Wisconsin in the War of the Rebellion, Vol. 2

              APPENDIX.
The Chicago Conspieact.—Previous to the autumnal election of 1864, an exten¬ sive conspiracy at the West was discovered, jvhich had 500,000 enrolled members, pledged to '' take up arms against any government found waging war against a people endeavoring to establish a gos'ernment of their own choice." It was de¬ signed to combine Canadian refugees jvith 5,000 of the treasonable order in Chicago, attack Camp Douglas, at that city, on election night, Nov. 8th, liberate the 8,000 rebel prisoners there, and then, having a force of 20,000 men, sweep through the Western States at will, receive large accessions of other conspirators, engage in wholesale robbery, arson and assassination, shift the war from the Soutli to the North, and secure the independence of the Confederacy.
Col. B. J. Sweet, then commandant at Camp Douglas, and previously of the 21st Wisconsin Regiment, flrst had a singular impression of coming danger, then quickly a confirmatory revelation through a detective. He selected one of the prisoners, who professed to be loyal, shrewdly managed to have him escape, then, watching him with a military police, so that he should not act the part of a traitor, even if disposed, employed him to ferret out the designs and movements of the conspirators. The deep-laid plots, the midnight conferences with noted rebels, the secret reports to the commandant, his wily and successful instructions at each step, and his swoop upon the traitors at just the right time, mark him as a genius and a general. Among the rebels he arrested, were Col. G. St. Leger GrenfeU, the guerrilla, Morgan's Adjutant General, the noted Capt. Cantrill, and Col. Vincent Marmaduke, brother of Gen. Marmaduke. Chicago jvas saved from terrible massacre and arson, and one of the chief hopes of the rebels, one of the foulest plots that ever emanated from Richmond, was defeated and turned with the sting of shame and indignation upon its inventors. Col. Sweet was brevetted Brigadier General in the Veteran Reserve Corps.
Christian Commission.—"Wisconsin bore an important part in the Christian Commission service before the date of the state organization. Mr. K. A. Burnell, while a Sabbath School missionary, really engaged in that work at the opening of the war. He and S. N. Millerd, John Rice, and others, established a prayer- meeting in the camp of the "ft''ashburn cavalry in December, 1861, from whicli followed a revival of religion. When Gov, Harvey went to the battle-fleld of Pittsburg Landing, he found Mr. Burnell at Cairo, and urgentlj' invited him to join his company. Before reaching the fleld, the Governor proposed that he should enter the service of the State to labor for the moral and religious benefit of the soldiers, and a feve hours before his death he commissioned him for three months for that work. He spent four weeks among the wounded at Shiloh, and then went by steamer with sixty Wisconsin disabled soldiers to Cincinnati. On that steamer was practically commenced the Christian Commission service of giving, along with the gospel, clean shirts, stockings aud drawers, and clean feet, hands and faces to soldiers jvho had been unwashed for jveeks after the battle. The Western Army Committee was not formed, at St. Louis, until the following autumn. Under the joint appointment aud support of that Committee, and the Plymouth church, of Milwaukee, Mr. Burnell formally entered upon his long and useful career iu the Christian Commission work. In February, 1862, he, with one ton and a half of reading matter, visited the soldiers stationed between St. Louis and Vicksburg. He soon after located au important branch of the Christian Commission at the Gayoso House, in Memphis, jvhere a daily religious service was held through the war, and whence were scattered among the soldiers, testaments by the thousand, religious newspapers by the hundred thousand, and pages of tracts and small books by the million. Mr. Burnell spent over three years at Nashville, Chatta¬ nooga, Corinth, Helena, Little Rook, Island Number Ten, Nejv Orleans, Red Kiver, and other places.