General Dix sent these letters to the War Department at Washington. They were given to President Lincoln, who put them in an envelope, marked it "Assassination," and laid it away in his desk, where it was found after his death. Mrs. Hudspeth testified that she picked these letters up on the day that General Butler left New York. General Butler had orders to leave on the 11th of November, but upon application got permission to remain until the 14th. Booth left Washington on the early morning train on November 11th, which would put him into New York on the afternoon of that day. Here he met his co-conspirator, Johnson, on the cars, and in exchanging letters with him, dropped these letters without noticing it. The Leenea letter was to have been returned by Johnson. He was to leave for Washington on the day after to-morrow, which, reckoning from the 11th, would be the 13th. The hotel register accounts for him again at Washington on the 14th in the early part of the evening. That the young man described by Mrs. Hudspeth was John Wilkes Booth was shown by her recognition of his photograph, shown to her in the presence of the Commission, when she declared that that was the same face.[5] It was also shown by the testimony of Samuel Knapp Chester, the actor, that Booth was in New York about this time, laboring with Chester in the most urgent manner to draw him into the conspiracy. It is true he represented to him that the purpose was to capture the President, and carry him a prisoner to Richmond; that this feat was to be performed at Ford's Theatre in Washington, and that Chester's part in it would be the easy one of simply opening the door of exit on a given signal; but can any sane man believe that this was his purpose? The impracticability of this proposition could not but have been as apparent to Booth as it was to Chester, who begged Booth, finally, to never mention the subject to him again. It is evident Booth intended to withhold from Chester his real purpose until he could get him irrevocably committed to the conspiracy. The letter which he had dropped, and which I have given above, reveals the real purpose of the conspiracy. It will be seen by this letter that it was in contemplation at that time to act at once, or at least as soon as a good opportunity should be found, or could be made. He who was "to be the Charlotte Corday of the nineteenth century" had his choice as to the weapons he should use; but whether it should be the cup, the knife, or the bullet, it simply meant death. Why was not the purpose carried out at that time as arranged for at the meeting to which the letter refers? As will be shown by the subsequent testimony, the assassins were restrained from present action by the agents of the rebel government in Canada, who desired to have explicit sanction to the arrangements they had made as to the compensation, and authority for the expenditure it involved.