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

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.

Edward J. Renehan Jr. is the author of The Life of Charles Stewart Mott, Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould – King of the Robber Barons, The Secret Six: The True Tale of the Men Who Conspired with John Brown, and The Kennedys at War, among others. He has appeared on C-SPAN’s BookTV, The History Channel, and PBS, and has been interviewed on National Public Radio. His essays and reviews have appeared in such publications as the Wall Street Journal and the San Francisco Chronicle. An avid sailor, he resides just outside Newport, Rhode Island, with his family.

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. Joe Knapp Jr.’s Confession as Transcribed by Henry Coleman
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
Appendix: The Last Will and Testament of Captain Joseph White
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index