So that it was not until the Court, having made up its verdicts, proceeded to affix its sentences, that the three advocates, still assisting at the work of death, encountered the unforeseen difficulties which compelled a prolongation of the session. The crime or crimes of which the prisoners were all pronounced guilty (with the possible exception of Spangler's) were capital, and the Secretary of War, on the eve of the assembling of the Commission, had already denounced against such offenses (not excepting Spangler's) the punishment of death. The sentence, however, under the rules governing military commissions, was wholly within the power of the Court, which, no matter what the nature of the verdict, could affix any punishment it saw fit, from a short imprisonment up to the gallows. Its two-fold function was, like a jury to find a verdict, not only, but, like the judge in a common-law court, to pronounce sentence; and, unlike such a judge, in pronouncing sentence, the Commission was confined within certain limits by no statute. Although the whole proceedings of the Court must be subjected to the final approval of the President, yet its members were clothed alike with the full prerogative of justice and the full prerogative of clemency. There was one limit, however. While a majority could find the verdict and prescribe every other punishment, it required two-thirds of the Commission to inflict the penalty of death. Four officers, therefore, could block the way to the scaffold, and five could mitigate any sentence, to any degree, and for any, or for no reason. The Commission must have taken up the cases for sentence in the order adopted in the formal Charge. As to the first three--Herold, Atzerodt and Payne--there could have been no dissent or hesitation. The Commission, with hardly a moment's deliberation, must have ratified the judgment of the Judge-Advocates and condemned the prisoners to be hung by the neck until dead. The sentences of death formally declare in every instance that two-thirds of the Commission concur therein, but, as to these three, we can scarcely be in error in stating the Court was unanimous. It was not until the cases of the next three--O'Laughlin, Spangler and Arnold--were reached, that symptoms of dissatisfaction with the sweeping doom of death, so confidently pronounced by Judge Bingham in his charge, first began to show themselves amongst the members of the Court. It seems that now, after having joined with the counsel in pronouncing capital punishment upon the three most prominent culprits, the majority could no longer whet their appetite for blood so as to keep it up to the same fierce edge as that of the Judge-Advocates.