"Every man has a right to bear arms.--The right is not sectional or restricted...."

The Indiana Conspirators.

   Since the exposure of the feeling and desires of the Indiana members of the secret Order of American Knights, and the seizure of arms and ammunition secreted on the premises of a member high in the Order, the Democratic journals have changed their base in their treatment of the disclosures. Now, instead of attempting to deny the existence of such an organization, they attempt to justify it; and the gathering of arms and ammunition by it they assure to defend on the constitutional right of every citizen to bear arms.

   But if their organization is justifiable why did they deny it? If it was for lawful purposes, why was it secret? And if they have a right to bear arms, why did they not bear them, instead of secreting them? Every man has a right to bear arms.--The right is not sectional or restricted. It exists in Georgia just as much as in Indiana. But the right to bear arms does not relieve people from liability for the way they bear them. And in time of war, when people are found with arms in their hands, or with quantities of arms gathered, the question for them to answer is, which side are they armed for?

   In the South, when they are not known to be armed for the Government, it is presumed that they are armed for rebellion and they are treated accordingly. The same laws govern in Indiana. It in incumbent on these men to show that they are not armed for the rebellion; and the appearance in their correspondence and in the revelation of their organization are purposes are decidedly against them.

   This correspondence reveals to the people of Indiana the leaders of the Democratic party in sympathy with the rebellion from the first, promising it the aid of the Democrats in the North; notified in 1861 to have that hundreds and thousands of men ready; put down for a season by the moral force of the popular uprising at the reality of the war; cowed and driven to secrecy; hoping all the while for the defeat and destruction of our armies; mutually declaring this their only hope; conspiring and aiming to take advantage of disaster to raise the standard of Democratic revolt in the North, plunge the State into the horrors of civil war, and holding out the offer of co-operation to Confederate invasion.

   There is nothing in the record of treachery that can compare with this. There is nothing in the history of conspiracies that equals this Democratic conspiracy in the boldness and villainy of its deliberate designs. But like all secret plotters they shrank from action. They wished blood to flow without risking their own. The correspondence shows a contrast between atrocity in desire and timidity in performance.  The discoveries show also that the number of this order of infernals has been over-estimated. It is an inside Circle for controlling the party by throwing into the Convention a disciplined force to carry out e secret programme; but it is not likely that it contains the majority of the rank and file of the democratic party in Indiana.

   The people can see what a volcano of villainy they have been sitting over, and they have made the discovery in time to suppress this danger. We apprehend that the storm of popular indignation will chafe these men into retirement, and load their names with immortal infamy.--Cincinnati Gazette.

[Cleveland Morning Leader, Cleveland Friday Morning, August 26, 1864. Vol. XVIII. No. 187 Pg. 3]