To allay public excitement it was necessary to prove _publicly_ that these exaggerated reports of traitorous combinations were merely the result of vain boasting and a desire for notoriety on the part of a few silly men, who had not wit enough to foresee the lamentable consequences of abusing the authority with which they had been imprudently entrusted. Whether the course pursued to gain this end was the most judicious, is somewhat questionable, though it seems to have been sanctioned by the very _highest_ authority in the country. The parties implicated by the miserable management of those who took the initiative measures, had rights, and, though the prerogatives of office gave the _power_, it is doubtful whether a due regard to the public welfare justified the Federal authorities in imprisoning for months innocent men, subjecting them and their friends to the inconvenience and expense of such investigations. To prove to the nation that its bungling agents had arrested the wrong men, cost the Government nearly Fifty Thousand Dollars. It excited between the authorities of neighboring States bitter animosities and unjust recriminations, where before had existed the best feeling and undisturbed harmony. It, for a time at least, inflamed sectional prejudices and caused renewed agitation of a question whose difficulties the greatest men of the nation had for years been striving to adjust peaceably. It cost the parties who were to be subjected to this ordeal, their liberty for months, the total abandonment, and, in some cases, the utter ruin of their business; to a few the loss of health, to all the entire privation, until the trial, of those comforts and sources of enjoyment upon which we are all so much dependent for happiness, and an expenditure of money in preparing for their defence that some were totally unable to meet, and that robbed a few of the entire earnings of industry and frugality. It cost their families many bitter tears and hours of anguish, depriving them for a protracted and severe winter of their natural protectors, upon whose exertions many of them were dependant for daily sustenance. To compensate for this enormous public and private expenditure of money--for the fearful, but, to public sympathy, the disregarded days of agony which took the place of happy and peaceful hours--and for this useless agitation throughout the nation, there resulted not the slightest benefit, immediate or remote, to any individual, save to a few of those who were engaged professionally in these cases. There rests somewhere a fearful responsibility. This ill-timed attempt to punish with public hatred and infamy, or with fine and imprisonment, perhaps death, the innocent instead of the guilty, was the result either of a pitiable desire for unenviable notoriety, or of a culpable and unpardonable negligence on the part of those who were the sources of the movement. For either cause, no excuse can be offered before any tribunal. FOOTNOTES: