The Great North Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details
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I. Windslow Ayer >> The Great North Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details
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That these accused would enter upon the commission of so heinous a crime,
I can scarcely permit myself to believe. They have made a strong appeal to
your sympathies. Each counsel has advocated the cause of his client with
an earnestness and an eloquence that does him honor; I shall always
respect them, and bear them in kindly recollection.
But there seems to have been something, during these four years of the
nation's trial, that has appeared to paralyze the native instincts of the
American heart. This phantom, this siren of secession, with her enticing
song, seems to have lulled to sleep the better part of human nature. At
the sound of her voice, and the flash of her eye, men have sprung to arms,
to grapple with the life of the nation, because it was free! They have
followed, at the beck of the siren, over desolated homes; they have
trampled over the dead corpses of murdered brothers, and innocent women
and children. They have blackened the land with desolation, and made it
the abode of moaning and woe. She has blinded, while she has demoralized
them. Old men, forgetting their white hairs, have joined in the conspiracy
at the beck of this phantom, who has taken out of the human heart its
heaven-born instincts, to plant there those of vengeance, and the thirst
for blood.
My tongue falters as I look over this country and see bereaved widows and
orphans, the white-haired patriots that mourn for the first-born, that
shall ne'er greet them, and those who sit at the desolate hearth, with
hands upraised, waiting for the knock that will be but the death-knell of
all their hopes; and think that the phantom of secession has caused all
this!
Men who were kind fathers, kind husbands and noble patriots, have
forgotten it all in a day, and have become traitors, and inculcated
doctrines that have, by the hands of fiends, stricken down that patriotic
and noble leader of the human race. There is something in it which no man
can comprehend. The doctrines which they inculcate harden the heart, and
nerve the arm to crime, enabling them to commit robbery, arson and murder,
for all is in her category; and as they commit those crimes, the appeal to
God for the justness of their cause. That is what has deceived these men;
it is this accursed phantom of secession that has blinded their eyes; that
has cooled their hearts and filled them with vengeance. It is this that
has changed and perverted the human instincts, that should have ruled in
their breasts.
Of this man Walsh, I have simply this to say: The evidence is as you have
seen it. I have briefly sketched it; I will not dwell upon much that ought
to be said; I can not. The testimony is voluminous, filling 2,000 or 2,500
pages. I have had but a few days to scan through it; I have given you only
the leading points, and you must judge. I would not say one word that
would take from this family their father; but if this man was guilty of
this crime, or has aided and abetted this conspiracy, you have but one
duty to perform. You must know no man, be influenced by no bias, betray no
sympathy, but must be firm in the performance of your stern duty. There
are thirty millions of suffering people in this land, and against these,
one man's life, if guilty, weighs little in the scale of justice. We have,
unhappily, in the history of this war, frequently seen sympathy manifested
for criminals, rebels and traitors--those who have brought this great
injustice upon the true and the loyal. It is not mercy to acquit those
guilty of cruelty to a people who are struggling for their very existence;
it would be cruelty to our brave soldiers, and to those who have been left
widows and orphans.
As to Judge Morris--for his white hair and old age, I have only respect.
For all that is worthy in him as a citizen, I do him reverence; but if
this white-haired old man has engaged in a conspiracy against my nation
and my country, I turn to the other side, and see white-haired patriots
who mourn in sadness because such as he have done these evil deeds,--and I
remember Justice!
As to this man Grenfel, I confess I have no sympathy with him; no sympathy
for the foreigner who lands in our country when this nation is engaged in
the struggle for human right and human liberty, and who takes part in the
quarrel against us, and arrays himself on the side of those who are trying
to establish tyranny and slavery. I have no sympathy for the man whose
sword is unsheathed for hire and not for principle; for whom slavery and
despotism have more charms than freedom and liberty. The motive of such a
one does not rise even to the dignity of vengeance. As has been said by
his counsel, his sword has gleamed in every sun, and has been employed on
the side of almost every nationality, and after this he engages in our
struggle, and, as testified to by Colonel Moore, desires to raise the
black flag against our prisoners; and after men have yielded as prisoners
of war, he rides up to one, and stabs him, coward like, in the back.
But he is not true to the cause he espouses. When in Washington he went to
the Secretary of War and betrays the very people with whom he had been
fighting; tells all he knows of the strength, position and designs of the
Confederates. He said he proposed to leave immediately for England, but he
breaks his faith, proceeds to Canada, and is found among the conspirators,
and is now here, charged with these crimes to-day. 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
pronounced 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 assassins 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
assassination, Rev. Dr. Tiffany, in an able and eloquent address said:
"God 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 assassin. 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 blustered 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 God 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 assassin 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 associates presume to
use,--a man allowed to go about the streets of Washington, breathing
treason and blaspheming God, 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 masses 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 assassin 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 hell 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 God 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 Constitution. 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."
* * * * *
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 ...................................................Cass.
Allen J. Hill...................................................Cass.
David Epler.....................................................Cass.
James A. Dick...................................................Cass.
Samuel Christey.................................................Cass.
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..................................................Hancock.
M.M. Morrow..................................................Hancock.
J.M. Finch...................................................Hancock.
Dennis Smith.................................................Hancock.
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.
Thomas McKee................................................... Knox.
J.F. Worrell..................................................McLean.
E.D. Wright...................................................Menard.
Edward Lanning ...............................................Menard.
Robert Halloway ..............................................Mercer.
Robert Davis..............................................Montgomery.
Thomas Grey...............................................Montgomery.
W.J. Latham...................................................Morgan.
J.O. S. Hays..................................................Morgan.
J.W. McMillen.................................................Morgan.
D. Patterson ...............................................Moultrie.
Dr. Kellar..................................................Moultrie.
G.D. Read ......................................................Ogle.
W.W. O'Brien..................................................Peoria.
Peter Sweat...................................................Peoria.
Jacob Gale....................................................Peoria.
P.W. Dunne....................................................Peoria.
John Fuller...................................................Peoria.
John Francis..................................................Peoria.
C.H. Wright.................................................. Peoria.
John Oug......................................................Putnam.
M. Richardson.................................................Shelby.
M. Shallenberger...............................................Stark.
J.B. Smith.................................................Stevenson.
J.L. Carr.................................................Vermillion.
John Donlar...............................................Vermillion.
Wm. S. Moore...............................................Christian.
B.S. Morris.....................................................Cook.
W.C. Wilson.................................................Crawford.
L.W. Onell..................................................Crawford.
Dickins ..................................................Cumberland.
J.C. Armstrong ...............................................Dewitt.
C.H. Palmer...................................................Dewitt.
B.T. Williams................................................Douglas.
Amos Green.....................................................Edgar.
R.M. Bishop....................................................Edgar.
W.D. Latshaw.................................................Edwards.
Levi Eckels..................................................Fayette.
Dr. Bassett..................................................Fayette.
T. Greathouse................................................Fayette.
Chas. T. Smith...............................................Fayette.
N. Simmons......................................................Ford.
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