A new trial having been ordered in my two cases, everybody supposed that the charge of larceny would now be abandoned, as the Circuit Court had taken away the only basis on which it could possibly rest.  But the zeal of the District Attorney was not yet satisfied; and, no longer trusting to his own unassisted efforts, he obtained (at the expense of the United States) the assistance of Richard Cox, Esq., an old and very unscrupulous practitioner, with whose aid he tried the cases over again in the Criminal Court.  The two trials lasted about fourteen days.  I was again defended by Messrs. Mann and Carlisle, and now with better success, as the juries, under the instructions which Judge Crawford found himself obliged to give, and notwithstanding the desperate efforts against me, acquitted me in both cases, almost without leaving their seats.

Finally, the District Attorney agreed to abandon the remaining larceny cases, if we would consent to verdicts in the transportation cases on the same terms with those in the case of Sayres.  This was done; when Judge Crawford had the satisfaction of sentencing me to fines and costs amounting together to ten thousand and sixty dollars, and to remain in prison until that amount was paid.

There was still a further hearing before the Circuit Court on the bills of exceptions to these transportation indictments.  My counsel thought they had some good legal objections; but the hearing unfortunately came on when Judge Cranch was absent from the bench, and the other two judges overruled them.  By a strange construction of the laws, no criminal case, except by accident, can be carried before the Supreme Court of the United States; otherwise, the cases against us would have been taken there, including the question of the legality of slavery in the District of Columbia.

Thus, after a severe and expensive struggle, I was saved from the penitentiary; but Sayres and myself remained in the Washington jail, loaded with enormous fines, which, from our total inability to pay them, would keep us there for life, unless the President could be induced to pardon us; and it was even questioned, as I shall show presently, whether he had any such power.

The jail of the District of Columbia is under the charge of the Marshal of the District.  That office, when I was first committed to prison, was filled by a Mr. Hunter; but he was sick at the time, and died soon after, when Robert Wallace was appointed.  This Wallace was a Virginian, from the neighbor hood of Alexandria, son of a Doctor Wallace from whom he had inherited a large property, including many slaves.  He had removed to Tennessee, and had set up cotton-planting there; but, failing in that business, had returned back with the small remnants of his property, and Polk provided for him by making him marshal.  It was not long before I found that he had a great spite against me.  It was in vain that I solicited from him the use of the passage.  The light which came