upremacy in a City of
at least sixty thousand inhabitants; whose commands thousands of their
armed fellow citizens obeyed implicitly; who, in disregard of all law,
arrested, imprisoned, tried and executed offenders; but whose power,
boundless and undisputed as it seemed, rested solely on the conviction
of their fellow men that they were just, wise, patriotic and true;
would faithfully administer the despotic power of which they were
the depositaries; and cheerfully resign it whenever the work of the
regeneration of society was accomplished. If this conviction should be
shaken, the association must instantly be dissolved and each of these
leaders and directors of it be left to die upon the scaffold. Well might
any person of the slightest sensibility look on such a body of men with
the utmost interest and curiosity, and in the contemplation be filled
with deep and solemn thought.

The Constitution likewise provided for a Board of Delegates, with
whom the Executive Committee might confer whenever matters of vital
importance should require it. This body was organized by the choice by
each company of two of its members, who, with the Captain, should be its
Delegates. When the military organization of the force was completed,
the field officers were added to the Board of Delegates; and when the
organization included many regiments, the number of Delegates was of
course larger. Whenever the death penalty had been decided upon by the
Executive Committee, the whole evidence upon which it was based was
submitted to the Board of Delegates, and a two-thirds vote of that Board
in confirmation of the Executive vote was required before it could
be inflicted. The element of discussion thus introduced into a body
essentially revolutionary, and whose success might be supposed to
depend upon the secrecy, promptness and unfaltering determination of
its councils and of the blows it struck, was thought at the time to
be likely to detract from its efficiency, if it did not endanger its
existence. But the good sense and prudence of the members restrained the
innate Yankee propensity to speech making, and this danger, with many
others, which from time to time threatened to make shipwreck of the
organization, was happily surmounted.

The Constitution having been adopted, the doors of the Committee Rooms
on Sacramento Street were opened for initiation into the body.
The greatest caution was exercised to prevent the admission of any
disreputable