J.W.  Browne, Henry I. Bowditch, William F. Channing, Joshua P. Blanchard and Charles List, authorized to employ counsel and to collect money for the purpose of securing to us a fair trial, of which, without some interference from abroad, the existing state of public feeling in the District of Columbia seemed to afford little prospect.  A correspondence was opened by this committee with the Hon. Horace Mann, then a representative in Congress from the State of Massachusetts, with ex-Governor Seward, of New York, with Salmon P. Chase, Esq., of Ohio, and with Gen. Fessenden, of Maine, all of whom volunteered their gratuitous services, should they be needed.  A moderate subscription was promptly obtained, the larger part of it, as I am informed, through the liberality of Gerrit Smith, now a representative in Congress from New York, whose large pecuniary contributions to all philanthropic objects, as well as his zealous efforts in the same direction both with the tongue and the pen, have made him so conspicuous.  He has, indeed, a unique way of spending his large fortune, without precedent, at least in this country, and not likely to find many imitators.

The committee, being thus put in funds, deputed Mr. Hildreth, one of the members of it, to proceed to Washington to make the necessary arrangements.  He arrived there toward the end of the month of May, by which time the public excitement against us, or at least the exterior signs of it, had a good deal subsided.  But we were still treated with much rigor, being kept locked up in our cells, denied the use of the passage, and not allowed to see anybody, except when once in a while Mr. Giddings or Mr. Hall found an access to us; but even then we were not allowed to hold any conversation, except in the presence of the jailer.

It may well be imagined that the news of my capture and imprisonment, and of the danger in which I seemed to be, had thrown my family into great distress.  I also had suffered exceedingly on their account, several of the children being yet too young to shift for themselves.  But I was presently relieved, by the information which I received before long, that during my imprisonment my family would be provided for.

Warm remonstrances had been made to the judge of the criminal court by Mr. Hall against the attempt to exclude us from communication with our friends,—­a liberty freely granted to all other prisoners.  The judge declined to interfere; but Mr. Mann, having agreed to act as our counsel, was thenceforth freely admitted to interviews with us, without the presence of any keeper.  Books and newspapers were furnished me by friends out of doors.  I presently obtained a mattress, and the liberty of providing myself with better food than the jail allows.  I continued to suffer a good deal of annoyance from the capricious insolence and tyranny of the marshal, Robert Wallace; but I intend to go more at length into the details of my prison experience after having first disposed of the legal proceedings against us.