The writer of this sketch was never more profoundly impressed than when, on two occasions, he was summoned, at half past twelve and two o’clock in the morning to the Executive Chamber as a witness.  The room was of the plainest, even rudest, appearance.  A semi-circular table was liberally supplied with stationary, and around it sat gravely, with faces paled by long continued vigils, anxious thought and awful responsibility a few individuals, some of whom he recognized, and knew to be quiet, humane, order-loving men.  On a raised platform sat the President, and in front of him the Secretary.  These few grave men, seen at so late an hour, by dim candle lights, the leaders of an armed insurrection, usurpers of all power, rule and supremacy in a City of at least sixty thousand inhabitants; whose commands thousands of their armed fellow citizens obeyed implicitly; who, in disregard of all law, arrested, imprisoned, tried and executed offenders; but whose power, boundless and undisputed as it seemed, rested solely on the conviction of their fellow men that they were just, wise, patriotic and true; would faithfully administer the despotic power of which they were the depositaries; and cheerfully resign it whenever the work of the regeneration of society was accomplished.  If this conviction should be shaken, the association must instantly be dissolved and each of these leaders and directors of it be left to die upon the scaffold.  Well might any person of the slightest sensibility look on such a body of men with the utmost interest and curiosity, and in the contemplation be filled with deep and solemn thought.

The Constitution likewise provided for a Board of Delegates, with whom the Executive Committee might confer whenever matters of vital importance should require it.  This body was organized by the choice by each company of two of its members, who, with the Captain, should be its Delegates.  When the military organization of the force was completed, the field officers were added to the Board of Delegates; and when the organization included many regiments, the number of Delegates was of course larger.  Whenever the death penalty had been decided upon by the Executive Committee, the whole evidence upon which it was based was submitted to the Board of Delegates, and a two-thirds vote of that Board in confirmation of the Executive vote was required before it could be inflicted.  The element of discussion thus introduced into a body essentially revolutionary, and whose success might be supposed to depend upon the secrecy, promptness and unfaltering determination of its councils and of the blows it struck, was thought at the time to be likely to detract from its efficiency, if it did not endanger its existence.  But the good sense and prudence of the members restrained the innate Yankee propensity to speech making, and this danger, with many others, which from time to time threatened to make shipwreck of the organization, was happily surmounted.