Ordered, that the Indians and half-breeds sentenced to be hanged by the military commission, composed of Colonel Crooks, Lieutenant-Colonel Marshall, Captain Grant, Captain Bailey and Lieutenant Olin, and lately sitting in Minnesota, you cause to be executed on Friday, the 19th day of December, instant. The other condemned prisoners you will hold subject to further orders, taking care that they neither escape nor are subjected to any unlawful violence. Abraham Lincoln, President of United States." The execution was carried out on the 26th of December, 1862. Thirty-eight were hanged. CHAPTER XXVI. THE EXECUTION--THE NIGHT BEFORE. The date of the execution was fixed for December 26, 1862. On the 22d instant the condemned prisoners were separated from the others, and on the same day Colonel Stephen Miller (afterwards Governor), who was in command, through the interpreter, Rev. Mr. Riggs, called upon the condemned and announced the decision of the Great Father at Washington. He said: Tell these thirty-nine condemned men that the commanding officer of this place has called to speak to them on a serious subject this afternoon. Their Great Father at Washington, after carefully reading what the witnesses testified to in their several trials, has come to the conclusion that they have been guilty of murdering his white children; and, for this reason, has directed that each be hanged by the neck until dead next Friday at ten a. m. That good ministers, both Catholic and Protestant, are here, and can commune with them for the remaining four days they have to live. That I will now cause to be read the letter from their Great Father at Washington, first in English and then in their own language. Say to them, now, that they have so sinned against their fellow-men, that there is no hope for clemency except in the mercy of God, through the merits of the blessed Redeemer; and that I earnestly exhort them to apply to that, as their only remaining source of comfort and consolation. Rev. Mr. Riggs, the interpreter, had been a missionary among them for twenty-five years, and he had known them intimately, and it pained him sorely to be obliged to convey to them as an interpreter the words that were to condemn them to death. In so doing he said: