s too, at a time (June 13, 1863), when Grant, after many recent
glorious victories, had been laying siege to Vicksburg, and its Rebel
Army of 37,000 men, for nearly a month, with every reason to hope for
its speedy fall.

No wonder that under such circumstances, the news of such a gathering of
the Northern Democratic sympathizers with Treason, and of their adoption
of such treasonable Resolutions, should encourage the Rebels in the same
degree that Union men were disheartened! No wonder that Lee, elated by
this and other evidences of Northern sympathy with Rebellion, at once
determined to commence a second grand invasion of the North, and on the
very next day (June 14th,) moved Northward with all his Rebel hosts to
be welcomed, he fondly hoped, by his Northern friends of Maryland and
elsewhere! As we have seen, it took the bloody Battle of Gettysburg to
undeceive him as to the character of that welcome.

Further than this, Mr. Cox had stumped Ohio, in the succeeding election,
in a desperate effort to make the banished Traitor, Vallandigham--the
Chief Northern commander of the "Knights of the Golden Circle"
(otherwise known as the "Order of the Sons of Liberty," and "O. A. K."
or "Order of American Knights")--Governor of that great State.

[The Rebel General Sterling Price being the chief Southern
commander of this many-named treasonable organization, which in the
North alone numbered over 500,000 men.

August, 1864.--See Report of Judge Advocate Holt on certain "Secret
Associations," in Appendix,]

And it only lacked a few months of the time when quantities of copies of
the treasonable Ritual of the "Order of American Knights"--as well as
correspondence touching the purchase of thousands of Garibaldi rifles
for transportation to the West--were found in the offices of leading
Democrats then in Congress.

When, therefore, it is said, and repeated, that there were not wanting
elements of proof, outside of Congressional utterances and actions, that
leading Democrats in Congress were trusted Lieutenants of the Supreme
Commander of over half a million of Northern Rebel-sympathizers bound
together, and to secrecy, by oaths, which were declared to be paramount
to all other oaths, the violation of which subjected the offender to a
shameful death somewhat like that, of being "hung, drawn, and
quartered," which was inflicted in the middle ages for the crime of
Treason to the Crown--it will be seen