The feeling against me was no doubt greatly increased by the failure of the efforts repeatedly made to induce me to give up the names of those who had cooeperated with me, and to turn states-evidence against them.  There was a certain Mr. Taylor, from Boston, I believe, then in Washington, the inventor of a submarine armor for diving purposes.  I had formerly been well acquainted with him, and, at a time when no friend of mine was allowed access to me, he made me repeated visits at the jail, at the request, as he said, of the District Attorney, to induce me to make a full disclosure, in which case it was intimated I should be let off very easy.

As Mr. Taylor did not prevail with me, one of the jailers afterwards assured me that he was authorized to promise me a thousand dollars in case I would become a witness against those concerned with me.  As I turned a deaf ear to all these propositions, the resolution seemed to be taken to make me and Sayres, and even English, suffer in a way to be a warning to all similar offenders.

The laws under which we were to be tried were those of the State of Maryland as they stood previous to the year 1800.  These laws had been temporarily continued in force over that part of the District ceded by Maryland (the whole of the present District) at the time that the jurisdiction of the United Spates commenced; and questions of more general interest, and the embarrassment growing out of the existence of slavery, having defeated all attempts at a revised code, these same old laws of Maryland still remain in force, though modified, in some respects, by acts of Congress.  In an act of Maryland, passed in the year 1796, and in force in the District, there was a section which seemed to have been intended for precisely such cases as ours.  It provided “That any person or persons who shall hereafter be convicted of giving a pass to any slave, or person held to service, or shall be found to assist, by advice, donation or loan, or otherwise, the transporting of any slave or any person held to service, from this state, or by any other unlawful means depriving a master or owner of the service of his slave or person held to service, for every such offence the party aggrieved shall recover damages in an action on the case, against such offender or offenders, and such offender or offenders shall also be liable, upon indictment, and conviction upon verdict, confession or otherwise, in this state, in any county court where such offence shall happen, to be fined a sum not exceeding two hundred dollars, at the discretion of the court, one-half to the use of the master or owner of such slave, the other half to the county school, if there be any; if there be no such school, to the use of the county.”