plotted? We had prisoners starving for years in some of the prison pens of the South, but if ever the sympathies of the men belonging to this order were moved in their behalf there is no record of it in this case or in history. Another purpose disclosed was the destruction of government property. The government had collected in warehouses immense stores which were being sent forward to supply the army in its contemplated campaigns. The railroads traversing our country and the steamboats navigating the Ohio and Mississippi rivers were loaded with these stores, the destruction of which was sufficient sometimes to thwart a great operation. Still another of the objects of the order, as disclosed here, was to put aboard our steamboats, freighted with stores and yet more precious lives, their infernal machines, which, in the night time, when men slept, should kindle fires and bring destruction to life and property. This was a purpose canvassed and actually listened to with approbation by such men as Bowles, and Milligan, and Dodd, and Horsey, and Humphries, and Dr. Wilson himself, who tells you of it. It was listened to as one would listen to the common details of a business affair. The per cent. that was to be paid for this infamous service by the rebel government, out of money stolen from our paymasters, was definitely fixed, and it was boasted that already government property had been thus destroyed. Is not language utterly powerless to express the abhorrence, the utter detestation which an honest heart must feel against monsters who could conceive such purposes as these? Mr. Hendricks talked to us a little in his opening speech of the horrible character of the proceedings before the Military Commission. I wish I might arouse him to a like abhorrence of this horrible conspiracy, and I shall look, gentlemen, to see if, in his concluding speech, he will not employ that gift of language and eloquence with which he has been endowed in denouncing it. We have seen that at Chicago Judge Bullitt, of Kentucky, Bowles, Dodd, Wilson and others assembled, discussed projects like those I have described as coolly as we would a transaction in real estate. Where were their consciences and moral nature? There is not a villain in a penitentiary, North or South, whose heart ever compassed or whose hand was ever reached out to execute a plan so utterly hellish as this. That a man who had conceived such plots, and who was only prevented from sharing in their execution by being taken into custody, and held for trial, by patriotic officers of the government, can come into our court rooms and sit here, day after day, seeking to recover damages against them, is an amazing instance of clemency. Whatever purpose Lee, Beauregard, or John Morgan and the marauding guerillas who operated through the border States under him, might put upon them to accomplish, these conspirators were organized to accomplish. Whatever purpose they had, these men had. Not Grant, not Sherman, not the brave men who stood with Indiana regiments in defense of our government, were the friends of Bowles, and Milligan, and Humphreys, and Horsey. Their friends were the enemies of the country. Consider next the condition of things at that time in our army. Sherman, in the spring of 1864, started on his grand campaign to the sea; and from May until the 2d of September he was toilsomely marching from Chattanooga to Atlanta, his way marked with the graves of his intrepid soldiers, killed by the sympathizers and associates of this plaintiff. Grant, starting about the same time, was making his difficult and bloody march through the Wilderness and Spottsylvania to Petersburg. The time was when all the energies of our people were upon a strain, when every patriotic heart was filled with unutterable anxiety for the success of those great campaigns. It was at the very crisis of our country's fate, these conspirators, here, in Indianapolis, in June, the plaintiff being present, as I shall show you, were devising and debating schemes intended to balk our armies, to turn back the tide of Union victories. To bring to your minds something of the condition of the country at that time, I desire to read to you, as part of my speech, a communication or two from the Generals commanding the armies of the United States: HEADQUARTERS ARMIES OF THE UNITED STATES. To HON. E. B. WASHBURNE: Dear Sir: I state to all citizens who visit me that all we want now to insure an early restoration of the Union is a determined unity of sentiment North. The rebels have now in their ranks their last man. The little boys and old men are guarding prisoners, guarding railroad bridges, and forming a good part of their garrisons for intrenched positions. A man lost by them cannot be replaced. They have robbed the cradle and the grave equally to get their present force. Besides what they lose in frequent skirmishes and battles, they are now losing from desertions and other causes at least one regiment per day. With this drain upon them, the end is not far distant, if we will only be true to ourselves. Their only hope now is a divided North. This might give them reinforcements from Tennessee, Kentucky, Maryland and Missouri, while it would weaken us. With the draft quickly enforced the enemy would become despondent, and would make but little resistance. I have no doubt but the enemy are exceedingly anxiou to hold out until after the Presidential election. They have many hopes from its effects. They hope a counter revolution; they hope the election of the Peace candidate. In fact, like "Micawber," they hope for something to "turn up." Our Peace friends, if they except peace from separation, are much mistaken. It would but be the beginning of war with thousands of Northern men joining the South because of our disgrace in allowing separation. To have "peace on any terms" the South would demand the restoration of their slaves already freed; they would demand indemnity for losses sustained, and they would demand a treaty which would make the North slave-hunters for the South. They would demand pay for the restoration of every slave escaping to the North. Yours truly, U. S. GRANT. WAR DEPARTMENT, September 14. MAJOR-GENERAL DIX, NEW YORK: Lieutenant-General Grant telegraphs this department in regard to the draft as follows: CITY POINT, 10.30 A. M., September 13. HON. E. M. STANTON, Secretary of War: We ought to have the whole number of men called for by the President in the shortest possible time. Prompt action in filling our armies will have more effect upon the enemy than a victory over them. They profess to believe and make their men believe there is such a party North in favor of recognizing Southern independence that the draft cannot be enforced. Let them be undeceived. U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General. The following despatch is from the present General of our armies: ATLANTA, GA., 6.30 P. M., September 18. HON. E. M. STANTON, Secretary of War: I am very glad to hear that the draft will be enforced. First, we want men; second, they come as privates to fill up our old and tried regiments, with their experienced officers already on hand; and third, because the enforcement of the law will manifest a power resident in our government equal to the occasion. Our government, though a Democracy, should in times of trouble and danger be able to wield the power of a great nation. All well. W. T. SHERMAN, Major-General. The General-in-chief, commanding one of our armies, then in the immediate theatre of its operations, now President of the United States, speaking from his official position, thus declared that the hopes of the Confederacy hung on the movement which these men were endeavoring to inaugurate in the State of Indiana. Their plans must have been known; their promises to kindle a rebellion here were known at Richmond; and thus that struggle was long protracted which would have ended at once but for the hope held out that our home governments would be assailed by armed forces composed of traitorous citizens, and the troops recalled from the front to prevent their overthrow. I have read these brief extracts from the communications of the great Generals who were leading our armies in the east and west, to show you how much the success of their campaigns depended on the enforcement of the draft, and the prompt suppression of disorders at home. They well appreciated the importance of the command that General Hovey held, and the help that would come to them by the prompt execution of the draft in Indiana, and the suppression of resistance to the National authority. Here then was the Confederacy stumbling towards its fall, and here was a movement on foot to restore its vigor by so weakening the power of our armies that they might not be able to maintain themselves in the field. The painful condition of affairs at that time through the whole country it is impossible for me to describe. It would be impossible for you or me to recall the anxiety, the watchfulness and the suspense everywhere to be seen in the country in 1864. The old mother in her country home, her boys all gone, plies her busy needle, and with every stitch lifts a prayer to God for victory and for the safety of her boys. The old father following again the plough which he had long left to be guided by the stalwart hands of the boy now gone, as he turns the furrow, his drooping form bent to unwonted labor, recalls the features of that boy, and longs for his return, yet is willing that the supreme sacrifice of the loved life may be made, if such sacrifice is necessary to save the Union. Then, when the old people gathered around the fireside altar, when the old man came from the field, and the old family Bible came down from its shelf, and they bowed alone before God, what was the burden of prayer? How the old man's voice, quivering with emotion, lifted itself toward the throne of grace in the one all-absorbing supplication to God for victory and the quick return of the absent one. And how many houses there were in which lonely wives and fatherless little ones dragged wearily on, their days and nights full of painful watching and apprehension. A cloud of anxiety seemed settled above their roof. The provider gone, the wife is doomed to unaccustomed toil. And then, too, there were times in such households as I have described, when sickness came, and the child stretched upon the bed, moaning and tossing with fever, asked with parched lips for papa, and when he would come home. And the counterpart of this I have seen with my own eyes-where the soldier, hearing the news from home, and without hope of release from duties in the field, braced his heart, wrung as it was with anguish and sorrow, and went forward to meet the enemy. These are no fancy pictures; they are only imperfectly drawn. I have myself seen brave men by the camp-fire and on the march in tears at such news from home, yet submitting themselves to the exigencies of the service. So, all over the land, in public places of information, about newspaper offices, the anxious crowds gathered to see whether the painful struggle was drawing to a close, to hear whether at last God seemed to be favorable to us in the strife. And then, in counterpart, I remember well |