although you had found shelter in the house of my friend than whom a more loyal and upright man does not live, and in my opinion you were properly arrested. But you confess your error and profess repentance, and as I have said I freely forgive you, although you have justified and taken part in this wary against us, which I must be allowed to say is the most unholy which ever was waged and has been conducted in a manner the most infamous and most barbarous which ever has been practiced by a nation professing Christianity. It could not well be otherwise however when the man who coldly planned the var in October last - and now marshals the hosts against us which must desecrate and efface the graves of his own children and those of his wife's father and mother before his vengeance and vanity can be gratified by our subjugation - is a renegade and parricide.

I will promptly communicate your letter to the honorable Secretary and he will do I have no doubt all that honor and humanity require. Sure I am that he will not imitate the example of your Government in the case of Mr. Faulkner who - returning to its jurisdiction from foreign service for it in order to perform his last act of duty to it - without offense of any kind because of his nationality alone has been committed to a loathsome prison, although his wife and children anxiously await him in Virginia, as yours do in Maine. While to you, however, I would willingly extend the mercy which you seek because of your vocation, your sickness and penitence, allow me to say that your case if you are discharged on parole should be regarded as the exception which proves the rule and not the rule. Your prisoners should be guarded carefully, and for each one of our who may be sacrificed by your Government twenty of yours should meet a similar fate. You will I hope not be one of that number, but will return in safety to your home to embrace your wife and children and teach your people to repent of the crime they have committed in slaughtering their own people as well as ours without case, and also to disbuse them of the error under which they labor when they suppose that the South can be subjugated. Tell them that when there is not a man left to confront the foe, nor women to nurse and cheer the wounded; when the sun shall cease to warm the South, and the notes of our mocking bird shall be hushed in despair, then and not till then will they conquer the South.

Respectfully, your obedient servant,

JAMES LYONS.

[Inclosure No. 3.]

RICHMOND FACTORY PRISON, October 24, 1861.

Hon. JAMES LYONS, Commissioner C. S. Army.

SIR: I fear that you have forgotten in the pressure of other business that a chaplain - a non-combatant - has been kept for three months in the common prison, doubly punished by being deprived of all that which is necessary to the spiritual well-being of a clergyman. Let me again call your attention to the fact that on your testimony alone I was deprived of my parole, and I suppose that the same person that bound me can unloose. And also let me beg you to remember the agony of the family from whom I am beg you to remember the expected that a non-combatant could be kept as a prisoner. To God and your sense of what is right and humane I commit myself. Voluntarily when I had time and means to escape I intrusted myself, a noncombatant, into the hands of the Southern Confederacy. Before God, my Judge and Savior, my hands are clean from aught save having espoused the cause of the North and having expressed my then views very warmly to your honor in a private conversation that was not sought