was insane. Upon hearing Brown’s evidence, John W. Galen, M.D., affirmed
at once that McFarland was insane.
12. Five months ago, McFarland showed his customary pistol, in his
customary way, to his bed-fellow, Charles A. Dana, and told him he was
going to kill Richardson the first time an opportunity offered. Evidence
of insanity.
13. Five months and two weeks ago McFarland asked John Morgan the time
of day, and turned and walked rapidly away without waiting for an answer.
Almost indubitable evidence of insanity. And–
14. It is remarkable that exactly one week after this circumstance, the
prisoner, Daniel McFarland, confronted Albert D. Richardson suddenly and
without warning, and shot him dead. This is manifest insanity.
Everything we know of the prisoner goes to show that if he had been sane
at the time, he would have shot his victim from behind.
15. There is an absolutely overwhelming mass of testimony to show that
an hour before the shooting, McFarland was ANXIOUS AND UNEASY, and that
five minutes after it he was EXCITED. Thus the accumulating conjectures
and evidences of insanity culminate in this sublime and unimpeachable
proof of it. Therefore–
Your Honor and Gentlemen–We the jury pronounce the said Daniel McFarland
INNOCENT OF MURDER, BUT CALAMITOUSLY INSANE.
The scene that ensued almost defies description. Hats, handkerchiefs and
bonnets were frantically waved above the massed heads in the courtroom,
and three tremendous cheers and a tiger told where the sympathies of the
court and people were. Then a hundred pursed lips were advanced to kiss
the liberated prisoner, and many a hand thrust out to give him a
congratulatory shake–but presto! with a maniac’s own quickness and a
maniac’s own fury the lunatic assassin of Richardson fell upon his
friends with teeth and nails, boots and office furniture, and the amazing
rapidity with which he broke heads and limbs, and rent and sundered
bodies, till nearly a hundred citizens were reduced to mere quivering
heaps of fleshy odds and ends and crimson rags, was like nothing in this
world but the exultant frenzy of a plunging, tearing, roaring devil of a
steam machine when it snatches a human being and spins him and whirls him
till he shreds away to nothingness like a “Four o’clock” before the
breath of a child.
The destruction was awful. It is said that within the space of eight
minutes McFarland killed and crippled some six score persons and tore
down a large portion of the City Hall building, carrying away and casting
into Broadway six or seven marble columns fifty-four feet long and
weighing nearly two tons each. But he was finally captured and sent in
chains to the lunatic asylum for life.
(By late telegrams it appears that this is a mistake.–Editor Express.)
But the really curious part of this whole matter is yet to be told. And
that is, that McFarland’s most intimate friends believe that the very
next time that it ever occurred to him that the insanity plea was not a
mere politic pretense, was when the verdict came in. They think that the
startling thought burst upon him then, that if twelve good and true men,
able to comprehend all the baseness of perjury, proclaimed under oath
that he was a lunatic, there was no gainsaying such evidence and that he
UNQUESTIONABLY WAS INSANE!
Possibly that was really the way of it. It is dreadful to think that
maybe the most awful calamity that can befall a man, namely, loss of
reason, was precipitated upon this poor prisoner’s head by a jury that
could have hanged him instead, and so done him a mercy and his country a
service.
POSTSCRIPT-LATER
May 11–I do not expect anybody to believe so astounding a thing, and yet
it is the solemn truth that instead of instantly sending the dangerous
lunatic to the insane asylum (which I naturally supposed they would do,
and so I prematurely said they had) the court has actually SET HIM AT
LIBERTY. Comment is unnecessary. M. T.
THE EUROPEAN WARS –[From the Buffalo Express, July 25, 1870.]
First Day
THE EUROPEAN WAR!!!
NO BATTLE YET!!!
HOSTILITIES IMMINENT!!!
TREMENDOUS EXCITEMENT.
AUSTRIA ARMING!
BERLIN, Tuesday.
No battle has been fought yet. But hostilities may burst forth any week.