found, and without the second a good officer, mingling the gentleman with the commander, cannot exist. "

The elephant is never won with anger,

Nor should the man who would reclaim the lion

Take him by the teeth.

There is nothing so degrading to an officer of rank as an intemperate reprimand, and before his inferiors. If he be respectful, as he would have others respect him, and fores not that he is a gentleman, his conduct is said to have merited the rebuke from his not having defended it. If both parties lose their temper a court-martial follows and neither party gains by the result. To make a good officer a man must be a gentleman, and they are inseparable. The man who cannot command his tongue is the worst man to instruct with any command. The supercilious and the arrogant always meet from men endowed with common sense the contempt such frivolity deserves.

So much for my opinion of a man placed at the head of any public affair. Now, I will proceed to state in as concise a manner as possible my views which I respectfully submit to your honorable notice. This subject I feel I cannot handle, although fraught with some interest to you and much anxiety to me. When this cruel war was forced upon us on the secession of Virginia I was among the first to resign from the old Navy and take up arms. I chose the Army, and shouldering my musket enrolled myself as a private. My career and advancement since then is known. I followed my unfortunate leader far within the enemy's lines, never questioning an order, but obeyed all; never asking, where go we? We fell. I suffered; but, thank God, escaped from the tyranny of the "usurper of rights" and have tried to deal them some goods blows. My injuries placed me in command of this post. Here I have tried to do my duty, and no matter what may be said or done you cannot keep this strong right arm idle; it shall work either as an officer or private until we achieve what we are all struggling for - the vindication of a sacred right - self government. I trust I have clearly demonstrated to this honorable body the character of the men who have been committed to my care - the murderer, the robber, the deserter, the substitute deserter, the pickpocket, and worst of all the skulker - the man who by his skulking endangers his comrades, therefore worse than the murderer - the spy, the reconstructionist, the disloyal; all, all that are inimical to our glorious cause are thrust upon me. Why? Because this Castle is the only penitentiary the Confederacy has. I have proved that rules and regulations were regularly distributed; that they were repeatedly told that punishment would follow a persistency in wrong-doing; that the place only acquired a bad name by the conduct of the fiends that inhabited it, and that punishment was only resorted to when it became absolutely necessary and it had become unsafe for a man to enter the wards. I have proved that while our noble army was in the field subsisting on corn these fiends were being fed on full rations and then would refuse positively to rejoin their suffering comrades, and could only be forced there at the point of a bayonet.

That some men were whipped on the back is true. Does it appear in the voluminous evidence that there was a single man not by the order of a court-martial or one from a State represented by any representative in our legislative halls? It was represented by one of the witnesses that men were tied up by the thumbs and gagged. The witness, who by the way was proven to have been discharged from his place for "moral incapacity," is certainly mistaken, or saw it in one of his drunken