As the case began, my attention was arrested. The jury was selected without difficulty; for, as none of the panel had heard of the case, the counsel waived the privilege of challenging. After the reading of the indictment, setting forth formally "an assault upon Mr. Monkton, with intent to kill, by one Ann, slave of William Summerville," the Commonwealth's attorney introduced Mr. Monkton himself as the only witness in the case. In a very minute and evidently pre-arranged story, he proceeded to detail the circumstances of a violent and deadly assault, which seemed to impress the jury greatly to my prejudice. When he had concluded, the prosecutor remarked that he had no further evidence, and proposed to submit the case, without argument, to the jury, as Mr. Trueman had no witnesses in my favor. To this proposal, however, Mr. Trueman would not accede; and so the prosecutor briefly argued upon the testimony and the law applicable to it. Then Mr. Trueman rose, and a thrill seemed to run through the audience as his tall, commanding form stood proud and erect, his mild saint-like eyes glowing with a fire that I had never seen before. He began by endeavoring to disabuse the minds of the jury of the very natural ill-feeling they might entertain against a slave, supposed to have made an attack upon the life of a white man; reviewed at length the distinctions which are believed, at the South, to exist between the two races; and dwelt especially upon those oppressive enactments which virtually place the life of a slave at the mercy of even the basest of the white complexion. Passing from these general observations, he examined, with scrutiny the prepared story of Mr. Monkton, showing it to be a vile fabrication of defeated malice, flatly contradictory in essential particulars, and utterly unworthy of reliance under the wise maxim of the law, that "being false in one thing, it was false in all." In conclusion, he made a stirring appeal to the jury, exhorting them to rescue this feeble woman from the foul machinations which had been invented for her ruin; to rebuke, by their righteous verdict, this swift and perjured witness; and to vindicate before the world the honor of their dear old Commonwealth, which was no less threatened by this ignominious proceeding than the safety of his poor and innocent client. The officers of the Court could scarcely repress the applause which succeeded this appeal.