reatment of our soldiers in the prisons at
Richmond was published, as a special instalment of our proceedings,
for popular use, accompanied by photographs of a number of prisoners
in their wasted and disfigured condition. The report produced a
powerful effect on the public mind, and caused unspeakable trouble
and vexation to the enemy. I assisted in the examination of our
prisoners at Annapolis, and never before had been so touched by
any spectacle of human suffering. They were in the last stages of
life, and could only answer our questions in a whisper. They were
living skeletons, and it seemed utterly incredible that life could
be supported in such wasted and attenuated shadows of themselves.
They looked at us, in attempting to tell their story, with an
expression of beseeching tenderness and submission which no words
could describe. Not one of them expressed any regret that he had
entered into the service of the country, and each declared that he
would do so again, if his life should be spared and the opportunity
should be offered. In examining one of these men I was perfectly
unmanned by my tears; and on retiring from the tent to give them
vent I encountered Senator Wade, who had fled from the work, and
was sobbing like a child. It was an altogether unprecedented
experience, and the impression it produced followed me night and
day for weeks.

The conservative policy of the Administration found a new and
careful expression in Mr. Lincoln's letter to A. G. Hodges, of the
4th of April. It showed great progress as compared with previous
utterances, but his declaration that "I claim not to have controlled
events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me," was
displeasing to the more anti-slavery Republicans. They insisted
that the Administration had no right to become the foot-ball of
events. It had no right, they said, at such a time, to make itself
a negative expression or an unknown quantity in the Algebra which
was to work out the great problem. It had no right, they insisted,
to take shelter beneath a debauched and sickly public sentiment,
and plead it in bar of the great duty imposed upon it by the crisis.
It had no right, certainly, to lag behind that sentiment, to magnify
its extent and potency, and then to become its virtual ally, instead
of endeavoring to control it, and to indoctrinate the country with
ideas suited to the emergency. It was the duty of the President,
like John Bright and