Alexander McLeod

Caroline Affair

During the Upper Canada Rebellion, the American steamer Caroline had been used to ferry weapons to a group of 200-300 Canadian rebels on Navy Island. Her owner, William Wells, had purchased the boat six months earlier after it was seized for smuggling, and claimed to have unloaded a cask for the insurgents but to have been ignorant of its contents.

Trial

McLeod was the subject of a "curious spectacle" of a trial, in that his defence attorney Joshua A. Spencer had been appointed United States Attorney for the Northern District of New York, but chose to remain as McLeod's counsel. Governor William H. Seward wrote to President John Tyler, but was informed that it was up to Spencer how he wished to handle his own affairs.

The indictment read by District Attorney J. L. Woods against McLeod stated that he had... quote|"not having the fear of God before his eyes, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the devil...with force and arms...on and upon one Amos Durfee, in the peace of God...then and there being, feloniously, wilfully, and in his malice aforethough and with a premeditated design to effect the death of the said Amos Durfee, did then and there make an assault upon the said Durfee...loaded and charged with gunpower and one leaden bullet...did shoot and discharge...with the leaden bullet aforesaid, out of the gun aforesaid, by force of the gunpowder and shot sent forth as aforesaid, the said Amos Durfee, in and upon the back part of the head of him

Presided over by Judge Gridley, the case saw Charles O. Curtis, Dr. Edmund Allen, John Mott, Elijah Brush, Ira Byington, William Carpenter, Isaih Thurber, Peter Sleight, Asher Allen, Seymour Carrier, Eseck Allen and Volnev Elliott as the chosen jurors, nine of them farmers. The "gentle words" of Lord Ashburton were credited with allowing the acquittal to sink from public scrutiny.