This Week's Trivia Question--Setting Murderers Free

As much as I'd like to say the answer to this question is Johnnie Cochran or Flea Bailey or Alan Dershowitz or the other less than honorable barristers who set a double murderer free, we have to go back a couple hundred years in American history for the answer.

First the question--

Which great figure in American history, while a lawyer, got a guilty man off free and ran into him years later on the street and upon being hailed as the man who saved his life, responded, "Ah!  Willis, poor fellow, I fear I have saved too many like you who ought to be hanged"?

Let's make it multiple choice.

A)   Future Congressman and President Abraham Lincoln

B)  Future Congressman, Senator and Secretary of State Daniel Webster

C)  Future Senator and Vice President John C. Calhoun

D)  Future U.S. House Speaker, Senator, and Secretary of State Henry Clay

or

E)  New Hampshire native (born in Cornish) future Ohio Governor, Senator, Secretary of Treasury, and Supreme Court Chief Justice (not to mention erstwhile abolitionist) Salmon P. Chase.

 

Alas I just finished reading a very difficult book (written by John Niven, 1995) on the life of Salmon P. Chase, a great man who ambition plagued his more noble efforts, but that's not the answer.

For the second week in a row, we look to Merrill D. Peterson and his bok "The Great Triumvirate" for the answer.  That book deals with Webster, Calhoun, and Clay, and for the second week in a row, the answer is Henry Clay.    Here's a further explanation from page 11, "By common report, not one of the accused murderers he defended, though their guilt was plain as day, was ever sentenced to the gallows.  In the case of Abner Willis, Clay, having won a new trial for the defendant on a technicality, turned around and pleaded double jeopardy to a jury that was like wax in his hands."

Johnny Cochran would be envious!  "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit" indeed!

Only page 11--looks like we've got months and months of more Henry Clay trivia.  Did you know he survived a dual?

Yes. 

Ain't history fun?

This is not the answer nor is it an easy book to read.

Herein lies the answer and a much more readable book by far!

This is not the answer nor is it an easy book to read.

Herein lies the answer and a much more readable book by far!