Sanford Conover, known to the conspirators as James Watson Wallace, was born and educated in New York City. He had been living in the South for five or six years when the rebellion broke out, and was conscripted into the rebel service from near Columbia, S.C., early in 1863, but was detailed and served as a clerk in the rebel war department at Richmond for six months. His sympathies being on the side of the Union, he embraced the first good opportunity he could find to desert, and ran the blockade from Richmond, walking most of the way. He rode on the cars as far as Hanover Junction, and then walked up through Snickersville to Charlestown, and from there to Harper's Ferry, and so on to Washington, reaching there in the latter part of December, 1863. Whilst in Washington he became a correspondent of the New York _Tribune_, and went to Canada in that capacity in October, 1864. He testified that he received compensation from the _Tribune_ for his services as correspondent, but had never received anything from either the United States or the Confederate government, and that his sympathies had always been with the Union cause. The fact that he was not willing to remain in the safe and easy position of a clerk in the rebel war department, but chose rather to take the hazard of deserting, fully confirms his sworn statements as to his political sympathies. He also was a self-constituted secret service agent of the United States, serving without pay. He seems to have been peculiarly successful in working himself into the confidence of Davis's agents in Canada, who admitted him to their conferences and revealed fully and freely to him all of their plans. His testimony is specific and conclusive as to their guilt. After he had testified before the Commission he was sent back to Canada by the Judge Advocate General to get the official report of the St. Albans trial, to be used in evidence. Arriving in Montreal, he was received in the most friendly manner by the conspirators, who had not the least idea that he had been a witness before the Commission, and so they went on with their confidences as to what they would yet do, declaring they were not done yet, etc. But after he had been there a day or two, his testimony, which had hitherto been withheld, was published in the New York papers, and this revealed to them the fact that Sanford Conover was their James Watson Wallace. Of course they were like demons in their rage when they saw that he had revealed all of their doings. He was at once virtually made a prisoner by twelve or fifteen men armed to the teeth, who confronted him with his testimony before the Commission. Conover found himself suddenly and unexpectedly placed in a situation of great difficulty and danger, escape being impossible, and so he denied that he had been before the Commission as a witness.