The last of the peace Commissioners.
The
Atlantic Monthly contains the last instalment of the narrative of "
Edmund Kirke" and
Colonel Jacques's trip to
Richmond.
It is much more impudent and Yankee in its style than the first publication.
It appears that they were courteously shown through the
Libby prison and hospitals.
We give some extracts about the visit to the Libby, where, after reflecting on the terrors of being imprisoned there, the writer delivers the following.
Complimentary Notice of Major Turner.
And, while these thoughts were in my mind, the cringing, foul-mouthed, brutal, contemptible ruffian who had caused all this misery stood within two paces of me ! I could have reached out my hand, and, with half an effort, have crushed him, and — I did not do it!
Some invisible power held my arm, for murder was in my heart.
"This is where that Yankee devil
Streight, that raised hell so among you down in
Georgia, got out," said
Turner, pausing before a jut in the wall of the room. "A flue was here, you see, but we've bricked it up. They took up the hearth, let themselves down into the basement, and then dug through the wall, and eighty feet under ground into the yard of a deserted building over the way. If you'd like to see the place, step down with me."
"We would,
Major.
We'd be right glad ter," I replied, adopting, at a hint from the
Judge, the
Georgia dialect.
"What is the keeps?" I asked. "Ye's got lots o' them, hadn't ye?"
"No — only six.
Step this way, and I'll show you."
"Talk better
English," said the
Judge, as we fell a few paces behind
Turner on our way to the front of the building; "there are some schoolmasters in
Georgia."
"Wal, thar' ha'n't — not in the part I come from."
The Arrangements for Blowing up the prison.
The keeper soon invited us to walk into the adjoining basement.
I was a few steps in advance of him, taking a straight course to the entrance, when a sentinel, pacing to and fro in the middle of the apartment, leveled his musket so as to bar my way, saying, as he did so:
"Ye can't pass yere, sir. Ye must gwo round by the wall."
This drew my attention to the spot, and I noticed that a space, about fifteen feet square, in the centre of the room, and directly in front of the sentinel, had been recently dug up with a spade.
While in all other places the ground was trodden to the hardness and color of granite, this spot seemed to be soft, and had the reddish-yellow hue of the "sacred soil." Another sentry was pacing to and fro on its other side, so that the place was completely surrounded!
Why were they guarding it so closely?
The reason flashed upon me, and I said to
Turner:
"I say, how many barr'ls hes ye in thar?"
"Enough to blow this shanty to--," he answered, curtly.
"I reckon!
Put'em thar' when thet feller
Dahlgreen wus a-gwine ter rescue'em — the
Yankees?"
"I recon."
He said no more, but that was enough to reveal the black, seething hell the rebellion has brewed.
Can there be any peace with miscreants who thus deliberately plan the murder, at one' swoop, of hundreds of unarmed and innocent men?
Why the visit to the Confederacy was made.
No reader of this magazine is so young as not to remember that, between the first of June and the first of August last, a peace simoom swept over the country, throwing dust into the people's eyes, and threatening to bury the nation in disunion.
All at once the
North grew tired of the war. It began to count the money and the blood it had cost, and to overlook the great principles for which it was waged.
Men of all shades of political opinion — radical Republicans as well as honest Democrats — cried out for concession, compromise, armistice — for anything to end the war — anything but disunion.
To that the
North would not consent, and peace, I knew, could not be had without it. I knew that; because, on the 16th of June,
Jeff. Davis had said to a prominent Southerner that he would negotiate only on the basis of Southern independence, and that declaration had come to me only five days after it was made.
To get that ultimatum, and to give it to the four winds of heaven, were my real objects in going to
Richmond.
What Lincoln had to do with it.
It was a difficult enterprise.
At the outset it seemed well-nigh impossible to gain access to
Mr. Davis, but we finally did gain it, and we gained it without official aid.
Mr. Lincoln did not assist us. He gave us a pass through the army lines, stated on what terms he would grant amnesty to the rebels, and said "Good bye, good luck to you," when we went away, and that is all he did.
A Summary of its Dangers.
If any one doubts this, let him call to mind what we had to accomplish.
We had to penetrate an enemy's lines, to enter a besieged city, to tell home truths to the desperate, unscrupulous leaders of the foulest rebellion the world has ever known, and to draw from those leaders — deep, adroit and wary as they are — their real plans and purposes.
And all this we had to do without any official safeguard, while entirely in their power, and while known to be their earnest and active enemies.
One false step, one unguarded word, one untoward event, would have consigned us to Castle Thunder or the gallows.
