tion who, in last July, were incarcerated in the penitentiary of Ohio. On entering this infamous abode, Captain Morgan and his companions were stripped in a reception room and their naked bodies examined there. They were again stripped in the interior of the prison, and washed in tubs by negro convicts; their hair cut close to the scalp, the brutal warden, who was standing by, exhorting the negro barber to "cut off every lock of their rebel hair." After these ceremonies, the officers were locked up in cells, the dimensions of which were thirtyeight inches in width, six and a-half feet in length, and about the same in height. In these narrow abodes our brave soldiers were left to pine, branded as felons, goaded by "convictdrivers," and insulted by speeches which constantly reminded them of the weak and cruel neglect of that government, on whose behalf, after imperilling their lives, they were now suffering a fate worse than death. But even these sufferings were nothing to what was reserved for them in another invention of cruelty without a parallel, unless in the secrets of the infernal.

It appears that, after General Morgan's escape, suspicion alighted on the warden, a certain Captain Merion, who, it was thought, might have been corrupted. To alleviate the suspicion (for which there were really no grounds whatever), the brute commenced a system of devilish persecution of the unfortunate Confederate prisoners who remained in his hands. One part of this system was solitary confinement in dungeons. These dungeons were close cells, a false door being drawn over the grating, so as to exclude light and air. The food allowed the occupants of these dark and noisome places, was three ounces of bread and half a pint of water per day. The four walls were bare of every thing but a water-bucket, for the necessities of nature, which was left for days to poison the air the prisoner breathed. He was denied a blanket; deprived of his overcoat, if he had one, and left standing or stretched with four dark, cold walls around him, with not room enough to walk in to keep up the circulation of his blood, stagnated with the cold, and the silent and unutterable horrors of his abode.

Confinement in these dungeons was the warden's sentence for the most trivial offences. On one occasion one of our prisoners was thus immured because he refused to tell Merion

which one of his companions had whistled contrary to the prison rules. But the most terrible visitation of this demon's displeasure remains to be told.

Some knives had been discovered in the prisoners' cells, and Merion accused the occupants of meditating their escape. Seven of them, all officers, were taken to the west end of the building and put in the dark cells there. They were not allowed a blanket or overcoat, and the thermometer was below zero. There was no room to pace. Each prisoner had to struggle for life, as the cold benumbed him, by stamping his feet, beating the walls, now catching a few minutes of horrible sleep on the cold floor, and then starting up to continue, in the dark, his wrestle for life.

"I had been suffering from heart disease," says Captain Morgan, speaking of his own solitary confinement on another occasion. "It was terribly aggravated by the cold and horror of the dungeon in which I was placed. I had a wet towel, one end of which I pressed to my side; the other would freeze, and I had to put its frozen folds on my naked skin. I stood this way all night, pressing the frozen towel to my side and keeping my feet going up and down. I felt I was struggling for my life."

Captain Morgan endured this confinement for eighteen hours, and was taken out barely alive. The other prisoners endured it for sixteen days and nights. In this time they were visited at different periods by the physician of the penitentiary -Dr. Loring-who felt their pulses, and examined their condition, to ascertain how long life might hold out under the exacting torture. It was awful, this ceremony of torture, this medical examination of the victims. The tramp of the prisoners' feet, up and down (there was no room to walk), as they thus worked for life, was incessantly going on. This black tread-mill of the dungeon could be heard all through the cold and dreary hours of the night. Dr. Loring, who was comparatively a humane person, besought Merion to release the unhappy men; said they had already been taxed to the point of death. The wretch replied, "They did not talk right yet." He wished them to humble themselves to him. He went into the cell of one of them, Major Webber, to taunt him. "Sir," said the officer, "I defy you. You can kill me, but you can

add nothing to the sufferings you have already inflicted. Proceed to kill me; it makes not the slightest difference."

At the expiration of sixteen days the men were released from the dungeons. Merion said "he would take them out this time alive, but next time they offended, they would be taken out feet foremost." Their appearance was frightful; they could no longer be recognized by their companions. With their bodies swollen and discolored, with their minds bordering on childishness, tottering, some of them talking foolishly, these wretched men seemed to agree but in one thing-a ravenous desire for food.

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"I had known Captain Coles," says Captain Morgan, as well as my brother. When he came out of his dungeon, I swear to you I did not know him. His face had swollen to two or three times its ordinary size, and he tottered so that I had to catch him from falling. Captain Barton was in an awful state. His face was swollen and the blood was bursting from the skin. All of them had to be watched, so as to check them in eating, as they had been starved so long."

We had had in this war many examples of Yankee cruelty. But the statement given above, may be said to take precedence of all that had ever yet been narrated of the atrocities of the enemy; and it is so remarkable, both on account of its matter and the credit that must naturally attach to its authorship, that we doubt whether the so-called civilized world of this generation has produced anywhere any well-authenticated story of equal horror.

In his message to Congress, President Davis eloquently adverted to the savage ferocity of the enemy and his crimes. But he had not a word to say of what had become of all his proclamations, pronunciamentos, gloomy appeals and terrible threatenings with respect to retaliation. The truth was they had never resulted in one solitary performance; they were a record of bluster and an exhibition of weakness and shame upon which the President might well turn his back. It is remarkable that Mr. Davis in all these proceedings touching questions of retaliation should have shown a character so different from that which he exhibited in the domestic controversies and intrigues of his administration. In his controversies with his military officers, he was very obstinate, very

bitter; in his attachment to certain favorites and to certain measures of domestic policy he was immovable and defiant. It was only when his duty brought him in contact with the enemy that these imperious traits of character disappeared, and were replaced by halting timidity and weak hesitation.

It was unfortunate that the Confederate President ever made any threats of retaliation, since he had not the resolution to perform them. They had been ineffectually repeated until they had become the sneer of the enemy. But the most unfortunate consequence of the want of a proper response to the cruel assumptions of power by the North was the moral effect it had upon our own people; for it implied a certain guilt, a certain moral inferiority in the South, of which the enemy had the right to take advantage. It converted the relations between us and our foes to those of the malefactor and the constable; it depressed our sense of right; and it gave to the soldier the bitter reflection that his government cared but little for him, in that martyrdom on the gallows or captivity in dungeons with the terrors of which the enemy assailed him.

Finally, there is this to be said of the rival administrations of Richmond and Washington: that if in the former there were to be found many evidences of weakness, these, at least, were not crimes, while if in the latter there were to be seen vigor and decision, they were associated with the insolence of the reprobate and the inhumanity of the savage. If the history of the retaliation policy and other questions which we have traced, exhibits imbecility on the part of the Confederate authorities, it has this compensation: that it has inseparably connected with it a fearful record of the inhumanity and crime of the enemy.

In this conflict, which, as to goverments, was that between the weakly good and the resolutely evil, the people of the Confederacy had but little to expect from their political authorities; but it was precisely the condition in which they had much to expect from the resources of their own righteous and aroused passions.

In connection with his "peace" proclamation, the Yankee President pointed with an air of triumph to the great resources of the North for the prosecution of the war. There was an actual surplus in its treasury. While the Confederacy had

collected only one hundred millions from its tax and revenue system, the receipts of the Yankee treasury were nine hundred millions. The Yankee army was increased. The Yankee navy now numbered nearly six hundred vessels, and seventyfive of them were iron-clads or armored steamers. The Yankee political parties had accommodated their differences and no longer embarrassed the authorities at Washington. "The crisis which threatened to divide the friends of the Union is past," said Mr. Lincoln.

The Washington government had now a united people, an unexhausted treasury, enlarged military resources, and a confidence more insolent than ever.

Richmond, in December, 1863, was a sombre city. An air of gloom pervaded the public offices. In Congress, Mr. Foote told his endless story of official corruption and imbecility, and had his savage jokes on "the pepper-doctor from North Carolina," who governed the commissariat of the Confederacy. There were no social gaieties, although disreputable balls and gambling "hells" still amused those immoral mobs, at all times inseparable from a metropolis. In the streets there was the perpetual juggle of bargain and sale, apparently unconscious of the war, simply because engrossed in individual avarice; the clatter of the auction sales; the levity of the thoroughfare. But there was the seriousness of anxiety, if not the gloom of despair, in the home, in the private sanctuary, in the public office-in every place where thoughtful minds contemplated the future, and looked beyond the circle of the twenty

four hours.

Washington was gay, in the mean time, not with thoughtlessness, but with exultations over the prospects of the war, and the promises of its government. Balls, "diamond" weddings, presidential levees, social parties, with splendid arrays of silks and jewels, with all the fantasy of wealth, the insolence of licentiousness, and the fashionable commerce of lust, amused the hours. Mr. Lincoln was jocose again. He snapped his fingers at "the rebellion." He attended the theatre nightly. This piece of human jacquerie chattered incessantly over the success of his schemes. The Northern newspapers indulged the almost immediate prospect of a peace, which was to irradiate the Yankee arms, humiliate the South, and open the door