CHAPTER XXXIII.
SECRET SERVICE DUTY AT THE NORTH.
New Scenes and new Associations. My first Visit to the North. The Wealth and Prosperity of the North contrasted with the Poverty and Desolation of the South. Much of the Northern Prosperity fictitious. The anti-war Party and its Strength. How some of the People of the North made Money during the War. "Loyal" Blockade-runners and Smugglers. Confederate Spies and Emissaries in the government Offices. The Opposition to the Draft. The bounty-jumping Frauds. My Connection with them. Operations of the Confederate Secret Service Agents. Other Ways of fighting the Enemy than by Battles in the Field. I arrange a Plan of Operations, and place myself in communication with the Confederate Authorities at Richmond, and also with Federal Officials at Washington and elsewhere. I abandon Fighting for Strategy.
WAS now introduced to entirely new scenes, new associations, and a new sphere of activity. I had never before been farther north than Washington, and my visit to the Federal capital was the hasty and secret one made shortly after the battle of Ball's Bluff, the particulars of which are recorded in a previous chapter. It was almost like going into another world to pass from the war worn Confederacy to the rich and prosperous states which adhered to the Federal government; and, when I saw the evidences of apparently inexhaustible wealth around me, and contrasted them in my mind with what I was leaving behind in the yet unconquered Confederacy, I confess that my heart began to fail, and I despaired of the cause more than I had ever done before.
In a great portion of the South the towns and villages
were few and far between, the forests large and dense, the population thin and scattering, while the most imposing of the Southern cities were far less splendid than New York and
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