Daniel McFarland Trial: 1870 - Not The First Time

Richardson knew his assailant well. He was a 50-year-old lawyer and unsuccessful entrepreneur named Daniel McFarland from whom, only weeks earlier, Abby Sage had obtained a divorce after several years of suffering his drunken abuse. Two and a half years earlier, in 1867, not long after Sage had first become acquainted with Richardson, McFarland had ambushed the journalist, shooting him in the thigh as he escorted the actress home after her theater performance. Richardson had not pressed charges.

Jailed, McFarland denied remembering the shooting but showed no remorse over it. At the Astor House, doctors tried to make the victim comfortable. Facing the inevitable, Abby Sage called on her friend, the prominent preacher Henry Ward Beecher, to perform a death-bedside wedding ceremony. Tribune editor Greeley was a witness. On December 2, Richardson died in the arms of his bride. On December 8, McFarland was indicted for murder.

The shooting, and then the wedding, had dominated the front pages of New York's many newspapers. As the trial opened on Monday, April 4, 1870, reporters, stenographers, and spectators fought for space. Defense lawyers Elbridge T. Gerry, John Graham, and Charles Spencer, sensing the emotional pull of the trial of a man for murdering the alleged seducer of his wife, arranged for 10-year-old Percy McFarland to be seen running happily to his father when the defendant was brought into the courtroom, then permitted the boy to sit beside him during the trial.

Prosecutors Noah Davis and Samuel Garvin presented a straightforward case. Dan Frohman, an 18-year-old clerk in the Tribune office, described how he was getting Richardson's mail when McFarland, who had been hanging around the office for some 15 minutes, abruptly shot him.