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.

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?" "Eighteen 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

for the fourth year an unconquered country, have, in the entire history of that war, represented every event as a Yankee success, and a mortal blow to the Confederacy, are no more discreditable witnesses in these particulars than when they parade before the world their nursery dramas of the horrors of "rebel" prisons.

To the sufferings of my first days in Fort Warren my memory reverts with an irrepressible shudder. If I had been in health I might easily have endured the hardships assigned me, including the straw sack; the diaphamous slices of bread and the bits of fat pork. But the nervous affection from which I had long suffered, and which was now aggravated by the anxieties and rude trials of imprisonment, had taken an alarming aspect. A partial paralysis of my body threatened to succeed. I could not rise from my bed or from a long sitting without finding my arm, or perhaps my whole side, temporarily powerless.

The kindness of my fellow-prisoners, in these circumstances, is never to be forgotten. I was relieved from my part of cooking and washing dishes, and was excused from "the police duty" assigned to prisoners, which included the cleaning of their quarters and a number of unpleasant tasks. My messmates came to my aid with friendly sympathy. I obtained medical advice from Dr. Hambleton, of Georgia, my fellowprisoner and excellent friend. Although I had but little faith in the justice or humanity of the Government at Washington, I thought it could scarcely insist upon torturing me, and would be satisfied to secure my person. I had applied for a parole on account of my health, but in vain had I waited for a reply. I had never, even, been allowed to see the order committing me to Fort Warren; and it seemed that the authorities had not been willing to spare me any agony of doubt or suspense.

I had been in prison nearly a fortnight, when I wrote the following letter to Washington:

FORT WARREN, BOSTON HARBOR, June, 1864. MR. GIDEON WELLES, Secretary of the United States Navy:

SIR: On the 10th of last month, I was taken one hundred and fifty miles out at sea on a British vessel, where I was simply a citizen passenger, unconnected with any public ser

vice of the Confederate States, and subject to none of the military penalties of your Government. Other passengers were, released: I, alone, of all the ship's company, an innocent passenger, was doomed to Fort Warren. I was taken from a sick bed to be brought here. In these harsh and invidious circumstances, I asked but a parole on account of desperate health; the bare concession of the plainest humanity. Since my confinement here, I have had three attacks of partial paralysis. It is now only left for me to declare to your conscience and to the sympathy of the world—not in terms of importunity or any mere personal disrespect, but in the spirit of a solemn conviction that I am being murdered by an imprisonment, the object of which is not to secure my person (since I offered to do this by an inviolable pledge of honor) but to punish an enfeebled body, and sharpen the torture of a disease that claims pity for its helplessness.

I am, etc.,

EDW'D A. POLLARD.

To this letter I never received a word of reply or sign of

heed.