The trial before the Military Commission in Cincinnati, just concluded,
was in many respects one of the most remarkable events of the war. The
investigation has elicited testimony of the most startling character,
showing conclusively to the minds of all reasonable men who have given
to it careful, earnest attention that there was a most formidable,
deep and well arranged conspiracy, which, but for timely discovery and
judicious action, would have resulted most disastrously, not only to the
particular cities and towns specified and doomed to destruction, but to
the whole country. None can contemplate the danger through which we
have passed without a shudder and without a recognition of the hand of
a merciful Providence who has guided our beloved country in its darkest
hours and who has crowned our struggles for liberty and union with
glorious victory.
To have proclaimed to the public, even a few short months ago, that
a scheme had been concocted in Richmond, of so vast and formidable a
character, so insidious in its operations, so complete in its details
that it had found favor and support in all the great cities and towns in
Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio, Iowa, and sections of other
States that scarcely a village was exempt from its corruption, that it
numbered in its ranks more traitors in the aggregate than the number of
brave men in the combined armies of the gallant Grant and Sherman,
and that all who had thus united recognised but one common cause--the
destruction of our country, the defeat and humiliation of our people,
and the triumph of the Rebellion--the author of such a proclamation
would have been written down a madman or a fool, by most persons in the
community; and yet the developments before the military tribunal have
established the fact, to the eternal infamy of all who were leagued in
the conspiracy.
As the trial opened, and the charges if the indictment were made
public, all sympathisers with the conspiracy affected to disbelieve its
existence, and raised their eyes and hands to Heaven, in pious horror,
and prayed that _justice_ might be meted out to the accused, who were,
they claimed, the best of citizens, the most devout Christians, the most
zealous patriots, the most earnest advocates of law and order, and that
their accusers might be shunned of all good men forever. To this prayer
the accused will scarce utter the response, Amen! Even some good,
careful, honest Union men, astonished at the startling revelations,
refused, for a time, to believe that there was any truth in the
allegations against the prisoners; by degrees, however, as corroborative
evidence accumulated, the truth was forced upon their minds, and there
are now few persons of ordinary intelligence and candor, who have not
been able to discover that "there was something in it, after all," and
that we have been Providentially saved a most terrible disaster.
But the investigation has been lengthy, and the reports in the
newspapers have been brief and irregular, and few, comparatively, there
are who have heard or read all of even the more important testimony,
or appreciate fully the vast magnitude of the conspiracy; and there are
many who having read only the indictment, have conceived the idea that
if the charges therein alleged are true, the crime was confined to a
few desperate and wicked men in Chicago alone, and that, therefore, it
possessed but a local interest. Such a conclusion is wholly groundless.
The history of this conspiracy is of the most vital interest for the
people of every State in the Union, for had the conspirators not
been foiled at a most opportune moment, their plans would have been
successful in every particular, and once in operation they could not
have been frustrated by any force we could have arrayed against them;
and who shall say that had the savage hordes of Jeff. Davis then been
turned loose upon an unarmed community, to carry desolation and ruin as
they should sweep over our fair States, that to-day the Southern rebels
would be, as they now are, in their last extremity--that victory would
now be perched upon our banners wherever our noble pioneers of freedom
advance, and that our brave boys of the Potomac would now be reposing
from, their labors in the halls of the rebel capitol! Those who, upon
investigation, fail to recognise the magnitude, the sagacity, the
completeness of this Northwestern Conspiracy, and realise its immense
importance to the rebel chieftains at the South, corroborated as the
evidence before the Commission has been by incidents of almost daily
occurrence for many months, have not learned to read correctly the
history of the Great Southern Rebellion. If an idea ever entered
the heads of malcontents at the North to establish a Northwestern
Confederacy, it was speedily chased away by the more promising schemes
of the arch traitor late of Richmond. It is to collect facts already
elicited, and to give further information, and with a hope of aiding
the cause of the Union so sacred and dear to us all, that the writer
has yielded to the oft-repeated requests of his friends to present a
connected and concise history of the Northwestern Conspiracy.