Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 9.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

Q.--“Can you state whether any of these persons participated in the conversation?” A.--“General Carroll, of Tennessee, did. He was more anxious that Mr. Johnson should be killed than anybody else.”

General Carroll denounces this as false, and shows by the certificate of Dr. McDonnell, an eminent physician of Montreal, and Mr. A. S. Huntington, with whom he boarded, that he was confined to his bed from the 1st to the 15th of April in consequence of a very painful disease, and that he was all the time under the care of Dr. McDonnell, thus completely exploding the story of the dispatches, cipher letter and apochryphal Surratt conversations.

Says General Carroll: “The facile ease with which this infamous wretch, Conover, commits perjury, is only equalled by the fertility of his brain in conceiving diabolical plots and involving innocent people in them.” I have thus cited Conover's perjuries, having for their object the connecting of Mr. Davis and Mr. Thompson with the assassination. Each, all, and every one of his statements as to Mr. Clement C. Clay, Mr. Saunders, Mr. Beverley Tucker and myself, are shown to be equally false and mendacious.

Conover mentions, in his secret examination, the names of other gentlemen as his “intimate associates in Montreal,” viz: Captain Magruder and Dr. Fallen, both of whom made affidavits. Says Captain Magruder: “I, George A. Magruder, late Captain in the Navy of the United States, and Chief of the Bureau of Ordinances and Hydrography, now residing in the city of Montreal, having been duly sworn upon the Holy Evangelists of Almighty God, doth depose and say: That having read the evidence or testimony of one Sanford Conover, alias James Watson Wallace, as reported in the public papers to have been given by him, and taken before the Military Commission, now sitting at Washington, D. C., in which he declares that, with others named by said Conover, alias Wallace, he wasi ntimately acquainted with me. This I swear to be absolutely false and untrue. Further, I declare never to have seen this person to my knowledge, nor have I ever heard his name, or assumed name, before my attention was drawn to it by his testimony. I did not know that such a person as said Conover or Wallace existed.”

Dr. Pallen, a distinguished surgeon of St. Louis, swears that he never saw or spoke to Sandford Conover, alias James Watson Wallace.

Conover said, in his secret testimony, that he did not go by the name of Sandford Conover in Canada, but under the name of James