and that the most momentous period of its history. To do justice to the subject of their memoir required a vast amount of the most painstaking research, and a general overhauling of the political history of the country over a period of a dozen or more years. This was a work of great labor, involving a careful examination of a multitude of documents and records. They had that familiar, personal acquaintance with Mr. Lincoln, growing out of their official relations to him, that enables them to form a correct estimate of his intellectual and moral character, and of the innermost feelings and governing motives of his life. They have done their work faithfully and well, and have presented Mr. Lincoln in his true character, and made manifest his wonderful astuteness, his wisdom, forbearance, charity, gentleness, and toleration toward his fellowmen, as well as his _firmness_ and fidelity to the right, to the gaze of an admiring world. It is with feelings of regret that faithfulness to my purpose of giving a true history of the great conspiracy which culminated in his death requires me to take issue with them in their treatment of this case. It will be evident to all my readers who have read and carefully considered the evidence presented by the government to sustain its charge against Jefferson Davis and his confederates in Canada, that authors who were familiar with it could never have come to the conclusion so confidently expressed by these authors when they say, "This was not proved on the trial." The abstract of the evidence which they then proceed to give, shows an equal degree of unfamiliarity with it. It consists merely in a confused jumbling of a few comparatively unimportant facts, leaving unnoticed and untouched the great mass of relevant and conclusive testimony that I have presented. The account which they give of the manner in which Davis received the news of the assassination does not consist at all with the testimony. They say: "It was shown by the sworn testimony of a reputable witness that Jefferson Davis at Greensboro', on hearing of the assassination, expressed his gratification at the news; but this, so far from proving any direct complicity in the crime, would rather prove the opposite, as a conscious murderer usually conceals his malice."