the martyrdom of the patriot and hero can be degraded by the hands of ruffians and traitors.

The remaining prisoners, now reduced to 14, were kept closely confined under special guard in the jail at Atlanta until October, when, overhearing a conversation between the jailer and another officer, they became satisfied that it was the purpose of the authorities to hang them as they had done their companions. This led them to form a plan for their escape, which they carried into execution on the evening of the next day, by seizing the jailer when he opened the door to carry away the bucket in which their supper had been brought. This was followed by the seizure also of the 7 guards on duty, and before the alarm was given 8 of the fugitives were beyond reach of pursuit It has been since ascertained that 6 of these, after long and painful wanderings, succeeded in reaching our lines. Of the fate of the other 2 nothing is known. The remaining 6 or the 14, consisting of the 5 witnesses who have deposed and Mr. Mason, were recaptured and confined in the barracks until December, when they were removed to Richmond. There they were shut up in a room in Castle Thunder, where they shivered through the winter, without fire, thinly clad, and with but two small blankets, which they had saved with their clothes, to cover the whole party. So they remained until a few days since, when they were exchanged; and thus, at the end of eleven months, terminated their pitiless persecutions in the prisons of the South-persecutions begun and continued amid indignities and sufferings on their part and atrocities on the part of their traitorous foes which illustrate far more faithfully than any human language could express it the demoniac spirit of a revolt, every throb of whose life is a crime against the very race to which we belong.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

J. HOLT,

Judge-Advocate-General.

Honorable E. M. STANTON,

Secretary of War.

No. 2 Letter from Major General Don Carlos Buell, U. S. Army.

SARATOGA, August 5, 1863.

SIR: In the Official Gazette of the 21st ultimo I see a report of Judge-Advocate-General Holt, dated March 27, relative to "an expedition set on foot in April, 1862, under the authority and direction," as the report says," of General O. M. Mitchel, the object of which was to destroy the line of communications on the Georgia State Railroad between Atlanta and Chattanooga." The expedition was "set on foot" under my authority. The plan was arranged between Mr. Andrews, whom I had in employment from shortly after assuming command in Kentucky, and my chief of staff, Colonel James B. Fry, and General Mitchel had nothing to do either with its conception or execution except to furnish from his command the soldiers who took part inch. He was directed to furnish 6. Instead of that he sent 22. Had he conformed to the instructions given him it would have been better. The chances of success would have been greater, and in any event several lives would have been saved. The report speaks of the plan as a