Judge Larrabee convened a special session of court, impaneled a grand jury, and having summoned two companies of militia--the Union Guards of Ozaukee County, a German company, and the Washington Guards, another German company, of Milwaukee--to come up for the protection of the prisoner, had him conveyed to the courthouse and examined. The grand jury brought in a true bill, charging murder in the first degree. To this the prisoner, on the advice of his attorneys, pleaded “not guilty.” The multitude which had been permitted to press into the court room, despite the judge’s instruction to the militia to limit the number to the seating capacity of the room, fairly raged when they found a trial would be required, and before the prisoner took many steps in the direction of the jail, they seized him and made way with him. The severest censure was leveled against the militia companies and their leaders. All the American writers whose statements appear in the _Sentinel_ charge that these companies fraternized with the lynching party, and practically assert that they had an understanding by which the prisoner was to be given up to them. The captain of the Milwaukee company, who was a veteran of the Mexican War--though a German immigrant--insisted with vigor that his company did all it could to prevent the lynching. He did not speak for the Union Guards of Ozaukee. All witnesses agree that one of the Union Guard officers, Lieutenant Beger, performed his duty manfully and heroically, but the weight of the testimony condemns the companies as organizations, and especially their captains. It would seem that two companies of militia, if well led, ought to have been able with the butts of their guns to hold off a rabble of three hundred men, and no witness puts the number higher than that, while some declare the rush was made by not more than thirty-five men. In the Milwaukee captain’s statement, as in the statements of other German apologists for the militia, we come at once upon the political note. They could not expect the “Know-Nothing American writers” to tell the truth about the tragedy. In other words, they found in the politics of the time an opportunity to charge prejudice against Americans, and by that means to dodge the real issue. Two German writers of West Bend, one of them the undersheriff, bitterly denounced both the militia companies and the lynchers, and both more than hint that the passions which led to the lynching were partly religious. Here, undoubtedly, we come upon one of the signs of division among the Germans themselves. It is possible that these two Germans were politically opposed to the main body of their fellow-countrymen, for by this time a light minority had already been attracted away from the Democratic party. However, we do not know that this was true, and merely call attention to the several psychological attitudes which, from the testimony, we know the case disclosed.