Part 3

It was duly announced, also, that an extra session of the Supreme Council had been convened in the city of New York, charged with the special business of revising the ritual, changing the signs, passwords, grips, and giving to the Order a new name. Pursuant to announcement, Charles W. Patten made his appearance in the Temple with the rituals and paraphernalia of the new Order of the Sons of Liberty--the result of the proceedings of the late Supreme Council.

This obscure individual, with fame limited to the dusty walls of the Invincible Club Rooms and the traitor's dungeon at Camp Douglas, upon his appearance in the Temple, assigned two chief reasons for the recent action of the Supreme Council. First and most important was, the obvious inadequacy of the Order of American Knights to subserve the purpose for which it was instituted, in consequence of the subordination of the military to the civil department. And, second, the disclosure in St. Louis had rendered the Order liable to intrusion by spies, an embarrassment to be avoided only by alteration of signs, grips, passwords, and name. We were then informed that we were Sons of Liberty (a sensible man would have said sons of the devil, if he had dared to have spoken the truth), and earnestly exhorted to exercise the utmost caution in adhering to the new rules and instructions of the Supreme Council. It is not a little amusing to witness the homeopathic doses of modern democracy, carefully administered to the rank and file of the northern people through the medium of these Orders.

In the first place, the Golden Circle edifies the "stranger advancing in dark, devious ways" with lessons upon the doctrine of state sovereignty, and admonishes him to "follow the straight and narrow path which is paved with gems and pearls, and bordered with perennial flowers whose perfumes all his senses will entrance," all of which is received by the sincere candidate with every mark of approval. We next find the American Knights embracing its members in the bedazzling folds of military lace to be used when in arms against the Government. A splendid spectacle of the doctrines of Washington, Jefferson, Jackson and Douglas! And to cap the miserable climax, men boasting of the Democracy of their fathers in a line of lineal descent for generations back, are required to subscribe to the doctrine of the subordination of the civil to the military authority by the tenets of the Sons of Liberty.

This astonishing feature of the Sons of Liberty, as contradistinguished from the Orders which preceded it, at first met with murmurs of disfavor, but the dissatisfaction was principally among men who ultimately acted the nobler part, and as the tide of treason rolled up to sustain this measure "for the good of the Order," all such were submerged and lost sight of, except by the evil eye set upon them as spies.

Without offering his advice, the writer would respectfully ask the true Democrat, who may yet, from the temptations of firmly-rooted prejudices, incline to the belief that this organization was purely democratic in the Andrew Jackson acceptation of that term, how the above statement of principles comports with his notions of the doctrines of the party with which he has hitherto seen fit to fellowship?

Is it not clearly to be seen that this Order meditated the establishment of a government more despotic in its character than history furnishes any example of? A government with three degrees or departments, each oath-bound and a profound secret to the other, moving in their appointed spheres, and the civil departments of which were secondary, in point of power, to the military departments!

Let no man, of whatever political persuasion he may be, flatter himself for a moment that such a government could be Republican in its nature.

Having now traced, with perhaps a tedious hand, the rise and fall of two political Orders, ranking among the most powerful instruments of crime and public wrong of their day, the writer bids their unmourned remains farewell, to pass to the consideration in the succeeding chapter, of the desperate career and final explosion of the Order of the Sons of Liberty--a solemn warning to the American people forever.

To save the Goudys, Caulfields, Adams, Edwards, Duncans, Wickershams, Cuttings, and Kimberlys, the Morrises, Walshes, Jacksons, Pattens, Gearys, and Doolittles were put forward because they were eager for the fray, and possessed the temerity to brave the danger of Union bullets.

We have now seen how the Temple or First Degree was instituted in counties; how the various elements of treason were collected together and detailed for their special service of educating the ignorant, manufacturing materials and munitions of war, and devising plots to burn, plunder, and pillage unsuspecting cities; how each member was singled out according to his fitness for certain duties, which he performed without their character coming even to his fellow members of the same degree; and how the brained leaders of these institutions retired to the back ground to elude the vigilance of the ministers of the law, and "adjust the wires" that were to check to-day, and to-morrow precipitate the conspiracy.

The Grand Council, or Second Degree, was established in every State where the Temple Degree had obtained any strength and character as to numbers. This Degree resembled the State in its governmental organization, and bore the same relation to the Supreme Council or Third Degree that the State governments of the Federal Union bear to the government at Washington. The Order having a military department, these Grand Councils, in council assembled, adopted the militia and other statute laws of the particular State, with such revisions, exceptions and additional laws as were deemed essential to the successful operation of the Order.

Regular semi-annual meetings of the Grand Councils were held, convening respectively on the 22d of August and the 22d of February--the latter, in sacrilege be it said, being religiously observed as the birthday of Washington.

But extra sessions were almost monthly called during the year of 1864, prior to the election, to take precautionary and other expedient action upon the continually recurring changes of that eventful year. No considerable battle was fought in the front, that was not the signal for the assembling of this council, and no political event of any importance transpired that did not receive the solemn deliberations of this already de facto legislative body. Of course no person ever became a member of this Council who had not first been inducted into the Temple, and then by his Temple elected as a representative in the Grand Council, the election for which purpose was held semi-annually as above, and new representatives took their seats at each regular session.

The Grand Council embraced in its sphere of labors such duties as experience seemed to dictate, as being necessary to the fulfilment of the mission of the Order. It provided remedies for unmistakable evils, and watched with a zealous care and fostering hand, every interest of treason within the boundaries of its jurisdiction.

The Supreme Council or Third and highest Degree of the Order in organization, was built after the pattern of the Federal government at Washington, and wielded a similar general control over the affairs of the Order, that our National government exerts over the consequences growing out of the union of the States under one central government. Here we see how admirably the design to effect Northern rebellion was conceived. The whole machinery of a government de facto, and in disguise though, it was, with all its branches, both civil and military in active operation for months and years within the very sound of the echoing steps of senators in the halls of the Capitol, was indeed a source of the most serious concern to the authorities, for the safety of the Republic. But valorous daring, tempered with prudence, was destined to bring to the light of day this infernal work of years, and accordingly the city of St. Louis was the scene of the first public development of the Order of American Knights, early in the spring of 1864, the principal facts of which disclosure the public learned from the press at the time, hence the writer will only allude in this connection to the effect created in various Circles of the Order, by the attempt upon the part of the Government to thwart the perpetration of the red-handed crimes contemplated by the leaders. When it was officially announced by Reuben Cassile, presiding Grand Seignior of the Chicago Temple, then recently removed from the Invincible Club Hall to McCormick's Building, that disclosures of the Order in St. Louis had occurred, every countenance was stamped with dismay. The timely appearance at the Temple, however, of Judge Morris and other leaders, served to interpose restraint upon any serious apprehensions of difficulty resulting to the Order.

CHAP. IV.

NEW ERA IN SECRET POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS--PLEDGE TO "TAKE UP ARMS" FOR JEFF. DAVIS--TRUE DEMOCRACY STRUCK DOWN--NATIONAL AND STATE LEADERS--INVINCIBLE CLUB LEADERS--VALLANDIGHAM'S RETURN TO THE STATES IN HIS CAPACITY OF SUPREME COMMANDER OF THE SONS OF LIBERTY.

A new era in the history of secret political orders was opened by the Sons of Liberty.

As the Presidential election of 1864 approached, the party in the minority began to appreciate the awkwardness of its attitude upon the political issues of the day, and appeared determined in its conclusion to obtain the ascendency in the coming administration, by means of fraud and force.

The great mass of the party had now become conversant and familiar with every species of political crime, through secret organization, and it only remained for the leaders to decide upon a programme, to have it executed with despatch and fidelity.

Languishing under the lash of chastisement inflicted upon those infamous enough to aid and abet the cause of dismemberment, mutual hate and slaughter, National extinction and death, they swore in this Order an eternal and most dreadful oath of vengeance upon their offenders, and pledged themselves, under fearful penalties of death, "ever to take up arms in the cause of the oppressed in their own country, first of all, against any monarch, prince, potentate, power or government usurped, and found in arms and waging war against a people or peoples, who had of their own free choice, inaugurated a government for themselves, in accordance with and founded upon the eternal principles of truth."

Thus, the liveliest form of ancient or modern civilization, in a republic just rising to the glories of empire, was to be sacrificed to the mad notion of petty "State Sovereignty," by a sworn band of desperadoes. How sad when other generations would ask, where is the Federal Government, to be answered only by poets, who would sing her elegy, as in the past they have sang that of the lamented Hellas:

"Ask the Paynim slave, Who treads all tearless on her hallowed grave; Invoke the spirits of the past, and shed The voice of your strong bidding on the dead! Lo! from a thousand crumbling tombs they rise-- The great of old, the powerful and the wise! And a sad tale which none but they can tell, Falls on the mournful silence like a knell. Then mark yon lonely pilgrim bend and weep Above the mound where genius lies in sleep. And is this all? Alas! we turn in vain, And, turning, meet the self-same waste again-- The same drear wilderness of stern decay; Its former pride, the phantom of a day; A song of summer-birds within a bower; A dream of beauty traced upon a flower; A lute whose master-chord has ceased to sound; A morning-star struck darkling to the ground."

The thought of the miserable commentary stirs the ire of the patriot and nerves his arm to daring deeds, in the holy cause of liberty, the constitution, and his country.

Skulk back into your dark dens of iniquity, you Clement L. Vallandigham, and you James A. McMaster, and you S. Corning Judd, and you Amos Green, and you P.C. Wright, (in Fort Lafayette where you ought to be,) before the wrath of honest people falls upon your wicked heads! Each of you, with the exception of you, Wright, being too infamous for that, even, have been before the Commission at Cincinnati, and stand before an outraged people condemned out of your own lips! Dare insult the light of day with your hideous faces, and be dashed in pieces on the rocks of public scorn!

But to return to our text, the Sons of Liberty, we find that undaunted organization in full blast from the time of its official inception in New York up to the Monday morning of the arrests on the 7th of November last.

It is now proposed to show, by an allusion to certain prominent facts occurring during the summer of '64, that the so-called Democratic party was the mainspring to the great conspiracy that has been attempted in the North with so much audacity that many men of the best judgment can scarcely believe it to be a reality. In this we do not wish to be understood that all men who have heretofore voted the "unterrified" ticket, have knowingly and willingly given aid and comfort to the treasonable plans and purposes of their leaders, for our personal acquaintance among that class of anti-administration men, is sufficient to enable us to say, with confidence, that many of them are as loyal at heart as any man who ever breathed the air of an American freeman.

But we mean this, and proclaim the fact in the face of every foe, that upon the death of that lamented statesman and patriot, Stephen A. Douglas, the Woods and McMasters of New York, the Seymours of Connecticut, the Vallandighams and Pendletons of Ohio, the Voorhees and Dodds of Indiana, the Judds and Greens of Illinois, and others of like ilk in other States, obtained the chieftainship of the party and inveigled its too pliable ranks into the prostituting embrace of this foul conspiracy, to overthrow the government and crown with success the cause of the confederate arms. It must be readily seen by every honest man of ordinary intelligence, that such an affair could never have gained a foothold among our people under a truly loyal condition of the opposing party. The truthfulness of this assertion is so very forcible to the candid reader, that illustration or argument in support of it would be superfluous. However, occasional incidents will serve better to connect popular leaders with the subject of these sketches, and call to the minds of participants practical facts.