428 Southern Historical Society Papers.
as a matter of course, but that it was also especially protected, the farming interest being granted an increased suffrage in proportion to the number of negroes on their plantations. * Even
in the last days, before the outbreak of war, when the press and demagogues raised the slavery question in order to inflame the masses, the statesman (of the North) carefully avoided such a blunder, since the slavery question was not the ground of the war, and could not be proclaimed as such."
ESCAPE OF PRISONERS FROM JOHNSON'S ISLAND.
In an interesting article by Lieutenant J. H. Carpenter, of New Orleans, La., on Prison Life on Johnson's Island, in the Century Maga- zine for April, 1891, he makes the statement that the prison was so isolated and so well guarded that notwithstanding repeated efforts of the more daring spirits confined there to secure their liberty, not a single escape occurred during the war. This has been proven to be a mistake. Lieutenant T. E. Fell, of Newnan, Georgia, in a com- munication dated April 5, 1891, and published in the Newnan Herald, gives his personal knowledge of the escape of Captain Robert Cobb Kennedy, of Alabama. Kennedy was "a perfect dare- devil, and no situation, however perilous, seemed to daunt his courage." Captain Kennedy's escape and subsequent recapture, con- viction by a court martial and final execution, are thus described :
" Few officers of interior rank figured more conspicuously during the late war than Captain Robert Cobb Kennedy. His career was short, thrilling, full of daring, and its final end closed very sad. Captain Kennedy was, we believe, a Georgian by birth, and a distant relative of one of Georgia's most distinguished sons, Howell Cobb. He entered the Confederate service in the early part of the war, and was captured near Decatur, Ala., whence he was carried a prisoner of war to Johnson's Island. It was there the writer first knew him. Of his services in the field we knew but little, and this brief sketch is written in the hope that some of his family or friends will give us a more complete history.
" Soon after his imprisonment he commenced devising means of escape, and made several unsuccessful attempts. He finally sue-
