ton had already been weakened by sending Floyd's and Buckner's forces to Donelson; because an overwhelming force or the enemy was pressing on his rear; and because Gen. Johnston's troops were on the march between Bowling Green and Nashville, and could not reach Fort Donelson in time to change the fortunes of the day.

With reference to the second assignment of cause of the President's displeasure, it was agreed on all sides that the transfer of the command by the senior generals was irregular. In a letter, however, written to the President by Gen. Johnston himself, which was understood to be private and confidential, and was, therefore, wholly relieved from any suspicion of the gloze of an official report, that officer had directed no censure upon Gens. Floyd and Pillow. On the contrary, in the confidence of this private letter, he wrote to the President, "the command was irregularly transferred, and devolved on the junior general, but not apparently to avoid any just responsibility or from any want of personal or moral intrepidity;" and he expressed continued "confidence in the gallantry, the energy, and the devotion to the Confederacy," of both Gens. Floyd and Pillow, which was testified especially in the case of Gen. Floyd, by assigning him, after the fall of Donelson, to the important duty of proceeding to Chattanooga to defend the approaches towards northern Alabama and Georgia, and the communication between the Mississippi and the Atlantic. This was the private and unrestrained testimony of Gen. Johnston. With perhaps a superior military sensitiveness of "irregularity," Mr. Davis repudiated the explanations of the commanding general in the field; deprived Generals Floyd and Pillow of their commands; and offered the spectacle to the country of a President with one hand sacrificing two brave officers who had contributed to the country's glory and safety 'n more than one victory, for a military punctilio, and with the other elevating to the highest office in his gift a man who, as Attorney-general, Secretary of War, and, at last, Secretary of State, seemed to enjoy the monopoly of the lucre and honors of state, and who had been charged, by the official report of a general in the field, and by the deliberate and unanimous verdict of a committee of Congress, with the plain and exclusive responsibility of the disaster of Roanoke Island. The

contrast between these two acts needed no addition of arga ment to convince the public mind that its government was not above the errors of judgment or the partialities of human affec tion.

The disposition of the Confederate prisoners taken at Fort Donelson gave an exhibition of vile perfidy on the part of the North, to which there is no parallel to be found in the history of civilized warfare, or in all the crooked paths of modern diplomacy. Instead of these prisoners being discharged by the North according to the understanding existing between the two governments, they were carried off into the Western interior, where they were treated with indignities and made a spectacle for mobs, who jeered at them because they did not have uniforms and warm coats, because many of the poor fellows had nothing better than horse blankets, rags, and coffee sacks around their shoulders, and because the "rebels"whose true glory a just and generous spirit would have found in their coarse and tattered garbs and marks of patient suffer ing lacked the fine and showy equipments of the Federal troops. This act of bad faith on the part of the North is re markable enough for a full and explicit history of the circum stances in which it was committed.

Permission had been asked by the Northern government for two commissioners, Messrs. Fish and Ames, to visit their prisoners of war within the jurisdiction of the South. Our government, while denying this permission, sought to improve the opportunity by concerting a settled plan for the exchange of prisoners; and for the execution of this purpose Messrs. Conrad and Seddon were deputed as commissioners to meet those of the Northern government under a flag of truce at Norfolk.

Subsequently a letter from Gen. Wool was addressed to Gen Huger, informing him that he, Gen. Wool, had full authority to settle any terms for the exchange of prisoners, and asking an interview on the subject. General Howell Cobb was then appointed by the government to mediate with Gen. Wool, and to settle a permanent plan for the exchange of prisoners during the war.

In the letter to General Huger, dated the 13th of February 1862, General Wool wrote:

"I am alone clothed with full power for the purpose of arranging for the exchange of prisoners. Being thus empowered, I am ready to confer with you on the subject, or the Honorable Messrs. Seddon and Conrad, or any other persons appearing for that purpose. I am prepared to arrange for the restoration of all the prisoners to their homes on fair terms of exchange, man for man, and officer for officer of equal grade, assimilating the grade of officers of the army and navy, when necessary, and agreeing upon equitable terms for the number of men or officers, of inferior grade, to be exchanged for any of higher grade when the occasion shall arrive. That all the surplus prisoners on either side be exchanged on parole, with the agreement that any prisoners of war taken by the other party shall be returned in exchange as fast as captured, and this system to be continued while hostilities continue.

"I would further inform you, or any other person selected for the purpose of making arrangements for the exchange of prisoners, that the prisoners taken on board of vessels, or otherwise in maritime conflict, by the forces of the United States, have been put, and are now held, only in military custody, and on the same footing as other prisoners taken in arms.”

The proposition, it appears, was readily accepted by our government, and a memorandum made as a basis for a cartel. It was proposed in this memorandum that the prisoners of war in the hands of each government should be exchanged, man for man, the officers being assimilated as to rank, &c.; that our privateersmen should be exchanged on the footing of prisoners of war; that any surplus remaining on either side, after these exchanges, should be released, and that hereafter, during the whole continuance of the war, prisoners taken on either side should be paroled within ten days after their capture, and delivered on the frontier of their own country.

General Wool promptly agreed to all the propositions except two. In lieu of the compensation basis of equivalents contained in one of the items of the memorandum, he proposed the cartel of equivalents adopted by Great Britain and the United States, in the war of 1812, and General Cobb accepted it.

He also objected to the provisions in another item, which required each party to pay the expense of transporting their prisoners to the frontier of the country of the prisoners. The provision met his entire approval, but he did not feel authorized, by his instructions, to incorporate it into the proposed cartel, and, therefore, desired time to consult his government on the subject.

The interview closed with the promise from General Wool that he would notify General Cobb, as soon as he could hear from his government, on that point.

On the first of March General Cobb held his second interview with him, in which he (General Cobb) proposed to enter into a cartel, containing the stipulations previously set forth. Gen. Wool then replied that his government would not agree to the proposition that each party should pay the expense of transporting their prisoners to the frontier, when General Cobb promptly waived it, thus leaving the cartel free from all his objections, and just what General Wool had himself proposed in his letter of the 13th February, to General Huger.

Upon this, General Wool informed General Cobb that his government had changed his instructions, and abruptly broke off the negotiation.

In the mean time our government, in a very curious or very foolish anticipation of the good faith of the North, had directed the discharge of the prisoners held by us as hostages for the safety and proper treatment of our privateersmen, who were confined in felons' cells and threatened with the gallows. Cols. Lee, Cogswell, and Wood, and Major Revere were sent to their own country; the remaining hostages were brought on parole from distant points to Richmond, on their way to be delivered up, at the expense of this government, and their surrender was only suspended on receipt of intelligence from General Cobb, that he saw reason to suspect bad faith on the part of the enemy.

The perfidy of the North was basely accomplished.* The

*This act of deception on the part of the North was but one of a long series of acts of Yankee perfidy, and of their abnegation of the rights of civilized war. When McDowell left Washington city to take Richmond, his army was supplied with handcuffs to iron rebels. After the battle of Bull Run they sent a white flag to ask permission to bury their dead. It was humanely granted. They left their dead to bury their dead, and attempted, under the protection of that white flag, to erect batteries for our destruction. On the battle-field of Manassas they unfurled a Confederate flag, and shouted to our troops not to fire upon them, that they were our friends, and then they fired upon our troops and fled. At Manassas and Pensacola they repeatedly and deliberately fired upon our hospitals, when over them a yellow flag was waving. In Hampton Roads they hung out a white flag, and then prostituted the protection it secured to them to the cowardly assassination of our brave geamen. At Newbern, in violation of the laws of war, they attempted to shell a city containing several thousand women and children, before either demanding a surrender, or giving the citizens notice of their intentions. A Kentuckiau went into a Federal camp to reclaim a fugitive slave, and they tied him up

correspondence of the Federal authorities, to which we have alluded, on this subject, constitutes a chapter of diplomacy qualified to attract the scorn of all civilized and honorable nations. At the time when it was believed our government held the larger number of prisoners, the Federal government proposed to exchange all prisoners, and to place on parole, in their own country, the surplus held by either party; and our government agreed to the proposition. Before the agreement could be reduced to writing, and signed by the parties, the casualties of war, in the fall of Fort Donelson, reversed this state of things, and gave the Federal government the larger number of prisoners. With this change of things that govern ment changed its policy, and deliberately, and perfidiously, and shamelessly receded from the propositions to which it had been distinctly committed by every obligation of truth, honor, and good faith.

While Mr. Benjamin, Secretary of War, by a curious act of supererogation was releasing our most important prisoners of war in advance of the conclusion of negotiations, sending them North without waiting to have them regularly and safely exchanged under a flag of truce in Norfolk harbor, the enemy were conveying the prisoners captured at Fort Donelson to Chicago and other points more distant from their homes, and were parading the officers who fell into their power through the entire breadth of the land, from western Tennessee, to Fort Warren in Boston harbor, where they were incarcerated. For the prisoners so curiously, and with such unnecessary haste, dispatched to the North by Mr. Benjamin, not a single officer taken at Fort Donelson, nor a single captive privateersman, had been restored to his home. With an excess of zeal well calcu

and gave him twenty-five lashes upon his bare back, in the presence of his runaway slave. It was repeatedly proposed by the people of the South to treat such an enemy without ceremony or quarter, by hanging out the black flag, and making the war a bellum internecinum; but while the South debated, talked, and threatened, the North acted, availing itself of the most ferocious and brutal expedients of the war, arming the slaves, breaking faith on every occasion of expediency, disregarding flags of truce, stealing private property, ravishing women, bombarding hospitals, and setting at defiance every law of civilized warfare. Such was the perfidy and brutality of the North, to which the South responded with the puerile threat of a black flag, which was never hoisted, and which did not even serve the purposes of a scarecrow to its bold and unscrupulous enemy