ed, except willingly. I
confess to a contempt for all organizations of spies and detectives,
which is the result of my military experience. The only spies who
long escape are those who work for both sides. They sell to each
what it wants, and suit their wares to the demand. Pinkerton's man
in the rebel commissariat at Yorktown who reported 119,000 rations
issued daily, laughed well in his sleeve as he pocketed the secret
service money. [Footnote: For Pinkerton's reports, see Official
Records, vol. xi. pt. i. pp. 264-272.]

A great deal of valuable information may be got from a hostile
population, for few men or women know how to hold their tongues,
though they try never so honestly. A friendly population overdoes
its information, as a rule. I had an excellent example of this in
the Kanawha valley. After I had first advanced to Gauley Bridge, the
Secessionists behind me were busy sending to the enemy all they
could learn of my force. We intercepted, among others, a letter from
an intelligent woman who had tried hard to keep her attention upon
the organization of my command as it passed her house. In counting
my cannon, she had evidently taken the teams as the easiest units to
count, and had set down every caisson as a gun, with the
battery-forge thrown in for an extra one. In a similar way, every
accidental break in the marching column was counted as the head of a
new regiment. She thus, in perfect good faith, doubled my force, and
taught me that such information to the enemy did them more harm than
good.

As to the enemy's organization and numbers, the only information I
ever found trustworthy is that got by contact with him. No day
should pass without having some prisoners got by "feeling the
lines." These, to secure treatment as regular prisoners of war, must
always tell the company and regiment to which they belong. Rightly
questioned, they rarely stop there, and it is not difficult to get
the brigade, division, etc. The reaction from the dangers with which
the imagination had invested capture, to the commonly good-humored
hospitality of the captors, makes men garrulous of whom one would
not expect it. General Pope's chief quartermaster, of the rank of
colonel, was captured by Stuart's cavalry in this very campaign; and
since the war I have read with amazement General Lee's letters to
President Davis, to the Secretary of War at Richmond, and to General
Loring in West Virginia, dated August 23d, in which he says: