Chapter VII (6)

At last the loyal Democrats came together to the great Convention, and with them came Satan also. Bands of ill-favored men, in bushy hair, bad whiskey, and seedy homespun, staggered from the railway-stations, and hung about the street-corners. A reader of Dante or Swedenborg would have taken them for delegates from the lower regions, had not their clothing been plainly perishable, while the devils wear everlasting garments. They had come, they announced, to make a Peace President, but they brandished bowie-knives, and bellowed for war even in the sacred precincts of the Peace Convention. But war or peace, the Commandant was ready for it.

For days reinforcements had poured into the camp, until it actually bristled with bayonets. On every side it was guarded with cannon, and, day and night, mounted men patrolled the avenues to give notice of the first hostile gathering. But there was no gathering. The conspirators were there, two thousand strong, with five thousand Illini to back them. From every point of the compass,--from Canada, Missouri, Southern Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New York, and even loyal Vermont, bloody-minded men had come to give the Peace candidate a red baptism. But "discretion is the better part of valor." The conspirators saw the preparations and disbanded. Not long afterward one of the leaders said to me, "We had spies in every public place,--in the telegraph-office, the camp itself, and even _close by_ the Commandant's head-quarters, and knew, hourly, all that was passing. From the observatory, opposite the camp, I myself saw the arrangements for our reception. We outnumbered you two to one, but our force was badly disciplined. Success in such circumstances was impossible; and on the third day of the Convention we announced from head-quarters that an attack at that time was impracticable. It would have cost the lives of hundreds of the prisoners, and perhaps the capture or destruction of the whole of us." So the storm blew over, without the leaden rain, and its usual accompaniment of thunder and lightning.

A dead calm followed, during which the Illini slunk back to their holes; the prisoners took to honest ink; the bogus "Butternuts" walked the streets clad like Christians, and the Commandant went to sleep with only one eye open. So the world rolled around into November.

The Presidential election was near at hand,--the great contest on which hung the fate of the Republic. The Commandant was convinced of this, and wanted to marshal his old constituents for the final struggle between Freedom and Despotism. He obtained a furlough to go home and mount the stump for the Union. He was about to set out, his private secretary was ready, and the carriage waiting at the gateway, when an indefinable feeling took possession of him, holding him back, and warning him of coming danger. It would not be shaken off, and reluctantly he postponed the journey till the morrow. Before the morrow facts were developed which made his presence in Chicago essential for the safety of the city and the lives of the citizens. The snake was scotched, not killed. It was preparing for another and a deadlier spring.

On the second of November, a well-known citizen of St. Louis, openly a Secessionist, but secretly a loyal man, and acting as a detective for the Government left the city in pursuit of a criminal. He followed him to Springfield, traced him from there to Chicago, and on the morning of November fourth, about the hour the Commandant had the singular impression I have spoken of, arrived in the latter city. He soon learned that the bird had again flown.

"While passing along the street," (I now quote from his report to the Provost Marshal General of Missouri,) "and trying to decide what course to pursue,--whether to follow this man to New York, or return to St. Louis,--I met an old acquaintance, a member of the order of 'American Knights,' who informed me that Marmaduke was in Chicago. After conversing with him awhile, I started up the street, and about one block farther on met Dr. E. W. Edwards, a practising physician in Chicago, (another old acquaintance,) who asked me if I knew of any Southern soldiers being in town. I told him I did; that Marmaduke was there. He seemed very much astonished, and asked how I knew. I told him. He laughed, and then said that Marmaduke was at his house, under the assumed name of Burling, and mentioned, as a good joke, that he had a British passport, _vised_ by the United States Consul under that name. I gave Edwards my card to hand to Marmaduke, (who was another 'old acquaintance,') and told him I was stopping at the Briggs House.

"That same evening I again met Dr. Edwards on the street, going to my hotel. He said Marmaduke desired to see me, and I accompanied him to his house." There, in the course of a long conversation, "Marmaduke told me that he and several Rebel officers were in Chicago to cooperate with other parties in releasing the prisoners of Camp Douglas, and other prisons, and in inaugurating a Rebellion at the North. He said the movement was under the auspices of the order of 'American Knights,' (to which order the Society of the Illini belonged,) and was to begin operations by an attack on Camp Douglas on election-day."

The detective did not know the Commandant, but he soon made his acquaintance, and told him the story. "The young man," he says, "rested his head upon his hand, and looked as if he had lost his mother." And well he might! A mine had opened at his feet; with but eight hundred men in the garrison it was to be sprung upon him. Only seventy hours were left! What would he not give for twice as many? Then he might secure reinforcements. He walked the room for a time in silence, then, turning to the detective, said, "Do you know where the other leaders are?"--"I do not."--"Can't you find out from Marmaduke?"--"I think not. He said what he did say voluntarily. If I were to question him, he would suspect me." That was true, and Marmaduke was not of the stuff that betrays a comrade on compulsion. His arrest, therefore, would profit nothing, and might hasten the attack for which the Commandant was so poorly prepared. He sat down and wrote a hurried dispatch to his General. Troops! troops! for God's sake, troops! was its burden. Sending it off by a courier,--the telegraph told tales,--he rose, and again walked the room in silence. After a while, with a heavy heart, the detective said, "Good night," and left him.

What passed with the Commandant during the next two hours I do not know. He may have prayed,--he is a praying man,--and there was need of prayer, for the torch was ready to burn millions of property, the knife whetted to take thousands of lives. At the end of the two hours, a stranger was ushered into the apartment where the Commandant was still pacing the floor. From the lips and pen of this stranger I have what followed, and I think it may be relied on.

He was a slim, light-haired young man, with fine, regular features, and that indefinable air which denotes good breeding. Recognizing the Commandant by the eagle on his shoulder, he said, "Can I see you alone, Sir?"--"Certainly," answered the Union officer, motioning to his secretary to leave the room. "I am a Colonel in the Rebel army," said the stranger, "and have put my life into your hands, to warn you of the most hellish plot in history."--"Your life is safe, Sir," replied the other, "if your visit is an honest one. I shall be glad to hear what you have to say. Be seated."

The Rebel officer took the proffered chair, and sat there till far into the morning. In the limits of a magazine article I cannot attempt to recount all that passed between them. The written statement the Rebel Colonel has sent to me covers fourteen pages of closely written foolscap; and my interview with him on the subject lasted five hours, by a slow watch. He disclosed all that Judge Holt has made public, and a great deal more. Sixty days previously he had left Richmond with verbal dispatches from the Rebel Secretary of War to Jacob Thompson, the Rebel agent in Canada. These dispatches had relation to a vast plot, designed to wrap the West in flames, sever it from the East, and secure the independence of the South. Months before, the plot had been concocted by Jeff Davis at Richmond; and in May previous, Thompson, supplied with two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in sterling exchange, had been sent to Canada to superintend its execution. This money was lodged in a bank at Montreal, and had furnished the funds which fitted out the abortive expeditions against Johnson's Island and Camp Douglas. The plot embraced the order of "American Knights," which was spread all over the West, and numbered five hundred thousand men, three hundred and fifty thousand of whom were armed. A force of twelve hundred men--Canadian refugees, and bushwhackers from Southern Illinois and Missouri--was to attack Camp Douglas on Tuesday night, the 8th of November, liberate and arm the prisoners, and sack Chicago. This was to be the signal for a general uprising throughout the West, and for a simultaneous advance by Hood upon Nashville, Buckner upon Louisville, and Price upon St. Louis. Vallandigham was to head the movement in Ohio, Bowles in Indiana, and Walsh in Illinois. The forces were to rendezvous at Dayton and Cincinnati in Ohio, New Albany and Indianapolis in Indiana, and Rock Island, Chicago, and Springfield in Illinois; and those gathered at the last-named place, after seizing the arsenal, were to march to aid Price in taking St. Louis. Prominent Union citizens and officers were to be seized and sent South, and the more obnoxious of them were to be assassinated. All places taken were to be sacked and destroyed, and a band of a hundred desperate men was organized to burn the larger Northern cities not included in the field of operations. Two hundred Confederate officers, who were to direct the military movements, had been in Canada, but were then stationed throughout the West, at the various points to be attacked, waiting the outbreak at Chicago. Captain Hines, who had won the confidence of Thompson by his successful management of the escape of John Morgan, had control of the initial movement against Camp Douglas; but Colonel Grenfell, assisted by Colonel Marmaduke and a dozen other Rebel officers, was to manage the military part of the operations. All of these officers were at that moment in Chicago, waiting the arrival of the men, who were to come in small squads, over different railroads, during the following three days. The Rebel officer had known of the plot for months, but its atrocious details had come to his knowledge only within a fortnight. They had appalled him; and though he was betraying his friends, and the South which he loved, the humanity in him would not let him rest till he had washed his hands of the horrible crime.

The Commandant listened with nervous interest to the whole of this recital; but when the Southern officer made the last remark, he almost groaned out,--

"Why did you not come before?"

"I could not. I gave Thompson my opinion of this, and have been watched. I think they have tracked me here. My life on your streets to-night wouldn't be worth a bad half-dollar."

"True; but what must be done?"

"Arrest the 'Butternuts' as they come into Chicago."

"That I can do; but the leaders are here, with five thousand armed Illini to back them. I must take them. Do you know them?"

"Yes; but I do not know where they are quartered."

At two o'clock the Commandant showed the Rebel officer to his bed, but went back himself, and paced the floor until sunrise. In the morning his plan was formed. It was a desperate plan; but desperate circumstances require desperate expedients.

In the prison was a young Texan who had served on Bragg's staff, and under Morgan in Kentucky, and was, therefore, acquainted with Hines, Grenfell, and the other Rebel officers. He fully believed in the theory of State Rights,--that is, that a part is greater than the whole,--but was an honest man, who, when his word was given, could be trusted. One glance at his open, resolute face showed that he feared nothing; that he had, too, that rare courage which delights in danger, and courts heroic enterprise from pure love of peril. Early in the war, he had encountered Colonel De Land, a former commandant of the post, on the battlefield, and taken him prisoner. A friendship then sprang up between the two, which, when the tables were turned, and the captor became the captive, was not forgotten. Colonel De Land made him chief clerk in the medical department, and gave him every possible freedom. At that time it was the custom to allow citizens free access to the camp; and among the many good men and women who came to visit and aid the prisoners was a young woman, the daughter of a well-known resident of Chicago. She met the Texan, and a result as natural as the union of hydrogen and oxygen followed. But since Adam courted Eve, who ever heard of wooing going on in a prison? "It is not exactly the thing," said Colonel De Land; "had you not better pay your addresses at the lady's house, like a gentleman?" A guard accompanied the prisoner; but it was shrewdly guessed that he stayed outside, or paid court to the girls in the kitchen.

This was the state of things when the present Commandant took charge of the camp. He learned the facts, studied the prisoner's face, and remembered that he, too, once went a-courting. As he walked his room that Friday night, he bethought him of the Texan. Did he love his State better than he loved his affianced wife? The Commandant would test him.

"But I shall betray my friends! Can I do that in honor?" asked the Texan.

"Did you ask that question when you betrayed your country?" answered the Commandant.

"Let me go from camp for an hour. Then I will give you my decision."

"Very well."

And, unattended, the Texan left the prison.

What passed between the young man and the young woman during that hour I do not know, and could not tell, if I did know,--for I am not writing romance, but history. However, without lifting the veil on things sacred, I can say that her last words were, "Do your duty. Blot out your record of treason." God bless her for saying them! and let "Amen" be said by every American woman!

On his return to camp, the Texan merely said, "I will do it," and the details of the plan were talked over. He was to escape from the prison, ferret out and entrap the Rebel leaders. How to manage the first part of the dangerous programme was the query of the Texan. The Commandant's brain is fertile. An adopted citizen, in the scavenger line, makes periodical visits to the camp in the way of his business, and him the Commandant sends for.

"Arrah, yer Honor," the Irishman says, "I ha'n't a tr-raitor. Bless yer beautiful sowl! I love the kintry; and besides, it might damage me good name and me purty prefession."

He is assured that his name will be all the better for dieting a few weeks in a dungeon, and--did not the same thing make Harvey Birch immortal?

Half an hour before sunset the scavenger comes into camp with his wagon. He fills it with dry bones, broken bottles, decayed food, and the rubbish of the prison; and down below, under a blanket, he stows away the Texan. A hundred comrades gather round to shut off the gaze of the guard; but outside is the real danger. He has to pass two gates, and run the gauntlet of half a dozen sentinels. His wagon is fuller than usual; and the late hour it is now after sunset will of itself excite suspicion. It might test the pluck of a braver man; for the sentries' bayonets are fixed, and their guns at the half-trigger; but he reaches the outer gate in safety. Now St. Patrick help him! for he needs all the impudence of an Irishman. The gate rolls back; the Commandant stands nervously by, but a sentry cries out,--

"You can't pass; it's agin orders. No wagins kin go out arter drum-beat."

"Arrah, don't be a fool! Don't be afther obstructin' a honest man's business," answers the Irishman, pushing on into the gateway.

The soldier is vigilant, for his officer's eye is on him.

"Halt!" he cries again, "or I'll fire!"

"Fire! Waste yer powder on yer friends, like the bloody-minded spalpeen ye are!" says the scavenger, cracking his whip, and moving forward.

It is well he does not look back. If he should, he might be melted to his own soap-grease. The sentry's musket is levelled; he is about to fire, but the Commandant roars out,--

"Don't shoot!" and the old man and the old horse trot off into the twilight.

Not an hour later, two men, in big boots, slouched hats, and brownish butternuts, come out of the Commandant's quarters. With muffled faces and hasty strides, they make their way over the dimly lighted road into the city. Pausing, after a while, before a large mansion, they crouch down among the shadows. It is the house of the Grand Treasurer of the Order of American Knights, and into it very soon they see the Texan enter. The good man knows him well, and there is great rejoicing. He orders up the fatted calf, and soon it is on the table, steaming hot, and done brown in the roasting. When the meal is over, they discuss a bottle of Champagne and the situation. The Texan cannot remain in Chicago, for there he will surely be detected. He must be off to Cincinnati by the first train; and he will arrive in the nick of time, for warm work is daily expected. Has he any money about him? No, he has left it behind, with his Sunday clothes, in the prison. He must have funds; but the worthy gentleman can lend him none, for he is a loyal man; of course he is! was he not the "people's candidate" for Governor? But no one ever heard of a woman being hanged for treason. With this he nods to his wife, who opens her purse, and tosses the Texan a roll of greenbacks. They are honest notes, for an honest face is on them. At the end of an hour good-night is said, and the Texan goes out to find a hole to hide in. Down the street he hurries, the long, dark shadows following.

He enters the private door of a public house, speaks a magic word, and is shown to a room in the upper story. Three low, prolonged raps on the wall, and--he is among them. They are seated about a small table, on which is a plan of the prison. One is about forty-five,--a tall, thin man, with a wiry frame, a jovial face, and eyes which have the wild, roving look of the Arab's. He is dressed after the fashion of English sportsmen, and his dog--a fine gray bloodhound--is stretched on the hearthrug near him. He looks a reckless, desperate character, and has an adventurous history.[D] In battle he is said to be a thunderbolt,--lightning harnessed and inspired with the will of a devil. He is just the character to lead the dark, desperate expedition on which they are entered. It is St. Leger Grenfell.

At his right sits another tall, erect man, of about thirty, with large, prominent eyes, and thin, black hair and moustache. He is of dark complexion, has a sharp, thin nose, a small, close mouth, a coarse, harsh voice, and a quick, boisterous manner. His face tells of dissipation, and his dress shows the dandy; but his deep, clear eye and pale, wrinkled forehead denote a cool, crafty intellect.[E] This is the notorious Captain Hines, the right-hand man of Morgan, and the soul and brains of the Conspiracy. The rest are the meaner sort of villains. I do not know how they looked, and if I did, they would not be worth describing.

Hines and Grenfell spring to their feet, and grasp the hand of the Texan. He is a godsend,--sent to do what no man of them is brave enough to do,--lead the attack on the front gateway of the prison. So they affirm, with great oaths, as they sit down, spread out the map, and explain to him the plan of operations.

Two hundred Rebel refugees from Canada, they say, and a hundred "Butternuts" from Fayette and Christian Counties, have already arrived; many more from Kentucky and Missouri are coming; and by Tuesday they expect that a thousand or twelve hundred desperate men, armed to the teeth, will be in Chicago. Taking advantage of the excitement of election-night, they propose, with this force, to attack the camp and prison. It will be divided into five parties. One squad, under Grenfell, will be held in reserve a few hundred yards from the main body, and will guard the large number of guns already provided to arm the prisoners. Another--command of which is offered to the Texan--will assault the front gateway, and engage the attention of the eight hundred troops quartered in Garrison Square. The work of this squad will be dangerous, for it will encounter a force four times its strength, well armed and supplied with artillery; but it will be speedily relieved by the other divisions. Those, under Marmaduke, Colonel Robert Anderson of Kentucky, and Brigadier-General Charles Walsh of Chicago, Commander of the American Knights, will simultaneously assail three sides of Prison Square, break down the fence, liberate the prisoners, and, taking the garrison in rear, compel a general surrender. This accomplished, small parties will be dispatched to cut the telegraph-wires and seize the railway-stations; while the main body, reinforced by the eight thousand and more prisoners, will march into the city and rendezvous in Court-House Square, which will be the base of further operations.

The first blow struck, the insurgents, will be joined by the five thousand Illini, (American Knights,) and, seizing the arms of the city,--six brass field-pieces and eight hundred Springfield muskets,--and the arms and ammunition stored in private warehouses, will begin the work of destruction. The banks will be robbed, the stores gutted, the houses of loyal men plundered, and the railway-stations, grain-elevators, and other public buildings burned to the ground. To facilitate this latter design, the water-plugs have been marked, and a force detailed to set the water running. In brief, the war will be brought home to the North; Chicago will be dealt with like a city taken by assault, given over to the torch, the sword, and the brutal lust of a drunken soldiery. On it will be wreaked all the havoc, the agony, and the desolation which three years of war have heaped upon the South; and its upgoing flames will be the torch that shall light a score of other cities to the same destruction!

It was a diabolical plan, conceived far down in hell amid the thick blackness, and brought up by the arch-fiend himself, who sat there, toying with the hideous thing, and with his cloven foot beating a merry tune on the death's-head and cross-bones under the table.

As he concludes, Hines turns to the new comer,--

"Well, my boy, what do you say? Will you take the post of honor and of danger?"

The Texan draws a long breath, and then, through his barred teeth, blurts out,--

"I will!"

On those two words hang thousands of lives, millions of money!

"You are a trump!" shouts Grenfell, springing to his feet "Give us your hand upon it!"

A general hand-shaking follows, and during it, Hines and another man announce that their time is up:--

"It is nearly twelve. Fielding and I never stay in this d----d town after midnight. You are fools, or you wouldn't."

Suddenly, as these words are uttered, a slouched hat, listening at the keyhole, pops up, moves softly through the hall, and steals down the stairway. Half an hour later the Texan opens the private door of the Richmond House, looks cautiously around for a moment, and then stalks on towards the heart of the city. The moon is down, the lamps burn dimly, but after him glide the shadows.

In a room at the Tremont House, not far from this time, the Commandant is walking and waiting, when the door opens, and a man enters. His face is flushed, his teeth are clenched, his eyes flashing. He is stirred to the depths of his being. Can he be the Texan?

"What is the matter?" asks the Commandant.

The other sits down, and, as if only talking to himself, tells him. One hour has swept away the fallacies of his lifetime. He sees the Rebellion as it is,--the outbreak and outworking of that spirit which makes hell horrible. Hitherto, that night, he has acted from love, not duty. Now he bows only to the All-Right and the All-Beautiful, and in his heart is that psalm of work, sung by one of old, and by all true men since the dawn of creation: "Here am I, Lord! Send me!"

The first gray of morning is streaking the east, when he goes forth to find a hiding-place. The sun is not up, and the early light comes dimly through the misty clouds, but about him still hang the long, dark shadows. This is a world of shadows. Only in the atmosphere which soon inclosed him is there no night and no shadow.

Soon the Texan's escape is known at the camp, and a great hue-and-cry follows. Handbills are got out, a reward is offered, and by that Sunday noon his name is on every street-corner. Squads of soldiers and police ransack the city and invade every Rebel asylum. Strange things are brought to light, and strange gentry dragged out of dark closets; but nowhere is found the Texan. The search is well done, for the pursuers are in dead earnest; and, Captain Hines, if you don't trust him now, you are a fool, with all your astuteness!

So the day wears away and the night cometh. Just at dark a man enters the private door of the Tremont House, and goes up to a room where the Commandant is waiting. He sports a light rattan, wears a stove-pipe hat, a Sunday suit, and is shaven and shorn like unto Samson. What is the Commandant doing with such a dandy? Soon the gas is lighted; and lo, it is the Texan! But who in creation would know him? The plot, he says, thickens. More "Butternuts" have arrived, and the deed will be done on Tuesday night, as sure as Christmas is coming. He has seen his men,--two hundred, picked, and every one clamoring for pickings. Hines, who carries the bag, is to give him ten thousand greenbacks, to stop their mouths and stuff their pockets, at nine in the morning.

"And to-morrow night we'll have them, sure! And, how say you, give _you_ shackles and a dungeon?" asks the Commandant, his mouth wreathing with grim wrinkles.

"Anything you like. Anything to _blot out my record of treason_."

He has learned the words,--they are on his heart, not to be razed out forever.

When he is gone, up and down the room goes the Commandant, as is his fashion. He is playing a desperate game. The stake is awful. He holds the ace of trumps,--but shall he risk the game upon it? At half past eight he sits down and writes a dispatch to his General. In it he says:--

"My force is, as you know, too weak and much overworked,--only eight hundred men, all told, to guard between eight and nine thousand prisoners. I am certainly not justified in waiting to take risks, and mean to arrest these officers, if possible, before morning."

The dispatch goes off, but still the Commandant is undecided. If he strikes to-night, Hines may escape, for the fox has a hole out of town, and may keep under cover till morning. He is the king-devil, and much the Commandant wants to cage him. Besides, he holds the bag, and the Texan will go out of prison a penniless man among strangers. Those ten thousand greenbacks are lawful prize, and should be the country's dower with the maiden. But are not republics grateful? Did not one give a mansion to General McClellan? Ah, Captain Hines, that was lucky for you, for, beyond a doubt, it saved your bacon!

The Commandant goes back to camp, sends for the police, and gets his blue-coats ready. At two o'clock they swoop to the prey, and before daybreak a hundred birds are in the talons of the eagle. Such another haul of buzzards and night-hawks never was made since Gabriel caged the Devil and the dark angels.[F]

At the Richmond House Grenfell was taken in bed with the Texan. They were clapped into irons, and driven off to the prison together. A fortnight later, the Texan, relating these details to a stranger, while the Commandant was sitting by at his desk writing, said,--

"Words cannot describe my relief when those handcuffs were put upon us. At times before, the sense of responsibility almost overpowered me. Then I felt like a man who has just come into a fortune. The wonder to me now is, how the Colonel could have trusted so much to a Rebel."

"Trusted!" echoed the Commandant, looking up from his writing. "I had faith in you; I thought you wouldn't betray me; but I trusted your own life in your own hands, that was all. Too much was at stake to do more. Your every step was shadowed, from the moment you left this camp till you came back to it in irons. Two detectives were constantly at your back, sworn to take your life, if you wavered for half a second."

"Is that true?" asked the Texan in a musing way, but without moving a muscle. "I didn't know it, but I felt it in the air!"

In the room at the Richmond House, on the table around which were discussed their hellish plans, was found a slip of paper, and on it, in pencil, was scrawled the following:--

"COLONEL,--You _must_ leave this house _to-night_. Go to the
Briggs House.

"J. FIELDING."

Fielding was the assumed name of the Rebel who burrowed with Hines out of town, where not even his fellow-fiends could find him. Did the old fox scent the danger? Beyond a doubt he did. Another day, and the Texan's life might have been forfeit. Another day, and the camp might have been sprung upon a little too suddenly! So the Commandant was none too soon; and who that reads this can doubt that through it all he was led and guided by the good Providence that guards his country?

But what said Chicago, when it awoke in the morning? Let one of its own organs answer.

"A shiver of genuine horror passed over Chicago yesterday. Thousands of citizens, who awoke to the peril hanging over their property and their heads in the form of a stupendous foray upon the city from Camp Douglas, led by Rebel officers in disguise and Rebel guerrillas without disguise, and concocted by home Copperheads, whose houses had been converted into Rebel arsenals, were appalled as though an earthquake had opened at their feet.... Who can picture the horrors to follow the letting loose of nine thousand Rebel prisoners upon a sleeping city, all unconscious of the coming avalanche? With arms and ammunition stored at convenient locations, with confederates distributed here and there, ready for the signal of conflagration, the horrors of the scene could scarcely be paralleled in savage history. One hour of such a catastrophe would destroy the creations of a quarter of a century, and expose the homes of nearly two hundred thousand souls to every conceivable form of desecration."[G]

But the men of Chicago not only talked, they acted. They went to the polls and voted for the Union; and so told the world what honest Illinois thought of treason.

More arrests were made, more arms taken, but the great blow was struck and the great work over. Its head gone, the Conspiracy was dead, and it only remained to lay out its lifeless trunk for the burial. Yet, even as it lay in death, men shuddered to look on the hideous thing out of which had gone so many devils.

FOOTNOTES:

[D] See Fremantle's "Three Months in the Southern States," p. 148.

[E] Detective's description.

[F] Since the foregoing was written the Commandant's official report has been published. In reference to these arrests, he says, in a dispatch to General Cook, dated Camp Douglas, Nov. 7, 4 o'clock, A. M.:--

"Have made during the night the following arrests of Rebel
officers, escaped prisoners of war, and citizens in
connection with them:--

"Morgan's Adjutant-General, Colonel G. St. Leger Grenfell, in
company with J. T. Shanks, [the Texan,] an escaped prisoner
of war, at Richmond House; Colonel Vincent Marmaduke, brother
of General Marmaduke; Brigadier-General Charles Walsh, of the
'Sons of Liberty'; Captain Cantrill, of Morgan's command;
Charles Traverse (Butternut). Cantrill and Traverse arrested
in Walsh's house, in which were found two cart-loads of large
size revolvers, loaded and capped, two hundred stands of
muskets loaded, and ammunition. Also seized two boxes of guns
concealed in a room in the city. Also arrested Buck Morris,
Treasurer of 'Sons of Liberty,' having complete proof of his
assisting Shanks to escape, and plotting to release prisoners
at this camp.

"Most of these Rebel officers were in this city on the same
errand in August last, their plan being to raise an
insurrection and release prisoners of war at this camp. There
are many strangers and suspicious persons in the city,
believed to be guerrillas and Rebel soldiers. Their plan was
to attack the camp on election-night. All prisoners arrested
are in camp. Captain Nelson and A. C. Coventry, of the
police, rendered very efficient service.

"B. J. SWEET, Col. Com."

In relation to the general operations I have detailed, the Commandant in this Report writes as follows:--

"Adopting measures which proved effective to detect the presence and identify the persons of the officers and leaders and ascertain their plans, it was manifest that they had the means of gathering a force considerably larger than the little garrison then guarding between eight and nine thousand prisoners of war at Camp Douglas, and that, taking advantage of the excitement and the large number of persons who would ordinarily fill the streets on election-night, they intended to make a night attack on and surprise this camp, release and arm the prisoners of war, cut the telegraph-wires, burn the railroad-depots, seize the banks and stores containing arms and ammunition, take possession of the city, and commence a campaign for the release of other prisoners of war in the States of Illinois and Indiana, thus organizing an army to effect and give success to the general uprising so long contemplated by the 'Sons of Liberty.'"

[G] Chicago Tribune, Nov. 8, 1864.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

1. _The Hillyars and the Burtons._ A Tale of Two Families.
By HENRY KINGSLEY. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

2. _Christian's Mistake._ By the Author of "John Halifax."
New York: Harper & Brothers.

3. _Uncle Silas._ A Tale of Bartram-Haugh. By J. S. LE FANU.
New York: Harper & Brothers.

While the American popularity of Charles Kingsley has been rather declining, the credit of his brother Henry has been gradually rising. Those who have complained of something rather shallow and sketchy in some of his former books will find far more solid and faithful work in this. Indeed, he undertakes rather more than he can carry through, and the capacious plot, well handled at first, gets into some confusion and ends in a rather feeble result. To deal with two large families, distributing part of each in England and part in Australia, to interlink them in the most complicated way in all genealogical and topographical relations, demands a structural genius like that of Eugene Sue; and though Mr. Kingsley grapples stoutly with the load, he staggers under it. His descriptions of scenery are as vivid as his brother's, and he exhibits far less arrogance and no theology. There are in the book single scenes of great power, and there has never, perhaps, been a more vivid portraiture of lower-middle-class life in England, or of the manner in which it has been galvanized into a semi-American development in Australia. The results of that expatriation upon more cultivated classes, however, appear such as we should be sorry to call even demi-semi-American. Fancy discovering in California a young lady in book-muslin, the daughter of cultivated parents, who remarks under excitement,--"Well, if this don't bang wattle-gum, I wish I may be buried in the bush in a sheet of bark! Why, I feel all over centipedes and copper-lizards!" Still, there may be some confusion in the dialects used in the book, as there is hardly a person in it, patrician or plebeian, on either side of the equator, who does not address everybody else as "old man" or "old girl," whenever the occasion calls for tenderness. It may be very expressive, but it implies a slight monotony in the language of British emotion.

There is rather a want of central unity to the book, but, so far as it has a main thread, it seems to be the self-devotion of a sister who prefers her brother to her lover. This furnishes a pleasant change from the recent favorite theme of ladies who prefer their lovers to their husbands.

To this latter class of novels, based on what may be called the centrifugal forces of wedlock, "Christian's Mistake" perhaps belongs. Its clear and practised style is refreshing, after the comparative crudeness of some other recent treatises on the same theme; the characters are human, not wooden, and the whole treatment healthful and noble.

"Uncle Silas" is the climax of the sensational, and goes as far beyond Mrs. Wood as she beyond Miss Braddon, or she beyond reason and comfortable daylight reading.

_The Life and Times of Sir William Johnson, Bart._ By
WILLIAM L. STONE. Albany: J. Munsell.

We well remember the interest with which, more than twenty years ago, we heard that Mr. William L. Stone was preparing a life of Sir William Johnson. His collection of material was very large, comprising several thousands of original letters, besides a great mass of other papers. He had written, however, but a small part of his work, when death put a period to his labors, and the documents which he had gathered with such enthusiastic industry seemed destined to remain a crude mass of undigested material. We think it fortunate for all students of American history, that a son, bearing his name and inheriting in the fullest measure his capacity for the work, has undertaken its completion, partly from affection and a sense of duty, and partly, it is evident, from a natural aptitude.

In the whole range of American history no other personage appears so remarkable in character and so important in influence, and at the same time so little known to general readers, as Sir William Johnson. The reason is, that his great powers were exercised on a theatre which, though vast and wellnigh boundless, was exterior to the familiar field of political action. Yet on the single influence of this man depended at times the prosperity and growth of all the British American colonies. Could France have won his influence in her behalf, England could not have broken that rival power in America without an exhausting expenditure of men and treasure, and without leaders of a different stamp from the blockheads with whom she long continued to paralyze her Cisatlantic armies. At the darkest crisis of the last French War, the influence of Johnson alone saved the English colonies from the miseries which would have ensued from the enmity of the powerful confederacy of the Six Nations; and for many years after, in his capacity of Superintendent of Indian Affairs, he continued to exercise an unparalleled power over the tribes of the interior, soothing their jealousies, composing their quarrels, and protecting them with equal justice, benevolence, and ability from the fraud and outrage of encroaching whites.

Johnson settled on the Mohawk in his youth, and immediately fell into relations with his savage neighbors. He was accustomed to join their sports and assume their dress; and it is an evidence of the native force and dignity of his character, that, in thus taking a course which commonly provoked their contempt, he gained their affection, without diminishing their respect and admiration. He gained a military reputation--not unqualified--by the Battle of Lake George, in 1755, where he commanded the British force; and he won brighter laurels by the capture of Fort Niagara in 1759. His true fame rests, however, on his civic achievements,--on the tact, energy, and judgment, the humanity and breadth of views, with which he managed the important interest placed in his hands. It would be hard to say whether the Indians or the Colonists profited most by his influence; for while with a fearless adroitness he overthrew the schemes of hungry speculators, he averted from peaceful settlers many a peril of whose existence, perhaps, they were unaware. He gave peace to the borders, and sweetened, as far as lay in the power of man, that bitter cup which had fallen to the lot of the wretched races of the forest.

Mr. Stone's book covers a period extending from a few years before the French War of 1745 to the death of Johnson in 1774. In accordance with its title, it is largely occupied with the "times" as well as with the "life" of its subject. In fact, it is a history of the period, relating with considerable detail contemporary events with which Johnson was connected only indirectly. This detracts from its character as a work of purely original research, to which, as far as regards the personal history of its subject, it is preeminently entitled.

Johnson's vast correspondence relates chiefly to matters of public interest, and supplies comparatively few of those details of private life which give liveliness to pictures of scenes and character. The book, in respect to execution, is perhaps necessarily unequal. The first seven chapters were written by the father of Mr. Stone, who endeavored to continue the work on its original plan. The attempt, always difficult, to carry out a design conceived in the mind of another, seems at the outset to have somewhat hampered the author; but as he proceeds with his work, his excellent qualification for it becomes more and more apparent. He is thorough and faithful in the use of his great store of material, and clear, vigorous, and often picturesque in his narrative. The period with which he deals is one of the most interesting and most important in American history, and the treatment is worthy of the theme. The hackneyed phrase, so often meaningless, is in the case of this book emphatically true,--that no library of American history can be said to be complete without it.

1. _The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living._ By JEREMY
TAYLOR, D. D. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.

2. _The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying._ By JEREMY TAYLOR,
D. D. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.

The beautiful meditations of Jeremy Taylor, written in the intervals of the great English civil war, seem appropriate enough amidst these closing days of our own contest. While the English language remains, his delicious sentences will find readers and lovers; and the endless variety of choice learning with which his pages are gemmed would make them always delightful, were his own part valueless.

This copiousness of allusion makes no small work for his American editor, since even the latest English editions leave much to be supplied. It is an enormous undertaking to verify and complete all these manifold citations, and yet the present editor has been content with nothing less. Editors so conscientious are not easily to be found; and it is to the honor of Little, Brown & Company that they habitually secure such services, and thus make their reprints almost as creditable to our literature as if they were original works.

_History of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United
States of America._ By ABEL STEVENS, LL. D., Author of "The
History of the Religious Movement of the Eighteenth Century
called Methodism," etc. Volumes I. and II. New York:
Carleton & Porter.

The history of a religions denomination is in itself a matter of no small importance. Taken in connection with other ecclesiastical bodies as a portion of the data in estimating the national development, it is still more valuable. In the churches inhere almost exclusively the sources of influence available for the moral culture of the people. The pulpit, the pastorate, and the various other ecclesiastical appliances are potent in effects which cannot be produced by other causes. The higher educational institutions are under the direction of the religious bodies; while our common schools, though properly excluding sectarian influence, are yet indirectly and not improperly affected by the religious character of the community. Not only does the man who undertakes to write history, while ignoring the religious element, give us an incompetent and false representation, but no one can become a respectable student of history who does not carefully consider the religious development of society as proceeding under the guidance of the several denominational bodies.

Up to about the period of the Revolution the principal religious establishments in this country were the Puritans, occupying practically the whole field in New England, the Presbyterians preponderating in the Middle Colonies, and the Episcopalians in the South. There were other elements, as the Quakers and the Baptists. The former, though not without a considerable influence in shaping the national character, were less marked in their effect. The latter, though already an important body and destined to become still more so, and though in fervor and aggressiveness subsequently approximating the Methodists, were as yet so little distinct from the Puritans that we may regard them as substantially one with the latter.

Presbyterianism and Episcopalianism were then, as they have been ever since, conservative in their character and tendencies. Puritanism was radical in its views and sentiments, yet lacking that diffusive propagandist power inhering in conventional bodies. Methodism, coming in, supplied this lack, and at the same time appealed to vast masses which had not before been reached by religious influences. An argument might be found here, were any needed, in support of the voluntary system of religious establishments, as more perfectly adapting themselves to the various wants and peculiarities of the different classes of people. Suggestions also arise concerning the equilibrium so necessary in a free government, for the proper settlement of moral, social, and political questions,--an equilibrium between the conservative and progressive tendencies, which is far more likely to be attained when left free from any direction by the state.

The present year completes a full century since the first Methodist societies were formed in this country. The name of a church was not assumed till some years later. It had been about thirty years since the commencement of the remarkable religious movement in England, under the Wesleys and Whitefield. It was introduced here by some Irish immigrants of German ancestry. Missionaries were very soon sent over from England, and in no long time native preachers were raised up. The time was propitious and the field promising for the success of the simple, cheap, and every way available appliances of the new religious agency. The rapidly increasing and widely scattering population could not be adequately supplied by any of the ecclesiastical bodies which operated only through settled pastorates. These new propagandists, confined to no locality, but going everywhere with their off-hand discourse, their eagerness "to preach the word" to congregations of any size, of any character, and in any place, with their rude, but vigorous style of oratory, and direct, outspoken address, attracted and affected whole communities to an extraordinary degree. It is true, they were not always treated with much deference, and sometimes they were the objects of abuse and violence, in which their lives were imperilled. But still they pursued their way through the wilderness, seeking the lost sheep. An anecdote illustrates the persistency of this class of preachers, and also the grim humor with which, in spite of themselves, they sometimes invested their rather startling announcements. In those early days there was one Richmond Nolley, a preacher in the new Southern country. He was a man of great zeal, energy, and courage, and omitted no opportunity of doing good to persons of any color or condition in whatever obscure corner he could find them. On one occasion, while travelling, he came upon a fresh wagon-track, and following it, he discovered an emigrant family, who had just reached the spot where they intended to make their home. The man, who was putting out his team, saw at once by the bearing and costume of the stranger what his calling was, and exclaimed,--

"What! another Methodist preacher! I quit Virginia to get out of the way of them, and went to a new settlement in Georgia, where I thought I should be quite beyond their reach; but they got my wife and daughter into the church. Then, in this late purchase, Choctaw Corner, I found a piece of good land, and was sure I should have some peace of the preachers; but here is one before my wagon is unloaded."

"My friend," said Nolley, "if you go to heaven, you'll find Methodist preachers there; and if to hell, I'm afraid you'll find some there; and you see how it is in this world. So you had better make terms with us and be at peace."

Dr. Stevens, who has acquired some celebrity by his excellent history of the Wesleyan movement in England, has displayed in the present volume the same marked abilities which made his previous work so popular. There is not only evidence of laborious and conscientious diligence in gathering up, sometimes from almost inaccessible sources, the requisite materials, but the skill displayed in their arrangement and treatment, so as to make the narrative an absorbingly attractive one, is eminently praiseworthy. As a history, the work is not only creditable in a denominational and ecclesiastical point of view, but it is a valuable contribution to our national literature.

Much of this success doubtless may be attributable to the nature of the subject; for it is not easy to conceive of any movement, and especially a religious one, in which the melodramatic, mingled here and there with both the tragic and comic, forms so large a natural element. There was a new country, a rude society, daring adventures, great perils, marvellous escapes, terrible hardships, the stern, harsh realities of pioneer life, grand and unexpected successes, all which, seen from the distance of the present, have a romantic coloring, and produce an exhilarating effect. Any ordinary ability would have made a readable story out of such materials; but to make a history worthy of the name required the hand of a master.

There is something, perhaps, rather fanciful in the coincidence or parallel which the author would make out between the enterprise of John Wesley and that of James Watt. Yet it is not devoid of interest. While the one, toiling in poverty and obscurity, was preparing an invention which should incalculably multiply industrial productiveness and give a mightier impulse to modern civilization than any other material element, the other, incurring the opprobrium of his ecclesiastical order, and regarded as a reprehensible agitator and fanatic, was inaugurating a movement which should prove one of the most extraordinary and far-reaching of any in modern times; and both these agencies--the one employing a mighty material force in the interest of society, the other setting in operation vast moral energies for the uplifting of the masses--were to have their grandest results in the New World.