For some reason or reasons not fully stated, the majority of the committee determined to throw in my way every possible impediment. The papers were put away from me, locked in boxes, hidden; and when I asked to see them, I was told that I could not. It was said the interests of the Government required that none should see these papers save and only Mr. Boutwell who was preparing the majority report. Secrecy has surrounded and shrouded, not to say protected every step of these examinations, and even in the committee-room I seemed to be acting with a sort of secret council of inquisition, itself directed by an absent vice-inquisitor, and grand inquisitor too.

I do not say that Judge Holt did himself originate the charges or organize the plot of the perjurers, because I do not know that he did; I merely say that a plot based on the assassination was formed against Davis, Clay, and others, and that the plotters did, and even yet, operate through the Bureau of Military Justice, and that the argument forwarded by Mr. Holt to the Committee of the Judiciary looked to me like a shield extended over the plotters may be, with a desire to save certain officers of the government from the charge of having been betrayed into the blunders of an excitement, which it was their province to allay or control, not to increase. I believe this was done to hide the disgraceful fact that the assassination of Mr. Lincoln was seized upon as a pretext to hatch charges against a number of historical personages, to blacken their private character, and afford excuse for their trial.