SMOKE OF THEIR TORMENT

“God, take me away next! I meet with nothing but misfortunes on this earth.” -David Dunning, The Report of the Trials of the Murderers of Richard Jennings

       Although the whites didn’t introduce Indians to distilled spirits, they did introduce them to regular drunkenness. And this is what was to become, and remains a common way of robbing, disenfranchising, demoralizing, and demonizing the African American, Native American and poor white populations in North America. The trope of the “drunken Indian,” persists. Liquor is a helluva drug.

        The idiom of sobriety, and punishable sin, polished by the church clerics and politicians, presented as the domain of proper white society, had its roots in colonial outposts like Goshen and later in the wild west; not in the urban centers of America. Temperance was a fringe movement in the cities. In 1850, the pious prospector Solomon Osterhout, was completely out of his depth in the California gold fields, “whoring dens of wickedness,” yet some preacher was always there before him, encouraging a doubting apostate to “put shoulder to the gospel wheel,” and give up drink. In all these raw, undeveloped settlements, from Sugar Loaf to Nevada City, the church and courthouse eventually prevailed over the brothel and saloon. Containment of “sin” within ghettos became common practice.    

    The 20th century Volstead Act, and the “war on drugs,” like marijuana, and crack cocaine would bring this temperance and ghettoization mindset home centuries later. Racist, xenophobic, demonization and criminalizing of minor drug use, has always been used as an excuse to marginalize, excise and punish specific communities of non-whites, immigrants and non-conformists; as deep state actors and entrepreneurs   systematically flooded these same communities with drugs and liquor. It was a working paradigm, that remains firmly in place today. When society’s rules were broken, the State would take it’s pound of flesh, and sell some more crack to your cousin.  

      The first thing anybody exhibits when I tell them the thumbnail sketch of the murder of Richard Jennings is complete astonishment over the fact that the one black man involved, “a drunken profaner,” Jack Hodges, isn’t lynched upon capture, or at the very least hung with the other white men in Goshen. Historical amnesia isn’t so pronounced as to forget how racist we were then, or are now. Nobody can wrap their head around the fact that Jack Hodges, not only escaped the hangman’s noose, but would become immortalized in print, mainly due to his killing of my great….uncle Richard Jennings. It’s a tough one to digest. Jack Hodges became a minor celebrity, both in prison and out, because he killed a white man, and received a pardon at the gallows’ steps. When I first heard the story, I felt the same way. That twist of payback is what put me on the path.

     It seems the most puzzling of tales, that in the same antebellum New York that produced so much pain and suffering for uncountable other African Americans, brutalized, lynched, and treated as little more than farm animals, that this one black sailor, Jack Hodges, would be so lucky. Maybe it was as simple as having a damn good lawyer in Henry G. Wisner or Jack’s strong sense of self after a lifetime at sea. Jack Hodges was nothing if not a survivor. Maybe all these powerful men were fair minded, sober, colorblind egalitarians. Or, maybe there were other, more subtle, forces at work.  

      

    It took all of the next day and through the night for the attorneys to get from Albany to Newburgh by steamboat, and another three hours by coach to reach the courthouse steps in Goshen. Henry G. Wisner and Jonathan Fisk (Conklin’s lawyer) were both elated. They went directly to Judge Van Ness’ chambers. Once word got out in town it spread like wildfire. The last to be informed were the prisoners. It was April 13, 1819, three days before their scheduled execution. Jack Hodges and David Conklin would be spared death. James Teed and David Dunning would not be so lucky.

    David Conklin had his sentence reduced to “life” and Jack Hodges, had his reduced to “twenty-one years” hard labor. Their lives would be spared, but per Judge Van Ness’ recommendations, not released. The other two murderers would hang as scheduled. The news was so jarringly unexpected in Goshen that neither Jack nor Conklin could completely process it. David Dunning stuck by his story, denying killing Richard Jennings, and even though he wasn’t a church going man, he was superstitious enough to look to the almighty for a little help. Dunning sat alone in his cell, reflecting in anguished silence, as to what lay ahead. He blamed his current state of condemnation on mistakenly cursing God a year before, after losing his favorite horse in a flooded sluice. That, and his association “with black people” were cited repeatedly by Dunning as the reasons he was to be executed—not his participation in the murder. 

    The day before his execution Dunning made a full “confession” in the presence of his wife Margaret, his son John, and Rev. Richard F. Cadle. After being warned by Rev. Cadle that, “All liars will have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone— the smoke of their torment will ascend up forever— they will suffer the pains of the worm that never dies, and of the fire which never is quenched.” Dunning took a deep breath, and started talking. He only admitted to keeping quiet, not warning the authorities or Jennings what was coming, but not to the murder or the conspiracy. He blamed the crime all on Jack Hodges. Dunning’s version was not unbelievable…..just different. His wife and boy backed him up, telling the pastor that the husband and father was chopping wood and feeding horses, while Jack killed Dick with no help from Dunning. Now that Dunning knew he was going to die, he continued to obsess over his dead horse. All that filled his mind was his favorite mount stumbling, gasping it’s last breath, due to his carelessness, as he cried to the heavens, “Goddamnit…take me away next!” Who’d have thought God would be listening.