Killer Colt (52 page)
Authors: Harold Schechter
6.
Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer
, November 22, 1842.
7.
New York
Sun
, November 19, 1842, p. 2;
New York Tribune
, November 19, 1842, p. 2;
New-York Commercial Advertiser
, November 19, 1842, p. 2.
8.
Seward,
William H. Seward
, p. 634.
CONCLUSION: LEGENDS
1.
New York Herald
, November 23, 1842, p. 2.
2.
Christian Reflector
, November 23, 1842, p. 5.
3.
Ohio Repository
, December 1, 1842, p. 3.
4.
Life and Letters of John C. Colt
, letter 18, June 10, 1842.
5.
For a thorough discussion of Universalism, see Ann Lee Bressler,
The Universalist Movement in America 1770–1880
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
6.
Bressler,
Universalist Movement
, p. 39.
7.
Review of
Universalism Examined, Renounced, Exposed
by Matthew Hale Smith,
Princeton Review
, no. 4 (October 1843): pp. 527–28.
8.
Christian Watchman
, December 10, 1842, p. 12.
9.
Trumpet and Universalist Magazine
, December 31, 1842, p. 15.
10.
New York Evening Journal
, December 27, 1842, p. 3.
11.
See Louis P. Masur,
Rites of Execution: Capital Punishment and the Transformation of American Culture, 1776–1865
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
12.
Child,
Letters from New-York
, p. 139.
13.
New York Tribune
, November 19, 1842, p. 2.
14.
New York
Sun
, November 24, 1842, p. 2.
15.
Bergman,
Collected Writings of Walt Whitman
, pp. 162–63.
1.
New York
Sun
, November 21, 1842, p. 2.
2.
Macatamney,
Cradle Days
, p. 191.
3.
“Everything Is Changed,” p. 5.
4.
Nevins and Thomas,
George Templeton Strong
, p. 193;
Hartford Daily Courant
, December 12, 1842, p. 2.
5.
New-York Commercial Advertiser
, November 19, 1842.
6.
New York
Sun
, November 19, 1842.
7.
New York Herald
, November 20, 1842, p. 2.
1.
Carolyn L. Karcher,
The First Woman in the Republic: A Cultural Biography of Lydia Maria Child
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), p. 303. Despite the prominent literary and intellectual status she enjoyed in her own time, Child is best known today (to the extent that she is remembered at all) as the author of the holiday chestnut “Over the river and through the woods / To grandfather’s house we go,” originally published in the second volume of her collection
Flowers for Children
(1844).
2.
These remarks were excised from the later, edited version published in Child’s book
Letters from New-York
. See p. 243, n. 16.
3.
Mrs. Sigourney was a regular contributor to the
Juvenile Miscellany
, the popular bimonthly magazine that Mrs. Child founded in 1826. See Carolyn L. Karcher, “Lydia Maria Child and the
Juvenile Miscellany:
The Creation of an American Children’s Literature,” in
Periodical Literature in Nineteenth-Century America
, ed. Kenneth M. Price and Susan Belasco Smith (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1995), pp. 93–109.
4.
For more on this famously unsuccessful experiment in cooperative living, see Sterling F. Delano,
Brook Farm: The Dark Side of Utopia
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).
5.
Child,
Selected Letters
, pp. 183–84.
6.
See Lundeberg,
Submarine Battery
, pp. 31–34.
7.
Ibid., p. 31.
8.
A summary of James’s career can be found in Livingston,
Biographical Sketches
, pp. 93ff. For an account of the duel, see Dick Steward,
Duels and the Roots of Violence in Missouri
(Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000), pp. 126–27.
9.
This and the other letters from James are on file at the Connecticut Historical Society.
10.
Keating,
Flamboyant Mr. Colt
, p. 69; Rywell,
Man and Epoch
, p. 72; Hosley,
American Legend
, pp. 22–23.
11.
Lundeberg,
Submarine Battery
, p. 46.
12.
Ibid., p. 55; Hosley,
American Legend
, p. 22.
1.
See Edwards,
Colt’s Revolver
, pp. 195–204; Houze,
Colt: Arms, Art, Invention
, p. 68.
2.
Evans,
They Made America
, pp. 60–61; Edwards,
Colt’s Revolver
, p. 99.
3.
Houze,
Colt: Arms, Art, Invention
, p. 73; Evans,
They Made America
, p. 66.
4.
Evans,
They Made America
, p. 68.
5.
Hosley,
American Legend
, p. 23.
6.
Ibid., p. 26.
7.
Ibid., p. 28.
8.
Rywell,
Man and Epoch
, p. 130.
1.
Edwards,
Colt’s Revolver
, p. 42.
2.
Tucher,
Froth & Scum
, p. 173.
3.
Ibid., pp. 173–74.
4.
Keating,
Flamboyant Mr. Colt
, p. 145.
5.
Ibid., p. 65.
1.
The source of the Julia Leicester legend appears to be Colt biographer William Edwards (see
Colt’s Revolver
, pp. 309, 340–42). Contrary to the claims by Edwards and subsequent writers who have unquestioningly accepted his statements, Colt historian Herbert G. Houze has conclusively shown that the woman who married Friedrich von Oppen was
not
Caroline Henshaw but rather the much younger Julia Colt, a distant cousin of Sam’s. Also see Houze,
Colt: Arms, Art, Invention
, p. 69, n. 14; p. 247.
2.
See Lewis,
Nation-Famous New York Murders
, pp. 240–41.
3.
Christian Reflector
, February 1, 1843, p. 19;
Brother Jonathan: A weekly Compendium of Belle Lettres and the Fine Arts
, vol. 4 (February 4, 1843), p. 137. For a concise account of Bannister’s career, see Martin Banham, ed.,
The Cambridge Guide to Theatre
(Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 76.
Ninety-five year later, a dramatization of the Colt affair was broadcast on the airwaves. Scripted by George J. Throp, “The Case of John C. Colt” was the debut episode of
Out of the Hall of Records
, a weekly radio series of “dramatized programs based on the annals of notorious court cases preserved in the Hall of Records of New York City.” The episode was broadcast on WNYC, Monday, December 5, 1938, 4:00–4:30 EST. The original script can be found in the WPA Radio Scripts collection at the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts, box 40, file 1, “The Case of John C. Colt” (Collection ID# T-MSS 2000–005).
4.
See Bon Gaultier, “A Night at Peleg Longfellow’s,”
The New World: A Weekly Family Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and the Arts
, vol. 7 (August 26, 1843): p. 227.
5.
The Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
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6.
Warner Berthoff, ed.,
Great Short Works of Herman Melville
(Harper & Row/Perennial Library, 1969), pp. 63–64.
7.
Theodora De Wolf Colt,
Stray Fancies
(Boston: published for private circulation, 1872), pp. 118–22.
8.
Hosley,
American Legend
, pp. 30–31.
9.
Ibid., p. 138.
10.
Keating,
Flamboyant Mr. Colt
, p. 187.
11.
Hosley,
American Legend
, p. 145.
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