"Public sentiment in Alexandria is intensely excited in condemnation of Sumner and his allies. We know that it increases in this city every hour. The masses look upon Sumner as responsible for the death of Batchelder. They attribute, and justly, the action of the murderers to the counsel of Sumner. We hope that the public sentiment against these Abolition miscreants who infest Congress and our fair city, and fill the atmosphere in which they move with the odor of a brothel, will not descend to acts of personal violence. Such conduct can find no justification. But let public opinion condemn these men everywhere,--in the street, in the Capitol, in every place where men meet. _Let Sumner and his infamous gang_ feel that he cannot outrage the fame of his country, counsel treason to its laws, incite the ignorant to bloodshed and murder, and still receive the support and countenance of the society of this city, which he has done so much to vilify. "While the person of a Virginia citizen is only safe from rudeness and outrage behind the serried ranks of armed men, Charles Sumner is permitted to walk among the 'slave-catchers' and 'fire-eaters' of the South in peace and security. While he incites his constituents to resist the Federal laws _even to the shedding of blood_, concocts his traitorous plots, and sends forth his incendiary appeals under the broad protecting panoply of the laws he denounces, he retains his seat in the Senate, and yet daily violates the official oath which he took to support the Constitution of the United States." Such articles were plainly intended to excite a mob against Mr. Sumner. The conspiracy obtained headway in Alexandria. One proposition was, to seize him as hostage for the surrender of the fugitive slave whose case was then pending in Boston; another was, to inflict upon him personal indignity and violence; another was, "to put a ball through his head." These menaces were communicated to him, and he was warned to leave Washington. This he refused to do, and he insisted upon walking to the Senate by Pennsylvania Avenue, always unarmed. At a restaurant, where he dined, he was directly menaced and insulted. The following telegram in the New York _Times_, under date of May 31, states the case briefly. "A strenuous and systematized effort is making here and in Alexandria to raise a mob against Senator Sumner, in retaliation for the Boston difficulty.... The _Star_ of this evening has two articles, the incendiary purpose of which cannot be mistaken. Senator Sumner himself has been several times warned to-day of personal danger, and assured that persons bearing close relation to the Administration are inciting the people to violence against him. Northern men are much excited in consequence, and if an outrage is committed, there is a probability that there will be serious trouble."