These plans involved a warfare against non-combatants; a war, as we shall see, of poisoning reservoirs, of burning towns and cities by wholesale; a war of the destruction of men, women, and children; burning of hospitals, churches, and private dwellings; a war for the destruction of life and property; in short, a war against humanity. The City of New York came in for a large share of their consideration. The destruction of the Croton dam was an enterprise that seemed very desirable to them, and for which they planned; and had the rebel armies been able to keep the field a little while longer, this would no doubt have been attempted and perhaps accomplished. The poisoning of the reservoirs supplying the city with water seemed very desirable to them, and was much discussed. This was one of the hobbies of the infamous Dr. Blackburn and a Mr. M. A. Pallen of Mississippi, who had been a surgeon in the rebel army. They had made a calculation of the capacity of the reservoirs supplying the city, and had calculated the amount of poison required to make an ordinary draught of water fatal to life. Amongst the poisons they had considered arsenic, strychnine, and prussic acid as available. Blackburn thought the project feasible. Thompson feared it would be impossible to collect so large a quantity of poisonous matter without exciting suspicion and leading to the detection of the parties engaged in it. Pallen and others thought it could be managed in Europe. This matter was fully and freely discussed in June, 1864, by Blackburn, Pallen, Thompson, Sanders, and Cleary. The moral question involved in the destruction, by poison, of the entire population of the American commercial metropolis,--men, women, and children,--did not enter into their thoughts; it was, in fact, a scheme dear to their hearts; the difficulties attending its accomplishment were the only things that gave them any trouble. This is that same Dr. Blackburn who, with the approbation of Thompson and his gang, made an effort in the summer of 1864 to spread pestilence in Washington City, and in other cities occupied by federal troops, as far south as could be reached, by means of clothing infected with yellow fever and with small-pox. Conover testified to this positively and circumstantially as one of their many wicked schemes to spread consternation over the North, and so demoralize the people that they would be willing to make peace on any terms. As this last scheme is so monstrous in character that it can only be believed on the fullest proof, I give the testimony of Godfrey Joseph Hyams before the Commission, in full.