Knowlton Biography, Chapter 36
Thirty-six: Prosecuted in Greenfield
I admire the motto of Col. Crocket, “Be sure you are right, and then go ahead;” but still, I am such a selfish, cowardly fellow, that notwithstanding my opinion of the utility of the work in question, I hardly think I could thus far have persisted in publishing it, if I did not believe that a great proportion of the enlightened part of the community do or will think favorably of it. The reader is to know that I am now for the third time prosecuted for selling books containing a knowledge of the anti-conception art.
Roswell Shepard agreed strongly with Charles about the usefulness of Fruits of Philosophy and the correctness of the stand they’d taken in Ashfield. In early 1834, it became widely known that Mason Grosvenor had started telling members of his church who refused to give up their doctors, that if they would “take hold and help get Knowlton out of town, Shepard may stay.” Neither the hold-outs nor Dr. Shepard considered the minister’s compromise.
The partners discovered Grosvenor was preparing to attack them from a different direction when a minister from New Salem appeared at their office, asking to buy two copies of Fruits of Philosophy. Charles took the man’s dollar, remarking that he had the look of a preacher, and that the doctors suspected he was there to make trouble. The minister didn’t deny it, but asked Charles if the thought so, why did he sell the books? Charles answered, “I would have him and every body else to know that I do not deal in books that I am afraid to sell to priest or deacon.”
The New Salem minister grabbed the books, and when he had them safely in his bag he leered at Charles and Roswell. Knowlton would be “judged” very soon for publishing this obscene trash, he gloated. Turning to Shepard, who was known to be at least a nominal christian, the minister advised, “Give him no peace—harass him wherever he goes, and he will learn at length that to live in this country, he must be silent or become a Christian—that is the way.” Dr. Shepard failed to respond as the christians hoped, however. So the minister, who had spent the previous night at Mason Grosvenor’s home, went to Greenfield with Grosvenor and his allies a few days later and swore out a complaint against both men.
In mid-August, Reverend Grosvenor and his allies testified before a grand jury in Greenfield, and asked for an indictment. Grosvenor’s fellow ministers, who had “promised to stand by me in this undertaking,” had been preaching against infidelity and licentiousness all summer, so even the jurors who knew nothing of the excitement in Ashfield were predisposed to believe the plaintiffs had a case. The allies returned to Ashfield in triumph, and word of the indictment “rang through the town like news of war.” At any moment, Grosvenor said, sheriffs would be coming to arrest the two criminals.
Ten days went by before Shepard and Knowlton were visited at their office by sheriffs Purple and Wells from Greenfield, and advised that there would be a trial in November. The two doctors were ready to make bail in any sum required, they told the sheriffs, but bonds were not required. If he’d believed half the stories being told about them around the county, Sheriff Purple told the doctors, he wouldn’t have expected to see either one of them anywhere near Ashfield. It was only on the basis of the outrageous rumors circulated by their enemies, he suggested, that the grand jury had ever gone along with Grosvenor’s request.
A month before the trial, Charles published a twenty-four page pamphlet he called A History of the Recent Excitement in Ashfield. Knowlton gave his side of the story, including a detailed description of Mason Grosvenor’s incessant agitating against infidels since the minister’s arrival in town. Charles reprinted the letter he’d written to Grosvenor, included a transcript of the speech he’d made in his own defense at the town hall, and added an open letter he’d written to Colonel Abel Williams, a prominent church-member who had refused to switch doctors. The pamphlet circulated widely in Franklin County, and probably did a lot to counteract the nasty rumors spread by Grosvenor and sympathetic ministers.
At the trial in Greenfield, Charles admitted writing Fruits of Philosophy, but argued that under the new Massachusetts libel law, he could not be found guilty if he published the truth, unless it could be proven he’d done it with bad intent. The jury was out for seventeen hours, and failed to reach a verdict. Ten jury-members voted to acquit Knowlton. The case was continued, and a new trial held in March, 1835. Once again, the jury couldn’t agree on a verdict, although they argued all night. The district attorney asked for another trial in August, and this time Charles and Roswell were required to give bonds of five hundred dollars each. Sometime in the early summer, the case was quietly thrown out.