Weigh the extenuating circumstances in whatever scale you may; extend as much mercy as possible to those who showed no mercy in their day of power--still, the offense of every one and all, who had hand, part or lot in this work of death, contains every element which, under the most rigorous definition of the law, makes up the Crime of Murder. The killing was there. The unlawful killing was there. The premeditated design to effect death was there. The belief of the perpetrators, that they had a right to kill, or that they were commanded to kill by an overruling power, before a court of law avails not a whit. Ignorance of the constitution as well as the law excuses no man, be he civilian or soldier, President or assassin, War-Minister or Payne. Murder it essentially was, and as such it should be denounced to the present and future generations. Garrett Davis told no more than the exact truth when he declared in his place in the Senate of the United States: "There is no power in the United States, in time of war or peace, that can legitimately and constitutionally try a civilian who is not in the naval or military service of the United States, or in the militia of a State in the actual service of the United States, by a court-martial or by a military commission. It is a usurpation, and a flagitious usurpation of power for any military court to try a civilian, and if any military court tries a civilian and sentences him to death and he is executed under the sentence, the whole court are nothing but murderers, and they may be indicted in the State courts where such military murders are perpetrated; and if the laws were enforced firmly and impartially every member of such a court would be convicted, sentenced and punished as a murderer." Although the actual guilt of any of the victims constitutes no legal defense to this fearful charge, yet as the unquestioning obedience which the soldier yields, as a matter of course, to the commands of his superior officer must alleviate, if it do not wipe away, the guilt of the members of the Commission, in the forum of morals; so the ascertainment that the sufferers on the scaffold and in prison, in fact, deserved their doom, cannot but blunt the edge of our condemnation of the iniquity of the trial, as well as weaken our pity for the condemned and our sense of shame over the tyrannous acts of the government. A word or two, therefore, will be appropriate in respect to the sufficiency of the testimony to establish the guilt of the accused.