prominent citizens and business men, and encouraged in every way by them.
The day being set once more, preparations were again made to capture the
vessel, and this time occurred what was called the _Lake Erie Piracy_,
nearly everything connected with which was so disgraceful to the United
States service, that although the government hastened to remove all the
reprehensible officers, and retain those who deserved well of their
country, yet seems to have endeavored to keep some of the facts connected
with it, from being made public. About one week before the time set for
the second attempt arrived, Capt. Beall returned from Sandusky to Windsor,
Canada West, and announced that all was ready for the capture, and
immediately telegraphed to Jacob Thompson, who was then at the Queen's
Hotel, in Toronto, who at once answered that he would come to Windsor that
night, and desired not to be recognized. That evening he arrived at
Windsor, and without apparently being known got into a carriage waiting,
and was taken to the residence of a Col. Steele, about a mile below
Windsor, where he was expected. During this week all the men who were to
participate in the affair were notified, and this time the services of
some of the men who had been to Chicago during the Convention, were called
into requisition. The officers of the rebel army could be seen running
about, here and there, to the different boarding houses where the men were
stopping, carrying ominous looking carpet bags, distributing from them
pistols, ammunition and other things, deemed necessary for the
undertaking, which was to be made on the night of the following Monday.
Most active in these efforts to incite these men to deeds of desperation,
were Col. Steele and Jake Thompson--or when he used his assumed name, Col.
Carson. The plans of the pirates were as follows, and the writer gives
them just as he heard them from the lips of two of the rebel officers who
participated in the affair, commanding detachments on board of the "Philo
Parsons." Part of the men, amounting in all to about seventy-five, were to
go from Canada to Sandusky city by rail, another party were to cross the