It often happened that he would return the next day after a protracted discussion and say, “Well I have consulted my pillow on that question, and after all I believe I was wrong. “
Judge Bullard, on Judge Martin128
Three weeks later, on Saturday, June 21, 1845, the parties returned to the Cabildo to hear the Supreme Court pronounce judgment. Miller, accompanied by one of his witnesses, Joachim Kohn, sat in straight-backed silence directly behind his lawyers. Men and women from the German community filled the rows of seats in the public gallery, but there was none of the excitement of the day when Buchanan delivered his decision—experience had taught them to be wary of justice.
The room grew still as four judges entered the courtroom. Judge Morphy was absent on account of illness, said Chief Judge Martin, explaining the empty chair. However, His Honor concurred in the court’s judgment, which would now be read by Judge Bullard.
All eyes turned to Bullard. In a slow, Yankee accent, he commenced his recitation of the facts:
She sets forth in her petition many things connected with her biography, and that of her father, which are unsupported by evidence, and which we regard as wholly immaterial to the great question which the pleadings present, to wit, whether the plaintiff be white and free, or a slave.
To Upton’s ears it wasn’t a promising start. Did this mean that the court intended to ignore Mr. Eimer’s birth certificate after all? He listened as Bullard spent the next few minutes summarizing the facts of the case and the evidence of the parties. Then Bullard paused, indicating to his listeners that the preliminaries were over. He went straight to the core of the matter:
Ever since the case of Adelle v. Beauregard, in the Superior Court, as early as 1810, it had been the settled doctrine here that persons of color are presumed to be free. Slavery itself is an exception to the conditions of the great mass of mankind, and, except as to Africans in the slave-holding States, the presumption is in favor of freedom, and the burden of proof is upon him who claims the colored person as a slave.…
These were the words Upton had prayed to hear. The court intended to follow the reasoning of Adelle v. Beauregard. Might they win? He held his breath, struggling to quell the fear that some twist in the court’s reasoning might yet deny them victory.
The proof in the record of the complexion of the plaintiff is very strong. Not only is there no evidence of her having descended from a slave mother, or even a mother of the African race; but no witness has ventured a positive opinion, from inspection, that she is of that race. She is evidently a brunette, but Gen. Lewis, one of the most intelligent and candid witnesses on the part of the defendant, who had known her long, says she is as white as most persons; but that he has seen slaves as bright as the plaintiff. He adds, that he always thought she had something resembling the colored race in her features, but this opinion may have been induced by the fact that he had always seen her associating with persons of color. He also testifies to her resemblance to another female then in open court, shown to be a German, and a kinswoman of the lost daughter of Daniel Miller.…
Her own statements on the subject, so far as they are of any value, while they show that she did not seek this controversy, and was apparently contented with her condition, make no allusion to her parentage, unless it be to the Indian race: and when she alluded to the fact of having come over the lake, or of being sold by a negro trader, it is impossible to say whether she alludes faintly, as a dim reminiscence, to her voyage over the Atlantic, or to her being brought here from Mobile.…
It has been said that the German witnesses are imaginative and enthusiastic, and that their confidence ought to be distrusted. That kind of enthusiasm is, at least, of a quiet sort, evidently the result of profound conviction, and certainly free from any taint of worldly interest, and is by no means incompatible with the most perfect conscientiousness. If they are mistaken as to the identity of the plaintiff; if there be in truth two persons about the same age, bearing a strong resemblance to the family of Miller, and having the same identical marks from their birth, and the plaintiff is not the real lost child, who arrived here with hundreds of others in 1818, it is certainly one of the most extraordinary things in history. If she be not, then nobody has told who she is.129
As Bullard read, a murmur rose from the body of the room, rising in intensity, as he approached the end. “After the most mature consideration of the case, we are of the opinion that the plaintiff is free….” The courtroom broke into uproar. “It is, therefore, adjudged and decreed….” The Germans in the court stood as one. Upton felt his back being slapped. Bullard, ignoring the disturbance, continued to read. “… that the judgment of the District Court be reversed; and ours is, that the plaintiff be released from the bonds of slavery.”
It was over. They had won. People embraced their neighbors. Eva Schuber and her husband hugged each other. Mr. Grabau stood with tears flowing down his face. Mr. Eimer did a dance to the front of the bar table. Upton turned to look at Salomé Müller. She sat slumped in disbelief. He called to her, and she looked up and smiled at him, then she disappeared behind a crowd of well-wishers.
Upton collapsed back into his seat. The case had been won on the strength of Adelle v. Beauregard. There wasn’t one word in Bullard’s judgment about the birth certificate. Not one word about the plaintiff’s age. There was nothing about when Lafayette was born, or whether Sally ever spoke with a German accent. The word “Attakapas” wasn’t mentioned. None of this seemed to matter to the Supreme Court. The essential point was that she looked as though she had white blood in her, so it was up to Miller to explain where she came from. This he had failed to do.
Tucked away in mid-paragraph toward the end of the judgment, if anyone cared to hear it, was a crumb thrown to Miller. It was “presumed,” said the court, that he had “acted in good faith, and in relation to whom, we are bound to say, that the allegations in the petition tending to his prejudice, are wholly unsupported.…”130
Upton looked around. He hadn’t even seen the judges leave the bench. Grymes, the other lawyers, and Miller had gone. The courtroom was theirs.
Within days, a grand celebratory ball was held by the German community in the Kaiser Dance Hall in Lafayette to welcome Sally Miller back into the ranks of white society. The Daily Tropic of June 30, 1845, devoted a column on its front page to describing the event. “The friends of Sally Miller, in great numbers were gathered together last Tuesday, at the home of Francis Schuber” and “about nine o’clock the party adjourned to a neighboring hall,” where “with music and dancing, a sumptuous feast, and an abundance of rich wines, they enjoyed themselves until a late hour.”
If the returned slave was to be accepted without reservation by the German community, it was the women who had to do it. When Sally Miller arrived at the hall, two hundred ladies waited to receive her. The most distinguished German in New Orleans, Christian Roselius, linked arms with Sally and escorted her around the hall. To each of the women lining the walls, Roselius formally introduced her as Sally Miller, a free German woman recently returned to society. Sally bowed and said she was pleased to be back. Some of the women took Sally by the hand and gave it a squeeze, others embraced her and with tears in their eyes told her she was lost no more. Several pressed a calling card into her hand and told her she was always welcome in their home. “They did greet her,” said one newspaper “as bone of their bone, and flesh of their flesh.”
After a circuit of the room, which took almost an hour to complete, Roselius accompanied Sally to the stage, where he proposed a toast. “Her liberation is not all,” he was quoted as saying. “A new leaf had been turned in the life-book of the freed woman. That leaf is white. See to it that it remains white and unsullied, so that the sorely tried woman who has been lifted up, will sink no more.”131
Upton was called upon to speak. In emotional terms, he paid tribute to Eva Schuber: “One there is to supply, as far as may be, the mother’s place—a holy conventional religious obligation has been imposed upon her and faithfully does the god-mother redeem her vows.”
He then cast an appeal to the ladies present:
On you I call to save this injured, this unhappy woman from sinking. We have snatched her from the house of bondage; to leave her now unprotected would be a cruelty instead of a kindness. Visit not upon her ignominy of her past life—not to her belongs its shame—not on her should be laid its reproach. Since Saturday last, a new life has opened upon her. The book which she now unfolds has as yet no word upon its pages. Ladies! Will you see that its future record is an honest and a correct one? Take her by the hand, go with her to the house of your God, teach her to worship His name, cheer, comfort, counsel, and aid her.132
The speeches finished, the orchestra led into music, and Roselius, who explained that the pleasures of dancing had little attraction for him, led Sally Miller to the hand of Upton. He escorted her to the floor and together they began a waltz. Others joined in and soon there was a swirling circle of men and women enclosing the two of them.