University of Virginia Library

Berl Trout's Dying Declaration.

I am a traitor. I have violated an oath that was as solemn and binding as any ever taken by man on earth.

I have trampled under my feet the sacred trust of loving people, and have betrayed secrets which were dearer to them than life itself.

For this offence, regarded the world over as the most detestable of horrors, I shall be slain.

Those who shall be detailed to escort my foul body to its grave are required to walk backwards with heads averted.

On to-morrow night, the time of my burial, the clouds shall gather thick about the queenly moon to hide my funeral procession from her view, for fear that she might refuse to longer reign over a land capable of producing such a wretch as I.

In the bottom of some old forsaken well, so reads our law, I shall be buried, face downward, without a coffin; and my body, lying thus, will be transfixed with a wooden stave.

Fifty feet from the well into which my body is lowered, a red flag is to be hoisted and kept floating there for time unending, to warn all generations of men to come not near the air polluted by the rotting carcass of a vile traitor.

Such is my fate. I seek not to shun it. I have

walked into odium with every sense alert, fully conscious of every step taken.

While I acknowledge that I am a traitor, I also pronounce myself a patriot.

It is true that I have betrayed the immediate plans of the race to which I belong; but I have done this in the interest of the whole human family—of which my race is but a part.

My race may, for the time being, shower curses upon me; but eventually all races, including my own, shall call me blessed.

The earth, in anger, may belch forth my putrid flesh with volcanic fury, but the out-stretched arms of God will receive my spirit as a token of approval of what I have done.

With my soul feasting on this happy thought, I send this revelation to mankind and yield my body to the executioner to be shot until I am dead.

Though death stands just before me, holding before my eyes my intended shroud woven of the cloth of infamy itself, I shrink not back.