Wicked River_ The Mississippi When It Last Ran Wild - Lee Sandlin [50]
I may have been wrong, but frankness constrains me to confess that I whispered back to Phelps, “you are not in the least danger; we shall have no difficulty whatever in preventing your conviction, and shall presently introduce a motion for a new trial, or in arrest of judgment, which will save you from all further annoyance.”
“I may have been wrong”—meaning, presumably, that he was troubled by the thought that he lied to his client. Or else he meant that he still regretted not telling Phelps to go ahead and damn the consequences.
In any case, Phelps acquiesced and did nothing. He remained placid as the jury found him guilty on all counts and the judge sentenced him to death. He didn’t seem to resent that Foote had lied to him, even after (as Foote himself knew perfectly well would happen) the motions for a suspended sentence and a new trial went nowhere. He went to prison without a fuss and spent his time before his execution working furiously on his memoirs.
Just before Phelps was scheduled to be hanged, he wrote to the governor asking for a reprieve. He didn’t want a full pardon; he was still only midway through his memoirs and he needed a couple of weeks more to finish them. The request was denied. Phelps made no complaint when he heard the news; he simply returned to his work at an even more frantic speed. Foote visited him at the end of that day and guessed that by dinnertime he’d written thirty more pages.
That same evening, after Foote left, Phelps had two visitors: the jailer and a priest. During their visit, Phelps revealed another way he’d been passing his time. He’d been working out a method for sawing through his manacles.
He abruptly reared up from his bench and threw the chains aside. The priest immediately bolted. Phelps advanced on the jailer and beat him unconscious with a makeshift weapon: a heavy lead inkwell (on loan from Foote) that he’d wrapped in a sock. Then he armed himself with the jailer’s knife and pistol. He picked up the jailer’s unconscious body, held the knife to his throat, and started dragging him toward the prison gate.
The noise of the fight had caused a commotion in the prison yard. But everyone gave way when they saw Phelps emerge from the cell with his hostage; even the toughest of the other prisoners were intimidated by Phelps. The guards didn’t hesitate to throw open the gates. A crowd had gathered outside—some had been waiting for the hanging, and others were running up to find out what the noise was about. They all fell back as Phelps advanced from the yard into the wide evening air.
The prison stood at the edge of a bluff where a steep grassy slope descended toward the Mississippi. Phelps started down the slope while the crowd followed warily at a distance. Then somebody threw a rock at Phelps’s back. It glanced off him without slowing him down. More rocks followed; then brickbats, bottles, and shards of wood. Phelps lumbered on silently. About midway down the slope, one of the brickbats finally staggered him. He let his hostage sag limply to the ground and turned around to face the crowd. The sheriff was cautiously coming toward him with pistols drawn. Phelps lowered his hands and told him to fire. The sheriff killed him with one shot.
Afterward Phelps’s unfinished memoir was turned over to Foote. It contained confessions to several murders Phelps hadn’t yet been suspected of committing, as well as an elaborate defense of his criminal career. It built up to a long and furious denunciation of slavery and a call for all slaves to be emancipated immediately. If this was not done, Phelps wrote, he was debating whether he should take direct action himself. Foote summarized: “He mentions, in his rude and coarse phraseology, his inclination