if the good men and women, both North and South, would now earnestly and patriotically unite in an endeavor to carry out the ideas of the founders of the government, they would, ere many years, be able to raise the nation to a pitch of greatness such as had yet been scarcely imagined.
As for my own experiences, if not exactly what I had expected them to be, they were sufficiently rich and varied in incident to satisfy all my ambitions. I had participated in bloody battles and sieges, and in the thickest of the danger had borne myself so valorously as to win the commendation of men who did not know what fear was, while, in addition to the campaigning I had gone through, my adventures as a spy and secret-service agent, were not only of advantage to the cause I had espoused, but they had supplied me with exciting and absorbing work which had demanded the best exercise of all my faculties. I felt that I had reason to be proud of my war record, and was the better satisfied with myself, as I knew that I had won the approbation of noble-minded men whose esteem was well worth winning.
When Colonel Baker called, therefore, to hear my decision, I told him that I would undertake to do what he desired. He accordingly gave me my instructions, and I was astonished to find how much he knew of some of my movements. He and his men must have been on the point of capturing me many times, and they undoubtedly would have done so, had I not had the wit to take the course I did in cultivating his acquaintance.
With many self-congratulations at having been successful in escaping thus far, and resolved that, if possible, Baker should not know me except as one of his own agents, I started for New York on a search for myself ostensibly, but in reality to wait anxiously for the coming of my brother, in whose company I proposed to get beyond the reach of the detective corps, with which I had been so long associated in such a singular manner, with all the expedition I could manage.
