This week in 1883

“You young saints and sinners, take warning and let whisky alone. It was whisky that brought me here. I did not kill the man, it was whisky; but I am come here now, and God has pardoned me. My way is clear before me…God bless you all.”

— Henry Dickerson, convicted of murder, hanging, Louisiana.
Executed September 7, 1883

Dickerson was drinking and gambling unsuccessfully with a group of plantation and steamboat workers when he left the dice game and met John Steele, “an uninterested passerby.” After Steele refused to give him a dime, Dickerson shot him through the heart. Dickerson escaped to spend eight days in a swamp but then, having nearly starved, gave himself up. He later found religion in prison.