About nine or ten o’clock, Mr. Giddings, the member of Congress from Ohio, came to see us.  There was some disposition, I understood, not to allow him to enter the jail; but Mr. Giddings is a man not easily repulsed, and there is nobody of whom the good people at Washington, especially the office-holders, who make up so large a part of the population, stand so much in awe as a member 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, over the spread of the principles of liberty and universal emancipation.  The violent attack upon Mr. Giddings, because he had visited us three poor prisoners in jail, and offered us the assistance of counsel,—­as if the vilest criminals were not entitled to have counsel to defend them,—­is well worthy of notice.  The following is the article referred to.