That the two persons were one it seemed scarcely possible to doubt.  Not only did every one who remembered Salome on shipboard recognize the plaintiff as she, but others, who had quite forgotten her appearance then, recognized in her the strong family likeness of the Muellers.  This likeness even witnesses for the defense had to admit.  So, on Salome’s side, testified Madame Koelhoffer, Madame Schultzheimer, and young Daniel Miller (Mueller) from Mississippi.  She was easily pointed out in the throng of the crowded court-room.

And then, as we have already said, there was another means of identification which it seemed ought alone to have carried with it overwhelming conviction.  But this we still hold in reserve until we have heard the explanation offered by John F. Miller both in court and at the same time in the daily press in reply to its utterances which were giving voice to the public sympathy for Salome.

It seems that John Fitz Miller was a citizen of New Orleans in high standing, a man of property, money, enterprises, and slaves.  John Lawson Lewis, commanding-general of the State militia, testified in the case to Mr. Miller’s generous and social disposition, his easy circumstances, his kindness to his eighty slaves, his habit of entertaining, and the exceptional fineness of his equipage.  Another witness testified that complaints were sometimes made by Miller’s neighbors of his too great indulgence of his slaves.  Others, ladies as well as gentlemen, corroborated these good reports, and had even kinder and higher praises for his mother, Mrs. Canby.  They stated with alacrity, not intending the slightest imputation against the gentleman’s character, that he had other slaves even fairer of skin than this Mary Bridget, who nevertheless, “when she was young,” they said, “looked like a white girl.”  One thing they certainly made plain—­that Mr. Miller had never taken the Mueller family or any part of them to Attakapas or knowingly bought a redemptioner.

He accounted for his possession of the plaintiff thus:  In August, 1822, one Anthony Williams, being or pretending to be a negro-trader and from Mobile, somehow came into contact with Mr. John Fitz Miller in New Orleans.  He represented that he had sold all his stock of slaves except one girl, Mary Bridget, ostensibly twelve years old, and must return at once to Mobile.  He left this girl with Mr. Miller to be sold for him for his (Williams’s) account under a formal power of attorney so to do, Mr. Miller handing him one hundred dollars as an advance on her prospective sale.  In January, 1823, Williams had not yet been heard from, nor had the girl been sold; and on the 1st of February Mr. Miller sold her to his own mother, with whom he lived—­in other words, to himself, as we shall see.  In this sale her price was three hundred and fifty dollars and her age was still represented as about twelve.  “From that time she remained in the house of my mother,” wrote Miller to the newspapers, “as a domestic servant” until 1838, when “she was sold to Belmonti.”