It will be noticed how closely the Rebel officer's disclosures accorded with the information gathered through indirect channels by the astute Commandant. When the report was conveyed to him, he may have smiled at this proof of his own sagacity; but he made no change in his arrangements. Quietly and steadily he went on strengthening the camp, augmenting the garrison, and shadowing the footsteps of all suspicious new-comers.
At last the loyal Democrats came together to the great Convention, and with them came Satan also. Bands of ill-favored men, in bushy hair, bad whiskey, and seedy homespun, staggered from the railway-stations, and hung about the street-corners. A reader of Dante or Swedenborg would have taken them for delegates from the lower regions, had not their clothing been plainly perishable, while the devils wear everlasting garments. They had come, they announced, to make a Peace President, but they brandished bowie-knives, and bellowed for war even in the sacred precincts of the Peace Convention. But war or peace, the Commandant was ready for it.
For days reinforcements had poured into the camp, until it actually bristled with bayonets. On every side it was guarded with cannon, and, day and night, mounted men patrolled the avenues to give notice of the first hostile gathering. But there was no gathering. The conspirators were there, two thousand strong, with five thousand Illini to back them. From every point of the compass,--from Canada, Missouri, Southern Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New York, and even loyal Vermont, bloody-minded men had come to give the Peace candidate a red baptism. But "discretion is the better part of valor." The conspirators saw the preparations and disbanded. Not long afterward one of the leaders said to me, "We had spies in every public place,--in the telegraph-office, the camp itself, and even _close by_ the Commandant's head-quarters, and knew, hourly, all that was passing. From the observatory, opposite the camp, I myself saw the arrangements for our reception. We outnumbered you two to one, but our force was badly disciplined. Success in such circumstances was impossible; and on the third day of the Convention we announced from head-quarters that an attack at that time was impracticable. It would have cost the lives of hundreds of the prisoners, and perhaps the capture or destruction of the whole of us." So the storm blew over, without the leaden rain, and its usual accompaniment of thunder and lightning.