Northwest to join in the
movement, form a confederacy of their own, and join us by a treaty
of alliance, offensive and defensive." Reliance on the support of the
societies was the will-o'-the-wisp that deceived General John Morgan
in his desperate attempt to carry out Beauregard's programme. Though
brushed aside as a mere detail by military historians, Morgan's raid,
with his force of irregular cavalry, in July, 1863, through Indiana and
Ohio, was one of the most romantic episodes of the war. But it ended
in his defeat and capture. While his gallant troopers rode to their
destruction, the men who loved to swear by Arcturus and to gabble about
the Pleiades showed the fiber to be expected of such people, and stayed
snug in their beds.

But neither their own lack of hardihood nor the disasters of their
Southern friends could dampen their peculiar ardor. Their hero was
Vallandigham. That redoubtable person had fixed his headquarters in
Canada, whence he directed his partisans in their vain attempt to elect
him Governor of Ohio. Their next move was to honor him with the office
of Supreme Commander of the Sons of Liberty, and now Vallandigham
resolved to win the martyr's crown in very fact. In June, 1864, he
prepared for the dramatic effect by carefully advertising his intention
and came home. But to his great disappointment Lincoln ignored him, and
the dramatic martyrdom which he had planned did not come off.

There still existed the possibility of a great uprising, and to that
end arrangements were made with Southern agents in Canada. Confederate
soldiers, picked men, made their way in disguise to Chicago. There the
worshipers of Arcturus were to join them in a mighty multitude; the
Confederate prisoners at Camp Douglas in Chicago were to be liberated;
around that core of veterans, the hosts of the Pleiades were to
rally. All this was to coincide with the assembling at Chicago of the
Democratic national convention, in which Vallandigham was to appear. The
organizers of the conspiracy dreamed that the two events might coalesce;
that the convention might be stampeded by their uprising; that a
great part, if not the whole, of the convention would endorse the
establishment of a Northwestern Confederacy.

Alas for him who builds on the frame of mind that delights in cheap
rhetoric while Rome is afire! At the moment of hazard, the Sons of
Liberty showed the white feather, were full of specious words, would not
act. The Confede