ceived a special from Wilson, commanding the army in which Andrew moves, confirming the rumor of his taking Selma, a great body of prisoners and of munitions, provisions, and the machinery which was established at that depot. Grant also told me that Hancock was on this very day compounding matters with the guerilla chief, Mosby. This is the fellow who has led all the raids into Maryland and to whom all the danger to me and mine at Silver Spring was attributable. His band of troopers could in two hours reach my house from their lurking-places near the fords of the Potomac. They could have taken me from my bed on any dark night and carried me off as a victim for any of their gang, and during the last four years I have had some secret intimations that they could avenge themselves if their will inclined them or any exigency prompted them to use such means.

madam, yours very cordially,

P. S.-Mobile is taken.

I am, dear

F. P. BLAIR.

CHAPTER XXVII.

SAVANNAH IN WINTER AND IN WAR.

SHERMAN had driven his army like a wedge of steel through the body of the Confederated States, from Nashville to Atlanta, from Atlanta to the sea. Hazen had stormed Fort McAllister. Hardee had evacuated and General Frank P. Blair had led the seventeenth army corps into the city of Savannah, and Sherman had made of that city, with its many thousand bales of cotton, a Christmas gift to the President of the Republic.

With this present came northward a wail of famine and of suffering. When Hardee with the Confederate army marched out of the city into the morasses of South Carolina, there followed him every wheeled vehicle drawn by every horse and mule, transporting the last barrel of pork and beef and flour and the last bushel of rice. He had left nothing for the subsistence of the people, and they were starving. So ran the report which was almost universally believed.

Straightway the people of New York City, without distinction of party, sect, or condition, forgot the firing upon Fort Sumter, the horrors of Andersonville, the almost four years of bloody war, and remembered only that the people of Savannah were Americans and that they were hungry. In a single morning a large committee was named by the Chamber of Commerce to receive contributions of provisions; the

committee was organized, named a depot where supplies might be sent, and before nightfall there were contributed provisions enough to load a steamer, the owners of which made her charter their own contribution. She was loaded in the night and the next morning was ready to be cleared for Savannah.

Her clearance involved a difficulty. The War Department objected. "To exhaust the supplies of the enemy," said Secretary Stanton, "is one of the objects we are trying to accomplish; it is one of the most effectual means of making war. To feed him, or to feed the families of soldiers who are in the field fighting our own armies, would prolong the war and make us the butt of other nations. Why do you ask me to do what you would not do yourself in my place?" he demanded when at the request of friends in New York I asked him to permit the steamer to be cleared. "I will not do it. If the people of New York City want to feed anybody, let them send their gifts to the starving prisoners from the Andersonville stockade. They shall not with my consent send supplies to the rebels in the very State in which the enormities of that hell are perpetrated!"

I could not answer the Secretary and I wanted to accommodate my friends in New York. I was in a strait betwixt two, and I had learned what to do in such a situation. I went to the President and laid the case with Secretary Stanton's objections fairly before him. "Stanton is right," he said, "but the Georgians must not be left to starve, if some of them do starve our prisoners. However, I will not offend Stanton unless I can make something by the transaction. I will compromise. If you will go on the steamer and make a report upon the actual condition

of the people, I will do better than Pharaoh did by the Israelites-I will let the steamer go."

I accepted the condition and the mission, went to New York the same evening, and as soon as the Custom House was open the next morning submitted the President's order, obtained the clearance, and by twelve o'clock the vessel was ready to sail.

The manifest of the steamer's cargo was not suggestive of famine nor even of destitution. It was midwinter, when fresh provisions could be transported without risk. The hold was filled to the deck-beams with barrels of flour, barrels and other packages of salted and canned beef, fish, and vegetables. Smoked hams and bacon were thrown into every crevice. Between the decks in close proximity were suspended on hooks the carcasses of fat beeves, calves, pigs, and sheep. All the staterooms unoccupied by the committee and the commissioner were crowded with layers of dressed turkeys, geese, ducks, and chickens. From manifestations after our arrival I was led to believe that there were fluids on board of higher proof than mineral waters.

The captain or skipper of the steamer was an original. He was a native of the eastern shore of New Jersey and was about fifty years of age. He stood six feet high, and carried a back and shoulders broad enough and a backbone stiff enough for two ordinary men. His face was intensely red-his hair bleached from dark brown to a straw color by long exposure. His whole life had been passed at sea. had risen from boy-of-all-work on a coal-carrying schooner, through all the grades, to the command of a three-master, from which he had been transferred to a small steamer as mate, and had attained to the

He

captaincy of the largest in a considerable fleet of coasting steamers.

He began by driving his passengers ashore to their homes after what he called decent winter clothing. "You are going around Hatteras in January," he said, "an' that ain't no summer excursion. I don't want to report you frozen to death on my hands. You had better put on all the flannels you've got in your chists, two or three pair of thick trowses, and as many coats. Clap an oilskin suit a-top of them, with a buffalo or a fur coat for real lively stirring weather, and you may be happy off Hatteras. Better to lose an hour now than to send you, frozen mummies, back to the bosoms of your families."

We were glad enough of the captain's foresight before we passed Sandy Hook. It was very cold in New York City and it grew colder every hour until we entered the mouth of the river at Fort Pickens. The red-heat of the coal-stove in the cabin was all absorbed by the circle of shivering landsmen gathered around it, while the captain danced and roared his orders above the howling of the wind in the very exuberance of his animal spirits.

The next day was one of uneventful cold. We were principally employed in keeping warm. At nightfall, when we retired to the seclusion of the cabin, the captain informed us that we were off the capes of Virginia. We passed the evening in games of whist and chess. About ten o'clock the captain rushed into the cabin exclaiming, "There's merry h-l to pay in-shore. I think it is another attack on Fort Fisher. I have half a mind to run in and see. It will not cost us more than four or five hours' delay."