gled several inches down the wearer's back, you had a military swell,
caparisoned for conquest--among the fair sex.
On our way we passed the noted Capitol of Virginia--a handsome marble
building,--of the column-fronted Grecian temple style. It stands in the
center of the City. Upon the grounds is Crawford's famous equestrian
statue of Washington, surrounded by smaller statues of other
Revolutionary patriots.
The Confederate Congress was then in session in the Capitol, and also the
Legislature of Virginia, a fact indicated by the State flag of Virginia
floating from the southern end of the building, and the new flag of the
Confederacy from the northern end. This was the first time I had seen
the latter, which had been recently adopted, and I examined it with some
interest. The design was exceedingly plain. Simply a white banner, with
a red field in the corner where the blue field with stars is in ours.
The two blue stripes were drawn diagonally across this field in the shape
of a letter X, and in these were thirteen white stars, corresponding to
the number of States claimed to be in the Confederacy.
The battle-flag was simply the red field. My examination of all this was
necessarily very brief. The guards felt that I was in Richmond for other
purposes than to study architecture, statuary and heraldry,
and besides they were in a hurry to be relieved of us and get their
breakfast, so my art-education was abbreviated sharply.
We did not excite much attention on the streets. Prisoners had by that
time become too common in Richmond to create any interest. Occasionally
passers by would fling opprobrious epithets at "the East Tennessee
traitors," but that was all.
The commandant of the prisons directed the Tennesseeans to be taken to
Castle Lightning--a prison used to confine the Rebel deserters, among
whom they also classed the East Tennesseeans, and sometimes the West
Virginians, Kentuckians, Marylanders and Missourians found fighting
against them. Such of our men as deserted to them were also lodged
there, as the Rebels, very properly, did not place a high estimate upon
this class of recruits to their army, and, as we shall see farther along,
violated all obligations of good faith with them, by putting them among
the regular prisoners of war, so as to exchange them for their own men.
Back we were all marched to a street which ran parallel to the river and
canal, and but one square away from them. It was
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