"The Tribune did more than any other agency to bring on the war. It is useless for you to ask the exchange of its correspondents. They are just the men we want, and just the men we are going to hold."
Our Government, through blundering rather than design, released a large number of Rebel journalists without requiring our exchange. Finally, while among the horrors of Salisbury, we learned that Edward A. Pollard, a malignant Rebel, and an editor of The Richmond Examiner, most virulent of all the southern papers, was paroled to the city of Brooklyn, after confinement for a few weeks in the North. This news cut us like a knife. We, after nearly two years of captivity, in that foul, vermin-infested prison, among all its atrocities—he, at large, among the comforts and luxuries of one of the pleasantest cities in the world! The thought was so bitter, that, for weeks after hearing the intelligence, we did not speak of it to each other. Mr. Welles, Secretary of the Navy, was the person who set Pollard at liberty. I record the fact, not that any special importance attaches to our individual experience, but because hundreds of Union prisoners were subjected to kindred injustice.
A Cruel Injustice.
At the Salisbury penitentiary was a respectable woman from North Carolina, who was confined for two months, in the same quarters with the male inmates. Her crime was, giving a meal to a Rebel deserter! In Richmond, a Virginian of seventy was shut up with us for a long time, on the charge of feeding his own son, who had deserted from the army!
In September, a number of Rebel convicts, armed with clubs and knives, forcibly took from John Lovell a Union flag, which he had thus far concealed. After the prisoners of war arrived they vented their indignation upon the convicts, wherever they could catch them. For several days, Rebels venturing into the yard were certain to return to their quarters with bruised faces and blackened eyes.
Rebel Expectations of Peace.
During the peace mania, which seemed to possess the North, at the time of McClellan's nomination, the Rebels were very hopeful. Lieutenant Stockton, the post-Adjutant, one day observed:
"You will go home very soon; we shall have peace within a month."
"On what do you base your opinion?" I asked.
"The tone of your newspapers and politicians. McClellan is certain to be elected President, and peace will immediately follow."