Deliberate Evil

Nathaniel Hawthorne, Daniel Webster, and the 1830 Murder of a Salem Slave Trader

Edward J Renehan

• Publisher: Chicago Review Press
• eBook ISBN:
  9781641603416
• Year: 2021

The 1830 murder of wealthy slaver Joseph White shook all of Salem, Massachusetts. Soon the crime drew national attention when it was discovered that two of the conspirators came from Salem's influential Crowninshield family: a clan of millionaire shipowners, cabinet secretaries, and congressmen. A prosecution team led by famed Massachusetts senator Daniel Webster made the case even more newsworthy. Meanwhile, young Salem native Nathaniel Hawthorne—who knew several of the accused—observed and wrote. Here, using source materials not available previously, Edward J. Renehan Jr. provides a riveting narrative of the cold-blooded murder, intense investigations, scandal-strewn trials, and grim executions that dominated headlines nearly two-hundred years ago.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Prologue
• 1 Old Salem by Moonlight
• 2 An Inconvenient Apparition
• 3 Wharves and Decline
• 4 A Melancholy Process of Decay
• 5 Great the Pain This Monster Must Be In
• 6 Murder as One of the Fine Arts
• 7 The Knapps of Salem
• 8 The Crowninshields of Salem
• 9 Vigilance
• 10 A Damned Eternal Fortune
• 11 Forever Stained with Blood, Blood, Blood
• 12 In the Hands of an Angry God
• 13 Joseph Knapp Jr.’s Confession as Transcribed by Henry Colman
• 14 The Fiend Has Robbed Justice of Its Victim
• 15 An Elaborate Game of Chess
• 16 Black Dan
• 17 A Murder of No Ordinary Character
• 18 The Cry of the People Is for Blood
• 19 Refuting the Truth
• 20 The Conclusion of Webster’s Summation in the First Trial: “Suicide Is Confession”
• 21 A Contagion of Unexampled Popular Frenzy
• 22 Franklin Dexter’s Summation at the Second Trial
• 23 Daniel Webster’s Summation at the Second Trial
• 24 The Execution of Frank Knapp
• 25 Emphatically Encompassed by a Sea of Blood
• 26 She Must Be the Very Devil
• 27 The Complaint of the Human Heart
• 28 Ghosts
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix: The Last Will and Testament of Captain Joseph White
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index