be granted paroles in order to tempt them to take the oath,
and I did not care to be caught in such company.

When I left Camp Chase, where every one had been uniformly polite and
respectful in demeanor, and I had enjoyed privileges which amounted
almost to liberty, the gloom of the penitentiary and the surly, ban-dog
manner of the keepers were doubly distasteful, and the feeling was as if
I were being buried alive. I found that, during my absence, the
prisoners had been removed from the hall, which they had all the time
previously occupied, to another in which the negro convicts had formerly
slept, and this latter was a highly-scented dormitory. The cause of the
removal was that (desperate at their long confinement and the treatment
they were receiving) a plan had been concocted for obtaining knives and
breaking out of the prison by force. A thorough knowledge of the
topography of the entire building was by this time possessed by the
leaders in this movement. They had intended to secure Merion, and as
many as possible of the underlings, by enticing them into the hall upon
some pretext, and then gagging, binding, and locking them up in the
cells. Then giving the signal for the opening of the doors, they
expected to obtain possession of the office and room where the guns were
kept. One of the party was to have been dressed in convict garb, to
give the necessary signal, in order that all suspicion might have been
avoided. It is barely possible that, with better luck, the plan might
have succeeded, but it was frustrated by the basest treachery.

Among the sixty-eight prisoners of war confined in the penitentiary,
there were four whose nerves gave way and they took the oath of
allegiance to the United States in other words, they deserted. One of
this four betrayed the plan to the warden. Men were sometimes induced
"to take the oath" by a lack of pride and fortitude, and absence of
manly stamina, who would have done nothing else prejudicial to the cause
which they abandoned, or that would have compromised their former
comrades. Their were men, however, who added treachery to apostacy, and
this man was one of that infamous class. The four were so fearful of
exciting the suspicion of the other prisoners, and so well aware of the
bitter scorn and resentment which their conduct would raise against
them, that they carefully concealed their design to the last moment. It
was not until our release from prison, that the proofs of the