ho told him so, or whether
somebody else told him that I had said so. Orme and Craig, with whom I
principally conversed, and who went into long details, recollected
nothing of the sort; and it is very certain that, as there was no
foundation for it, and no motive for such a statement on my part, I
never made it. Williams, perhaps, had heard somebody guess that, if I
had got off, I had slaves enough to make me independent; and that guess
of somebody else he perhaps remembered, or seemed to remember, as
something said by me, or reported to have been said by me; and such
often, in cases producing great public excitement, is the sort of
evidence upon which men's lives or liberty is sworn away. The idea,
however, of an intention to run the negroes off for sale, seemed
principally to rest on the testimony of a certain Captain Baker, who had
navigated the steamer by which we were captured at the mouth of the
Potomac, and who saw, as he was crossing over to Coan river for wood, a
long, black, suspicious-looking brig, with her sails loose, lying at
anchor under Point Lookout, about three miles from our vessel. This was
proved, by other witnesses, to be a very common place of anchorage; in
fact, that it was common for vessels waiting for the wind, or otherwise,
to anchor anywhere along the shores of the bay. But Captain Baker
thought otherwise; and he and the District Attorney wished the jury to
infer that this brig seen by him under Point Lookout was a piratical
craft, lying ready to receive the negroes on board, and to carry them
off to Cuba!

Besides Houver, Williams, Orme, Craig and Baker, another witness was
called to testify as to the sale of the wood, and my having been in
Washington the previous summer. Many questions as to evidence arose, and
the examination of these witnesses consumed about two days and a half.

In opening the defence, Mr. Mann commenced with some remarks on the
peculiarity of his position, growing out of the unexpected urgency with
which the case had been pushed to a trial, and the public excitement
which had been produced by it. He also alluded to the hardship of
finding against me such a multiplicity of indictments,--for what
individual, however innocent, could stand up against such an accumulated
series of prosecutions, backed by all the force of the nation? Some
observations on the costs thus unnecessarily accumulated, and, in
particular, on the District Attorney's ten-dollar fees, produced a grea