We believe it to be true that the laws of his church did not forbid him to make public, with her consent or command, her last confession on this point, and that the Father in making the statements he does at this late day is simply practicing sleight-of-hand upon the public. It is a very strange circumstance, too, that whilst Payne, Arnold, O'Laughlin, Atzerodt, and even John H. Surratt admitted their connection with one or the other of the conspiracy plots, Mrs. Surratt has not left one word or line after her to explain away the incriminating evidence brought against her. The reason is plain; she could not have explained anything without involving herself and her son, and giving away the whole case. For twenty-six years Father Walter and his rebel co-adjutors have kept a paragraph going the rounds of the papers, stating as a fact that all the members of the Commission but one are dead, and that they died miserable deaths, which marked them as the subjects of heaven's vengeance, and that some of them perished from the violence of their own hands, being crazed with remorse. The truth is that at this writing, April, 1892, all of the members of the Commission are alive except General Hunter and General Ekin. General Hunter lived to over four score years, and General Ekin to seventy-three. The present writer is nearly seventy-nine and is still able to vindicate the truth in the interest of a true history of his period. Is it not high time that the American people should be fully informed as to this most important episode in their history, in order that they may not be misled by men who were not the friends, but the enemies, of our government in its struggle for its preservation and perpetuation? CHAPTER XVII. CONCLUSION.