"The sun had descended nearly to the horizon; the shadows of night were beginning to fall around us. The sheriff could defer the dark deed no longer. With no little emotion, and with words of earnest deprecation, he gave that excellent, heroic, Christian young lady into the hands of the jailer, and she was led into the cell of Watkins. So soon as I had heard the bolts of her prison door turned in the lock, and saw the key taken out, I bowed and said: 'The deed is done, completely done. It cannot be recalled. It has passed into the history of our nation and our age.' I went away with my steadfast friend, George W. Benson, assured that the legislators of the State had been guilty of a most unrighteous act, and that Miss Crandall's persecutors had also committed a great blunder; that they all would have much more reason to be ashamed of her imprisonment than she or her friends could ever have. "The next day we gave the required bonds. Miss Crandall was released from the cell of the murderer, returned home, and quietly resumed the duties of her school until she should be summoned as a culprit into court, there to be tried by the infamous '_Black Law of Connecticut_.' And, as we expected, so soon as the evil tidings could be carried in that day, before Professor Morse had given to Rumor her telegraphic wings, it was known all over the country and the civilized world, that an excellent young lady had been imprisoned as a criminal--yes, put into a murderer's cell--in the State of Connecticut, for opening a school for the instruction of colored girls. The comments that were made upon the deed in almost all the newspapers were far from grateful to the feelings of her persecutors. Even many who, under the same circumstances, would probably have acted as badly as Messrs. A. T. Judson & Co., denounced their procedure as 'un-Christian, inhuman, anti-Democratic, base, mean.' "On the 23d of August, 1833, the first trial of Miss Crandall was had in Brooklyn, the seat of the county of Windham, Hon. Joseph Eaton presiding at the county court. "The prosecution was conducted by Hon. A. T. Judson, Jonathan A. Welch, Esq., and I. Bulkley, Esq. Miss Crandall's counsel was Hon. Calvin Goddard, Hon. W. W. Elsworth, and Henry Strong, Esq. "The judge, somewhat timidly, gave it as his opinion 'that the law was constitutional and obligatory on the people of the State.' "The jury, after an absence of several hours, returned into court, not having agreed upon a verdict. They were instructed and sent out again, and again a third time, in vain; they stated to the judge that there was no probability that they could ever agree. Seven were for conviction and five for acquittal, so they were discharged.