CCOMPLICES.

VIRGINIA, 1865.

The soft new grass is creeping o'er the graves
By the Potomac; and the crisp ground-flower
Lifts its blue cup to catch the passing shower;
The pine-cone ripens, and the long moss waves
Its tangled gonfalons above our braves.
Hark, What a burst of music from yon wood!
The Southern nightingale, above its brood,
In its melodious summer madness raves.
Ah, with what delicate touches of her hand,
With what sweet voices, Nature seeks to screen
The awful Crime of this distracted land,--
Sets her birds singing, while she spreads her green
Mantle of velvet where the Murdered lie,
As if to hide the horror from God's eye!

THE CHICAGO CONSPIRACY.

On the eve of the last general election, the country was startled by the
publication of a Report from the Judge Advocate of the United States,
disclosing the existence of a wide-spread conspiracy at the West, which
had for its object the overthrow of the Union. This conspiracy, the
Report stated, had a military organization, with a commander-in-chief,
general and subordinate officers, and five hundred thousand enrolled
members, all bound to a blind obedience to the orders of their
superiors, and pledged to "take up arms against any government found
waging war against a people endeavoring to establish a government of
their own choice."

The organization, it was said, was in every way hostile to the Union,
and friendly to the so-called Confederacy; and its ultimate objects were
"a general rising in Missouri," and a similar "rising in Indiana, Ohio,
Illinois, and Kentucky, in cooperation with a Rebel force which was to
invade the last-named State."

Startling and incredible as the Report seemed, it told nothing but the
truth, and it did not tell the whole truth. It omitted to state that the
organization was planned in Richmond; that its operations were directed
by Jacob Thompson, who was in Canada for that purpose; and that
wholesale robbery, arson, and midnight assassination were among its
designs.

The point marked out for the first attack was Camp Douglas, at Chicago.
The eight thousand Rebel soldiers confined there, being liberated and
armed, were to be joined by the Canadian refugees and Missouri
"Butternuts" engaged in their release, and the five thousand and more
members of the treasonable order resident in Chicago. This force, of
nearly twenty thousand men, would b