charge, and at 7 o'clock in the evening the jury retired. Twenty minutes later they came back with the verdict.
"Guilty."
"Gordon heard the verdict without emotion," so the reporters described the scene, and they were about the only spectators outside of those directly interested in the case.
But when that verdict had appeared in print, next day, the people of New York woke up to the importance of what had occurred. On Saturday, November 30, when motions for a new trial had been denied, and Gordon was commanded to stand up and hear his doom, he arose to his feet in a court-room "densely packed" with people who had come to hear the sentence of the first American slaver convicted as a pirate.
As Gordon heard the command to stand up his face changed color rapidly, but once on his feet he recovered his composure, and in reply to the usual question said, with a forced smile,
"I have nothing to say whatever."
At that Judge Nelson began to speak. He recited the facts in the case, warned the prisoner that as he had shown no mercy to the unfortunate he could expect none now from the Court, and ended by ordering that the slaver be, on February 7, 1862, between the hours of noon and three in the afternoon, hanged by the neck until he was dead.
When February 7 came Gordon had been respited for two weeks by the President. "It was currently reported that the President had commuted the sentence." said one paper, but Marshal Murray knew
