During the progress of the trial, after the adjouring of the Court in the evening, our lawyers would come into the prison, & there the matters would be talked over.

The propriety of our sending for witnesses, was also discussed. Our attorneys, said that they would recommend to us not to introduce any evidence at that trial. said it would avail us nothing, for the would put us into prison, if a cohort of angels were to come & swear that we were innocent: & beside that, he said that if we were to give to the court the names of our witnesses, there was a band there ready to go & they would go & drive them out of the country or arrest them & have them cast into prison, to prevent them from swearing or else kill them. It was finally concluded to let the matter be so for the present.

During the progress of the trial, & while I was laying sick in prison I had an opportunity of hearing, a great deal said about by those of them who would come in. The subject was the all absorbing one. I heard them say, that we must be put to death— that the character of the required it. The must justify herself, in the course she had taken, & nothing but punishing us with death, could save the credit of the & it must therefore be done.

I heard a party of them one night telling, about some female whose person they had violated & this language was used by one of them: “The damned bitch how She yelled.” Who this person was I did not know; but before I got out of prison. I heard that a widow whose husband had died, some few months before, with consumption had been brutally violated by a gang of them & died in there hands, leaving three little children, in whose presence the scene of brutality took place.

After I got out of prison & had arrived in Illinois. I met a strange man in the Street, who was inquiring & enquired of me respecting a circumstance of this kind— Saying he had heard of it [p. 147]