His papers were not of an incendiary character exactly, I suppose, and my recollection of it now is, that they were principally letters of introduction, which were prepared by English lords with the avowed purpose of being used by the bearer in making a "case," or difficulty, on account of his English citizenship, which would give them some grounds to make a claim for his release, that would create a breach, and bring about a war, all in the interests of the Southern people. This, in effect, was the story, and I took it all in very carefully.
One day, to my disgust as well as personal discomfort, Colonel Woods brought a gentleman to my door, whom he introduced as a fellow Rebel who would be compelled to share my room with me for awhile; because, as he explained, they were getting a little crowded. The party introduced to me, I recognized at once—that is I remembered seeing his face some place, but couldn't exactly place him; when Colonel Woods in a little further chat, intimated that my associate would no doubt be a boon companion, as he was an original Rebel, he left us alone.
My new room-mate was a man of thirty-five or forty years, with a face that I should now denominate as hard. He was pleasant; indeed, his manner was made especially agreeable to me. The story he told me of the cause of his imprisonment served to satisfy me—for the time being—that I had been in error in having supposed that I had ever seen him before.
He said he was arrested for having been implicated in an attempt to recapture and return to Virginia some fugitive slave whom he had caught in the District of Columbia. He gave me a long account of the law, as it then existed—which, by the way, is the fact—that in 1862 there was a fugitive slave law in the District.
As soon as my two comrades in distress heard of this associate having been thrust upon us, and dropped into our exclusive mess to become our company, their suspicions were aroused.
The Englishman declared that the object of putting "this person" in among us was to ascertain what we had been so thick about lately. I confess this had not once occurred to me. I was simply annoyed at being obliged to have the constant company of another person in my cramped little hall room; not that he was at all disagreeable personally, but probably because we three had become rather exclusive and wanted to select our company from among the convicts. It is likely enough that we would have resented any person's society from outside just then.
When the others expressed their conviction that it was a scheme to entrap us, my eyes became opened, as I recalled again my first impression, that I had certainly seen the man before. When I mentioned this fact to Miss Boyd, she at once jumped to the conclusion that he was a spy on us, which opinion was shared by the Englishman most decidedly, who gave us our orders as our commander to be on the qui vive for him.
It was thought best that we should treat him with the greatest possible coolness, but of course with decency. Indeed, our Englishman was so exceedingly polite and gracious to the new-comer that his assumed airs and comic actions were so amusing to Miss Boyd and myself that we could scarcely keep up our show of dignity. Miss Boyd performed the chilling process, and she acted the part so well that the poor man was frozen on to me, as the only one to whom he could talk sensibly. I talked lots to him when we were alone. The opinions, the very decided opinions, he got from me, on Mr. Stanton and his clerks, if repeated to his employers, would have made things more interesting for him and me too.
When I became satisfied, or thought I was, and imagined that I had for my room-mate or companion a Pinkerton man, who had been purposely sent in there by some of the War Department officials to manufacture testimony against us, we all took the greatest delight in filling him up.
The first night, when alone, I talked him to sleep. I told him all my grievances; at least, that part that I wanted the War Office to hear officially.