avis. Holt drew those charges. They are in his hands and he has
determined to press his prisoner to trial before his Board of Assassins
without allowing me to know the substance of his accusations. It's
infamous."

"There are complications which may increase our dangers or suddenly lift
them--"

"Complications--what do you mean?"

"The President, who has been intensely hostile to Davis, realizes that
his own term of office and possibly his life are now at stake. He has
broken with the Radicals who control Congress, old Thaddeus Stevens's at
their head. Stevens lives in Washington in brazen defiance of
conventionalities with a negro woman whom he separated from her husband
thirty odd years ago. Under the influence of this negress he has
introduced a bill into the House of Representatives to confiscate the
remaining property of the white people of the South and give it to the
negroes--dividing the land into plots of forty acres each. He proposes
also to disfranchise the whites of the Southern States, enfranchise the
negroes, destroy the State lines and erect on their ruins territories
ruled by negroes whom his faction can control.

"Johnson the President, a Southern born white man, has already informed
the Radicals that he will fight this programme to the last ditch.
Stevens' answer was characteristic of the imperious old leader. 'Let him
dare! I'll impeach Andrew Johnson, remove him from office and hang him
from the balcony of the White House.'

"The President realizes that the Bureau of Military Justice which he
allowed Holt to create may be used as the engine of his own destruction.
They have already taken the first steps to impeach him--"

"Then he'll never dare allow another case to be tried before that
Bureau--" O'Connor interrupted.

"It remains to be seen. He is afraid of both Stanton and Holt. The
Bureau of Military Justice is their hobby."

O'Connor sprang to his feet.

"We must smash it by an appeal to the people. Their sense of justice is
yet the salt that will save the Nation. The key to the situation is in
the character of the remarkable witnesses whom Holt has produced before
this tribunal of assassination. In my judgment they are a gang of hired
perjurers. Their leader is a fellow named Conover. There are five men
associated with him. They used these witnesses against Mrs. Surratt.
They used them against Wirz. They are preparing to use them against
Davis. It is inconceivable that these plugs fro