Becoming convinced, when this project fell through, that nothing could be expected from Northern Democrats, he placed his reliance on Canadian sympathizers, and turned his attention to liberating the Confederate prisoners confined on Johnson's Island in Sandusky Bay and at Camp Douglas near Chicago. But both these elaborate schemes, which embraced such magnificent details as capturing the war steamer Michigan on Lake Erie, came to nought. Nor did the plans to burn St. Louis and New York, and to destroy steamboats on the Mississippi River, to which he also gave his sanction, succeed much better. A very few men were tried and punished for these and similar crimes, despite the voluble protest of the Confederate government; but the injuries he and his agents were able to inflict, like the acts of the Knights of the Golden Circle on the American side of the border, amounted merely to a petty annoyance, and never reached the dignity of real menace to the government.
