The prisoners of war at Chicago, Illinois, being released, and the great
conspiracy in the North once fairly inaugurated, the capture of the
steamer Michigan was to be one of the combined movements that were to
startle the country, and aid the conspiracy in overturning the authority
of the United States Government, With the "Michigan" in their hands, the
conspirators would have a powerful auxilliary in their pernicious designs
upon the country, and be able to render effective aid to the Southern
Rebellion; ruining the commercial status of the United States on the great
lakes, and effectually closing all the ports on their borders, and in
addition to this, their laying all the large towns and cities on the
northern portion under contributions, and exacting from them enormous sums
of money, through fear of bombardment. The plan of the conspirators to get
possession of the Michigan was by bribery and by surprise. Mr. Thompson,
in his efforts to seize the vessel, secured the services of a man named
Cole, of Sandusky City, who, whilom, had been a citizen of Virginia, but
who still retained his sympathies for the rebellion, and took an active
part in aiding it whenever he had an opportunity, and a woman, said to
have been his paramour, who carried dispatches backwards and forwards
between the parties. This man Cole seems to have been the most wiley
conspirator of them all, and played his infamous part of the plot with the
most adroit shrewdness; and the defeat of the whole scheme was not owing
to any blunder of his, but rather the blunder of those who employed and
furnished him with the means. Having been well supplied with money by Mr.
Thompson, and no limit put to his expenses, he began his work with a will.
He seems to have begun by getting generally well acquainted with the
officers of the vessel, by feasting them, and now and then lending them
money, or accommodating them in some other way, until he had won the
confidence of all those in command of the steamer, as well as those in
charge of Johnston's Island. After a time, he found out those who were
most vulnerable on the money question, and those whom he did not dare to