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people would ever have permitted their rulers, under any pretence whatever, to establish such a despotism as I have lived to witness, I should have indignantly denied the assertion ; and if I had been then told, that officers of the Army would ever consent to be the instruments to carry out the behests of a vulgar dictator, I should have predicted that they would rather have stripped their epaulets from their shoulders. But we live to learn; and I have learned much in the past few months."
This letter was returned to me the next morning, and on the following day one of the sergeants handed me a letter addressed by Colonel Burke, to Lieutenant Wood, which he said the latter had ordered him to read to me particularly, and to the other prisoners. I was unable to procure a copy of this letter, but remember the tenor of it. Colonel Burke expressed his surprise that I should have attempted to make him and Lieutenant Wood the medium through which to cast reflections on their superior officers. He was also pleased to say that as my family had always borne a gentlemanly character in Maryland he had not expected that I would be guilty of conduct " so indelicate, to use no stronger terms." He concluded by insisting that the Government had been, and would be unremitting in its exertions to make us comfortable.
I immediately sent him this note:
"Fort La Fayette, October 23d."Lieutenant-Colonel BURKE,
"Sir:
"Lieutenant Wood, has communicated to me the contents of your note to him of this date. Permit me to say, in reply to your allusions to the course I have thought proper to pursue, that you mistake me much if you suppose (as you seem to do) that a mere desire to embarrass or annoy you, or the officers under you, has prompted me to write the letters which have been returned to me. The fact that little or nothing has been done to make me or my fellow prisoners decently comfortable, is self-evident to any one who chooses to inspect our quarters, and it was on that account that I chose to
