Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1885-03-05
gtlistellaueums &eading.
FRANK MOSES AND THE JUDGE.
GFrom the Boston Herald.
1 cx.soon Of tho Supori

| lin j. Moses, Ex-Governor OF South carroll
ma was placed in the dock for sentence, he
having pleaded guilty to an indictment for
obtaining money by false pretenses from
Colonel r. w. Higginson of Cambridge.
He was pale, attenuated, with hair and
beard nearly white, and presented the ap-
pearance of man entirely broken in health.
Colonel Higginson stated briefly the man
ner by which Moses imposed upon him;
that he came to his house and represented
that he was Captain Brian of South Caro-
lima, and he 0he ColoneD believed him and
gave him S34. Afterward he telegraphed
to South Carolina, and found that Captain
Brian had not left the State. Then the legal
proceedings were instituted, which resulted
in the arrest of the prisoner in Detroit,
Mich. Judge Pitman then asked the pris-
oner if he had anything to say upon the mat
ter of sentence. Moses stood up and ad-
dressed the Court as follows:
| May it please your Honor: Not on my
own account, but for the sake OF the name
I bear-which, until the death OF my father
| in 1877, was an honored one in the public
annals of South Carolina-1 crave your in
diligence for my utterance of a few words
| in connection with the crime charged
against me, and of which, by my own ad-
mission, stand before you as guilty. NOT
under any circumstances could l have been
able to adduce before the Court any facts
which would have gone to prove me guilt
less of the crime as charged, but, were IL
not for the paucity of my pecunary means,
it would have been within my power m0st
abundantly to have proved by those who
are cognizant of the premises that even be-
fore my accession to the gubernatorial chair
of South Carolina, at the early age OF thirty
wears, nv mind was in an unbalanced anu
unsettled condition, consequent upon the
unjust and utter alienation OF those among
whom, up to that time, my whole life !had
been passed. That alienation, Caused in the
| first instance by my sincere convictions as
| to my public duty on the eve of "reconstruc,
tom in the South, was so complete and
unanimous as to render me practically
stranger in the State which gave me birth
and narrowed and confined my sphere of
social existence to those who entertained
political convictions identical with my
own. These troubles unnerved and almost
paralyzed nv mind They left their traces
| in streaks of living white upon my head,
increasing in intensity as the years
sped by, have left me nothing but the shat
tered wreck your Honor sees before you
mind and intellect almost wholly gone, ana
memory freighted only with blasted hopes
and blighted aspirations. This condition
of mind has been diagnosed by physicians
under whose care have been, and it could
| be shown that I am in mental and physi-
cal condition which would warrant my be-
ing, if confined at all, consigned, not to
prison, among criminals, but to some in
stitution where they minister to minds
diseased" The crime committed by me
against Col. Higginson was not Willful
and premeditated one. After many years
of suffering and privation found myself
with my family in New York, impoverish-
ed and unemployed, and came to Boston
for the purpose of asking aid of one whom
nv power to assist under almost similar
circumstances. TO my horror and conster-
nation I met with negative reply to my
earnest appeal. Not for one moment had l
thought of such an answer, and it left me
aghast and bewildered. In this hour of un-
looked for refusal, the horror of the situa-
ton came upon me with irresistible force.
In my fevered imagination | saw my wife
and little children-Whom l love with pas
sionate idolatry-houseless and homeless on
the public highways of a greatcity, depend
ent for shelter on the charity of strangers.
Like a drowning man at sea, my mind
looked out upon the boundless stretch OF
the waters in which was engulfed without
the sight of single friendly sail. The trial
was too great for me. My mind gave way
under it. 1t was in this condition Of mind
the crime was committed. 1 found myself
with the means of assistance in my hands
indeed, but, incredible as it may seem to
your Honor, with an immediate sense OF
self-condemnation at the method employed
to obtain it. I cherished the hope that in
the money 1t was the old, old story.
Temptation presenting itself in the hour OF
trial, but in my case the temptation came
to mind already enfeebled and diseased,
and which, under other circumstances,
could and would firmly resist it's approach.
May it please your Honor, have wife
and children whom 1 dearly and devotedly
love, and who are left in desOate condi-
ton. I have ventured to hope, for ''hope
springs eternal in the human Breast" that,
in my approaching old age, the frailties and
infrmities of my life would have met with
pardon and the merciful oblivion of silence
nately, however, as it may be for me and
those who are dependent upon me, the Vio-
lated majesty of the law decreed otherwise,
and I, therefore, humbly confess my fault,
but plead in eXtenuation thereof the cir
cumstances which rendered me almost
crazed at the moment of its commission.
1 entreat that your Honor will inquire
whether it is not wholly unworthy of belief
that man who in the years that have
gone have filled the positions and perform
ed the duties that have fallen to my lot
would, in his sober senses and with his
mind in its full vigor, have stopped to the
commission of crime, the purpose of which
was to obtain the comparatively small sum
of thirty-four dollars, and whether it is not
contrary to the natural order of things that
a man who has pride in his ancestry would
choose a criminal course of life-most es-
pecially when such course is in direct op-
position to his tastes and instincts. From
my earliest days I have been known as a
strictly temperate man, and have never
taken part in games of chance, whereby
money or anything else could be gained or
lost. Your Honor, 1 have done the State
some service. But short time after the
close of the war, under the appointment Of
the lamented General Candy, who at the
time represented the government as COM
manding general in South Carolina, l oc-
cupied, acceptably to him, the position of
District Judge and held the scales of justice
both on civil and criminal sides of the court,
among the people of two counties in the
State, at a time when the minds of men
were inhamed with passion and prejudice,
the one against the other. AS member of
the Constitutional Convention of 1868,
took part in framing the new organic law,
which, as a condition precedent, my native
State was readmitted to her place within
the Union. l served as Speaker of the
House of Representatives, and as Adjutant
and Inspector General of the State from
1868 to 1872, in the fall of which year l was
inaugurated as Governor, and held that po-