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and within the fortified and intrenched lines thereof, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, and at the time of said combining, confederating and conspiring, President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief the Army and Navy thereof; Andrew John. son, then Vice President of the United States aforesaid, Wm. H. Seward, Secretary of State of the United States aforesaid, and Ulysses S. Grant, Lieutenant-General of the Army of the United States aforesaid, then in command of the armies of the United States, under the direction of the said Abraham Lincoln; and in pursuance of and in prosecuting said malicious, unlawful and traitorous conspiracy aforesaid, and in aid of said Rebellion, afterward, to-wit, on the 14th day of April, 1865, within the Military Department of Washington aforesaid, and within the fortified and intrenched lines of said Military Department, together with said John Wilkes Booth and John H. Surratt, maliciously, unlawfully and traitorously murdering the said Abraham Lincoln, then President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States as aforesaid, and maliciously, unlawfully and traitorously assaulting, with intent to kill and murder, the said Wm. H. Seward, then Secretary of State of the United States as aforesaid, and lying in wait with intent, maliciously, unlawfully and traitorously, to kill and murder the said Andrew Johnson, then being Vice President of the United States, and the said Ulysses S. Grant, then being Lieutenant-General and in command of the Armies of the United States as aforesaid."

In the course of the trial, positive evidence was furnished, connecting Jacob Thompson, Jefferson Davis, and their associates named above, with President Lincoln's assassination. This direct evidence is only the key-stone of an arch of circumstances, strong as adamant. We have already seen the avowal, in the Greeley-Sanders peace correspondence, that several of these men were in Canada, in the "confidential employment" of Davis. This employment, after the failure of their busy intrigues with Northern sympathizers, to defeat Mr. Lincoln's re-election, and the liberal waste of funds in sustaining Northern Rebel journalism, had taken a form congenial to their "chivalrous" instincts, in instigating and aiding piratical seiz

ures on Lake Erie, robbery at St. Albans, hotel-burning and wholesale murder at New York, and in a broad-cast diffusion of pestilence and death through the northern cities, by the efforts of the "philanthropic " Dr. Blackburn, who labored assiduously in his purpose of spreading malignant disease by means of infected clothing. What farther depth of iniquity needed these men to sound before organizing a conspiracy-at first for the avowed purpose of abducting, then of murdering outright, the President whom they so maliciously hated? That they did enter this scheme, is proved beyond doubt. That Jefferson Davis, in whose "confidential employment" all this while they were, was consulted as to the plan of assassination, and gave it his approval, is shown by positive testimony. And this suits the temper he had shown in his readiness to entertain McCullough's infamous plan for introducing into the "confidential" service a combustible which would obviate the "difficulties heretofore encountered" in burning hotels. It is strikingly confirmed by his language on hearing, at Charlotte, North Carolina, that Mr. Lincoln had been assassinated. Lewis F. Bates, of that town, in whose house Davis was then staying, gives the following testimony on this point, after stating that the latter received a dispatch from Breckinridge announcing the assassination:

Q-Look at this (exhibiting to witness a telegram) and see whether it is the same dispatch?

A.-I should say that it was.

The dispatch was then read, as follows:

"GREENSBORO, April 19, 1865.-His Excellency, President Davis: President Lincoln was assassinated in the theater in Washington, on the night of the 14th inst. Seward's house was entered on the same night, and he was repeatedly stabbed, and is probably mortally wounded.

(Signed,)

"JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE."

Q.-State what Jefferson Davis said after reading this dispatch to the crowd. Endeavor to recollect his precise language?

A.-At the conclusion of his speech to the people, he read this dispatch aloud, and made this remark: "If it were to be done, it were better that it were done well."

Q.-You are sure these are the words?

A.-These are the words.

Q.-State whether or not, in a day or two afterward, Jefferson Davis, John C. Breckinridge, and others, were present in your house in Charlotte?

A. They were.

Q.-And the assassination of the President was the subject of conversation?

A.-A day or two afterward that was the subject of their conversation.

Q. Can you remember what John C. Breckinridge said?

A.-In speaking of the assassination of President Lincoln, he remarked to Davis that he regretted it very much; that it was unfortunate for the people of the South at that time. Davis replied: "Well, General, I don't know; if it were to be done at all, it were better it were well done; and if the same were done to Andrew Johnson, the beast, and to Secretary Stanton, the job would then be complete."

Q-You feel confident that you recollect the words?
A. These are the words used.

The expedient of assassinating Mr. Lincoln had long been. a favorite one, beyond doubt, with many of the Southern traitors. It was no less unlawful, they might naturally reason, than levying war against the Government. That it was less manly, that it was infamous in the eyes of all nations, weighed little with many who had so long brazenly defied the sentiment of the civilized world. Mr. Lincoln, during the canvass of 1860, received letters threatening his life-in themselves of no consequence, but showing how easily Rebel notions even then took such a direction, and might sooner or later mature into act. It can not reasonably be doubted that there was a definite plan for assassinating Mr. Lincoln at Baltimore, in February, 1861. Northern Copperheads and Southern traitors kept the propensity alive by constant denunciations of the President as a tyrant, and by historic allusions, hightened in effect by poetic citations in praise of tyrannicide. These doctrines were fostered by the Copperhead secret ordersundoubtedly in affiliation with Thompson, Clay and Tucker, and receiving from them pecuniary aid. This spirit was rampant at the Chicago Democratic National Convention, as shown in

previous pages, and during the subsequent canvass. All these ideas apparently originated in the South, and were propagated from thence. It was under such training that the assassin was prepared for the conception, and nerved to the execution of his monstrous crime.

When the youthful Col. Dahlgren fell a victim to Southern hate, in Kilpatrick's unsuccessful raid for the rescue of pris oners at Richmond, on the 4th of March, 1864, there was pretended to have been found on Dahlgren's person an order in his name, directing that the city be destroyed, "and Jeff. Davis and Cabinet killed." This "order," of which much was made in the Rebel States and abroad, has been satisfactorily shown to be a forgery, and it now but serves to reveal the dark undercurrent in the Southern mind, setting in the direction of a crime ultimately consummated.

There is positive proof, developed on the trial of the assassination conspirators, that, at the time of this raid of Kilpatrick, preparations were made for a wholesale massacre of several thousand Union prisoners, in case he had taken the city, by means of mines filled with gunpowder under the Libby prison. This fact has been officially conceded and justified in the report of a Rebel committee, which has recently come to light.

A lawyer of Alabama, named Gayle, perhaps quite as respectable as "philanthropist" Blackburn, published a notice (the authorship and genuineness of which are proved), on the 1st of December, 1864, in the Selma Dispatch, in these words:

ONE MILLION DOLLARS WANTED TO HAVE PEACE BY THE 1ST OF MARCH.-If the citizens of the Southern Confederacy will furnish me with the cash, or good securities, for the sum of one million dollars, I will cause the lives of Abraham Lincoln, William H. Seward and Andrew Johnson to be taken by the 1st of March next. This will give us peace, and satisfy the world that cruel tyrants can not live in a "land of liberty." If this is not accomplished, nothing will be claimed beyond the sum of fifty thousand dollars, in advance, which is supposed to be necessary to reach and slaughter the three villains.

I will give, myself, one thousand dollars toward this patriotic purpose. Every one wishing to contribute will address Box X, Cahaba, Alabama.

DECEMBER 1, 1864.

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