It is the writer's intention to speak first of two expeditions to Chicago,
for the release of the prisoners confined there. The first of these took
place during the Chicago Democratic Convention, when it was hoped that the
rebels from Canada and their sympathizers from Missouri, Kentucky, Indiana
and Illinois, who came armed to assist them in their projects, would be
enabled to go quietly into the city without fear of detection, in the vast
crowds who were then assembling there, from all parts of the United
States, and under the guise of friendly visitors, were to be ready at a
moment's notice whenever their leaders called upon them to spring out
before the people in their true light, and effect the release of those
rebels confined at Camp Douglas. As early as the twenty-fourth and
twenty-fifth of August last, at the request of Jacob Thompson, secretly
and quietly circulated all through the Canadas, Nova Scotia and New
Brunswick, all the Rebels, Skedadlers, Refugees, and others who could be
relied upon to take part in the expedition, began to assemble in Toronto,
Canada West, at the different hotels and boarding houses; of these, at
that time, it was generally reported that there were about three hundred;
but so far as positive evidence goes, out of this number only about
seventy-five men were induced to join this expedition and go to Chicago.
At Toronto the objects of the expedition were made known to nearly all of
them, and arms furnished them--_arms manufactured in New York city and
shipped to Canada for that express purpose_. The details of the affair
were only known to a few of the leaders, who maintained the strictest
silence upon the subject, and enjoined upon the men the most implicit
obedience to their orders, pledging themselves for their safety and the
feasibility of their plans. On the nights of the twenty-sixth,
twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth of August, these men began to leave
Toronto, by all the different routes leading to Chicago, in squads of from
two to ten, and began to arrive at the Richmond House in that city, as
early as the Saturday before the Convention. They were all pledged to