been so far muddled as to accept this shameless declaration as true. But proceeding to the specific purposes of the order, which the leaders have had in view from the beginning, and which, as will be seen, it has been able in many cases to carry out with very considerable success, the following are found to be most pointedly presented by the testimony:

First. Aiding soldiers to desert and harboring and protecting deserters. Early in its history the order essayed to undermine such portions of the army as were exposed to its insidious approaches. Agents were sent by the Knights of the Golden Circle into the camps to introduce the order among the soldiers, and those who became members were instructed to induce as many of their comrades as possible to desert, and for this purpose the latter were furnished by the order with money and citizens' clothing. Soldiers who hesitated at desertion, but desired to leave the army, were introduced to lawyers who engaged to furnish them some quasi legal pretext for so doing, and a certain attorney of Indianapolis, named Walpole, who was particularly conspicuous in furnishing facilities of this character to soldiers who applied to him, has boasted that he has thus aided 500 enlisted men to escape from their contracts. Through the schemes of the order in Indiana whole companies were broken up (a large detachment of a battery company, for instance, deserting on one occasion to the enemy with two of its guns), and the camps were imbued with a spirit of discontent and dissatisfaction with the service. Some estimate of the success of these efforts may be derived from a report of the Adjutant-General of Indiana, of January, in 1863, setting forth that the number of deserters and absentees returned to the army through the post of Indianapolis alone during the month of December, 1862, was nearly 2,600.

As soon as arrests of these deserters began to the generally made writs of habeas corpus were issued in their cases by disloyal judges, and a considerable number were discharged thereon. In one instance in Indiana, where an officer in charge of a deserter properly refused to obey the writ, after it had been suspended in such cases by the President, his attachment for contempt was ordered by the chief justice of the State, who declared that "the streets of Indianapolis might run with blood, but that he would enforce his authority against the President's order. " On another occasion certain U. S. officers who had made the arrest of deserters in Illinois were themselves arrested for kidnaping, and held to trial by a disloyal judge, who at the same time discharged the deserters, though acknowledging them to be such. Soldiers, upon deserting, were assured of immunity from punishment and protection on the part of the order, and were instructed to bring away with them their arms, and, if mounted, their horses. Details sent to arrest them by the military authorities were in several cases forcibly resisted, and where not unusually strong in numbers, were driven back by large bodies of men, subsequently generally ascertained to be members of the order. Were arrests were effected our troops were openly attacked and fired upon on their return. Instances of such attacks occurring in Morgan and Rush Counties, Ind., are especially noticed by General Carrington. In the case of the outbreak in Morgan County, J. J. Bingham, editor of the Indianapolis Sentinel, a member or friend of the order, sought to forward to the disloyal newspapers of the West false and inflammatory telegraphic dispatches in regard to the affair, to the effect that cavalry had been sent to arrest all the Democrats in the country, that the had committed gross outrages, and that several citizens had been shot, and adding, "10,000 soldiers cannot hold the men arrested this night. Civil war and bloodshed are