r of Congress; especially a
member of Mr. Giddings' well-known fearless determination. He was
allowed to come in, bringing another person with him, but was followed
into the jail by a crowd of ruffians, who compelled the turnkey to admit
them into the passage, and who vented their rage in execration and
threats. Mr. Giddings said that he had understood we were here in jail
without counsel or friends, and that he had come to let us know that we
should not want for either; and he introduced the person he had brought
with him as one who was willing to act temporarily as our counsel. Not
long after, Mr. David A. Hall, a lawyer of the District, came to offer
his services to us in the same way. Key, the United States Attorney for
the District, and who, as such, had charge of the proceedings against
us, was there at the same time. He advised Mr. Hall to leave the jail
and go home immediately, as the people outside were furious, and he ran
the risk of his life. To which Mr. Hall replied that things had come to
a pretty pass, if a man's counsel was not to have the privilege of
talking with him. "Poor devils!" said the District Attorney, as he went
out, "I pity them,--they are to be made scape-goats for others!" Yet the
rancor, and virulence, and fierce pertinacity with which this Key
afterwards pursued me, did not look much like pity. No doubt he was a
good deal irritated at his ill success in getting any information out of
me.

The seventy-six passengers found on board the Pearl had been committed
to the jail as runaways, and Mr. Giddings, on going up to the House, by
way of warning, I suppose, to the slave-holders, that they were not to
be allowed to have everything their own way, moved an inquiry into the
circumstances under which seventy-six persons were held prisoners in the
District jail, merely for attempting to vindicate their inalienable
rights. Mr. Hale also, in the Senate, in consequence of the threats held
out to destroy the _Era_ office, and to put a stop to the publication of
that paper, moved a resolution of inquiry into the necessity of
additional laws for the protection of property in the District. The fury
which these movements excited in the minds of the slave-holders found
expression in the editorial columns of the Washington _Union_, in an
article which I have inserted below, as forming a curious contrast to
the exultations of that print, only a week before, and to which I have
had occasion already to refer,