therefore placed in the paradoxical position of conviction by his own
confession, under a plea of "Not guilty." The arrest took place on the
30th of October, 1831, the confession on the 1st of November, the trial
and conviction on the 5th, and the execution on the following Friday, the
11th of November, precisely at noon. He met his death with perfect
composure, declined addressing the multitude assembled, and told the
sheriff in a firm voice that he was ready. Another account says that he
"betrayed no emotion, and even hurried the executioner in the performance
of his duty." "Not a limb nor a muscle was observed to move. His body,
after his death, was given over to the surgeons for dissection."

The confession of the captive was published under authority of Mr. Gray,
in a pamphlet, at Baltimore. Fifty thousand copies of it are said to have
been printed; and it was "embellished with an accurate likeness of the
brigand, taken by Mr. John Crawley, portrait-painter, and lithographed by
Endicott & Swett, at Baltimore." The newly established _Liberator_ said
of it, at the time, that it would "only serve to rouse up other leaders,
and hasten other insurrections," and advised grand juries to indict Mr.
Gray. I have never seen a copy of the original pamphlet; it is not easily
to be found in any of our public libraries; and I have heard of but one
as still existing, although the Confession itself has been repeatedly
reprinted. Another small pamphlet, containing the main features of the
outbreak, was published at New York during the same year, and this is in
my possession. But the greater part of the facts which I have given were
gleaned from the contemporary newspapers.

Who now shall go back thirty years, and read the heart of this
extraordinary man, who, by the admission of his captors, "never was known
to swear an oath, or drink a drop of spirits"; who, on the same
authority, "for natural intelligence and quickness of apprehension was