Around a table near the eastern side of this room sat, resplendent in full uniform, the members of the Court. At the head as President was Major-General David Hunter--a stern, white-headed soldier, sixty-three years old; a fierce radical; the first officer to organize the slaves into battalions of war; the warm personal friend of Lincoln, at the head of whose corpse he had grimly sat as it rested from place to place on the triumphal progress to its burial, and from whose open grave he had hurried, in no very judicial humor to say the least, to take his seat among the Judges of the accused assassins. On his right sat Major-General Lew Wallace, a lawyer by profession; afterwards the President of the Court-Martial which tried and hung Henry Wirz; but now, by a sardonic freak of destiny, known to all the world as the tender teller of "Ben Hur, a Tale of the Christ." To the right of General Wallace sat Brevet Brigadier-General James A. Ekin and Brevet Colonel Charles A. Tompkins; about whom the only thing remarkable is that they had stepped into the places of the two relieved officers, Colonel Tompkins being the only regular army officer on the Board. On the left of General Hunter sat, first, Brevet Major-General August V. Kautz, a native of Germany; next, Brigadier-General Robert S. Foster, who may or may not have been the "Colonel Foster" alluded to in the testimony of Lloyd quoted above, as threatening the witness and as afterwards being seen by him on the Commission--the presence of an officer, previously engaged by the Government in collecting testimony against the accused, as one of the judges to try him not being considered a violation of Military Justice. Next sat Brigadier-General Thomas Mealey Harris, a West Virginian, and the author of a book entitled "Calvinism Vindicated;" next, Brigadier-General Albion P. Howe, and last, Lieutenant-Colonel David R. Clendenin. Not one of these nine men could have withstood the challenge which the common law mercifully puts into the hands of the most abandoned culprit. They had come together with one determined and unchangeable purpose--to avenge the foul murder of their beloved Commander-in-Chief. They dreamt not of acquittal. They were, necessarily, from the very nature of their task, _organized to convict_. The accused were asked, it is true, whether they had any objections to any member of the Court. But this was the emptiest of forms, as bias is no cause of challenge in military procedure, and peremptory challenges are unknown. Moreover, it was nothing but a cruel mockery to offer to that trembling group of prisoners an opportunity, which, if any one of them had the temerity to embrace, could only have resulted in barbing with the sting of personal insult the hostile predisposition of the judges.