breath came thick and heavy, and I thought of suffocation. The
ladder was drawn up, and with a dull and heavy sound that seemed
crushing down on my heart, the trap-door fell. I wedged and jammed my
way through the living throng to the window. The one I reached was
just under the wooden stairs, and, of course, gave no light. The other
was below the surface of the ground. They were at opposite sides of
the room, and were only about a foot square, being filled with a
triple row of thick set iron bars, that almost excluded every current
of air. I pressed my face close to the bars, and breathed the purest
air I could get, until I became partly reconciled to the oppression,
and then turned to ascertain the condition of my companions. It was
wretched beyond description. They were ragged, dirty, and crawling
with vermin. Most of them were nearly naked; but this was no
inconvenience there, for it was so warm that those who had clothes
were obliged to take them off, and nearly all were in a state of
nudity. I soon found it necessary myself to disrobe, and even then the
perspiration poured off me most profusely. It was an atmosphere of
death.

Yet among the prisoners were old men, just trembling on the verge of
the grave, who were arrested merely because they had ventured to
express a preference for the old, well-tried Government, over the new,
slave-built Confederacy. The cruelty practiced on the Tennessee Union
men will never half be told. It forms the darkest page in the history
of the war. In every prison of which I was an inmate in Georgia and
Virginia, as well as in Tennessee, I found these miserable but
patriotic men thus heartlessly immured. But I will speak more of them
hereafter; at that time the thought of my own danger banished every
other consideration.

There were fourteen white men in the room beside myself, and one
negro. I wonder what those tender soldiers, who consider it derogatory
to their dignity to fight in the same army that blacks do, would think
if they were confined with them so closely that there was no
possibility of getting away. But we endured too many real evils to
fret at imaginary ones; and besides, Aleck was so kind and
accommodating, so anxious to do everything in his power for us, that
he soon became a general favorite; and when he was taken out to be
whipped, as he was several times, to ascertain whether he was telling
a true story or not, we could not help feeling the sincerest sympathy
fo