and 2, Camp Chase, Ohio, having been detailed to that duty by order of Brigadier-General Mason, commandant at Columbus and at Camp Chase, Ohio, with orders to report to Lieutenant Colonel A. H. Poten, assistant commandant of prisons, for instructions, and I received all my instructions from him. Those instructions did not give me any immediate control of the guards, but I was to be conversant with the instructions given them from time to time, and was required to watch closely whilst on my tour of duty through and about the prisons and see that sentries strictly carried out their instructions and report cases of neglect or carelessness.

At the time, and for some time previous to the shooting of William L. Pope, the instructions given sentries were more rigorous than common, and greater vigilance was required owing to the persistent efforts of the prisoners to escape by tunneling under the prison walls and the continued discoveries of plots, seeming to have connection with outside influence, for their release.

No prisoner was allowed to approach the wall nearer than ten feet, day or night, and no lights were allowed to be burned in their quarters after taps. The sentries were instructed to warn the prisoners if they attempted to approach- to halt and order them away. If he persisted in approaching after being so halted twice, or refused to go away when ordered, the sentry was to fire upon him.

In case lights were seen burning, the sentry was to order them out twice; if not extinguished, was to fire. In case of a necessity for deviation from this rule the consent of the provost-marshal was to be obtained, and it was his duty to inform the officer of the day of such permission being given, that the sentries might be instructed accordingly.

No permission was so given to William L. Pope to approach the wall, nor was I solicited for such permission at any time for some days previous to the shooting of William L. Pope. Two tunnels were known to be in course of construction by prisoners in Prison Numbers 2, and as extra caution was called for, the provost-marshal was required to visit the prison after night before retiring for the night.

On the night of the shooting of William L. Pope, in company with the commissary of prisons, was going the rounds, visiting sentries and suspected points about the prison to see that all was correct, and while approaching from the outside the entrance gate of Prison Numbers 1, heard the challenge of a sentry, we continued to walk toward the gate and had taken perhaps twenty steps, when the following words were spoken:

"I have told you to go away often enough", and instantly followed the report of a musket, with the groans of a person on the inside of the prison wall.

An immediate investigation showed that the challenge and remarks spoken of had come from a sentry on post on the parapet, over the gate and that he had fired the shot at and struck one William L. Pope, a prisoner of war, whom the sentry stated had persisted in approaching the wall, the blood on the ground showing that Pope was close to the wall when shot.

All of which I respectfully submit.

ISAIAH S. TAYLOR,

Lieutenant, Company B, Fifteenth Regiment Invalid Corps.

Subscribed and sworn to before me at Chicago, Ill., this 29th day of February, 1864.

H. BURR,

Assistant Adjutant-General, U. S. Volunteers.