view between the General and the Reverend Doctor Leacock,
(Rector of Grace Church in New Orleans, and one of the three Episcopal
clergymen who refused to read the prayer for the President, and were
therefore sent North as prisoners, under my charge,) in which the General
urged upon the Doctor his views on the injurious influence of disloyalty
in the pulpit, sustaining his argument by prolific quotations from
Scripture, recited with an accuracy and appositeness that few theologians
could exceed, the Doctor replied,--

"But, General, your insisting upon the taking of the oath of allegiance is
causing half of my church-members to perjure themselves."

"If that is the case, I am glad I have not had the spiritual charge of
your church for the last nine years," (just the term of Dr. Leacock's
pastorate,) the General answered, promptly.

After a lengthy conversation, the Doctor finally asked,--

"Well, General, are you going to shut up the churches?"

"No, Sir, I am more likely to shut up the ministers," he replied.

To the casual observer this would appear but a brilliant repartee, while,
in fact, it was significant as indicative of a sagacious policy. Closing
the churches would have given warrant to the charge of interference with
the observances of religion. So careful was the General to avoid anything
of this nature, that, in every instance where a clergyman was removed from
his church, the very next Sunday found his pulpit occupied by a loyal
minister.

As a great many excellent Churchmen have misunderstood the cause of the
arrest of clergymen in New Orleans, I think I must add a word of
explanation. The ministers so arrested were of the Episcopal denomination,
in which the rector is required to read a liturgy prescribed by the
General Convention. In this liturgy occurs "a prayer for the President of
the United States," and its omission in their reading of the service was
clearly an overt act of disloyalty, in that it was by unmistakable
implication a declaration that they did not recognize the authority of the
President of the United States; and it is a fact not generally known, that
this omission in the service was supplied by the minister's regularly
announcing, "A few moments will now be spent in silent prayer." Who can
doubt the character and burden of this voiceless petition, when it is
understood that it was the successor to an audible appeal--which General
Butler suppressed--to Heaven for Jefferson Davis and