aking speeches in the senate. It was a point, too,
involved in a good deal of difficulty; for there were some English cases
which denied the power of pardon under such circumstances. Mr. Sumner
found, however, by a laborious examination of the American cases, that a
different view had been taken in this country; and he drew up and
submitted to the President an elaborate legal opinion, in which the
right of the executive to pardon us was very clearly made out.

This opinion the President referred to the Attorney General. A
considerable time elapsed before he found leisure to examine it; but at
last it obtained his sanction, also. Information at length reached
us--the matter having been pending for two months or more--that the
President had signed our pardon. It had yet, however, to pass through
the office of the Secretary for the Interior, and meanwhile we were not
by any means free from anxiety. The reader will perhaps recollect that
among the other things which the District Attorney had held over our
heads had been the threat to surrender us up to the authorities of
Virginia, on a requisition which it was alleged they had made for us.
The story of this requisition had been repeated from time to time, and a
circumstance now occurred which, in seeming to threaten us with
something of the sort, served to revive all our apprehensions. Mr.
Stuart, the Secretary of the Interior, through whose office the pardon
was to pass, sent word to the marshal that such a pardon had been
signed, and, at the same time, requested him, if it came that day into
his hands, not to act upon it till the next. As this Stuart was a
Virginian, out apprehensions were naturally excited of some movement
from that quarter. The pardon arrived about five o'clock that afternoon;
and immediately upon receiving it the marshal told us that he had no
longer any hold upon us,--that we were free men, and at liberty to go
where we chose. As we were preparing to leave the jail, I observed that
a gentleman, a friend of the marshal, whom I had often seen there, and
who had always treated me with great courtesy, hardly returned my
good-day, and looked at me as black as a thunder-cloud. Afterwards, upon
inquiring of the jailer what the reason could be, I learned that this
gentleman, who was a good deal of a politician, was greatly alarmed and
disturbed lest the act of the President in having pardoned us should
result in the defeat of the Whig party--and, though willin