hundred yards back and scattered toward the back part of the town. They were quietly but very promptly gathered up.

Their appearance gave the strongest indications that they were just the men that we were in quest of, but it turned out that they were mechanics and laborers on their way to Nashville, and substitutes and men coming to be enlisted and mustered by the provost-marshal. At 6 p. m. I sent out a small party with some discreet officers on the Sandusky, Mansfield, and Newark road, with instructions to proceed as far as Monroeville (sixteen miles), wait there for the train from Toledo and Detroit, and then return on the evening train from the south, which was to arrive at Sandusky as 8. 15 o'clock. This party returned in due time without being able to discover any suspicious characters.

I sought the provost-marshal at the earliest opportunity and supplied him with all the force he wished to arrest the six Sanduskians alleged to be fellow conspirators with Cole. While that work was going on I made careful inquiry, with the view to learn if there were any strangers or suspicious circumstances in Sandusky apparently connected with the plot, but could discover nothing beyond the supposed complicity of the six citizens named. The Cleveland train came in at 7. 10 p. m. No suspicious characters were or had been on board of it that trip.

Rosenthal, Williams, Merrick, Strain, Brown, and Stanley had been arrested and placed on board the Princess (ferry boat for this island). Before permitting the boat to leave on its return form Sandusky I deemed it proper to learn if possible about the Parsons, which was to have left Detroit for Sandusky about 8 o'clock that morning, but which had not arrived or been discovered. I did this out of abundant caution, for I could not believe that her officers would be permitted to commence the trip from Detroit unwarned if there was the slightest prospect of her seizure, and her non-arrival and the fact that no news had arrived concerning her induced me to think that her officer had been warned and had omitted the trip. I got no reply from Detroit until after 9 p. m. (See Nos. 17 and 18. *) As soon as the reply was received I returned to the island with my six citizen prisoners. Captain Carter met me at my quarters. Upon consultation, although it would be in violation of instructions for him to leave his station without orders from Washington, it was agreed between us that he should go out on a cruise at daylight in the morning.

To go earlier might, and probably would, involve the grounding of his ship in attempting to leave the harbor, and it might endeavor the safety of the post, garrisoned as it was only by my own regiment, which had five detachments away, while if he could get out and reach the other islands the chances of his finding any piratical craft in the night would not be at all favorable. The captain had kept a close watch over the harbor and out upon the lake, and had kept us his fires all of the time after Cole's arrest.

As to the Island Queen, running from Sandusky to Kelley's Island, Put-in-Bay, &c., there was nothing to excite the slightest suspicion. She had left Sandusky at 3 p. m. on her usual time not to return until the next forenoon. The Michigan left at daylight the next morning as proposed, made her cruise to the mouth of Detroit River, and returned at 3 o'clock the next afternoon. Among the islands on her way to Detroit River she heard of the seizure of the Parsons and Island Queen; that the Queen had been sent adrift and floated off down

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* Omitted.

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