fame from opprobrious or vindictive mention. Yet such language as we have supposed, would be less coarse less churlish, less offensive, less brutal, than the terms which General Wilson employs in exulting over the calamities of an illustrious enemy, whose reputation is dear to myriads of his countrymen. His relations to that enemy, as captor to captive, would have created in the heart of any truly generous and chivalrous soldier an obligation of respect, forbearance, gentleness, and courtesy. Such a soldier feels toward such a prisoner a sentiment which renders him a defender and protector, rather than a defamer and calumniator.
The terms "treachery," "dishonor," "disgrace," applied by Wilson to Jefferson Davis, admit of no reply that I care to make, and require none. They are indeed "foul, dishonoring words," but the reader needs not to be told who it is that they dishonor.
The length to which this article has already been extended, leaves but little room for the remainder of the story. General Wilson gives a brief account of the march to Macon, but says nothing of the horses, watches, and other articles of plunder secured by the captors, of which we have information from other sources. It must be remembered that all, or nearly all of the thirteen private soldiers of whom he speaks—if that was the correct number—and some of the officers, were paroled men, not arrested in any violation of their parole, but merely acting as an escort to a party of women and children, for their protection from the thieves and marauders who were roaming through the country. The horses of these men were their own private property, secured to them by the terms of their surrender. This pledge was violated, as was also the pledge of personal immunity—for some of them were remanded into captivity. The writer of an account of the capture, in the "Atlantic Monthly" for September, 1865, who is identified by General Wilson as an officer of his command, chuckles over the appropriation of what he elegantly and politely styles "Jeff's wines and other 'amenities'"—that is to say, the private stores of Mrs. Davis and her family—for Mr. Davis carried no stores—in a tone of sportive exultation, as if it were a very good thing. He tells it in a vein that reminds one of Master Slander's desire to have Mrs. Anne Page bear the capital joke about his father's "stealing two geese out of a pen." The same writer gives us, in the same jocose vein, an account of a brutal indignity offered
