The trial thenceforth proceeded in quiet until the announcement of the verdict of "not guilty," when another terrible scene ensued; but provision having been made for such an occurrence, the negroes were carried off to jail for protection. The people were satisfied that the negroes were guilty, and the verdict (obtained by Rousseau by showing the inconsistencies of the confession and the circumstances, the threats and the terror, under which it was extorted) only increased their passion. The jail was surrounded, and the night after the acquittal the negroes were taken out by the mob and hung on the trees in the City Hall grounds. During the riot the mayor of the city, Mr. Pilcher, while endeavoring to quiet the crowd, was struck by a missile in the head, and died soon after from the effects of the injury received. This and several other trials eventually resulted in increasing Rousseau's popularity. Two or three of his most important cases embraced the defense of men accused and undoubtedly guilty of aiding negroes to escape from slavery. It is hardly comprehensible that less than a decade ago this offense was considered the most criminal act a man could commit in Kentucky, or that men were sentenced to fifteen years' hard labor for such offenses, or that convicts are still working out their term for these offenses in Southern penitentiaries. To engage in the defense of such criminals a few years ago, even in the latitude of Louisville, was to be set down as an "abolitionist," and but few of the Kentucky lawyers of the decade just before the war cared to bear such a character. Rousseau, without courting the reputation, did not fear it; and his manly bearing in all such cases, and in the political excitement of the time, so advanced him in popular estimation that in 1860 he was elected to the State Senate of Kentucky without opposition and as the candidate of both parties, whose only rivalry with regard to him was as to which should first secure his acceptance of the nomination. It was while holding this position as state senator that Rousseau began his bold opposition to Kentucky neutrality, which brought him so prominently before the country, and opened to him that career in which he has won so much honor and such a high rank.