Short Paper: "A Municipal Report" by O. Henry

The Right in the Wrong

            An accessory is defined as “a person who assists in the commission of a crime, but who does not actually participate in the commission of the crime as a joint principal” (Wikipedia: Accessory [Legal Term]).  This law has been part of the legal code of the United States since 1790 (Wikipedia: Aiding and Abetting).  It is generally assumed that, in order to be a good citizen and to do the right thing, one must not break the law.  “A Municipal Report” by O. Henry shows an exception to that rule.

            Murder is a crime that should never be committed by anyone who would call themselves a good citizen of any area.  However, in “A Municipal Report,” the unnamed narrator tells the story of how he became an accessory to just such a crime from the perspective of a future date.  Through the narrator’s recollections of interaction with Uncle Caesar the tumbril driver, Major Wentworth Caswell and Mrs. Azalea Adair Caswell, O. Henry asserts that, although murder should never be done, sometimes if a murder has already happened, and concealing the identity of the murderer would benefit the highest number of other good citizens, the only way to continue to be a good citizen is to become an accessory to that murder.

            Mrs. Azalea Adair Caswell is an intelligent and good woman.  She is respected and liked by the people who come across her, and does nothing to upset the rest of Nashville's residents.  The narrator's sole purpose for visiting Nashville, Tennessee is to make a contract with Mrs. Caswell to write for his magazine, so that she can share her intelligence with the magazine's readers, therefore contributing positively to the intelligence of society as a whole.  If she were not intelligent, the magazine's editors would not have wanted her to continue after receiving her first essay, and society would not benefit from her intelligence.

            In addition, after the death of Azalea's father, Judge Caswell, she kept his former slave, Uncle Caesar, on as a hired coach driver and Uncle Caesar's care of Mrs. Caswell--giving her the money he earns--shows that she is a good person at heart.  If she were not, then Uncle Caesar would not feel as though he needed to stay and especially would not take care of her with his own wages.  There are others who care for Mrs. Caswell--and would be at least emotionally harmed if she were to die from the starvation her husband imposes upon her--such as Dr. Merriman, but Caesar is the only one from whom Mrs. Caswell will accept help.  Therefore, keeping Caesar from being tried and hanged for murder is the only way to attend to the health and care of Mrs. Caswell, even though she will be receiving money from the narrator's magazine for her writing.  Her monetary--and therefore, her nutritional--needs have been provided for, but should she fall ill, she would let the condition become so bad before accepting help from anyone but Caesar, that she could very well die before anyone else would know she needs medical attention.

            Uncle Caesar, who reminds the narrator of King Cettiwayo, ruler of the Zulu Kingdom from 1872 to 1879 (Wikipedia: Cetewayo), has a look of royalty about him and is also respected by others such as Dr. Merriman.  The narrator learns that Caesar is indeed African royalty, just not of the Zulu Kingdom.  In fact, as Dr. Merriman tells the narrator, Caesar's "grandfather was a king in Congo," and "Caesar himself has royal ways" (1085).  One of those "royal ways" is loyalty.  After being freed from slavery, Caesar could, conceivably, have gone anywhere to make a living.  Instead, he chose to stay with Mrs. Caswell.  Possibly, Mrs. Caswell's father was such a good master that Caesar came to respect him--and wanted to show that respect by staying loyal and caring for his daughter even after the judge was gone.  That is only speculation, however.

            The fact is that, like a king, Caesar provides for those for whom he is in a position to provide, and defends them from threats.  He also passes judgment and sentence on those who would harm the good people he has taken under his wing.  He convinces the narrator to pay four times the value of his first tumbril ride to Azalea Adair Caswell's home, and the narrator later discovers that Caesar has given that money to Mrs. Caswell herself.  When Major Caswell took that same two dollars--the narrator recognized the taped-up dollar bill he had given to Caesar--then Caesar, seeing that Major Caswell has harmed Mrs. Caswell by depriving her of the means to buy the food necessary to survive, confronts Major Caswell in order to protect her from further drunken behavior and abuse.  There must have been an altercation of some sort, since Major Caswell managed to catch hold of a button.  It is this button that the narrator recognizes as the only true button formerly left on Caesar's jacket.

            Unlike Mrs. Caswell and her kingly protector, Major Wentworth Caswell is not a good citizen.  He is not well liked and is a generally slimy person who "[hunts] about the hotel lobby like a starved dog that had forgotten where he had buried a bone" (1078).  The narrator admits that if Caswell had not shaved, he "would have repulsed his advances" (1078), showing that even within the first few minutes of meeting Caswell the narrator can tell that he is not of good character.  The narrator is not the only person who does not like Major Caswell, however.  The hotel desk clerk tries to get the narrator to make a formal complaint about Caswell because he is "a nuisance, a loafer, and . . . we don't seem to be able to hit upon any means of throwing him out legally" (1078).  The desk clerk is someone who contributes to society by arranging for the hospitality of visitors to Nashville and stays within the law.  His reason for disliking Caswell is that, although he does nothing illegal, he does not contribute to society, and therefore no one benefits from his own presence except himself.  The most telling indication of Major Caswell's character is that, when he is found dead, the only nice thing that anyone can find to say about him is that "when 'Cas' was about fo'teen he was one of the best spellers in school" (1086), an accomplishment that, again, only benefitted Caswell.  Certainly, if he was a better, or at least a better-liked, person then more good could have been said when he was gone and more of the good citizens of Nashville would have been positively influenced by his continued existence in their sphere.

Someone had to get Major Wentworth Caswell to go away and leave Nashville in peace.  He would not take a hint that his company was not wanted, drank to excess, and abused his wife.  Furthermore, he used every cent that his wife could scrape together for food on alcohol and did not care that she was starving to death because of his habit.  He never broke the law but, nevertheless, was not a good citizen.

By the time the narrator of O. Henry’s “A Municipal Report” recounts his story, Major Wentworth Caswell has already been murdered.  There is nothing the narrator can do to prevent the crime, but he has to make a decision about whether or not to reveal the murderer’s identity when he discovers Uncle Caesar’s button in the victim’s hand.  However, the narrator feels somewhat responsible for the murder, even in hindsight, believing that if he had “repulsed [Major Caswell’s] advances . . . the criminal calendar of the world would have been spared the addition of one murder” (1078).  The narrator gave Uncle Caesar the money which Caesar then gave to Mrs. Caswell and Major Caswell took from her.  Therefore, he believes he is responsible for Mrs. Caswell’s fainting spell and Caesar’s altercation with and murder of Major Caswell.

This may or may not be true.  After all, it is impossible to say whether or not Caesar would have committed the same crime eventually without the narrator’s monetary contribution acting as a catalyst for events.  Someone else could just as easily have paid Caesar two dollars which would have been taken from Mrs. Caswell as well.

Although he is only a visitor to Nashville, the narrator of “A Municipal Report” proves that he is indeed a good citizen by breaking the law and becoming an accessory to the murder of Major Wentworth Caswell.  In fact, he does not even think about taking the evidence and casting “it out the window into the slow, muddy waters below” the Cumberland River bridge (1086).  He believes he is doing the right thing in hiding evidence of Caesar’s guilt and making himself an accessory to the murder of Major Caswell.

In fact, given Caswell’s poor citizenship, the narrator of “A Municipal Report” did the citizens of Nashville a favor by throwing away the evidence which could have been used to convict Uncle Caesar of murder.  The narrator also did Mrs. Caswell—an intelligent, kind and well-loved citizen of Nashville—as well as all of the readers of his magazine a favor, since Uncle Caesar’s conviction would have deprived her of a valued helper, the only helper she would accept.  Without this helper, Mrs. Caswell could die without the knowledge of other citizens until it was too late to prevent her death, and with her death other citizens of the country would be less edified by her intelligent discourse in the narrator's magazine.

Through the narrator’s account of his own crime, O. Henry shows that sometimes right and wrong are not so well defined, and that shades of grey can appear even in the events following an obvious crime.

Teacher Comments and Grade: Now the discussion makes sense on its own without having read the story.  (This was the revision of the final essay, which the teacher allows for all short papers in all of his classes.  I had the same teacher for EN205 in Fall 2011.)  Good job, Darcy! A