federate Congress from Missouri. (A part of Missouri believed that
it had seceded, as you may remember, just as a few Counties in Kentucky
thought they had.) Harris had passed through the lines, coming through
West Virginia and Kentucky, as any one could have done at any time, and
as many doubtlesss did. His statement, as Dent told it to us, was this:
That he was sent by the President of the Confederate States (so-called),
and was on his way to Indianapolis to lay a plan before the leaders in
this and other States; thence he was to pass into Canada and meet the
leaders there, and in that way have prompt action and co-operation
assured. His greatest desire seemed to be to meet Mr. Thos. A. Strider,
who, he said, was one of their best and shrewdest advisers. His
headquarters were to be at Windsor, Canada. He directed the Lodge to
which Dent belonged to be ready at a moment's notice to do whatever
might be directed from the Supreme Council. He told his hearers to
spread the alarm wherever they could without being suspected, that there
was to be a great destruction of property in the North; that, he said,
would terrify leading men and property holders; and, in order to satisfy
his confederates that there was a basis for this statement, he disclosed
a part of a plot that had been proposed to Jefferson Davis and was soon
to be carried out. It was that a discovery had been recently made by a
professor of chemistry, one McCullough, by which towns and cities, and
vessels coming in and going out of our ports, could be easily burned
without danger of discovery. With this newly-discovered combustible
material a general and wholesale destruction of all kinds of
destructible property was to be inaugurated. Harris said that agents
were to be employed all over the country, who were to be selected from
the members of the Knights and to be made up of the most reliable and
tried men; that this matter had been duly considered and determined upon
by the authorities at Richmond; that Jacob Thomlinson, C. C. Carey and
others were now on their way to England to meet Mr. McCullough, who was
already there, and where the destructive material was to be manufactured
and brought in an English vessel to Canada, as there was noway of
getting from the Confederate States to the place from which they wished
to operate without running the gauntlet, and perhaps meeting with
dangers not desirable to be encountered. This man Harris also instructed
all who hear