peculiar legal talents of Rousseau, the attorney general employed him to aid in the prosecution of Jeff Davis for treason, and to assist Hon. John H. Clifford and William M. Evarts in the important duty of endeavoring to define treason. There occurred in Louisville in 1857 a trial of a very remarkable character, which illustrates in a very interesting manner Rousseau's legal ability and his decision and daring. A family of five or six persons, named Joyce, were murdered, and their bodies burned in their house near the city. Suspicion fell upon some negroes on the adjoining plantation, and they were seized by the neighbors and threatened with hanging if they did not confess. One or two of them were hung up for a few moments and then let down nearly exhausted, but still persisted in declaring their innocence. Another, however, tied to a stake, and the fagots fired around him, agreed to confess, and, to avoid death by burning, confessed that himself and the others arrested with him had committed the murder. The negroes--four of them, all belonging to one man--were thrown into jail to await their trial. Their master was satisfied that they were innocent, and determined to engage the best available counsel for them. This was easier to propose than to do, for so great was the excitement among the people that, extending to the lawyers, no other counsel besides Rousseau could be retained, and he was compelled to undertake the defense unaided. He had always been very popular in the district in which the murder had been committed, and many of his old friends from the neighborhood visited him, and urged him not to sacrifice his popularity with them by defending such abased and brutal criminals as these negroes. In vain Rousseau urged that the greater the guilt the greater the necessity for a lawyer. His friends could listen to no reason, and saw no justification in defending negroes who deserved to be hung according to their own confession. When Rousseau intimated that he did not believe the confession, and alluded to the manner in which it had been extorted, they would go away in disgust, and many cursed him for "a damned abolitionist."