This ægis being withdrawn, the administration of justice through the civil courts would have been an impossibility, even in the capital of the nation; and with this protection it was equally impossible to secure the demands of justice through the civil courts in cases involving the issues of the war, as a jury of partisans could not be expected to decide impartially if all belonged to one party, and if divided on party lines, they could not be expected to decide at all. The latter alternative was the only one on which a jury could have been impaneled, under the rules of law, at that time, in the District of Columbia. Outside of the soldiery there were as many enemies as friends of the government in the population of the district, to say the least, and many of these enemies were passing under the guise of friends. In this state of things it was obvious that it would be futile to send these prisoners before a civil tribunal for trial. The government had evidence that a great conspiracy existed, the purpose of which was to aid the rebel cause by a series of assassinations, and that what had happened was in pursuance of that plan, but only its partial accomplishment. The extent of this conspiracy had not been fully revealed, but its spirit and purpose were known, and both wisdom and good policy required that it should be met with the utmost promptitude and suppressed with no faltering hand. These persons had been arrested by the military police, and were held as prisoners in military custody. They were held not as prisoners of war, but as _secret active enemies_ of the government, guilty of a crime the purpose of which was to aid the rebellion, and this being their purpose, it took them out of the realm of _civil_, into the realm of _martial_, law. Their crime was regarded as an act of war, inasmuch as its purpose was to aid the existing armed rebellion. The means by which they thus sought to give it aid were morally reprehensible, and such as had long been rejected by the enlightened sentiment of the civilized and Christian nations of the earth. The crime was a blow at the life of the nation, in the person of its chosen head, and was committed in the nation's capital, and within the intrenched lines and fortifications thereof; and so it was decided that the prisoners were properly subject to a trial by a military commission. President Lincoln's order of September 25th, 1862, had not been rescinded and was still in force, and under this order the prisoners were, from the purpose of their crime, subject to a military trial. They could not, under the articles of war, be sent before a court-martial for trial, but could, _under martial law, which is only the common law in a state of war_, be tried by a military commission.