he desperate expedient of endeavoring to overcome
that record by putting his own oath to a false statement of the
facts, against the statement of the three judges, made on their own
knowledge, as eye-witnesses, and supported by the affidavits of court
officers, lawyers, and spectators.

To Montgomery he wrote:

"I have made a plain statement of the facts which occurred in
the court, and upon that propose to ask the intervention of
the President, and I request you to see the President; tell
him all you know of me, and what degree of credit should be
given to a statement by me upon my own knowledge of the facts.
When you read the statement I have made you will be satisfied
that the statement in the order of the court is false."

He then proceeded to tell his story as he told it in his petition to
the Circuit Court. His false representations as to the assault he made
upon the marshal, and as to his alleged provocation therefor, were
puerile in the extreme. He stood alone in his declaration that the
marshal first assaulted him, while the three judges and a dozen
witnesses declared the very opposite. His denial that he had assaulted
the marshal with a deadly weapon was contradicted by the judges and
others, who said that they saw him attempt to draw a knife in the
court-room, which attempt, followed up as it was continually until
successful, constituted an assault with that weapon. To call his
bowie-knife "a small sheath-knife," and the outrageous conduct of
his wife "acts of indiscretion;" to pretend that he lost his temper
because he was assaulted "while making an honest effort to peaceably
and quietly enforce the order of the court," and finally to pretend
that his wife had been "unnecessarily assaulted" in his presence, was
all not only false, but simply absurd and ridiculous.

He said: "I don't want to stay in prison six months for an offense of
which I am not guilty. There is no way left except to appeal to the
President. The record of a court imports absolute verity, so I am not
allowed to show that the record of the Circuit Court is absolutely
false. If you can help me in this matter you will confer on me the
greatest possible favor."

He told Montgomery that it had been suggested to him that one
reason for Field's conduct was his refusal to support the latter's
aspirations for the Presidency. In this connection he made the
following statement:

"In March, 1884, I received a no