The Great North-Western Conspiracy in All Its Startling Details Part 9

There is no throb of my heart that beats in unison with such conduct as this. He was a fit instrument to be used in this enterprise. What to him would be the wail of women and little ones? What to him would be the pleadings of old men and unarmed citizens?

The delivery of Judge Burnett's argument occupied three and a half hours, after which the Commission adjourned to meet at four o'clock P.M., to deliberate on the findings and sentence. They accordingly met at the hour appointed, and, after mature deliberation, finally recorded their verdict.

General Hooker issued General Orders No. 30, April 22, in which he promulgates the finding of the military commission which, for three months past, has been engaged in the trial of the alleged Chicago conspirators. The commission have acquitted Buckner S. Morris and Vincent Marmaduke, and they are to be discharged upon their taking the oath of allegiance. They find Charles Walsh and Richard T. Semmes guilty of all the charges and specifications, and sentence the former to five years' imprisonment at hard labor from the 7th of November last, and the latter to three years' imprisonment at hard labor from the same date, at such place as the commanding general may direct. Gen. Hooker has named the State penitentiary at Columbus, Ohio.

Cantrill's trial has been continued; Anderson committed suicide, and Charles Travis Daniels escaped. The commission found a verdict against Daniels, but it has not yet been promulgated. The findings against G.

St. Leger Grenfell have not yet been announced officially; but it is death, at such time and place as Gen. Hooker shall designate. The commission has been dissolved.

The Chicago _Tribune_, in speaking of the sentence, says:

The trial of the Chicago conspirators has ended, the sentences have been p.r.o.nounced and approved, and the court has adjourned. Buckner S. Morris and Vincent Marmaduke are acquitted and Charles Walsh and Richard T.

Semmes were found guilty of the entire charges and specifications, to wit: of conspiracy for the relief of the prisoners at Camp Douglas, and of conspiring to "lay waste and destroy" the city of Chicago. Walsh is sentenced to imprisonment for five years from November 7th, 1864, and Semmes to imprisonment at hard labor for three years from the date of sentence. The findings against G. St. Leger Grenfell have not been officially promulgated, but it is stated that he is found guilty and sentenced to death, at such time and place as Gen. Hooker shall designate. The penitentiary at Columbus, Ohio, is designated as the place of confinement of Walsh and Semmes. The trial has been long, mainly by reason of the course pursued by the defense, whose aim has been to protract it, so as to tire out the perseverance of the prosecution and the patience of the court and people. The court have performed their arduous duties with great ability and fairness. The result will doubtless be satisfactory to the people. It is proved that this great crime was in all its naked deformity and depravity actually committed. It follows that the Copperhead statement, published in the rebel organ in this city, charging that the entire plot and arrest of these Copperhead traitors and a.s.sa.s.sins were invented by the Union Republicans of Chicago as an electioneering trick, was the subterfuge of conscious guilt trying to cover up its tracks and to rub out the stains of its own attempted crimes. The same organ now impugns the "competency"

of the Court. It may consider itself fortunate that it has not had an opportunity to argue the question of jurisdiction on its own behalf before a similar tribunal. Its opposition to such courts originates in a feeling of uneasiness about its own safety. For

"Thief ne'er felt the halter draw With good opinion of the law."

REV. DR. TIFFANY UPON COPPERHEADS.

At a public meeting held in Chicago, after the announcement of the a.s.sa.s.sination, Rev. Dr. Tiffany, in an able and eloquent address said:

"G.o.d alone is great. At rare intervals he sends us a man beyond the limit of our measure. Our attention has been directed to the excellences of the character which belonged to our late President, and to the spirit of the system which gave strength to the blow of the a.s.sa.s.sin. A more terrible topic is now to be discussed--our relation to that spirit--our responsibility for that blow.

We have been accustomed to say, "slavery is sectional, and freedom national," let those who elect slavery take the results of slavery to themselves; let them suffer, if their choice brings suffering; but as for us, we wash our hands in innocency, and hold ourselves guiltless of blood." And so we have been going on ever since the outbreak of slavery in the form of armed rebellion. "They are the guilty parties, let them suffer." But has all this been right? Have we had no responsibility?

Is no guilt ours? We may not have owned slaves, but we may have made a common cause with men owners--may have brought condemnation upon ourselves by our tolerance, by our compromises.

Sad and almost disgraceful is the record which exhibits our complicity with this sin. We began by making free States wait at the door of the Union until slavery had a counterpoise, or balance adjusted in the form of slave State, to preserve the balance against freedom in the National Senate. We compromised the territories west of the Mississippi, by tolerating slaves there, and as one demand after another was made it was granted, till we even allowed slave rule in free States, by submitting to the Fugitive Slave law--these things could not have been done without our votes. When they threatened and bl.u.s.tered we fawned and cringed, until they knew and avowed their belief that the crack of a slave whip would bring the north to its knees. All they asked we granted, more than they demanded we offered. We held out our wrists for manacles. When we elected the great good man, who embodied our idea of nationality and freedom; and even after official announcement had been made of the position slavery occupied in their proposed nationalism, we guarded their slaves, and kept them secure to labor for the support of the masters who were fighting against us. When these slaves, acting on an intuition of freedom, came fleeing to us, we sent them back to chains and bondage. In all this we showed our complicity with the sin which struck the blow which killed our good President.

And after the slaughter of thousands in battle, and the death of as many more in hospitals, of fever, starvation and wounds, still was our hatred of the sin which caused them not deep enough. We talked of amnesty and non-humiliation, and G.o.d has permitted the sad cup to come to each lip in bitterness. Each one mourns to-day as if personally bereaved. The blackness of darkness is in our homes, and the whole nation mourns its first-born--its first-loved. May not--does not--a measure of responsibility rest upon us for this last sad event? Have we not been tolerant of the treason which has wrought this crime? Have we not been apologists for infamy under the name of different political opinions?

Have we not spared when we should have punished--been merciful when mercy was but cruelty? We seem to have believed that because there were more serpents away from our homes, the few left here had no venom. We felt secure because the loyalists were more numerous than the traitors.

But of the few who were here, and tolerated here, some plotted the escape of rebel prisoners, some the burning of our city, some the conflagration of New York, and some the murder of the Cabinet, while one has killed the good President. Had they all been driven out, or put under strict surveillance, there would have been none of these things from them. We have lost our President by tolerating traitors in our streets.

Who was the a.s.sa.s.sin of the President? Not an armed rebel, clothed with belligerent rights; not a political refugee, who had skulked into our lines for rapine and for plunder; but the citizen of a free State, who could visit and send his cards to the Vice-President with a flippant familiarity, which his aristocratic slave-holding a.s.sociates presume to use,--a man allowed to go about the streets of Washington, breathing treason and blaspheming G.o.d, without rebuke. He could command attention from proprietors of houses and saloons, from owners of blooded stock, from men who were called loyal, and the toleration of this killed our good President.

He was a wretch, of whom a press said, but yesterday, that he was sincere in thinking he should rid the earth of a tyrant, by slaying the President, this sincerity must place him on a level with John Brown.

[Hisses and cries of _The Times_.] This was said yesterday, and read by thousands, and I know of no steps taken to prevent the utterance of similar insult and outrage to-morrow. For this tolerance we are responsible, and tolerance like this killed the good President. When a far-seeing military commandant ordered the suppression of published treason, there were men in high places, and men all over the land, who outraged the loyal ma.s.ses by interfering to prevent the execution of that order, on the ground of disturbing the freedom of the press; but when our ministers went into Richmond they were muzzled, and the result has been that treason has been littered, the good man called an _imbecile_--the generous man a _tyrant_--the restraint of traitors has been referred to as, _usurpation_ of power, and prisons have been called _Bastiles_. All this has been, and we have tolerated it. This has given aid and comfort to treason in the South, and traitors in the North, and this has killed the good President.

The measure of our responsibility is the amount of our connivance at these things. No man is free from guilt who has winked at this wrong, who has interfered to prevent the punishment of wrong-doers, who has apologies for treason, who has not done all in his power to rebuke, denounce and punish the foes of the nation, at home and abroad. We stand, to-day, as though in the presence of the nation's dead, and here, on the tomb of our chieftain, let us swear eternal enmity to treason and to traitors. Nor let us, when the a.s.sa.s.sin shall be arrested and punished--oh! let us not then think we have done our duty. I had rather the profane wretch who has done this deed were never taken, than that his execution should relieve our minds from one thought of our personal responsibility. No; rather let the wretch be a fugitive and vagabond, with the mark of Cain upon him. Let none slay him, for we ourselves are not guiltless. And as he flies from men, with hate in his eyes and h.e.l.l in his heart, let every home be an asylum from which he shall be barred, and every honest, loyal heart a sanctuary where no thought of complicity with him, or sympathy for him may enter. Let us bow before G.o.d to-day in humble penitence; let us ask of Him forgiveness--Father forgive us, for we knew not what we did--that His hand be stayed, and the measure of our responsibility be canceled."

In this connection, we may with propriety, introduce the following extract from President Johnson's recent speech to the Indiana delegation:

"We are living at a time when the public mind had almost become oblivious of what treason is. The time has arrived, my countrymen, when the American people should be educated and taught what crime is, and that treason is crime, and the highest crime known to the law and the Const.i.tution. Yes, treason against a State, treason against all the States, treason against the Government of the United States, is the highest crime that can be committed, and those engaged in it should suffer all the penalties. It is not promulgating anything that I have not heretofore said, to say that traitors must be made odious; that treason must be made odious; that traitors must be punished and imprisoned. [Applause.] They must not only be punished, but their social power must be destroyed. If not, they will still maintain an ascendency, and may again become numerous and powerful; for, in the words of a former senator of the United States, when traitors become numerous enough, treason becomes respectable. And I say that, after making treason odious, every Union man and the Government, should be remunerated out of the pockets of those who have inflicted the great suffering upon the country. [Applause.] But do not understand me as saying this in a spirit of anger; for, if I understand my own heart, the reverse is the case; and, while I say that the penalties of the law, in a stern and inflexible manner, should be executed upon conscious, intelligent, and influential traitors,--the leaders who have deceived thousands upon thousands of laboring men, who have been drawn into the rebellion; and while I say, as to leaders, punishment, I also say leniency, conciliation, and amnesty, to the thousands whom they have misled and deceived, and, in relation to this, as I have remarked, I might have adopted your speech as my own."

THE LIST OF PROMINENT MEMBERS OF THE "SONS OF LIBERTY" IN ILLINOIS.

List of names of prominent members of the "Sons of Liberty" in the several counties of the State of Illinois, as reported by Col. J.B.

Sweet.

Names. County.

James W. Singleton ............................................Adams.

Thomas P. Bond................................................. Bond.

Harry Wilton....................................................Bond.

Thos. Hunter....................................................Bond.

Martin Brooks..................................................Brown.

C.H. Atwood....................................................Brown.

Fred Rearick ...................................................Ca.s.s.

Allen J. Hill...................................................Ca.s.s.

David Epler.....................................................Ca.s.s.

James A. d.i.c.k...................................................Ca.s.s.

Samuel Christey.................................................Ca.s.s.

T.J. Clark................................................Champaigne.

James Morrow .............................................Champaigne.

H.M. Vandeveer.............................................Christian.

J.H. Clark.................................................Christian.

S.S. Whitehed..................................................Clark.

H.H. Peyton....................................................Clark.

Phillip Dougherty..............................................Clark.

A.M. Christian..................................................Clay.

Stephen B. Moore...............................................Coles.

Dr. Wickersham .................................................Cook.

G.S. Kimberly...................................................Cook.

S. Corning Judd...............................................Fulton.

Charles Sweeny ...............................................Fulton.

L. Walker...................................................Hamilton.

M. Couchman..................................................Hanc.o.c.k.

M.M. Morrow..................................................Hanc.o.c.k.

J.M. Finch...................................................Hanc.o.c.k.

Dennis Smith.................................................Hanc.o.c.k.

J.S. Rainsdell.............................................Henderson.

A. Johnson.................................................Henderson.

Ira R. Wills...................................................Henry.

Chas. Durham...................................................Henry.

Morrison Francis...............................................Henry.

J.B. Carpenter.................................................Henry.

J. Osborn....................................................Jackson.

G.W. Jeffries.................................................Jasper.

G.H. Varnell...............................................Jefferson.

Wm. Dodds..................................................Jefferson.

J.M. Pace..................................................Jefferson.

James Sample..................................................Jersey.

O.W. Powell...................................................Jersey.

M.Y. Johnson...............................................Jo Davies.

David Shean................................................Jo Davies.

M. Simmons.................................................Jo Davies.

Louis Shisler..............................................Jo Davies.