to place myself in peril very soon again by attempting to play a double game, as I had been doing with Colonel Baker and other Federal officials. I was willing to risk as much as any one when there was a fair chance of accomplishing any thing, but I was not willing to undertake enterprises of extraordinary peril, and to run the chance of being betrayed through either the stupidity or the treachery of those who professed to be working with me.
I did not know how much information Baker might have with regard to my recent doings, but thought that it would be rather remarkable if he and other government detectives had not discovered something which it was not especially advantageous to me that they should be informed of. I had no very great opinion of their smartness, but, considering all that I had been doing, the peculiar relations which I held to Baker, "and the opportunities which the arrest of the Confederate agents in Sundusky had given for them to obtain the full particulars of the plot, and the names of those prominently concerned in it, I did not care to cultivate the acquaintance of Baker and the members of his corps any further just then, and was not sorry to have an opportunity to leave the country for a time.
Buying Goods for the South.
This opportunity was afforded in a proposition that I should purchase a quantity of goods in Philadelphia and New York to fill Southern orders, and should go to the West Indies with them as a sort of supercargo, for the purpose of arranging for their shipment to different Southern ports. I was also to supervise the shipment of a variety of goods of various kinds from Europe.
It was thought that, as in the cases of the proposed raid, a woman would be able to do a great many things without exciting suspicion, that it would be hazardous for a man to attempt. It was daily getting to be more and more difficult to smuggle goods, especially merchandise of a bulky nature, through the blockading fleet. The tribulations of the blockade-runners, however, did not begin when they approached the beleaguered ports of the Confederacy. There were great difficulties in the way of purchasing goods, especially at the North, and of getting them shipped in safety, and then, in the majority of cases, they had to be taken to some point in
