Barrister Hunt was low and stormy. The jury, unable to come to an unanimous decision, were locked up till midnight, when they could dissolve themselves, but they remained until eleven on Sunday morning. Food was furnished to them by stealth. The state immediately altered {82} the law to compel juries to sit until they can decide, or be liberated by consent of parties. On the Monday, the jury again met, and were locked up again for four days, and liberated by consent of parties without giving a verdict. The case therefore remains to be tried a seventh time.
Sunday, 13th.—Accompanied Nathaniel Russell, Esq. (whose son-in-law was a bishop) to an excellent church, this morning, but saw, as I thought, little piety or devotion.
14th.—Again at court, to witness the form of passing sentence on a criminal, the turnkey of the prison, who was convicted of aiding the escape of a murderer. He seemed a genteel or smart young fellow, and with little emotion heard himself doomed to be branded with the letter M on the thick of his thumb, and imprisoned one year. The judge, in a black silk gown, a very judicious, kind-hearted man, shewed how just and reasonable was the sentence pronounced.
I left the Planter's hotel, (Charleston,) where funerals begin to be frequent, owing to pestilential air, and took up my abode on Sullivan's cool, salubrious isle, to which I go with an agreeable young Yankee, Mr. Coffin, bound to New Orleans and Natches.
- [Footnote: There he took a firm stand against a protective tariff, and in opposition to the
tariff of 1832 announced the doctrine of nullification, his speech calling forth Webster's celebrated reply. Elected governor (December, 1832), he led the state in preparing to resist with armed force the collection of the tariff, but Jackson's prompt measures and Clay's compromise bill induced the commonwealth to repeal her ordinance of nullification. Upon the expiration of his gubernatorial term, he served as mayor of Charleston (1835-37).—Ed.]
