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