Free The President's Vampire: Strange-But-True Tales of the United States of America by Robert Schneck Page B
Authors: Robert Schneck
web-sites, where it’s accompanied by dripping red letters and flapping cartoon bats, but these retellings are often inaccurate and offer little beyond the accounts in the Eagle and Wild Talents . That means the two main sources for these crimes were published 26 and 66 years after the events they describe.
Could anything new be learned 137 years later? Contemporary newspapers were not likely to have ignored a sensational double murder, and if official records survived, they would provide verification. Fortunately, even vampires leave a paper trail.
The President Intervenes
The commutation was the first important document to be found:
“To all to whom these Presents shall come, GREETING:
“Whereas, at the October term 1866, of the United States Circuit Court for the District of Massachusetts, one James Brown was convicted of murder and sentenced to be hung.
“And whereas, I am assured by the United States District Attorney, Assistant District Attorney, Marshal and others, that there were certain mitigating circumstances in this case which render him a proper object of executive clemency;
“Now, therefore, be it known, that I, Andrew Johnson, President of the United States of America, in consideration of the premises, divers other good and sufficient reasons me thereunto moving, do hereby commute the said sentence of death imposed upon the said James Brown to imprisonment at hard labor in the Massachusetts’ State Prison at Charlestown, Massachusetts, for the term of his natural life.”(8)
This proves that James Brown existed, that he was convicted of murder, and that the President of the United States commuted his sentence. No mention is made of what the “divers other good and sufficient reasons” for the commutation might have been, and if they had been included we would know more about both Brown and Johnson, one of America’s most forgotten presidents. (Despite the turbulence of his administration, Johnson is even more obscure than Millard Fillmore, whose total obscurity has given him a degree of notoriety.)
The commutation led to prison registers, trial records, newspaper articles—even the ship’s log—and as these accumulated, James Brown, the killer-vampire, dissolved like Max Schreck in a sunbeam. What remained was not a pile of dust but a run-of-the-mill murderer, whose story bears little resemblance to published accounts.
The following reconstruction is based on the collected documents.
Murder on the High Seas
May 23, 1866 was a fair day with a breeze from the Southeast; pleasant weather for men aboard the bark Atlantic as it cruised for whales in the Indian Ocean.(9) The crew spent the day bundling up the whalebone (baleen) that was used in those pre-plastic days for making umbrella ribs, buggy whips, and corset stays. Whalebone, however, was little more than a by-product of the search for whale oil, which was found in the animal’s head and blubber and provided the best illumination and mechanical lubricant available at the time. In order to collect it, fleets of ships that combined the functions of a hunting lodge, processing factory, and warehouse combed the seas.
The Atlantic was one of them, “ a staunch, well-built craft of two-hundred and ninety tons, “with a crew of thirty or more men.(10) Brightly painted whaleboats hung from davits, ready to drop rowers and harpooners into the sea at a shout of “There she blows!” (or “There she breaches!” or “There she white waters!”). An enormous brick stove stood on her deck for boiling whale oil out of blubber. Also on deck were James Brown, a ”negro cook” from New Bedford,(11) blacksmith James W. Gardner, and seaman John Soares (or Suarez).(12)
Brown was around 25 years old. He stood five-feet, six and a half inches tall, had a rounded chin, black hair, and “frank” eyes. His skin was decorated sailor-style with tattooed eagles, anchors, hearts, and stars and, on his right forearm, a woman wearing a skirt.(13)
He
Could anything new be learned 137 years later? Contemporary newspapers were not likely to have ignored a sensational double murder, and if official records survived, they would provide verification. Fortunately, even vampires leave a paper trail.
The President Intervenes
The commutation was the first important document to be found:
“To all to whom these Presents shall come, GREETING:
“Whereas, at the October term 1866, of the United States Circuit Court for the District of Massachusetts, one James Brown was convicted of murder and sentenced to be hung.
“And whereas, I am assured by the United States District Attorney, Assistant District Attorney, Marshal and others, that there were certain mitigating circumstances in this case which render him a proper object of executive clemency;
“Now, therefore, be it known, that I, Andrew Johnson, President of the United States of America, in consideration of the premises, divers other good and sufficient reasons me thereunto moving, do hereby commute the said sentence of death imposed upon the said James Brown to imprisonment at hard labor in the Massachusetts’ State Prison at Charlestown, Massachusetts, for the term of his natural life.”(8)
This proves that James Brown existed, that he was convicted of murder, and that the President of the United States commuted his sentence. No mention is made of what the “divers other good and sufficient reasons” for the commutation might have been, and if they had been included we would know more about both Brown and Johnson, one of America’s most forgotten presidents. (Despite the turbulence of his administration, Johnson is even more obscure than Millard Fillmore, whose total obscurity has given him a degree of notoriety.)
The commutation led to prison registers, trial records, newspaper articles—even the ship’s log—and as these accumulated, James Brown, the killer-vampire, dissolved like Max Schreck in a sunbeam. What remained was not a pile of dust but a run-of-the-mill murderer, whose story bears little resemblance to published accounts.
The following reconstruction is based on the collected documents.
Murder on the High Seas
May 23, 1866 was a fair day with a breeze from the Southeast; pleasant weather for men aboard the bark Atlantic as it cruised for whales in the Indian Ocean.(9) The crew spent the day bundling up the whalebone (baleen) that was used in those pre-plastic days for making umbrella ribs, buggy whips, and corset stays. Whalebone, however, was little more than a by-product of the search for whale oil, which was found in the animal’s head and blubber and provided the best illumination and mechanical lubricant available at the time. In order to collect it, fleets of ships that combined the functions of a hunting lodge, processing factory, and warehouse combed the seas.
The Atlantic was one of them, “ a staunch, well-built craft of two-hundred and ninety tons, “with a crew of thirty or more men.(10) Brightly painted whaleboats hung from davits, ready to drop rowers and harpooners into the sea at a shout of “There she blows!” (or “There she breaches!” or “There she white waters!”). An enormous brick stove stood on her deck for boiling whale oil out of blubber. Also on deck were James Brown, a ”negro cook” from New Bedford,(11) blacksmith James W. Gardner, and seaman John Soares (or Suarez).(12)
Brown was around 25 years old. He stood five-feet, six and a half inches tall, had a rounded chin, black hair, and “frank” eyes. His skin was decorated sailor-style with tattooed eagles, anchors, hearts, and stars and, on his right forearm, a woman wearing a skirt.(13)
He
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