By these fair and seemingly sincere pretensions, they soon kindled relentings in the hearts of the prosecutors. How could it be otherwise? for "they were all honourable men." Several of the individuals who assisted in maturing the plan were men of commanding influence, in the very town where I was bred. I had abundant opportunities to know them. A proposition was finally made through them by the instructions of the officers, that, as the brothers knew their guilt was fully established, it would have a tendency to mitigate their sentence, if they would expose the head man, by whose knavery many extensive property-holders were threatened with total bankruptcy. This was the precise position at which the secret band of brothers had been aiming. The next step was to secure, if possible, the younger brother as "state's evidence" against the appointed victim of Cleaveland notoriety, whom, for the sake of convenience, I will designate by his name, Taylor.
He was a man of extraordinary abilities and gentlemanly deportment. He and the two brothers were mutual acquaintances. They had been accomplices, no doubt, in many a deed of darkness. But as "the devil should have his due," I am bound to exculpate him from any participation in the alleged crime. That he was innocent in this affair I have the fullest evidence. I was solicited by the pettifogger, (I will not say lawyer,) for the brothers, to take a bribe for perjury, and swear poor Taylor guilty of giving me five hundred dollars of counterfeit money, which money he would place in my hands. Of this fellow, I will speak in another chapter. The younger brother was now to declare himself and brother as having been seduced by Taylor. It was to be done without the apparent knowledge of the elder brother, whom we will hereafter call Colonel Brown. It was to be communicated to one of the officers, with a solicitation to keep it a secret from the colonel. He also had an appointed part to play. The character he was to sustain in this drama of well-concocted treachery, I will next present.
The colonel's physician advised him to take medicine, to reduce his system, and give him the appearance of one rapidly sinking under a pulmonary affection. He consented, as such a plan was considered the most likely to succeed. It will be readily seen, that the design was to work upon the sympathies of the officers, and thus procure his enlargement. Nor were they disappointed. The colonel's health began to fail. The drugs acted their appropriate part. Some of his friends made vigorous exertions to have him removed to the hospital, declaring it necessary for the continuation of life. Others were actively engaged in giving forth intimations, and expressing their fears that he would die before his trial came on, always taking care to assert their confidence of his innocence. This was a mere ruse, to trick the officers into a consent for his removal. But they had mistaken the character of the men with whom they were dealing. They were not to be moved by exhibitions of suffering humanity. Their hearts had become insensible to human misery and they resisted all appeals to sympathy.