parole not to visit or the correspond with a seceded State that I will do and will honorably keep the promise until released from it. May I beg of you the favor to call the attention of him who has the power to open the gates of my prison to this my case? If there are any other explanations I can make they will be promptly given as the days here seem like weeks and I confess to a great anxiety to get out.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

D. C. LOWBER.

NEW YORK, November 5, 1861.

Honorable WILLIAM H. SEWARD.

DEAR SIR: Allow me to call your attention to the inclosed letter* from Mr. D. C. Lowber, now a prisoner in Fort Warren; also to a paper handed me last evening by Charles Todd. Of nearly all the statements in it I hod confimenatory letters from Mr. and Mrs. Lowber and Mr. Neil and other residents of New Orleans dating form October, 1860, to April, 1861, which I will forward if desired. Particularly is it well known that Mr. Lowber made himself to some to some degree obnoxious in New Orleans by his strong defense of the Union and his condemnation of the precipitate action of the Sountried Administration, and un unhesitating and continued remonstrance against the existence of a vigilance committee. From my own experience I can say that his house was the only one in New Orleans in which I ever heard abolitionism fairly allowed an utterance. In a conversatikn with Miss Fremont, then visting at his house in New Orleans in May, 1860, I remember his distincly avowed disguest at the demagogues who wished by secession to plunge the country into civil was, for which he believed they had not one unfriendly act of Government to show as excuse. At the time that he broke a friendship of fifteen years' standing and turned Mr. Thomas Heard from his house for his offensive utterance of secession sentiments (December 24) the feeling against him was so strong that both he and Mr. Neill were repeatedly threatened by the vigilance committee, and I most sincerely believed that he left New Orleans with the simple and sole purpose of visiting his grandchildren and establishing business relations in Glasgow. Also I think it can be proved that whatever letters or papers he carried on his return not one found its way South. All this existing letters and papers are now is possession of the Government. Four or five Union men well known as such are wiling in consideration of these statements and his tied truth to give bail for him honorable adherence to his parole. Or should bail be refused they will hold themselves responsible for his word. As we are the only relatives in the North with whom he would care to spend an hour I think it is almost unnecessary to pledge ourselves for his good faith. You must know that no aid or comfort to the enemy would go from our house.

I have been induced to write thus from the belief forced upon me that Mr. Lowber's health is being seriously affected and his constitution undermined by the inactivity of prison life and by the conviction that if released on parole no harm could result to the cause nearest and dearest to me. The disease from which he suffers is peculiaconfinement and from my knowledge of the family tendency I have been seriously alarmed lately lest it terminate in some form of insanity. Except my parents he is my dearest relative and I could not entertain

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* Not found, but probably Lowber to Seward, preceding.

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