CONFEDERATE STATE OF AMERICA, WAR DEPARTMENT,

Richmond, Va., November 21, 1864.

Governor M. L. BONHAM, Columbia, S. C.:

Your dispatch to the President has been referred to this Department for answer. Instructions have been given, in deference to your views, to discontinue construction of prison at Columbia.

J. A. SEDDON,

Secretary of War.

CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA, WAR DEPARTMENT,

Richmond, Va., November 21, 1864.

Honorable J. G. RAMSAY, M. C.:

SIR: Your letter of the 15th instant, inclosing a letter from the mayor and commissioners of Salisbury, was referred to the officer in charge of the prisoners in several of the States. He says that there is but a single military prison in North Carolina; that there are three in Virginia, three in South Carolina, and three in Georgia; that it is utterly out of the question to consider this petition. I have no other place of confinement for these prisoners, as other prisons are more crowded than this.

The Department regrets that the public necessity should expose the inhabitants of Salisbury to inconvenience or hardship, but for the present it is beyond its power to afford relief.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

JAMES A. SEDDON,

Secretary of War.

WAR DEPARTMENT, BUREAU OF MILITARY JUSTICE,

November 22, 1864.

THE SECRETARY OF WAR:

This office, on May 24, 1864, in an application precisely similar to this for the pardon of Fountain Brown, citizen, convicted of re-enslaving persons freed by the emancipation proclamation, reviewed at some length in a report to the President all the circumstances surrounding the case, and notice, it is believed, all the points now made in these new papers. The President, upon mature consideration, denied the petition, and the Secretary of War designated Alton military prison as the place of confinement. For the particular features of this case of atrocious criminality the Secretary is respectfully referred to the above-mentioned report, herewith inclosed*. It is not deemed necessary to re-digest the facts, inasmuch as this petition, though signed by another set of persons, among whom is Major-General Steele, brings to notice no additional points not disposed of in the former examination by this Bureau. Attention is, however, directed to the circumstances that, while the prisoners in this letter now presented to have been ignorant of the injunctions of the proclamation, he was distinctly proved at the trail to have told his slaves before this sale that they were freed by that decree, and to have confessed that he knew he was doing wrong and violating the law; but was induced to yield by the importunities and offers of the purchaser. The prisoner's desire to escape from a just punishment now triumphs over his veracity as his cupidity then got the better of his prudence. The views expressed in the previous report are decidedly adhered to, and it is earnestly recommended that the full

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* See p. 159.

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