte and Howe issued summonses to witnesses, including Harry Newsom and William Powell. Also on the morning of June 25, the justices instructed “any constable” of Fulton Township “to summon six good men and lawful men, householders … to appear before us at the late residence of Robert Newsom … to inquire how and by whose hands or by what cause he came to his death.”10

  The six-man inquest jury assembled was composed of local residents, men whose lives strikingly resembled that of the murdered Robert Newsom. Their names were George Thomas, Daniel Robinson, John Wells, Simpson Hyton, George Brown, and John Carrington. All had resided in Fulton County at least since the 1850 census. They were typical of Callaway’s residents, men of neither wealth nor social status. At fifty-eight the eldest of the group, Daniel Robinson was also the wealthiest. He was not a wealthy man, even by Callaway standards. Valued at $1,500 his real estate holdings were worth less than half those of Robert Newsom. Two of the men, George Brown, age twenty-five, and Simpson Hyton, age thirty-seven, owned no real property. George Thomas was the only slaveholder of record in 1850, and in that year held four female slaves, an adult and three children. Except for Hyton, who was a wagonmaker, all of the jurymen were farmers.

  Like Newsom, the jurors had all come to Missouri from states to the east, bringing their families with them, for all were married. Even the youthful George Brown was not a native Missourian, but was born in Kentucky, as was his wife. Carrington, Hyton, and Thomas had also moved to Missouri from Kentucky; Wells was from Virginia; Robinson from Maryland. The 1850 census indicates that except for Brown, all were fathers. In that year Hyton listed two children, Carrington four, Thomas six, and Wells four. Robinson listed no children, although a young couple lived with him and his wife. The man, Simon Crow, was listed as a farmer and a native of Missouri, and was married to Eveline, age twenty-two, who like Robinson’s wife Elizabeth was born in Virginia. In all probability Eveline Crow was the Robinsons’ daughter.11

  Thus the six men who first heard evidence that Celia had killed Robert Newsom were, in practically every respect, his peers. As residents of Fulton Township, it is likely that at least some of the six were also personally acquainted with Newsom and his family, knowing them as neighbors and community members. On that June morning they gathered at the Newsom home to hear three people give testimony about the manner in which he had met his death. The three witnesses, too, were in all probability known personally by at least some, and perhaps all, of the jurors.

  The first witness was William Powell, who gave a straightforward account of his questioning of Celia the day before. The only family member to testify was young Coffee Waynescot, who at twelve years of age remained illiterate, unable even to sign his name. Why no adult member of the family testified is puzzling. The most probable explanation is that the evidence of Celia’s guilt seemed overwhelming and their testimony did not appear to be necessary. Also, given their shock and grief, it is understandable that they would not testify unless necessary, especially at a pretrial proceeding at which additional corroborating testimony was less essential. The boy briefly and straightforwardly summarized his part in the drama that had unfolded the previous day, and was dismissed. The final witness was Celia, whom the justices called to the stand. Celia’s account, like that of Powell and young Waynescot, was brief and to the point. She admitted that she had killed Newsom and disposed of the body in her fireplace. Her testimony added little to the information furnished by Powell and Waynescot, except that she insisted “she did not intend to kill him when she struck him but only wanted to hurt him.” Powell’s testimony had made it clear that Celia accepted total responsibility for Newsom’s death. Powell testified that Celia “said there was no person in the cabin that night but Mr. Robert Newsom and her children, and that she had no assistance in killing him.”12

  The response of the six inquest jurors to the testimony presented was predictable. After hearing the witnesses, the jurors quickly arrived at the finding that there was probable cause to arrest Celia and charge her with the murder of Robert Newsom. Acting upon the jury’s verdict, justices Whyte and Howe ordered the constable of Fulton Township to take Celia “and deliver her forthwith to the keeper of the common jail of said County to await her trial at the next term of the Circuit Court of said County.”13

  With Celia formally charged, all that remained was to tidy up some of the details associated with the holding of the inquest. David Newsom, Powell, and probably other potential witnesses were required to post bond to insure their appearance at the circuit court for Celia’s trial. Both Powell and Newsom pledged to forfeit to the state of Missouri one hundred dollars in “goods and chattels and tenements and chattels real” if they did not “personally appear before the Circuit Court” during its October term to testify against Celia. Documents summarizing the testimony of the witnesses were drawn up, signed, and attested to by the justices. David Newsom signed with a fine, steady hand, Celia with a mark indicating her illiteracy.

  The presiding justices of the peace also confirmed the costs of the inquest, which they forwarded to the justices of the county court. One Felix Nicols was paid eighty-five cents for serving summons to the jurors. Each of the six jurors received mileage costs, which ranged from sixty to seventy-five cents. Whyte and Howe presented the court with their own fees, some five dollars for issuing warrants, swearing the jury, and issuing subpoenas, and an additional request for reimbursement for the cost of travel to and from the Newsom farm. Among the bills submitted by the justices to the county court was a fee of five cents for swearing each witness. In this respect Celia was treated as an equal, as the justices recorded their charge “for swearing Celia a slave $.05.”14

  As Whyte and Howe directed, Celia, now formally charged with murdering her master, was escorted to the county jail in Fulton by the constable of Fulton Township, where she would be lodged until her trial. Her incarceration, however, did not calm the fears of some in the community that there was more to Newsom’s murder than the act of an individual slave. The account of the murder in the Fulton Telegraph of the following week did little to calm such fears. The paper’s report described Newsom as an old man who lived alone. While being visited by relatives, the Telegraph reported, Newsom had been attacked and killed by his slave Celia. The paper gave a graphic account of Celia’s disposal
of Newsom’s body, and indicated that the family had first suspected George of the killing. Only after George was questioned, according to the paper, was Celia implicated. The correspondent maintained that although Celia confessed to the murder and George insisted that he knew nothing about it, the Newsom family doubted that Celia could have done the deed alone. For some inexplicable reason the Telegraph’s account, which was picked up by the Boonville paper, was much less accurate and more alarmist than the account of the murder sent “by correspondent” to the Missouri Republican in St. Louis. This account, which lacked the lurid details found in the Fulton paper, made the Newsom kitchen the scene of the crime, but otherwise agreed with the testimony taken at the inquest, with one major exception. The correspondent reported that the murder was committed “without any sufficient cause.”15

  THE fact that papers in Missouri towns as far apart as Boonville, roughly forty miles upriver from Fulton, and St. Louis, approximately a hundred miles east of Fulton, carried reports of the murder indicates the level of the white population’s concern with slave violence, and especially with the murder of a slaveholder by one of his slaves. The Fulton Telegraph’s emphasis upon the fact that the Newsom family continued to suspect George’s involvement in the murder also indicates the unease with which slaveholders viewed their human property. There was good reason for the Newsoms to suspect that Celia had not acted alone in the killing of her master. They knew that she and George had been lovers, a relationship that gave George a strong motive for possible complicity in the crime. Because Celia was female, and because she had been ill, had in fact complained of an inability to work because of her illness, they had reason to doubt that, without the aid of another adult, she could have burned Newsom’s body in her cabin’s fireplace. As is seen below, events that occurred soon after Celia’s incarceration demonstrate that not only the Newsoms but others in Fulton and Callaway County were seriously concerned that George and possibly other slaves had taken part in Newsom’s murder.

  George certainly was aware of and took seriously the suspicions of members of the Newsom family and other members of the white community. In his questioning of George, William Powell had made it clear that the family suspected that he had harmed Newsom, or had helped Celia to do so. If the Telegraph’s report that members of the family continued to suspect George’s involvement even after Celia’s confession is accurate, then there is every reason to believe that their continuing suspicion was conveyed to George. Testimony at Celia’s trial also indicates that George continued to be questioned about the possibility of his aiding Celia. Under these circumstances, George would be completely at the mercy of Celia, for if she had implicated him, the family would have certainly believed her. Thus George’s safety was directly dependent upon Celia’s continued denial of his complicity, a situation of which he must have been fully aware. For George, dependence on Celia must have seemed little protection indeed, since it was he who had first implicated Celia, and because he had helped the family search for Newsom’s remains. Because he had experienced the methods of interrogation employed by local whites, George would have known it risky to assume that Celia would continue to deny his involvement, especially if her children were threatened. He also knew that Celia was aware of his actions, of his readiness to assure the Newsoms that it was Celia alone, and not himself, who had killed their father. George, therefore, elected to take matters into his own hands. In a desperate bid to insure that no harm would befall himself, George fled the Newsom farm. His escape only fueled rumors that he had been involved in the murder.16

  The threat of slave violence and possible insurrection was a specter that constantly haunted the white population of the antebellum South, and the residents of Callaway County were no exception. The fear was there before the United States acquired the land that would become Missouri. President Thomas Jefferson had acquired the Louisiana Purchase from the French when the nation was still in its infancy, only twenty years after the British had acknowledged the futility of continuing their war against American independence. The French had sold this vast region whose magnificent river systems beckoned further European settlement in part because of the very thing Callaway County’s residents feared in the summer of 1855, slave rebellion. Inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution, in 1789 Toussaint L’Ouverture, the grandson of an African king, led the half-million slaves of Haiti in a revolt against their some thirty thousand French colonial masters. After more than a decade of struggle and the betrayal, capture, and death of L’Ouverture, the Haitian slaves won independence under the leadership of General Jean-Jacques Dessalines, an ex-slave who in 1804 declared himself emperor of the new nation. In an act of jubilation and revenge, Dessalines’s black troops slaughtered many of the whites who remained in Haiti. Some of Haiti’s former slaveowners escaped to America, many landing in the southern ports of New Orleans and Charleston. These refugee planters brought with them tales of the unspeakable horrors of slave rebellion. The press spread their stories to guilt-ridden whites throughout the South, who, despite their protestations to the contrary, knew the power of the will to be free and feared it. For white southerners, Haiti became a symbol of that fear. In Virginia, the state from which came many of the early residents of Missouri and Callaway County, among them Robert Newsom and Theodorick Boulware, white fears of the influence of the Haitian slave revolts upon the native black population surfaced as early as 1793. Nearly three decades later, during the debates over Missouri’s admission to the Union, southern proponents of admission contended that statehood with slavery would make slave insurrection less likely by insuring that the slave population in the east would never become dangerously disproportionate to the white population. Northern opponents countered that statehood with slavery could lead to Haitian-like revolts in Missouri. That the white population of Callaway County shared these fears is evident from reports of black violence against former masters in the West Indies carried by the Fulton Telegraph as late as 1848.17

  A decade after Missouri joined the Union and approximately a decade before Celia’s birth, Nat Turner’s rebellion heightened the fear of slave rebellion that Haiti had instilled in the hearts of white southerners. In August 1831, a slave preacher on a Southampton County, Virginia, plantation led an uprising of a handful of slaves. In one terrible day of vengeance a merciless Nat and his followers murdered more than fifty whites—plantation masters and their families, men, women, and children. News of the rebellion flashed through the South, and within a matter of days Nat Turner was transformed into a symbol of rebellion, the personification of a terror that was to be guarded against at all cost. Given the large number of Virginians who had migrated to Missouri and Callaway County in the two decades following Nat Turner’s rebellion, there is statistically a high probability that among the county’s white residents in 1855 were individuals who had been in Virginia during the events of the Turner rebellion. Any of Callaway’s citizens who had been in Virginia in 1831 would have retained personal memories of the sense of panic that had gripped the state; of the preparations for war against the slave population taken by Virginia’s governor, John Floyd; of the bloody reckoning as militia units hunted down, tortured, and killed the rebels and other slaves merely suspected of being their accomplices.18

  White Missourians’ fear of slave plots was no mere fantasy. In 1850 a group of some thirty slaves in western Missouri had armed themselves with knives, clubs, and three guns and attempted to escape. Overtaken by a heavily armed posse, the slaves surrendered only after their leader was shot dead. The rise of the abolitionist movement had convinced southerners that northern abolitionists were a constant threat to their slave property and would go to any lengths to support planned escapes and insurrections. In Missouri this fear was heightened with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, and the struggle for Kansas between Free Soil and proslavery forces that: followed. Slaveholding Missourians came to view all nonslaveholding Kansas settlers as abolitionists and “nigger stealers,” ideologues
who threatened both the property and safety of law-abiding Missouri citizens. Shortly after Celia killed Newsom, for example, tales of the efforts of an Irish abolitionist named Martin Gallagher and a Methodist minister, W. H. Wylie, to aid an escape plot surfaced in Cash County. At a public meeting attended by some two hundred angry residents, Wylie was denounced for his role in the supposed plot and given seven days to leave the county. Wylie accepted the crowd’s suggestion.19

  And so in the summer of 1855 in Callaway County it is little wonder that rumors that Celia had an accomplice or accomplices in the murder of Robert Newsom persisted for over a week after her arrest. Nor is it strange that the persistent rumors alarmed a number of individuals in the white community other than members of the Newsom family. In fact, despite Celia’s insistence that she alone and unaided killed Newsom and disposed of his body, there was considerable circumstantial evidence to the contrary. George remained the logical suspect as her accomplice, and his escape provided a strong piece of circumstantial evidence implicating him in either the murder or the disposal of the body. Although Celia never implicated George, the fact that when questioned by William Powell she gave at least two versions of what happened in her cabin on the night Newsom was killed lent weight to suppositions that George had participated in the actual murder. The physical difficulties of burning a human body in a cabin fireplace within the period of time between approximately midnight and sunrise also supported speculation that Gelia had received assistance. To alone dispose of the body in this manner, Celia would have had to build a fire hot enough to burn the body, place the corpse in the flames and keep it there, and maintain the fire at a temperature high enough to consume Newsom’s flesh and reduce even his bones to a state of brittleness that allowed them to be crushed by a heavy object. Accomplishing all this would have taxed the strength of a healthy woman, and Celia was pregnant and sick. Finally, the fact that Celia’s children were in the cabin posed a problem. The stench of burning human flesh within the confines of the cabin, combined with the heat from the flames, surely would have aroused the children. Tending to two small children unaided while burning Newsom’s remains would have presented Celia with an extremely difficult task.