TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO CONSPIRATORS—THE WITNESSES AND THE TESTIMONY.
When our troops entered Richmond, among other rebel documents found was a bill, offered in secret session of the rebel House of Representatives, January 30th, 1865, establishing a Secret Service Bureau, for the employment of secret agents, "either in the Confederate States, or within the enemy's lines, or in any foreign country," and authorizing the chief officer "to organize such a system for the application of new means of warfare approved, and of secret service agencies, as may tend best to secure the objects of the establishment of the bureau."
The trial, conviction, sentence, and execution of Capt. Beall, for piracy on the lakes, and of Kennedy, for incendiarism in New York, are still fresh in the recollection of our readers. That these men were acting under instructions from the bureau of secret service of Jeff. Davis, no rational person can doubt. These acts were but incidents in the grand conspiracy at the North; the guilty parties, who suffered death, were but the instruments of others, and the members of the secret organizations, who were cognizant of these acts and purposes, though yet unwhipped of justice, are more guilty, in the sight of Heaven, than the wretches who undertook the execution of the hellish design, and for which they suffered ignominious death.
After the discovery of the purposes and acts of the leaders of the Sons of Liberty in Illinois, in co-operation with rebels, and the arrests detailed in a former chapter, a Military Commission was convened in Cincinnati for the trial of the prisoners, Morris, Walsh, Grenfell, Anderson, Daniels, Cantril, Marmaduke and Semmes, upon a charge of conspiring to sack and burn Chicago, and to liberate the prisoners in Camp Douglas.
The Commission consisted of the following named officers:
C.D. Murray, Colonel 89th Indiana Volunteers, President Commission. Ben. Spooner, Colonel 83d Indiana Volunteers. N.C. Macrae, Major United States Army. P. Vous Radowitz, Lieutenant-Colonel United States Army. S.P. Lee, Major 6th Regiment Veteran Reserve Corps. M.N. Wiswell, Colonel Veteran Reserve Corps. B.P. DeHart, Colonel 128th Indiana Volunteers. S.H. Lathrop, Lieutenant-Colonel, A.I.G. Albert Heath, Lieutenant-Colonel 100th Regiment Indiana Volunteers.