The Preacher and the Gun
from the book Dead and Gone by Manly Wade Wellmon
Lassiter had arrive at Rose Bay early in the year, from his native Gatesville, to teach the school at the bend of the turnpike two miles from Mason’s. His pay was $70 a quarter, by no means beggarly for the time and region. In figure he was "low-built," as North Carolinians say, about five feet six inches tall, with broad chest and shoulders. Though only in his middle twenties, he was beginning to put on flesh. He has been described as "of reserved manner and melancholy temperament," and his work as a teacher occupied almost wholly his time and thought. Yet, save for a certain exception, the people of Rose Bay liked him and made him welcome in their homes. He must have felt melancholy beyond his usual wont, to be leaving a community so friendly.
He dressed himself in a white shirt and a suit of thick black broadcloth, with a rather fancy vest of brown silk. In a new red-striped carpetbag he stowed a change of clothing. His trunk would stay at the Mason house, to be sent for later. On his head he put a rough cloth cap. Just before noon, he took leave of Dorset Mason, and his manner seemed both friendly and haunted.
Mason had boarded Lassiter since August and was sorry to see him go. Lassiter confessed to feeling uneasy about walking alone up the turnpike toward the lake."Anybody that would try to get his wife to swear my life away," he added, " would take my life any way he could."
But he did not name the man he feared and, if Mason knew without being told who that man was, he never said so for the records. Lassiter picked up his carpetbag and trudged off, bent on seeking employment at another school some four miles eastward on the shores of Lake Mattamuskeet.
Away from Mason’s walked Lassiter, along a narrow path that joined the turnpike. Today that same road, graded and ditched, runs close to where it ran a hundred years ago. In 1852 it led from the head of Rose Bay straight for two miles eastward to the schoolhouse where Lassiter had been teaching. Thence, bending somewhat to the right, it continued another two miles or so to the lake. Along its northern side ran a deep-cut canal, connecting lake and bay. The stretch of turnpike between schoolhouse and bay was set with a dozen or so farm dwellings, which formed a settlement of sorts. From the school to the lake, however, the turnpike lay through clumps and thickets of brushy pine and laurel, with no houses whatever until it came to the shore of the lake itself. Lassiter reached the turnpike just at the point where Thomas Bridgman lived, and Bridgman was just coming into his yard after a morning’s work in the fields. With the ready hospitality of the Tarheel countryman, Bridgman invited Lassiter to his noonday dinner table. The schoolmaster accepted, for he like good food, and very probably he did ample justice to Mrs. Bridgman’s meat and vegetables. After the meal, he remained and talked until about three o’clock. Then Bridgman went into the back yard to feed his hogs, and Lassiter resumed his journey.
He must have moved at a very slow rate, for it was an hour or so later when he paused in another dooryard not quite half a mile to the eastward and shook hands with the venerable Thomas Gibbs. T reach Gibb’s home from that of Bridgman, Lassiter had been obliged to pass the fine double-chimneyed house of Rose Bay’s most prosperous and remarkable citizen. While Lassiter chats briefly with old Mr. Gibbs, let us make the acquaintance of George Washington Carawan---planter, preacher, and a recognized leader of the little community.
He was born at Swanquarter in 1800 and was orphaned of his father before he was five years old. His mother was strong-minded and toiled hard to support her four children,but she is said to have been quick to anger, and she was fanatically strict in her religion. As she worked, so she required her children to work almost as soon as they could toddle.
Schools were scarce in North Carolina in the early years of the nineteenth century, and so she taught her children herself, how to read and write and do sums. "Firm but not fond," wrote a man who knew her, "her system of education was deprived of every charm, and, the task completed, no cheering word of approbation excited the child to renew application." She talked a great deal about God and still more about the terrors of hell.
Young George Washington Carawan so actively rebelled against this tuition that by the time he was fourteen the neighbors called him a willful young sinner, profane of speech and a sarcastic foe of the staid and orthodox faith to which almost every other person of the neighborhood subscribed. He argued for the atheistic point of view, sneeringly and cleverly as well, with whomever would uphold conservative Christianity. He had a notable gift for mimicry and attended revivals held by Methodist and Baptist ministers solely for the purpose of observing their pulpit styles, then imitating them to the roaring delight of his friends.
At the age of twenty-one, he married Elizabeth Carow and moved with her to Goose Creek Island in Beaufort County. His brother Green Carawan, who had better pleased their mother by becoming a Baptist minister, served a church near by. Washington Carawan farmed for four years and toilsomely achieved some success. Then he quarreled, publicly and spectacularly, with his brother, whom he accused of trying to seduce Elizabeth. Nobody seems to have taken his angry charges seriously, and, scolding, he moved back to Hyde County. There he worked land near his mother’s home, and later bought and cultivated the farm on the Rose Bay Turnpike.
He continued, both as successful farmer and as scoffer at religion, until the age of twenty-seven. Then, with characteristic abruptness, he professed conversion. At the South Mattamuskeet Baptist Church he loudly repented of his wordly mockeries and asked for baptism. He was accordingly dipped by Elder Enoch Brickhouse, amid chorused rejoicings over so incandescent a brand snatched from the burning. The baptized elder remarked that he hoped to see his new convert become a preacher.
That would sound like a direct invitation to join the ministry; but Carawan chose to recognize a summons from a considerably higher ecclesiastic authority than Elder Brickhouse. He announced, some days after his baptism, that Jesus Christ had appeared to him in a vision, hallooed in glory and had extended to him a scroll that bore a command to preach the gospel.
His fellows, simple partakers in the Old School Baptist conviction, heard this story and accepted it as unvarnished truth. He received ordination a the hands of Elders Samuel Ross and John Richardson and from the first was a shining success in the pulpit. Energetically he labored to found new churches on Cedar and Hog Islands in Carteret County and, upon the death of his brother Green on Goose Creek Island, assumed the charge of the church there also. These and others he visited in turn, circuit-rider fashion, and never lacked for devout hearers.
His style of preaching was original and forceful. A big man of the most handsome and commanding appearance, he dominated from his pulpit. One contemporary wrote of him; "There was a strong old Saxon in his language which was captivating." Another, less educated but salty of speech for all that, vowed: "I would sit all day upon a sharp rail and listen to Carawan’s preaching." He surpassed many of the most fervent exhorters, and was known far and wide for the moving prayers he addressed extempore to the Almighty. He liked to argue and debate the tenets of his denomination, and sometimes spoke in bitter criticism of other sects.
The conversions he achieved were numerous, and he himself baptized, throughout a period of nearly twenty-five years, more than five hundred men and women. Several young men so brought into the church by his efforts became preachers through his inspiration. With more education and opportunity, Carawan might have become another Henry Ward Beecher or Brigham Young among the spiritual leaders of his day.
For all this godly service, he refused any salary or other payment. His large Rose Bay farm and another broad acreage on the lake were worked by slaves, and he was comfortably well off, was even called a rich man. His first wife died in 1839, and within three weeks he had married a second time—Mary Bell, who had been his housekeeper. It is said that the suit he bought for the funeral of Elizabeth sufficed him at his wedding to Mary.
But this story, if true, is the only one which would seem to indicate stinginess in his nature. The Reverend Mr. Carawan was never over-slow at turning loose a dollar. He bought himself fine guns and liked to roam the Rose Bay Woods, shooting blackbirds. Something boyish remained in his nature, for he kept two tame bears in a stout cage in his yard. They must have delighted his three young sons, the only survivors of twenty children by his two wives. He was also rearing the orphaned son of his niece, a nineteen-year-old named Carawan Sawyer. This youth could neither read nor write, but he could, and did, drink frequently. However, he had come to bear a responsible hand in running the Rose Bay farm..
Carawan was hospitable. It is said that he made welcome all traveling strangers, with food and entertainment, and the praise of this trait in him suggests that he outdid even his neighbors in what has always been a North Carolina virtue.
At fifty-two, he was still an imposing figure of a man, more than six feet tall and of broad, muscular build. His clean-shaven face still kept something of the good-humored handsomeness of his youth, and he had a big nose, a firm chin, and wide-set, brilliant eyes. His white hair, thinning above his spacious forehead and worn long behind, gave him a venerable aspect.
Most of the Rose Bay people deferred to him as the most virtuous and admirable of men, and counted themselves lucky to enjoy his company and example. However, old Mr. Gibbs disliked him, and so also did Albin B. Swindell, a Baptist minister like Carawan and a man both pious and courageous. Swindell had denounced Carawan in open meeting of the church membership, charging him with unpreacherly interest in women and hinting of murder in Carawan’s past. But Carawan’s influence and reputation enabled him to draw from the assembly a vote of confidence and a denouncement of Swindell as a jealous troublemaker.
And while we have tarried thus long to observe Carawan, we have lost sight of Lassiter. It is too bad, really. After he left the Gibbs home, only one man ever saw him alive again.
By midday of Wednesday, November 17, with rain falling cold upon Rose Bay, Lassiter’s old neighbors were wondering about him. Word was sent to the farmers on the border of Lake Mattamuskeet, and on Friday, Lassiter’s friend, Levi McGowan, inquired for him from door to door of that region.
Nobody had seen him arrive at the lake community. On Saturday, November 20, farmers from both the lake and the bay gathered and began to comb the thick woods on either side of the turnpike, at first to no avail. The morning passed with no clue of the vanished schoolmaster to be found.
Among those who searched were Jesse Bridgman and Jesse Mason, relatives of the men who had heard Lassiter’s farewells. After noon dinner they poked here and there in a stretch behind Jesse Bridgman’s property, where fire had destroyed the timber five years before. A tangle of catclaw briers, gallbushes, reeds, and pine saplings had sprung up, and through these two men stubbornly forced their way at midafternoon. Underfoot the ground was soggy and grown up in thick moss, like sod—a "dismal," such country was called. Scattered over this moss at one place lay some sticky clods. Jesse Bridgman noticed brown dryness among the green fronds. He knelt and scooped with both hands. His fingers closed on cloth. He tugged—it was the lapel of a coat. He had found Clement Lassiter.
Mason helped him scoop away dirt. The dead man lay face down in a shallow grave, over which lumps of mossy earth had been carefully arrange. Lassiter’s elbowshiked backward and upward, and the dark broadcloth coat seemed to have been dragged partially away from Lassiter’s shoulders.
Sensibly, the two discoverers rummaged around the body only enough to be sure of who lay there. They now yelled loudly several times to summon their companions. When nobody replied, they headed for the turnpike and there assembled others of the search party. These returned and mounted vigil all through the shuddery cold night.
On Sunday morning Hyde County’s coroner, Dr. Bryan H. Griffin, arrived with a colleague, Dr. Sanford Long. Under their supervision the body was taken up and bound to a rail, like a dead deer. Two men carried it. The others plied axes to make a trail by which it could be brought to the open.
The doctors found that Clement Lassiter had been shot from a position to his right and a little behind. Several shot had penetrated his right arm, and two of them had ranged on to pierce his heart. Others had reached the lungs and liver. The coroner and his associate decided that Lassiter must have died instantly. They removed several shot that remained lodged in the body, and found them to be of various sizes. Lassiter had been dead for several days, it was hard for even medical experts to say exactly how many.
The Reverend Mr. George Washington Carawan had not joined in the search. Instead he had watched from his yard while others scoured the woods and had appeared nervous. At about supper time of the day when Lassiter was found, Carawan departed from his home. At eleven o’clock that night, he knocked at the door of Henry Tooley, who lived on the Neck Road at Fortescue’s Creek near the point where the Pungo River divides Hyde and Beaufort Counties.
Presumably the fifty-two-year-old preacher had walked the twelve miles from his own home but seemed deeply anxious to travel yet farther. Tooley launched a canoe in the creek and paddled with Carawan some three miles to the home of Dempsey Lupton on the Pungo. There, at midnight, Carawan asked to be taken across the river to Durham’s Mills.
"When do you want to go?" asked Lupton sleepily. "Right off now," Carawan replied. Lupton wanted to wait until morning and offered Carawan a bed in his house. This friendly offer Carawan refused and again urged Lupton to ferry him across at once. Lupton led him to his boat and started across the broad estuary of the Pungo.
Rowing in the dark for a matter of twelve miles, with the running of the tide to complicate matters, took several hours, and it was sunrise before they reached Durham’s Mills. As they came near, Carawan volunteered the information that he had so nagged Lupton into a night journey because he, Carawan, was on his way to buy land in Beaufort County. Others wanted to make the same purchase, he added, and had sent letters ahead.
"Is that your business or your hurry?" inquired Lupton. "Yes," said Carawan, rather equivocally, and, landing, disappeared into some woods.
If Lupton believed him, his belief lasted no longer than midmorning. Sheriff F. S. Roper of Hyde County arrived at Lupton’s with a warrant for Carawan’s arrest. Beyond the Pungo, however, he could not trace his man.
Meanwhile, two highly interesting stories were being told broadcast by members of Carawan’s household.The adopted great-nephew, Carawan Sawyer, informed several neighbors that, on the 15th, Lassiter had passed the preacher’s dooryard. Shortly afterward, Carawan had headed into the woods as though on a parallel course. In a moment Mrs. Carawan hurried after her husband, carrying a shotgun partially wrapped in her apron.
But more dramatic still was the tale of Seth, a young Negro slave whom Carawan used as a sort of confidential servant. There was little of confidence respected by Seth now, for he said that just before dark on the 15th his master had led him across fields to where, near the road, Lassiter lay dead. Carawan had then ordered Seth to help carry the body into the thick brush and help with its burial. Carawan, said Seth, had also told with a grim face of ambushing Lassiter and shooting him in the back.
By North Carolina law of those days, the testimony of slave was not admissible as evidence. The Old School Baptists of Rose Bay, however, declined to hamper themselves with such a technicality. They accepted Seth’s story, met in solemn session, and disavowed Carawan both as preacher and as member of their church. Handsome apologies were made to the Reverend Mr. Swindell for earlier mistrust.
All these things served as a running start for neighborhood gossip to play havoc with what was left of Carawan’s reputation. It was said that he had beaten both of his wives cruelly, that he had made love, stealthily and not unsuccessfully, to several handsome ladies of his congregation, and that he may well have killed three others before ever he aimed his gun at Lassiter.
As for the schoolmaster’s murder, it took short time to piece together a motive. Lassiter had boarded with the Carawans for a while before going to Dorset Mason’s, and Carawan had picked a quarrel with him in August. When the young man had so risen from his habitual melancholy as to offer fight, Carawan had snatched up his gun and had driven Lassiter from the house. Later, he had brought Mrs. Carawan before a justice of the peace, telling her to swear out a warrant charging Lassiter with attempted rape.
It may be that the justice had heard of Carawan’s earlier rantings against his brother Green on a similar charge. At any rate, he called the story fantastic and bade Carawan forget the matter. But Lassiter heard and said that he would sue his accuser for libel in the sum of $2,000. All these things had been more or less hushed up. Now everyone remembered them, recounted them, and embroidered them extravagantly.
Unfortunate Mary Carawan, left alone on the farm with late corn to be put in the crib, was given the kindest and most helpful treatment by neighbors, who harvested the crop and otherwise showed sympathy. She is quoted as saying that Carawan’s charges against Lassiter were totally unfounded—that the poor dead teacher had "behaved well in the house." She added a plea never to let Carawan hear that she had said so, for he might kill her. Some construed this to mean that she expected him to return, and so he did.
Again it was Seth, the Negro confidential servant, who spread the news. He hurried through a freezing night in January of 1853 to the home of a neighbor. That neighbor ran in turn to summon another neighbor, and others beside. Carawan was back, went the swift word. He had been challenged at his own door, by the barking of his own dog, and Mrs. Carawan had admitted him.
Full thirty farmers, armed and stern, surrounded the house between midnight and dawn and took positions covering every door. At a signal, they entered from all sides and found Carawan talking to his wife. He was in his night clothes and unarmed, and he made no resistance. They allowed him t eat breakfast, and Mrs. Carawan made a bundle of bedding for him The posse took him in the morning to the jail at Swanquarter.
There he was locked in a brick dungeon beneath the building, a rough cavelike chamber sixteen feet by twenty, with no fireplace or window. The only openings were two barred airholes, and a space in the heavy wooden door through which a bowl of food could be passed. Carawan bore this confinement with a scowling fortitude.. He spent much of his time in writing, by candle light. He sent many letters to friends and also worked on what he said was a story of his life. He had finished four hundred pages in the ten months of his imprisonment. This autobiography, could it be traced today, might reveal most interestingly a complex character.
Outside the jail gathered crowds, to curse Carawan’s name. On June 2, Carawan addressed to the court, through his attorney, James W. Bryan of New Bern, a plea for change of venue. Judge Mathias E. Manly ordered the case removed to the county of Beaufort for trial at the fall term of court. Carawan was accordingly taken to Washington, where on the morning of November 23 he was brought before Judge John L. Bailey.
His wife appeared with him and his three small sons. Carawan was neatly dressed and seemed in good spirits. He had engaged three notable lawyers to assist James Bryan in his defense. Fenner B. Satterthwaite was a man of commanding appearance, who had studied law while in debtor’s prison and who rose to immense legal and political success. William Blount Rodman, small and plump, was a fluent speaker with an encyclopedic law knowledge and had a growing reputation as a state historian. Richard S. Donnell, a former congressman, was also clear-thinking and impressive of aspect.
Against these, Solicitor George S. Stevenson had marshalled two special prosecutors on his own side. Edward J. Warren was perhaps the most celebrated courtroom orator in that part of the state. A native of New England, he was a leader among North Carolina Whigs and later a standard-bearer for secession. His associate in the case, the large-limbed, ruthlessly logical David M. Carter, was to become his law partner.
The state brought thirty witnesses to the stand, to tell of the finding of Lassiter’s body, Carawan’s flight and his capture. Once Carawan rose to his feet, glaring at a witness. At another time, when someone spoke to his damage, he growled out, "That is false!" and his lawyers gestured for him to hold his peace.
At the end of the second day of the trial, came a diversion that must have been welcome after so much stark talk about strife and death. William Tyson, a Hyde County blacksmith, took the stand to recount a conversation with Carawan. That had been the Friday after Lassiter’s disappearance, and three days before his body was discovered. Carawan had mentioned Lassiter, and Tyson had confessed that he had never seen him. Then, as Tyson quoted him, the preacher remarked, "Well, I think it’s likely you never will."
Satterthwaite, rising to cross-examine, studied the blacksmith narrowly. "How many drinks have you taken today?" he asked."Can’t tell," replied Tyson genially. "Can’t you say how many?" Satterthwaite prodded him. "Well," said Tyson, "I can vouch for two."
This evoked a snicker among the listeners, and Judge Bailey frostily reminded the witness that this was no fit occasion for merriment.
"Don’t you consider yourself drunk now?" Satterthwaite pursued his inquires. "I think not," said Tyson, but the court was of other opinion.
"Mr. Sheriff, is the witness intoxicated?" demanded Judge Bailey of Beaufort County’s sheriff. "Don’t know him, your honor," was that official’s understandably cagey reply. Then, plainly seeking to shift responsibility: "The sheriff of Hyde is here."
"The witness is under the influence of liquor," volunteered Sheriff Roper, no doubt speaking from a good acquaintance with Tyson, "but he is not so drunk that he cannot give correct testimony."
"May it please your honor," added Solicitor Stevenson, "I consulted with the sheriff of Hyde before calling the witness on the stand."
These assurances did not satisfy Judge Bailey. "it is evident that the witness is drunk," he pronounced bleakly. "He must be imprisoned till tomorrow at ten o’clock, for contempt of court in coming into court intoxicated."
That concluded the day’s session. Tyson was led weaving away, to a cell in the same jail with Carawan. When court re-convened on the following morning he was back on the stand, sober in more senses of the word than one, to repeat his story of Carawan’s dark observation about the vanished Lassiter.
The comic aspect of the drama was over. Two more witnesses followed Tyson, giving brief testimony. Then entered the star performer, Carawan Sawyer. This illiterate young man had never testified before save to the coroner’s jury the previous November. For the ordeal at Washington, he primed himself day after day in Washington’s bar rooms. But he came to the stand, however, in no such unhappy condition as had the blacksmith Tyson. His story was of the Monday when Lassiter walked past the Carawan farmstead. He told how the preacher had seen his enemy and had gone to the woods, with his wife bringing the shotgun after him. On the day that Lassiter’s body was found, said young Sawyer, his great-uncle had drawn him aside for a significant interview. "He said to me," vowed Sawyer, "that if I would say he was home all day on Monday, he would give me the best Negro fellow he had."
Gruelingly Satterthwaite cross-examined the witness, "Weren’t you in Asa Paul’s shop in Washington yesterday," prompted Satterthwaite, "and didn’t you say in the presence of Ruel Jordan, Carney Armstrong and others, that you expected to make more money this week than you had ever made in your life?" "I don’t remember that," said Sawyer stoutly. "Didn’t someone ask you how you’d make it," insisted Satterthwaite, " and didn’t you reply, ‘That’s best known to myself’?""I don’t recollect anything like that." "Didn’t you abuse the prisoner’s name in the presence of Thomas Bridgman, and say that he ought to be hung?"
"I never said such a thing in my life," flashed back Sawyer. "I am friendly with the prisoner, I have nothing against him and never did have."
All this was damaging enough to Carawan’s case, but worse was to befall him when the court met for an evening session after supper. Solomon Northon, jailer at Swanquarter, took the stand and the solicitor handed him two letters. Northon identified them as documents he had found on the floor of Carawan’s dungeon, one folded within the other. A. B. Swindell identified their handwriting as Carawan’s. Over strenuous objections by defense counsel, the letters were admitted to evidence and read aloud to the jury by Warren. They were supremely worth the hearing.
"MY DEAR OLD FRIEND:--Whether you can get a rogue to leave or not, deliver me. You understand me. You said you had boys that would do thus and thus. Are you going to let them falsely swear me out of my life? You can fix it. I know you can. You see Reuben, he will see you are paid, and so will Bro. Jarvis, for I have directed both of them about the matter, as I have said. Look upon my old gray head, and then look on my poor little babes and my affectionate wife. Brother Jarvis said yesterday from what he knows, or words to this effect, that some of Rose Bay and elsewhere—and gave me to understand that it was A.B. Swindell—said that if it was not for the law, they would go upon Mary, and take her life, because she paid respect for me. Good Lord! Take all these things in consideration, and then deliver me for heaven’s sake. If he will not leave, have done otherwise; for God’s sake, let it be done before court in February. Consult Reuben on the subject. And don’t delay, for delays breed dangers. You don’t live in the neighborhood, therefore you will not be thought of. Oh, deliver me, and never more will I forget you in this life, and I hope the Lord will not in the world to come. Yours..."
"MY DEAR OLD FRIEND:--Do let me know through the channel I have prescribed. Also, let my poor wife know what is the prospect, and she can give me to understand. Tell her to be careful, for they are going to have her sworn; and that is one reason why they have cut her off from me—is for the purpose of setting her against me if they can, and take advantage of her weak mind. Caution her to be on her watch, and not to talk any on the subject, and not to suffer them to question her, and if they try, let her answer be this, "to let that be done on the trial," and stop there. Don’t forget to tell her, if you please. Try to write her a letter in by the lawyers at court, if you cannot get them in by Hoyt, but you can. Get him also to take mine, and I will pay him for you. Tell my wife to give him something, but be sure to do the main thing—to put aside that evidence by hook or by crook. Were you here and suffering as I do now,, I would go to death almost, to rescue you. You cannot begin to think how bad it is. I can’t tell myself. I have said enough for you to understand...."
These communications were signed, with rueful humor, "The Old Horse In the Stable."
Carawan had written to his unknown friend "You understand me." Lest others lack understanding, prosecuting counsel stood ready to interpret. Plainly, it was urged, Carawan wanted the damaging evidence of his grand-nephew removed—by bribery or, failing that, by a more violent method. "...boys that would do thus and thus,....by hook or by crook....." The prosecution closed that same evidence, and on the following day, November 26, the defense announced that it would impeach the testimony of Carawan Sawyer.
Several persons said that Sawyer had told different and less damaging stories about Carawan at the time of the murder, and that during the early days of the trial Sawyer boasted in his cups of money he would make. Only six witnesses spoke for the defense, and in the afternoon David M. Carter delivered the opening argument for the prosecution.
An adjournment until Monday, November 28, and Satterthwaite addressed the jury, though he was ill and sometimes wavered on his feet. He was followed by Stevenson for the state, then by Rodman for the defense. On Tuesday Bryan closed the argument for the prisoner, and that afternoon Warren made the final speech to the jury.
Much had been made by the defense of the fact that only circumstantial evidence had been brought against Carawan, and Warren commented upon this argument with harsh irony.
"We have heard enough eloquence and rhetoric," he said, "and rhetoric and eloquence enough to acquit the prisoner at the bar, if rhetoric and eloquence could avail him. We would suppose that not George W. Carawan, but the state’s counsel, the witnesses for the prosecution, and the people of Hyde , were on trial here for high crimes and misdemeanors.... But the evidence in this case discloses a murder as foul and atrocious as can be found in the history of crime."
He then proceeded to notice the slurs cast by the defense counsel on circumstantial evidence, both generally and in its specific presentation against Carawan. His remarks were long held in North Carolina to be the classic upholding of that sort of evidence.
"What is circumstantial?" he asked. "It is the evidence of facts, which, according to the course of human experience, usually, and almost invariably accompany an act....If a man commits theft, he does it not in the presence of his fellows. If he commits arson, or burglary, or robbery, he takes no witness with him to testify to the act. If he commits murder, if he coolly and deliberately plots the crime of blood, he seeks to perpetrate the crime where no eye can see him, and where no human sagacity can follow his footsteps. How can he be detected, or brought to answer to justice and the violated law, except by administering the rules of circumstantial evidence?"
This argument he re-enforce by reading largely from books of high legal authority, and by reviewing much of the testimony, especially sworn accounts of Carawan’s hints about enmity and violence toward Lassiter.
"I trust," he finished, " that you will so perform your duty, as to satisfy both your own consciences and the claims of public justice."
It was now half-past six. Judge Bailey made a brief charge to the jury. He turned his attention to Carawan Sawyer’s story and the attacks made upon it by the defense. "You will not convict, gentlemen of the jury, on the testimony of a single tainted witness," he said. "If the matter goes only to his discredit, to his bad character—if his statements out of doors differ from his statements on the stand, the jury will consider the testimony, and give it that weight which it deserves. But if on the stand, in questions pertinent to the issue, he should deny a particular thing, or say that he did not remember when he did remember, and the denial is corrupt, then the witness is guilty of perjury, and the rule is that you must set the whole aside."
These words were sweet in the ears of Carawan’s attorneys, and sweetest of all in the ears of Carawan himself. After the jury commenced its deliberations, he went under guard to supper. Elatedly he told his wife, "The jury will acquit me and I will go to Hyde County tomorrow morning on the steamboat."
But an hour passed, and the judge summoned jury, attorneys, and defendant back to the courtroom. He announced that some of the language of his charge might have been misunderstood. He had not intended a flat instruction to disregard Sawyer’s testimony, but only a rehearsal of the defense’s claims concerning it.
"The prisoner’s counsel claim that they have a right to have the testimony of this witness set aside by a stubborn rule of the law," he clarified his earlier remarks and sent the jury back to its room to make up its own mind.
Carawan’s spirits sank. "I shall be condemned tomorrow," he told his wife, "and then they will fasten me up in this place, and you will never be permitted to see me again until I am taken out to be hung."
He asked, and received, permission for his wife and children to spend the night with him in the jail. His wife achieved a make-shift bed for the three little boys. Carawan paced the floor of his dungeon, talking to her on a variety of subjects not subsequently revealed.
In the morning he shaved, and ate the sort of hearty breakfast generally assigned by journalists to persons already condemned. Then he sat down and wrote something on a slip of paper. He handed his spectacles and the inkstand to Mary Carawan. "Put them away," he directed her, "and be careful not to spill the ink."
She saw the note, folded small, between his fingers. He many have meant for her to take it,, too, but did not put it in her hand. It was never seen again. Deputy Sheriff Joseph J. Hinton came to lead him to court.
"Goodbye," he called to other prisoners. You will never see me again." He also shook the hand of the jailer’s wife and turned to leave. He shed a few tears, but dried them before he entered the courtroom.
At 8:30 the jury appeared. Judge Bailey came in shortly after. Carawan sat down behind his attorneys. Not far away Mrs. Carawan took her place, the boys beside her, and began to sob. Solicitor Stevenson and Edward Warren also entered and stood in front of the judge’s bench.
"Have you agreed upon a verdict?" the clerk, Mr. Jollie, asked the jury.
"We have," they replied. "Who shall say for you?" asked Jollie. Benjamin Patrick, the foreman, rose. Jollie faced the prisoner.
"George Washington Carawan, hold up you right hand," he ordered. Carawan got to his feet, lifting his hand. He fixed his brilliant eyes upon Patrick.
"Look upon the prisoner, you that have been sworn," Jollie was saying to the jury. "What say you—is he guilty of the felony whereof he stands indicted, or not guilty?"
"Guilty," said Patrick, meeting Carawan’s stare.
Carawan sat down, bent forward, and whispered to his lawyers. Bryan rose and asked that the jury be polled. Jollie called the jurors by name.
"Guilty or not guilty?" he asked each in turn; and each replied, "Guilty." Carawan gazed from juror to juror. As the last of them spoke, he began to unbutton his vest. Jollie swiftly entered the verdict in his records, and spoke once more:
"Gentlemen of the jury, hearken to your verdict as the court has recorded it. You say that
George Washington Carawan is guilty of the felony and murder whereof he stands indicted. So say you all."
Judge Bailey then said, "Gentlemen of the jury, you are discharged. The court will take a recess of one hour."
Carawan sprang erect again. From inside his shirt he snatched a single-barreled pistol---how he had managed to get possession of it in jail, nobody has ever explained. Aiming at Warren, he fired. The courtroom rang with the explosion, and Warren fell sprawling but struggled up again.
Carawan, meanwhile, had drawn another pistol. Hinton, the deputy, sprang to grapple with him. Powerfully Carawan dragged himself free, pushed the muzzle against his own head behind the ear, and again touched trigger. Abruptly he collapsed into his chair, his right arm hanging over the railing and his head sagging forward upon his chest. Blood crimsoned his face and his open shirt front.
Judge Bailey had left the bench. Everyone was shouting and milling. Warren seemed the calmest person there, save only for the silent, slack figure in the prisoner’s box. To anxious questions, Warren replied that he was unhurt. The bullet had struck a locket that he wore under his clothes and had glanced away, tearing the stiff padding in his lapel.
Examination proved that Carawan’s brain had been pierced from side to side, the bullet lodging just above his left eye. He had died as instantly, perhaps, as had Clement Lassiter. His face, when the blood was sponged from it, seemed quiet and peaceful.
He was buried, appropriately enough, on the spot where once a gallows had stood near the Beaufort County almshouse. Later his relatives brought the body to Rose Bay, where neighbors protested against it burial there. The final grave was dug at Juniper Bay, some miles distant.
The story was told for years that his unquiet spirit walked the shore at that point, and within recent times there were not wanting those who said the believed it.
