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stantly pacified me by taking the letter, and promising that General Butler should have it in the next twelve hours.

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In that letter I had got in my land the clew to undo the web of malice that had been woven around me.

CHAPTER XIX.

A WEEK IN THE YANKEE LINES AROUND RICHMOND.--The Pleasure Party on the "River Queen."-General Butler Aroused and Profane.-Yankee "War Correspondents" at Headquar¡ters.-Material of the Yankee Army: Negro Soldiers.-Yankee Officers on "Subjugation.”– General Butler's Tribute to General Lee.-How I Made a Narrow Escape to Richmond.

There is little ceremony in the liberation of a prisoner. Two days after my note to General Butler, the provost-marshal opens the door, and tells me to "pack my things in ten minutes." He does not tell me why; he does not state where I am going; the old mystery of the Bastile is kept up to the last moment. But I do not ask any questions this time; for I know very well that General Butler is taking action over the heads of Grant and of his master at Washington, and that it is my policy to keep a discreet silence.

A sergeant marches up to take me in custody. As I step into the open air my cramped limbs tremble under me, and I stagger, giddy but pleasantly bewildered, towards the wharf. There was lying General Butler's staff-boat, "the River Queen," gay with flags and streamers; in its upper saloon groups of gaily dressed ladies, among them the wife and daughter of General B., on a pleasant jaunt to the front, for the benefit, as I afterwards learned, of a party of English naval officers, whose lustrous uniforms added to the picturesqueness of the scene. As I approached this garish boat, on which I was told I would be taken under guard to General Butler's headquarter, I found groups of women at the windows of the saloon taking that cool survey of me, some with the assistance of lorgnettes, that only the impertinent curiosity of Yankees could bestow. I had always made it a point when a prisoner, to put on the best appearance before the enemies of my country. Before I had left the fort I had found time to cleanse my face and hands, and to dress myself with the most scrupulous care; and I thought I detected in the curiosity, which proposed to feast itself on the spectacle of a rebel prisoner, a shade of disappointment that there were no appendages of interest to me in the way of rags or clouts.

I held myself carefully aloof from the company on the boat. Several of the English officers' on board seemed to make it a point to walk near where I was standing; and I could plainly see sympathy and interest in their looks despite the restraints of the Yankee company whose guests they were. There was no breach of manners in what they did; although I could plainly read in their eyes a feeling which made me proud and flushed to know that it reflected an admiration for my country, testified to a plain, solitary man, who stood under guard in a throng of Yankee pleasure-seekers-a stark figure of a prisoner, in the midst of the gilt and revelry of his enemy.

My second interview with General Butler did not last three minutes. It was refreshingly brief. Arrived at his headquarters, I was ushered by the provost-marshal into his presence.

"Sir," said General Butler, "I understand you have been put in confinement since I paroled you and promised to send you through my lines. I had nothing to do with it, sir. Read this."

He handed me a paper. It was a telegraphic dispatch from Secretrry Stan ton to General Grant, ordering me into close confinement. The mystery was revealed; I saw the demon at the bottom of it; I had calculated aright my appeal to General Butler as my only hope of escape.

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I handed the paper back to General Butler. He twirled it between his thumb and forefinger. "By G- I don't know what this means. I don't care what it means. I believe, Mr. Pollard, I promised to send you to Richmond." "You did, General Butler."

"By G-, sir, you shall go. I would send you through my lines to-morrow. But I sent a flag-of-truce down the road the other day, and some of your people fired upon it. They must have been d-d drunk."

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He rose from his chair as a signal for the conclusion of the interview. "Sir," he said, "I always keep my word, alike to friend and foe. I know hope deferred maketh the heart sick;' and you may yet be detained here a week for Colonel Mulford's flag-of-truce, but make up your mind that go you shall to Richmond."

I replied that his assurance completely satisfied me. I could scarcely sup

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press my feelings at the prospect before me. I would defeat Stanton's plot; I would override him and get back to Richmond. But to effect this, I saw the value of silence, and the paramount necessity of doing or saying nothing to draw the attention of the Washington authorities upon me, and to bring to close quarters a quarrel through which my hope was to slip unperceived.

I was turned over by the provost-marshal to the staff-quartermaster, who assigned me a bunk and invited me to his mess. This officer-Lieut. Merrillwas both civil and kind. But there were some civilities in store for me that I

had not expected.

I had scarcely entered the quartermaster's hut when an orderly came in with a full file of New York papers, which he handed me, accompanied by a card, on which was written "Compliments of James B. Chadwick, New York Tribune." In a few minutes after this surprise another card was handed me, on which there was this prolix designation: "S. Cadwallader, Correspondent-inChief New York Herald, General Grant's Headquarters, Armies of the United States." Presently a fat gentleman, in a heavy suit of quadrangular stripes, who introduced himself as another correspondent of the Herald, invited me to a large double hut, assigned to the representatives of the press permitted to reside at headquarters.

I found here about a dozen "war correspondents" of different Northern papers in an atmosphere of tobacco smoke. There were liquors, nuts and raisins on the table; excellent Havannas, ad libitum; and a retinue of black servants in attendance-for the Yankee "war correspondent" is an important personage at headquarters, keeps his horse and servant, and receives a salary scarcely less than the pay of a Major-General. I was treated with abundant hospitality. But I must not venture to describe the festive relaxation of my polite entertainers; for the fat correspondent of the Herald, who treated the company to several scenes and reminiscences of his on the comic stage, seemed to be nervously afraid that I was "taking notes," and made me promise, in the most solemn manner, "not to put him in the Richmond Examiner.".

There was one piece of gentlemanly delicacy in a passage of general conversation of the company that I could not fail to appreciate, and should not neglect

to mention. Two of the company were engaged in quite an animated discussion of General Butler's merits, when one of them got upon the slavery question. Mr. Chadwick, the representative of the Tribune, immediately interferred, and said: "Perhaps such conversation is not pleasant to Mr. Pollard; let us change the subject." No one but a gentleman could have shown such a ready sense of propriety.

I parted from my entertainers with many protestations of their desire "to see me in Richmond," and the rather dubious declaration that if the Yankees got there I would certainly be "looked up."

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Six days in the Yankee lines; and I have learned some things which will bear repetition.

I wish every man in the South could see for himself the extent of the deterioration of the material of the Yankee army. He would find in this view an encouragement for the Confederacy that had not before entered his mind; and when he saw on what legs the war is now supported in the North, he could readily understand the peculiar difficulties of Yankee recruiting, and how they are verging to the last necessity.

I had an interesting occasion of observation within the Yankee lines around Richmond; I had had for several months an insight into the recruiting offices, with which the City Park, in New York, is shingled; I had, on different occasions, had the freedom of the city of Boston, which is the great entrepotmuch more so than New York-of foreign enlistments; and when I declare to the reader that the proportion of citizens of the United States in the Yankee army has fallen to about one-fifth of it, and these the worst and nastiest "scabs" of Northern cities, he may be sure I am not amusing him with extravagant assertions, but giving him the results of careful and reliable information.

Foreign enlistments, as is now well known, have got to be in the worst odour in Europe, and that source of supply of the Yankee army may be said to have pretty thoroughly dried up. Negro soldiers are now at an immense premium at the North, and yet they are obtained with the greatest difficulty. I saw a negro in the hotel at Fortress Monroe who had escaped from Richmond, and

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