Lewis F. Bates, who testified as to Jefferson Davis's remarks to his auditors on reading to them the telegram from General Breckinridge, informing him of the assassination of the President, etc., and of his remarks to General Breckinridge on the following day at the dinner table, was a resident of Charlotte, N.C., where he had been for a little over four years. He was superintendent of the Southern Express Company for the State of North Carolina. He was a native of Massachusetts. The responsible position in which we find him vouches for his standing as a reliable man amongst those who knew him. His character was further established before the Commission by the testimony of a witness who was acquainted with him, James E. Russell, as follows: "I reside in Springfield, Mass. I have known Lewis F. Bates for about twenty-five years. For the last five years I have not known anything of his whereabouts, until I learned from him that he had been living in Charlotte, N.C. He was in business as a baggage-master on the Western Railroad, Massachusetts, while I was conductor, and I never heard anything against his reputation for truth." Burton N. Harrison, private secretary to Jefferson Davis, in an article entitled, "An Extract from a Narrative, written not for publication, but for the entertainment of my children only," published in the _Century Magazine_, New Series, Vol. V., pp. 136 and 137, says: "In pursuance of the scheme of Stanton and Holt to fasten upon Mr. Davis charges of a guilty foreknowledge of, and participation in, the murder of Mr. Lincoln, Bates was afterwards carried to Washington and made to testify (before the military tribunal, I believe, where the murderers were on trial) to something about that speech [referring to Davis's speech at Charlotte, N.C.]. As I recollect the reports of the testimony published at the time, they made the witness say that Mr. Davis had approved of the assassination, either explicitly or by necessary implication; and that he added, 'If it was to be done it is well it was done quickly,' or words to that effect. If any such testimony was given it is false and without foundation; no comment upon or reference to the assassination was made in that speech. I have been told the witness has always stoutly insisted he never testified to anything of the kind, but that what he said was altogether perverted in the publication made by the rascals in Washington. Col. William Preston Johnston tells me he has seen another version of the story, and thinks Bates is understood to have fathered it in a publication made in some newspaper after his visit to Washington; it represents Bates as saying that the words above mentioned as imputed to Mr. Davis were used by him, not, indeed, in the speech I have described, but in a conversation with Johnston at Bates's house. Johnston assures me that, in that shape, too, the story is false; that Mr. Davis never used such words in his presence, or any words at all like them.