uard
of the prison was the 178th New York regiment, composed of insolent
Germans, some of whom could not speak the English language. I came near
losing my life by the bayonet of one of them, because he could not
understand a request that I made of him. The house was infested by
insects whose name I will not call; but the reader will recognize their
nature when I characterize them as malodorous, and blood-sucking. We
could expel them from our bunks, but not from the walls and the ceiling,
from the holes and the cracks of which they swarmed at night, rendering
sound sleep impossible.

In a few days after having taken involuntary quarters in the Old Capitol
I read with surprise and grief an article in the Baltimore _American_,
headed "Meade _versus_ Lee." General Lee, misinformed by somebody, had
reported that there had been no battle at Falling Waters, and that none
of his soldiers had been captured except those who had straggled during
the night or fallen asleep in barns by the roadside. When he published
that statement he knew that there had been no engagement of his
ordering, but he did not know that the gallant and accomplished
Pettigrew had been wounded on the field, nor that some of his men had
kept the enemy in check, while others were thereby afforded the
opportunity of safely crossing the river. No; the men who were captured
with me were not stragglers: they were taken on the field of battle, and
they were as brave and dutiful as any that ever wore the gray. Neither
was General Meade's report strictly correct, but it corresponded more
closely with the facts. He did not capture a brigade, as he said, but he
did take the flags of Brockenbrough's brigade, and enough men of other
commands to form one.

During the whole term of my imprisonment I anxiously longed to be
exchanged, being willing any day to swap incarceration for the toils and
dangers of active military service. In the early part of the war there
were some partial exchanges, but as it was prolonged the government at
Washington rejected all overtures for a cartel. Throughout the North
there were raised loud and false reports that Federal soldiers in
Southern prisons were being wantonly maltreated, while the National
Government might have restored them to freedom and plenty by agreeing to
the exchange of prisoners that was urged repeatedly by the Confederate
Government. The refusal was an evidence of the straits to which the
Union was pushed, and an act o