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second session, we shall note on a subse- of Rosecrans, under Pleasanton, was operating in Price's rear.

quent page.

Pleasanton having reached Jefferson city on the 8th of October, sent Gen. Sanborn, with all the available 1864. cavalry force, in pursuit of the invaders. Sanborn, with inferior numbers, harassed the enemy and attacked them at Booneville, whence Price moved to Marshall and Lexington, freely plundering by the way. Pleasanton, having now efficiently organized his cavalry force in four brigades, under Gens. Brown, McNeil, Sanborn, and Col. Winslow, promptly took the offen

Although of no particular moment in its bearing on the final result of the war, the invasion of Missouri, by the rebel Gen. Price, may here be placed on record. Having gathered about 10,000 men, Price reached Jacksonport, at the close of August, on his way to make an inroad into and ravage that state in which he had already done vast mischief. Rosecrans was in command in the department (p. 383), and in order to strengthen his force, Grant ordered Gen. A. J. Smith with his command, and a cavalry force under Col. Winslow sive. Prior was driven from Lexington from Memphis, to join Rosecrans. This made his forces superior to those of Price, and, as Grant said, "no doubt was entertained he would be able to check Price and drive him back, while the forces under Gen. Steele, in Arkansas, would cut off his retreat." Price crossed the southern frontier by way of Pocahontas and Poplar Bluff, and plundering the farmers of horses to mount his men, and impressing all he could lay hands upon, he prepared to strike at the centre of the state.

on the 20th, and two days after out of Independence, where there was some severe fighting. The pursuit was vig. orously kept up to the Big Blue River at Byron's Ford, where Price was defeated, with a loss of nearly all his artil lery and trains, and a large number of prisoners. Energetically pursued by Pleasanton, aided by Blunt's command from Kansas, Price was forced to make a hasty retreat with his broken and dispirited forces into Northern Arkansas.

Rosecrans, in November, congratula ted the army on its brilliant success in this campaign; but the lieutenantgeneral, in his report, expresses himself rather tartly on the subject: "The impunity with which Price was enabled to roam over the state of Missouri for a long time, and the incalculable mischief done by him, show to how little purpose a superior force may be used. There is no reason why Gen. Rosecrans should not have concentrated his forces, and beaten and driven Price before the

On the 26th of September, Price assaulted Pilot Knob, where Gen. Ewing was in command, with a garrison of about 1,000 men. On the second day, Ewing evacuated the place and retreated, skirmishing along his march to Har rison and thence to Rolla. Price moved north to the Missouri River, and continued up that river towards Kansas. Gen. Curtis, who was in command in Kansas, immediately collected such forces as were within reach to repel the invasion of the state, while the cavalry | latter reached Pilot Knob."

CH. XVII.]

REBEL BARBARITIES TO PRISONERS.

The sufferings of our men, who were prisoners in the hands of the rebels, had long been known to be very great and trying; they have before been alluded to (pp. 391, 406); but the actual extent of the horrible exposure and destitution to which the defenders of the country were subjected, was not at all appreciated, or even dreamed of, by the people of the loyal states, until there was furnished incontestable, detailed evidence of the facts, from various sources, especially from the report of the United States Sanitary Commission, in September of this year. This admirable organization which, since the beginning of the war, had been engaged in the noble work of charity, in mitigating, as far as lay in their power, the sufferings and anguish of war, among the sick, the wounded, and the dying, appointed a committee of their body, in May, to inquire into and investigate, patiently and fully, the truth of the rumors and statements as to rebel cruelty and barbarity practised towards our unfortunate men who had fallen into the enemy's hands. Six gentlemen, of high ability and undoubted integrity, composed this committee, viz: Dr. Ellerslie Wallace, the Hon. J. I. Clark Hare, and the Rev. Treadwell Walden, of Philadelphia, and Dr. Valentine Mott, Dr. Edward Delafield, and Gouverneur M. Wilkins, of New York. The committee employed several months in their inquiry, visiting the hospitals where the returned prisoners had been received in Annapolis, Baltimore, and else where, examining carefully into their condition, and taking the depositions of officers and men as to the treatment

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they had received. A mass of testimony was collected concerning the barbarities practised at Richmond, at the Libby Prison, and more particularly in the camp in its vicinity at Belle Isle. It is impossible to read their testimony without a cold chill of horror, and an oppressive sense of its being almost an impossibility that there should be in human form, creatures so soulless, and so like incarnate demons, as these rebel agents and authorities proved themselves to be. We cannot go into details; the documents are before the world; the projectors and willing instruments in this devilish work are stamped with infamy of the deepest dye; and the reader must ponder the lesson which all this teaches. A paragraph or two at the close of the report may not inaptly be quoted:

"The immensity and variety of that system of abuse to which our soldiers are subjected are too general, too uniform, and too simultaneous to be otherwise than the result of a great arrangement. One prison station is like another-one hospital resembles another hospital. This has been made especi ally apparent by intelligence that has reached the public just as this investigation is closing, and this report is being written. The remote prison at Tyler, Texas, sends out a tale of suffering identical with that described in these pages. It was only a few weeks ago, that the streets of New Orleans beheld a regiment of half starved and half naked men, who had just been released from that station. Still more heart-rending is the later account, given in a memorial to the president, from

Andersonville, Georgia, and in the full description, verified on oath, of what is now being suffered there by the imprisoned soldiers of our army. It would appear to be Belle Isle five times enlarged, and tenfold intensified. An enormous multitude of 35,000 men are crowded together in a square enclosure or stockade of about twenty-five acres, with a noxious swamp at the centre, occupying one-fourth of the whole space. Here the prisoners suffer not only the privations already mentioned, but others peculiar to circumstances of a worse description. In this pestilential prison they are dying at the rate of 130 a day, on an average! The commissioners allude to this station not as part of the evidence taken by themselves, but as an interesting, authentic, and corroborative illustration of the point now under consideration.*

shot by unrestrained and brutal guards; despondent even to madness, idiocy and suicide; sick of diseases (so congruous in character as to appear and spread like the plague), caused by the torrid sun, by decaying food, by filth, by vermin, by malaria, and by cold; removed at the last moment, and by hundreds at a time, to hospitals corrupt as a sepulchre, there, with few remedies, little care and no sympathy, to die in wretchedness and despair, not only among strangers, but among enemies too resentful either to have pity or to show mercy.

"These are positive facts. Tens of thousands of helpless men have been and are now being disabled and destroyed by a process as certain as poison, and as cruel as the torture or burning at the stake, because nearly as agonizing and more prolonged. This spectacle is daily beheld and allowed "It is the same story everywhere:- by the rebel government. No supposiprisoners of war treated worse than tion of negligence, or thoughtlessness, convicts, shut up either in suffocating buildings, or in outdoor enclosures, without even the shelter that is provided for the beasts of the field; unsupplied with sufficient food; supplied with food and water injurious and even poisonous; compelled to live in such personal uncleanliness as to generate vermin; compelled to sleep on floors often covered with human filth, or on ground saturated with it; compelled to breathe an air oppressed with an intolerable stench; hemmed in by a fatal dead-line and in hourly danger of being

* In a supplement to the report is an account of the sufferings of our prisoners at Andersonville, Georgia, and the memorial and appeal, sent through one of their number exchanged, to the president of the United States, under date of August, 1864.

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or indifference, or accident, or inefficiency, or destitution, or necessity, can account for all this. So many and such positive forms of abuse and wrong cannot come from negative causes. conclusion is unavoidable, therefore, that 'these privations and sufferings' have been 'designedly inflicted by the military and other authority of the rebel government,' and cannot have been 'due to causes which such authorities could not control.'"*

* Some mitigation of these unutterable, indescrib. able sufferings was happily effected before the close of the year, the result of a correspondence between Gen. Lee and Gen. Grant, the rebel authorities taking the initiative, by which it was agreed that either party might send to their prisoners of war such articles of necessity and comfort as might be desirable. This was

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CH. XVII.]

ATTEMPT TO FIRE NEW YORK CITY.

As we have before noted (p. 387), raids were threatened along our northern frontier by rebel sympathisers and traitors in the British dominions. Two small steamers were burned on Lake Erie by a band of these ruffians, who made their escape into Canada; * and in October, another band, about thirty in number, attacked the village of St. Albans, Vermont, plundered the banks, stole all they could, and made off to ward the Canada line. They were pursued, and, by the help of the Canadian authorities, twelve of them, beside a fellow named Young, were arrested and put in jail. Various delays occurred before a trial could be had; and then, on the 13th of December, the Canadian judge, Coursol, of Montreal, decided that the court had no jurisdiction, and set the robbers and murderers at liberty. Such conduct stirred up great indignation in the United States; Gen. Dix, at New York, issued a stringent order,

a decided measure of relief pending the negotiation

of the entangled question of a general exchange of

prisoners. Early in the following year, 1865, the ex change of prisoners, on the part of the North, was

placed in the hands of Gen. Grant, by whom arrange ments were made and carried into effect for a general

exchange. (See p. 390.)

*The leader in this affair, John Y. Beall, a native of Virginia, was arrested, in December, by Mr. Young, chief of the New York Metropolitan detective force. Beall was tried and convicted "as a spy and guerrillero," and was hung on the 18th of February, 1865.

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requiring, in any similar case, that the marauders be shot, and, if need be, that they be pursued into Canada and brought to his headquarters for summary execution. The president modified the order, and the Canadian authorities re-arrested Young and several of his companions.

In furtherance of their vile purposes, the rebels made a deliberate attempt to set fire to the chief hotels and theatres, on the night of the 25th of November; but, providentially, the murderous attempt was defeated. In speaking of this, Gen. Dix said, the next day: "If this attempt had succeeded, it would have resulted in a frightful sacrifice of property and life. The evidences of extensive combination, and other facts disclosed to-day, show it to have been the work of rebel emissaries and agents. All such persons engaged in secret acts of hostility here can only be regarded as spies, subject to martial law, and to the penalty of death. If they are detected, they will be immediately brought before a court martial or military commission, and, if convicted, they will be executed without the delay of a single day.'

* R. C. Kennedy, a Louisianian, one of the chief incendiaries, was arrested and tried by a military com. mission at Gen. Dix's headquarters. He was convicted and hung on the 25th of March, 1865.

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CHAPTER XVIII.

1865.

PEACE PROPOSITIONS: ACTION OF CONGRESS: INAUGURATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

Renewal of efforts to negotiate peace with the rebels — Mr. F. P. Blair goes to Richmond - His movements — The president's course - Conference - Failure of any result Another attempt - The president's letter to Gen. Grant-The rebel statement - Davis's mortification - Lee appointed rebel commander-in-chief His urgent appeal - Rebel congress vote to arm the slaves and employ them as soldiers - Bitter necessity of the case- Last appeal of rebel congress Second session of the Thirty-eighth Congress - Various measures — The most important, the passing the Constitutional Amendment abolishing slavery - The amendment, as sent to the states - Action thereupon - The national debt at this date - Andrew Johnson's inaugural speech, as vice-president, on the 4th of March-Striking scene at Mr. Lincoln's inauguration — His remarkable address in full- Reasons for hopefulness in the future.

1865.

In a previous chapter (p. 460), we | ton, and communicating Davis's letter have given some account of the efforts to the president, Blair received, on the made to satisfy the longing desire for 18th of January, a reply, as follows:peace, and the fruitless results of such "Sir, you having shown me Mr. efforts. Despite the failure, in the sum- Davis's letter to you, of the mer of 1864, there was a renewal of the 12th inst., you may say to him that 1 attempt to reach the same end, by the have constantly been, am now, and shall visit of Francis P. Blair, senior, to continue ready to receive any agent Richmond, in December. This gentle-whom he, or any other influential perman was allowed, by an order from the son now resisting the national authority, president, on the 26th of December, may informally send me, with a view of "to pass our lines, go south, and re- securing peace to the people of our turn," but received no authority to common country." Blair, thereupon, speak or act for the government, nor revisited Richmond, and Davis appointwas the president "informed of any-ed three persons, A. H. Stephens, J. A. thing he would say or do on his own Campbell, and R. M. T. Hunter, as account or otherwise." On his arrival commissioners to proceed to Washingat Richmond, Mr. Blair had an interview with Jeff. Davis, and received from him a letter, dated January 12th, in which he expressed himself desirous to send a commissioner, or receive a commission, "to enter into a conference with a view to secure peace to the two countries." On returning to Washing

ton. On the 29th of January, these agents of Davis reached our lines, and, after some delays, arrived at Gen. Grant's headquarters at City Point, where they met Major Eckert, whom the president had sent on his behalf. An unsatisfactory interview was had, on the 1st of February, and matters would

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