the afternoon walking in the streets of Washington with his spurs on, having doubtless brought dispatches from Thompson to Booth, and that he thereupon disappeared. On the night of that day President Lincoln was murdered, the exclamation of the assassin and the surrounding circumstances making it apparent to all that the crime was committed in the interest of the public enemy and under the inspiration of the chiefs of the rebellion. To the chain of testimony thus indicated may be added yet another link, which is found in the language of Davis wen speaking to John C. Breckinridge of the assassination of the President the day after the telegram announcing it had been received. Breckinridge, it seems, professed to deplore it, not as a crime, but simply as asmifortune to the South at the time. A witness, neither whose intelligence nor integrity has been or can be impeached, testifies that to this view expressed by Breckinridge Davis replied as follows:

Well, General, I don't know; if it were to be done at all it were beter that it were well done; and if the same had been done to Andy Johnson - the beast - and to Secretary Stanton the job would then be complete.

These are not the words of sorrow or of surprise but rather of exultation over a tragedy which had been anticipated, mingled with regret that important particulars the programme of crime, with the details of which the language implies and acquaintance, had failed. Impressed by the force of these proofs, which still exist and are within the reach of the Government, I have entertained the opinion, and frankly expressed it to yourself, that Davis should be put upon his trial before a military court, such as during the past summer tried and condemned his alleged confederates in guilt - such a tribunal alone, in my judgment, having jurisdiction of the offense, which was committed in aid of the rebellion and in violation of the laws and usages of war. My conviction is complete that the punishment of the wretched hirelings of Davis, some of whom have been sent to the gallows and other to the penitentiary, has made no sufficient atonement for this monstrous crime against humanity, which covered our land with mourning, but that, on the contrary, the blood of the President is still calling to us from the ground, not for vengeance, for that his nature was incapable, but for justice - that justice without which no nation can long live in honor or peace or happiness.

The accompanying copies of reports, marked Nos. 1 and 2, heretofore made by this Bureau to the Secretary of War, in the cases of Clement C. Clay and D. L. Yulee and S. R. Mallory, will, it is believed, sufficiently present the grounds both of the arrest of these parties and of their continued detention by the Government. It remains but to note the fact that in this report, as well as in that of the case of Clay, the names of certain witnesses and others have, for obvious reasons growing out of the present state of the investigations, been thought proper to be withheld.

Respectfully submitted.

J. HOLT,

Judge-Advocate-General.

[Inclosure Numbers 1.]

WAR DEPARTMENT, BUREAU OF MILITARY JUSTICE,

December 6, 1865.

Honorable E. M. STANTON, Secretary of War:

SIR: Pursuant to your order I have to present the following report upon the testimony on file and communicated to this Bureau in regard to the alleged complicity of Clement C. Clay in various crimes against