Gentlemen, if there has been a division between you, remember that that division has sprung up from honest conviction. Can you think otherwise? Shoulder to shoulder with your fathers, in the days of the Revolution, their fathers fought the battles of freedom. Side by side with you, they trod the burning plains of Mexico, and encountered, in hostile strife, the foes of your country; and when the shock of battle was over, wrapped in the same honored flag, their dead and yours were borne to their final resting place. Is it for a light and a trifling cause that they have thus separated from you? In conclusion, gentlemen, let me beg you to meet this issue like men. No matter what the pressure upon you is, stand firm, do justice, and discharge these prisoners. In so doing, you will but do your duty, and God himself will sanction the act. But, gentlemen, if deaf to the promptings of reason, of justice, and of humanity--if, impelled by political rancor and passion--you condemn these prisoners, and execution follows condemnation, be assured that they will meet their fate like men; and that these manacled hands, which you have so often disported through your streets to excited crowds, will, "though impotent here," be lifted, and not in vain, to a far more august tribunal than this, before whose unerring decrees Courts and nations alike must bow with awful reverence. ARGUMENT OF MR. SULLIVAN. Mr. Sullivan, of Counsel for the prisoners, said: _May it please the Court: Gentlemen of the Jury_: This case has brought to my mind an interesting episode in ancient history, to which I beg permission to refer. For many years, the States of Greece had been engaged in bloody civil strife, which ended in the discomfiture of Athens. The Spartans and their allies assembled in council to consider and determine on her fate. Animated by resentful passion, the Thebans urged extreme and vindictive measures: that Athens should be razed to the ground, that the hand of the victorious States should fall heavy, and the Athenians be proclaimed exiles from their homes and outlaws in Greece. This proposal was applauded by the Corinthians and some others, but at that moment the deputy of the Phocians, who owed a debt of gratitude to the Athenians, sang in the assembly the mournful Choral Ode from the Electra of Sophocles, which moved all present in such a manner that they declared against the design. The poem had lifted them from the passion of the hour, and invoked the memories and ancestral glories of their common nation. The spirits of departed heroes now lent the inspiration of their presence, and yielding to it the members of that council and jury became great Greeks, as of old their fathers were. Marathon and Salamis, Platæa and Mycale, were pictured in the chambers of their souls, with Miltiades, Themistocles and Aristides for their counselors; and then, and not until then were they fit to render a verdict upon Athens, the loveliest sister of them all.