id not strongly corroborate this
beautiful theory. Shortly after Major Higley's misfortune, Captain
Cheatham was again honored with an invitation to inspect the dungeons,
and take up his quarters in one of them. He, with great modesty,
protested that he had done nothing to deserve such a distinction, but
his scruples were overruled and he was induced to go. The offense
charged was this: An anonymous letter had been picked up in the hall--in
which the prison officials were ridiculed. Merion fancied that the
handwriting of this letter resembled Cheatham's--there was no other
evidence. So far as the proof went, there was as much right to attribute
it to one of the prison corps as to one of the prisoners, and to any
other one of the prisoners as to Cheatham. After he was placed in the
dungeon, where he remained forty-eight hours, and it became known upon
what charge, and that he denied it, General Morgan first, and soon many
others, demanded that, if another prisoner had written the letter, he
should own it and suffer for it. There was not a man in the sixty-eight
of our party (with four exceptions) who would have permitted a comrade
to be punished for an offense committed by himself.

It was never known who wrote the letter. Captain Cheatham always denied
having done so. So justice was not always so impartially administered in
the sacrificial temple of the Ohio law, and the governed had it not
always in their power to escape punishment.

After we had been in the penitentiary some three or four weeks, Colonel
Cluke and another officer were taken out and sent to McLean barracks, to
be tried by court-martial upon the charge of having violated some oath,
taken before they entered the Confederate service. They were acquitted
and Colonel Cluke was sent to Johnson's Island, where during the
ensuing winter he died of diphtheria. He was exceedingly popular in the
division, and was a man of the most frank, generous and high-toned
nature. But he possessed some high soldierly qualities. In the field, he
was extremely bold and tenacious--and when threatened by a dangerous
opponent, no one was more vigilant and wary. He displayed great vigor
and judgment on many occasions, both as a regimental and brigade
commander. The news of his death excited universal sorrow among his
comrades.

Shortly before Colonel Cluke's removal, Major Webber and Captains
Sheldon and McCann had been brought to the penitentiary from Camp Chase.
They, of cours