captured enough of the rebel leaders (and their friends in such connexion
as to leave no doubt of their guilt,) to make every disloyal man quake in
his boots. The captures of the military and police were not confined alone
to the conspirators, and in addition to them were captured immense
military stores of all kinds, boxes of guns already shotted, cart loads of
army pistols loaded and ready for the bloody work expected of them,
holsters, pistol belts, cartridges by the cart load, and enough munitions
of war to have started an arsenal of moderate size. These arms were not
taken from the rebels, but found in the houses of citizens of Chicago, who
can produce witnesses upon the stand (of pretended loyalty and standing,
some of them being office-holders under the Government,) to swear that
they themselves are, and have always been loyal and true to their
allegiance. In the house of Charles Walsh, most of these arms were taken,
and also there were captured two rebel soldiers, Captain George Cantrill
and Charles Travis Daniels, who were shortly after identified; and
Cantrill partly confessed his views, and his complicity with the
Copperheads. This man Cantrill had been one of those who had come to
Chicago during the Convention, for the same purpose, and averred that then
and at the election, the Copperheads had offered and held out to them
every inducement to get them here. That had it not been for them he would
never have come here. It may be well here to publish a little incident,
showing fully the kindred feelings existing between the conspirators and
the inmates of Camp Douglas. It was a well known fact, that there were
several thousand of John Morgan's desperadoes confined in this prison, and
the Copperhead conspirators, to show their refinement of feeling, their
accommodating dispositions, and their attention to the worst of these men,
had purchased for their use exclusively, the finest cavalry carbines then
made in the United States, and had them stored in the immediate
neighborhood of the prison, when upon being released they could at once
begin to revel in a carnival of blood. Happy, happy for the people of