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So far was my submission from modifying in any way the course of the government, that the principal prisoners were, after all, condemned to death. Their sentences were passed the same as though my signature had not been obtained. That they were not executed is due solely to a consideration which has been officially stated: “Word came from the United States that the execution of captive rebels would militate against annexation. That about settled it.”

Proceedings against me, personally, were not modified. Every day thereafter papers were brought to me from the office of President Dole, a legal service, I suppose it is called, being made on me by Major George C. Potter, an aid-de-camp of the president’s staff. In the first of these I found myself charged with the crime of “treason.” After about a week had gone by, the accusation was changed to “misprision of treason.” The substance of my crime was that I knew my people were conspiring to re-establish the constitutional government, to throw off the yoke of the stranger and oppressor; and I had not conveyed this knowledge to the persons I had never recognized except as unlawful usurpers of authority, and had not informed against