The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-12-15

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 nished to A. H. Baldwin Capt. w G' 1 Baldwin. and to myself Information l piecemeal and reluctantly. The name or Carolina de Saussure, his bunk mate, was
 the last one obtained.
 l Conyers tried to commit suicide after he
 found that he had made his statements 1 to detective. declaring that the other negroes would kill him when it got out. i He finally wrote to Senator Foraker ana received a reply, a copy of which IS annexed. That reply he construed to mean that he should stick to his original story told before the Senate committee at all hazards, and there he stands l have every reason to believe that his confess sion is genuine and gives for the hrst time the true secret history of the Brownsville raid
 The list of participants given in this report Conyers furnished me personally. l believe 1t Is substantially correct but with the influences shown-to be backing i Conyers to adhere to his false testimony given before the Senate committee stlii being exerted he cannot be relied on to support his own confession until it IS thoroughly sustained from other sources. Evidences of similar encouragement to stick to the lies told at Brownsville and before the Senate committee were found il many places, and subsequent to the date of the Foraker letter they became
  The investigation has been conducted with strict recognition of the advisanil- ity of preserving secrecy and with dis cretion. No promises of immunity were made. The knowledge on the part ot the ex-soldiers that the government could not punish them after their separatloh from the service coupled with the beneI that by preserving silence they would aid in the passage of the relief legisla- | In to the difficulty of securing information.
 The issue has evidently become racial. The colored detectives would be confront- ed frequently in the smaller towns where these men are living with demand rom colored men for Information as to their business.
 We have located over 13o of these ex- soldiers and have been in 30 states in quest of information. The appendices give statements as to the results obtained. They indicate a general knowledge on the part of the ex-soldiers that the raid came from inside the fort, and that the soldiers of Company B were the guilty parties
 We earnestly urge that we be per mitted to continue the investigation SeV- eral detectives are still in the held' ana within the coming week a number Of affidavits will be Forthcoming.
 With some repetition of matter appear ing later in the report. Boyd Conyers' story is given here in narrative form;
 The rumors of trouble over the as- signment of colored troops to BroWhs- vile were circulated before the troops left Fort Niobrara and preparations were made among the men to get even with the crackers" so the whites were called. Some cartridges were held out at range practice, but more en route to Brownsville. Pretense was made that they were given away at stations along the road. Some were but a large number were secreted.
 At inspection in Brownsville, Lieu tenant Lawrason, Company B, threat ened punishment to the men who were short of ammunition, but nothing was done about 1t and the deficiency was supplied.
 The friction with citizens of Browns vile began at once. In Boyd Con yers' language "whiskey made all the trouble. If we hadn't been drinking we wouldn't have had the nerve to shoot up the town"
 It was agreed at gathering or few men in the saloon of Allison, the colored ex-soldier, on the afternoon of August IS, 1908, that the raid should take place that night at 12 o'clock It seems to have been delayed a few minutes to let Tamayo, the Mexican scavenger, get away from the B bar racks.
 John Holloman, the money lender of the money lender of Company E, was the chief conspirator and leader In the raid and custodian and distributor or the cartridges, but his plans could not have been carried out had not Sergt George Jackson of Company B, in charge of the keys to the gun racks in B barracks, and Sergeant Reid, in command of the guards, co-operated both before and after the raid
 The four men who led the raidSwere John Holloman, John Brown, Boyd Conyers and Carolina de Saussure all of Company B (and probably K. l.. Collier of Company O. Holloman was in barracks, Brown in the bake shop, Conyers and De Saussure in the guard house. The two latter were in the same detail and had been relieved at about Il o'clock, De Saussure on the post at the guardhouse and Conyers on No. 2, around the barracks and fac ing the town. Holloman got the party together. Conyers and De Saussure slept on the same bunk in the guard house, claiming that they wanted to get under the mosquito net and they had the trick of taking their guns into the bunk instead of placing them in the open rack, on the excuse that they didn't rust so badly under cover, but really so the absence of the guns from the open guardhouse rack would not attract attention and thattheir own absence would be ascribed to visit to the closet, which was back of the guardh ouse. These two men slipped out the rear door of the guardhouse, passed through the sally port and joined dolloman and Brown.
 ho rtU fort down near the end of A bar racks went up the roadway to the entrance to the Cowen alley, where the signal shots were fired. These shots were immediately tallied onto by the alarm shots of Joseph B. How ard guard on No. ?, and formed the
 series testified to by Mrs. Kate E. Leany of Brownsville. Ter testimony
 is further borne out by the statement that not over 30 seconds elapsed before number of men of Company B swarmed out on the upper gallery and l opened a fusilade on the town.
 It Is an absolute certainty that it
 would have been impossible for Ser
 geant Jackson to have opened the gun
 racks, for the men to have assembled,
 secured their guns, loaded them, gone
 out to the gallery and started firing, all after the first shot was fired; all | aroused, as they testified unanimously
 from sound slumber in less than two ! minutes, in the confusion of a dark barrack room. Beyond fhe possibility J of doubt, the racks had been opened
 and the inside conspirators were ready l to pour out on the signal shots. The