guilty. It is needless to enter in this report into a minute detail of the purposes, principles, and magnitude of the illegal order of the Sons of Liberty, of which the accused was shown on this trial to have been a leading spirit, and to hold in it even now a position of authority only second to that of the supreme commander of the order throughout only second to that of the supreme commander of the order throughout the United States. The exposition of its treasonable organization and designs has been so recently and so thoroughly made in a report from this Bureau, under date of October 8, 1864, that it would be but a waste of time to lift the veil again from its secret and hideous recesses. It is enough to say that the evidence in the present case shows that the accused was a leader in the organization; was fully aware of its secret designs against the integrity of the Government, and devoted all his energy and talents to the degradation of its deluded rank and file to a level of crime where the seeds of treason, so assiduously scattered by himself and his infamous co-adjustors, would find a soil congenial to their rankest growth. He is shown to have suggested and volunteered the assassination of fellow-citizens to advance the interests and avert the betrayal of his conspiracy. He is shown to have been in consultation and communication upon the subject of the order with the arch-conspirator Vallandigham while in exile in Canada. He is shown to have caused the vast forces he had beguiled into his service to be armed and drilled in readiness for the uprising, for which Vallandigham was to give the signal. He is shown to have meditated an armed co-operation with invading rebel armies, and to have invited such invasion. He is shown to have formed and zealously promoted a plot for the secession of the Northwestern States and their erection into a separate government to be united by treaties with the so-called Souther Confederacy. The crimes by which these projects were to be carried out, such as wholesale murder and arson, some of which were actually perpetrated and others only considered and resolves upon, it is not necessary to enlarge upon in this report.

On the 7th of October, 1864, the eleventh day of the trial, it was announced by the judge-advocate that the accused had made his escape from the mitigated confinement which he had given his word to respect, and could not be found. The judge-advocate moved the court to proceed at once to judgment in prisoner's absence, and rested his case on the evidence already in. The counsel for the accused opposed the motion, but the commission overruled his objection, and having first convicted Dodd on all the charges and specifications, in which the evidence fully supported them, sentenced him to be hung at such time and place as the commanding general of the district should designate. In this sentence the requisite two-thirds of the commission concurred. General Alvin P. Hovey, commanding District of Indiana, approves the proceedings and sentence and forwards the record for the action of the President. The action of the commission in proceeding to judgment and sentence in the voluntary absence of the accused is sustained by common law authorities, and is thought to be in harmony with the rules and principles of military courts. It is the privilege of the defendant on trial before a court-martial to decline to introduce testimony in his defense or to address the court in an argument upon the facts, while it is the rule of military tribunals to exclude from their presence all persons other than the members of the court during their deliberations on the evidence and the acquittal or conviction of the prisoner. It is believed that the defendant's shameful flight is to be deemed no more than the exercise of the power to waive his defense, and while he cannot by voluntary act on his part impair the rights of