The officers composing this court were, according to the biographers of President Lincoln (Nicolay and Hay) "not only officers high in rank, but of unusual weight of character"; they had been thoroughly schooled in military discipline, and so recognized the duty of obedience to orders as the first duty of a soldier. It was not any part of their duty to discuss the wisdom, propriety, or legality of an order before entering upon the act of obedience. Their duty was simply to obey, and for this they were properly held responsible. The order of detail assigned to them the specific duty of trying the accused under the charge and specifications prepared against them by the government, and so, as loyal, obedient soldiers, loving their country and having faith in its government, they had nothing to do but to enter upon and discharge the duties for which they had been detailed. As before stated, the Hon. Reverdy Johnson, a United States Senator from Maryland, volunteered to defend Mrs. Mary E. Surratt, selecting her for his client that he might have the benefit, for the purpose of his argument, of the sympathy which we all naturally feel for her sex. It was not his purpose to defend her any more than any other one or all of the prisoners, as he addressed himself simply to the task of arguing the question of jurisdiction. His real object was, evidently, to get himself before the Commission, that he might arraign the martyred President before the country and before the world, and denounce his acts for the prosecution of the war as unconstitutional and tyrannical usurpations of power. He made a lengthy, and from the stand-point of the right of secession, able argument against the right to try these cases before a military tribunal. The Commission was made up largely of men sufficiently versed in constitutional law, as well as the laws of nations and of war, to be little influenced by his sophistries. Their position towards the government on these questions had placed them where they were, as officers in its military service, and they could not be swerved from the loyal discharge of their duty. The reply of the Hon. John A. Bingham to the sophistries of the honorable senator, is a masterpiece of logical reasoning, as also of forensic eloquence and legal acumen, and will well repay the careful study, not only of every student of law, but of every young man who has an ambition to become intelligent in matters of public interest, involving the rights, duties, and privileges of the citizen in time of peace and in time of war. It will be found not only thoroughly learned and exhaustive of all questions involved, as a legal argument, but also the very embodiment of patriotic devotion to our free institutions of government, and to the cause of civil liberty, justice, humanity, and moral progress.