Our counsel afterwards made some complaint of this great number of
indictments, when two against each of us, including all the separate
charges in different counts, would have answered as well. It was even
suggested that the fact that a fee of ten dollars was chargeable upon
each indictment toward the five-thousand-dollar salary of the District
Attorney might have something to do with this large number. But the
District Attorney denied very strenuously being influenced by any such
motive, maintaining, in the face of authorities produced against him,
that this great number was necessary. He thought it safest, I suppose,
instead of a single jury on each charge against each of us, to have the
chance of a much greater number, and the advantage, besides, of repeated
opportunities of correcting such blunders, mistakes and neglects, as the
prisoner's counsel might point out.

On the 6th of July, I was arraigned in the criminal court, Judge
Crawford presiding, on one of the larceny indictments, to which I
pleaded not guilty; whereupon my counsel, Messrs. Hall and Mann, moved
the court for a continuance till the next term, alleging the prevailing
public excitement, and the want of time to prepare the defence and to
procure additional counsel. But the judge could only be persuaded, and
that with difficulty, to delay the trial for eighteen days.

When this unexpected information was communicated to the committee at
Boston, a correspondence was opened by telegraph with Messrs. Seward,
Chase and Fessenden. But Governor Seward had a legal engagement at
Baltimore on the very day appointed for the commencement of the trial,
and the other two gentlemen had indispensable engagements in the courts
of Ohio and Maine. Under these circumstances, as Mr. Hall was not
willing to take the responsibility of acting as counsel in the case, and