The Works Author:DANIEL WEBSTER Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE MURDER OF CAPTAIN JOSEPH WHITE.1 INTRODUCTORY NOTE.f The following argument was addressed to the jury at a trial for a remarkable murder. A more extrao... more »rdinary case never occurred in this country, nor is it equalled in strange interest by any trial in the French Causes Ctlebres or the English State Trials. Deep sensation and intense curiosity were excited through the whole country, at the time of the occurrence of the event, not only by the atrocity of the crime, bnt by the position of the victim, and the romantic incidents in the dotection and fate of the assassin and his accomplices. The following ontline of the facts will assist the reader to understand the bearings of the argument. Joseph White, Esq., was found murdered in his bed, in his mansion- house, on the morning of the 7th of April, 1830. He was a wealthy merchant of Salem, eighty-two years of- age, and had for many years given up active business. His servant-man rose that morning at six o'clock, and on going down into the kitehen, and opening the shntters of the window, saw that the back window of the east parlor was open, and that a plank was raised to the window from the back yard ; he then went into the parlor, bnt saw no trace of any person having been there. He went to the apartment of the maid-servant, and told her, and then into Mr. White's chamber by its back door, and saw that the door of his chamber, leading into the front entry, was open. On approaching the bed he found the bed-clothes turned down, and Mr. White dead, his countenance pallid, and his night-clothes and bed Argument on the Trial of John Francis Knapp, for the Murder of Joseph White, Esq., of Salem, in Essex County, Massachusetts, on the Night of the 6th of April, 1830. t This interesting and valuable account of the crime w...« less