Lincoln Government in the North, and had esteemed it nothing more than a demonstration of partisan machinery, in competition for office and power. But however correct may be this general estimate of parties in the North, what I was made a private witness of in Boston was sufficient to satisfy any candid mind that the Southern Confederacy had a party in the North of devoted and intelligent friends entitled to her consideration and gratitude. What was most remarkable was that these men sympathized with us not from infidelity to their own section, but on the high and intelligent grounds that the war involves the issue of their own liberties, and that the Southern Confederacy in this struggle represents what remains of constitutional law and conservatism in America, battling against a fanaticism which must at last be destructive of itself. A sympathy of this sort is valuable. There is, perhaps, other sympathy with us in the North proceeding from less honorable motives, the mere fruit of faction-properly entitled "Copperheadism"-which I am very much inclined to think is worthless and contemptible. "Sir," said a leading merchant of Boston to me, "I am not what is called a disloyal man. I want to see the South succeed because I want to see the constitutional issue she is fighting for, succeed. I regard General Lee as fighting our battles as well as your own, and if he is whipped we shall have a despotism at Washington which will crush freedom in the North, as well as independence in the South."

In short, I had discovered a circle of "secessionists" in Boston, and had been cursing the black desert of heartless crowds before my eyes, without the least thought that it contained an oasis for the despised Confederate. I was overwhelmed with kindness by my newly found friends, offered a testimonial dinner which I peremptorily declined; invited to charming country places and suburban rides. Alas, from this amicable diver sion my thoughts were to be soon turned into a channel of bitterness! What could avail even the most generous kindness of a few individuals when I had been marked as a victim by the Autocracy at Washington, and the iron wheel of its torture was being prepared to crush out my life or grind it with all the unutterable misery that the imagination of despotism could invent.

CHAPTER IV.

COMMITMENT TO FORT WARREN.-Horrors of the Yankee Bastile.-Torture of "A Brutal Villain."-A Letter to Secretary Welles.

I was taken from a sick bed to my granite prison and sack of straw. I had been suffering for many months from nervous prostration; and so much had it been aggravated, by the anxieties of my situation, that I had taken myself to bed. I was lying there, the morning of Sunday, the 29th of May, when a deputy of the United States marshal entered my room, and commanded me to accompany him to 'Fort Warren. There was no explanation of this harsh and immediate summons, except that "orders had come to that effect from Washington." In vain I plead the confines of sickness, and sought the delay of a single day. "Could I see the marshal?" "No." The orders from Washington were to imprison me "forthwith." "What was I accused of? Why was it that the other passengers on the Greyhound were so graciously liberated, and I alone to be sent to Fort Warren ?" The officer did not know. So, without explanation, without notice, without process of any sort, I had been selected, the single victim, to suffer for the Greyhound, while her master was off for Canada, and the other passengers had been permitted, without a whisper of investigation, to proceed in the same direction. Perhaps my imprisonment, under these circumstances, was a complimentary distinction; but I must confess that, at the time, I could not, as the Yankees say, "see it in that light."

In the beautiful Sabbath-day, full of sunshine, through the sparkling water, and along the green islands of the bay, I was carried to my prison-house, the sight of whose solid masonry, rising above the bright water, smote my heart with a strange agony. What a mockery all this flashing and picturesque scenery of Boston bay, as I passed through it on the way to prison. Through it all I could see the horrid maw of the jail

that awaited me, and the black veil that was to fall over my hopes, and drape my life in mourning.

I was presented to Major Cabot, commandant of the fort, "registered," and was then asked to surrender my money and give an account of my effects. The latter proceedings were undertaken by Lieutenant Parry, the officer "in charge of prisoners," who dispensed with all that was unpleasant in them, and took my word that I had "neither weapons nor documents" in my baggage. This officer was very civil, and not only spared me the indignity of a search, but addressed me some polite common-places, kindly intended, I thought, to compose my mind. He inquired when I had left Richmond; and asked, with an appearance of great interest, after the condition of General Longstreet, who had been wounded before I had taken my departure from the Confederacy.

Here let me say, once for all, that I am satisfied the officers of Fort Warren showed, to the prisoners in their charge, all the kindness they could venture; but, at the same time, I am forced to declare that this disposition could do but little to mitigate that system of punishment of prisoners of war demanded at Washington.

I was consigned to a casemate, and a sack of straw for my bed.

"Eight

As I passed the sally-port, in charge of a corporal, my name was called out, and one of a melancholy group of men advanced to meet me. It was V. of Richmond, but I scarcely recognized him, for his hair had turned gray, and his prison attire made him a strange spectacle. "You here!" I exclaimed; "how long have you been in this prison ?" een months!" was the solemn reply. I had never heard in Richmond of his arrest. But there were other terrible disclosures for me, which I had never heard in Richmond; which the people had never heard in Richmond; but which the Government, in that Confederate city, had assuredly heard, and had kept to itself in silence and submission.

Here in this fort, companions of my misfortune, were one hundred and sixty odd men, the majority of them prisoners for more than a year.

Here, entombed in solitary confinement, were seven brave soldiers of the Confederacy, taken in Virginia and Tennessee.

Here, sentenced by a Yankee court-martial to fifteen years imprisonment, were two Confederate officers, Major Armesy and Lieutenant Davis; thus punished for recruiting Confederate troops in Western Virginia.

Here, in the quarters allotted to solitary imprisonment (brought here), was Captain Brattle, of Wheeler's cavalry, conveniently designated as a guerilla, and treated as a felon.

I did not learn these facts without a shudder. How long was I to continue here, and the words "how long?" seemed to reverberate in my heart like a knell. I was too sick to eat, and did not go to the cook-house, where another horror of my prison awaited me. But I had learned enough for one day. As I laid upon my wretched bed at night, and watched the thin slice of moonlit sky, that shone through the grating, my nature seemed absorbed with unutterable horror.

The hardships of a prison, its physical restraints, its beggar diet, are, after all, but slight evils, compared with the mental distress (aggravated, in my case, by a nervous constitution and diseased body), occasionally taking the form of a morbid agony, as the spirit wrestles for LIBERTY. For the first time in my life I felt the meaning of this precious word—no longer now the mere decantation of poetry and sentiment. I had often used it as an idle ornament in language, but I little knew the sweet and hidden meanings of this noble word, how it signified the vital possession of man's nature, and contained the richest jewel of his inheritance from God.

I found in the morning newspapers the anouncement of my incarceration, coupled with such comments as might be expected from the cowardly malignity of a Yankee, where its object is a helpless prisoner. The announcement in one paper was entitled "A Brutal Villain." Another administered the following warning:

"Some stronghold like that in which he has been placed is the safest quarters Pollard can find, as he is a doomed man among the surviving prisoners who have been released from Richmond."

But the following in a Pennsylvania paper (Pittsburg Dispatch) was a complimentary notice, especially to be preserved:

"To this man's coarse, unfeeling brutality our men attribute no small share of the indignities and hardships heaped upon them in Richmond, and his voice was never heard but against them-never raised save to inculcate the justice or expediency of some newly devised brutality. He is one of that little band of malignants who have been engaged, heart and hand, for three years, in spreading among the ignorant masses of the South, the most villainous misrepresentations of the Government and the Northern people, and who have done more, as journalists, to sustain the rebel cause than regiments of soldiers in the field. For his exertions in this line, however, we could afford to trust him to the vengeance of the Government, but for his unwarranted and unmanly efforts to oppress the already overburdened prisoners in Richmond, we look to another source for punishment. Our townsman, Colonel Rose, and a score of others, well known and dear to us, have had a taste of this man's quality, and we ask for no other satisfaction than that chance may favor any one of them with a momentary meeting. There will assuredly be one educated villain less to labor in the rebel cause."

Of course, one's flesh might be expected to tingle at this foul and cowardly abuse. The next minute a sensible man would be inclined to laugh at it-especially the valiant threat of Colonel "Rose" and other flowers of Yankee chivalry. In another moment reflection would teach him that he was complimented by such evidence of his personal importance, and decorated, as every true Confederate is, by the libel of a Yankee

newspaper.

The sufferings I was to endure were to be terrible enough; but added to them was the constant smart of Yankee falsehood, which, ignoring the victims of its own cruelty, was incessantly publishing the imaginary misery of prisoners in Richmond and elsewhere in the Confederacy. One can have an idea of the smart of this misrepresentation, if he will imagine a Confederate cut off from the world by the walls of a prison, and compelled to chew his indignation in silence, reading every day in Yankee newspapers some new version of "the barbarities of the rebels," and left to conjecture that the world is induced to believe these vile slanders, scattered to the ends of it, without the opportunity of any contradiction on the other side. But there is some possible comfort in the reflection, that Yankee falsehood in this war has overleaped itself. A people who, ravaging the country of their neighbors, burning their houses and property, and stripping the shelter over the heads of women and children, yet entitle their adversary as savages, and assert themselves champions of civilization; who, fighting