I did, however, in spite of their vigilance, succeed in sending a message and note to Judge Black (late Attorney-General of the United States) and to the Honourable R. J. Walker, requesting them to call upon me. But those grave legal gentlemen, influenced by prudential considerations, or sympathy with the inquisitorial hierarchy, gave no heed to my request, and I was thus left in the hands of an unscrupulous cunning enemy, with only my own judgment to guide me.

To show the utter recklessness of the Abolition Government, and the extraordinary means they temporarily resorted to, to infuse velour into their demoralised ranks, it was now authoritatively published that our great and good President had died in Richmond a few weeks after the battle of Manassas. He was said to have died of a slow fever, brought on by great mental anxiety, and compunction at the share he was supposed to have had in bringing about the revolution; that he had breathed his last sigh at twenty minutes to six in the morning; that his attending physicians and family and friends were present; that his mind was clear, and that he solemnly exhorted his friends to renew their allegiance to the United States, and to do all in their power to put down the revolution. The fags were reported to be at half-mast at Arlington Heights, Manassas, and all other points in our possession, and that minute guns were fired during the day. This account went through the whole North, and was the cause of immense rejoicing, for our President had filled them with fear and dread, in proportion to the confidence and veneration with which he had inspired every Southerner.

On Friday morning, the 30th of August, I was informed that other prisoners were to be brought in, and that my house was to be converted into a prison, and that Miss Mackall and myself, and little girl and servant, were to be confined in one room. After considerable difficulty and consultation with the Secretary of War, another small room was allowed for my child and maid, with the restriction, however, that I should not go into it, as it was a front room, with a window on the street. Subsequently my library was also allotted to me.

My parlours were stripped of their furniture, which was conveyed into the chamber for the use of the prisoners. By this time I had become perfectly callous. Everything showed signs of the contaminanation. Those unkempt, unwashed wretches - the detective police - had rolled themselves in my fine linen; their mark was visible upon every chair and sofa. Even the chamber in which one of my children had died only a few months before, and the bed on which she lay in her winding-sheet, had been desecrated by these emissaries of Lincoln, and the various articles of bijouterie, which lay on her toilet as she had left them, were borne off as rightful spoils. Every hallowed association with my home had been rudely blasted - my castle had become my prison. The law of the land had been supplanted by the higher law of the Abolition despot, and I could only say, ‘O Lord, how long will this iniquity be permitted?’

But I stray from my story. Soon armed men filled the house, the clank of whose muskets resounded through it like the voice of doom. I was confined to my chamber, at the door of which two soldiers stood, musket in hand.

The commotion below told me that other prisoners were arriving. They were the Philips family - Mrs. Philips, and her two oldest daughters, and her sister Miss Levi. A silent greeting, en passant, was all we were allowed to exchange. These ladies had been arrested the day after I was, and were subjected to the like, if not greater indignities, from which the presence of the husband and the father could not protect them; and now they were dragged from their own homes, the mother from her little children, several of whom were infants of tender age; her house ransacked, her papers overhauled, without finding anything to base even a suspicion upon - the only circumstance against her really being, that she was a Southern woman, and a lady, scorning association with the ‘mudsills’ whom the upheaving of the revolution had brought to the surface of society.

Another prisoner was to be confined in the room adjoining mine. A heavy bar of wood had been nailed across the door between, so as to prevent all communication. She was brought in late at night; her deep and convulsed sobs broke on the stillness of the hour. I sat by the door, and heard the officer in charge call her name. It was Mrs. Hasler, of whom I had some previous knowledge; but, had she been a stranger, her hapless lot would have established a claim to my sympathy.

I had sent to this person's house, the night of my arrest, to warn her, but found her house already in charge of soldiers, and my messenger barely escaped arrest. I was, of course, intensely anxious to let her know that she was in my house, and to communicate with her. She had been accredited to me as a reliable messenger by Colonel Jorden; had successfully served in that capacity several times; and it was through her means (most innocently, however) that my despatches had been betrayed into the hands of the Government. Special care was taken to prevent this prisoner and myself from communicating, as they hoped through her to establish direct evidence against me. The morning after her arrival I diverted the attention of the guard, whilst Miss Mackall slipped into her room, and warned her to deny all knowledge of me - which was, however, limited to the fact of her having been an agent of communication.

Poor woman! she had been most infamously used - dragged from her own lodgings to a station-house, where she had been kept for a whole week, lying on a dirty straw-bed, without sheets or pillow, amidst the lowest and most disgusting class of the community; and her nervous system had been completely shattered by it.

All intercourse between the prisoners was interdicted. Had we been adjudged to the condemned cell more rigorous measures could not have been enforced.

Miss Mackall was allowed to see her mother and sisters only in the presence of an officer. Intercourse thus restricted afforded but little pleasure. Still, it was a link between us and the outer world, which had not been appreciated at its full value until we were deprived of it.

It must not be supposed that I have related all the incidents which occurred in these first days. Under the eyes of the detective police I had received and answered despatches from my friends. Amongst them had been the order from my President to give up my cipher, upon specified contingencies. I am restrained, by prudential considerations, from mentioning many, and where the parties only escaped by the stupidity of my gaolers.

The efforts of the Black Republicans had been persistently to make the term Secessionist one of disgrace and reproach, and although they had with great assiduity courted the few Southern families who remained, there was no language too coarse for them to use in describing Secessionists - always, of course, assuming that the person addressed had too much self-respect to be thus classified. Every social element was brought to bear against the unhappy Southerner; ties of blood and kindred were arrayed in dread hostility, those who remained upon the Abolition side affecting to think that their family escutcheons had been tarnished by the misguided members who advocated the Southern cause, and constitutional liberty. No one suffered in this respect more than myself, for many members of my immediate family sided with the despot, and held high official position under him.

The detective police, who had hitherto had charge of me, now gave place to the military guard selected from one of the volunteer companies - the Sturgis Rifles, who hitherto constituted M'Clellan's bodyguard. A lieutenant and twenty-one men were detailed for this valorous duty.

The detective police, on resigning their charge, were very anxious that I should not be apprised of their true characters. They had assumed to be officers of the United States regular army, and deluded themselves with the idea that I had not discovered ‘the wolf under the sheep's clothing.’ My wish had been to foster this delusion by every means in my power, as I thereby gained some advantages; and I very reluctantly allowed myself to be enlightened on the subject by some enthusiastic young officers, who cherished the hallucination that honour still lingered under the old livery of the United States. The officer in charge of my prison, Lieutenant Sheldon, was directed by Captain Averil, U.S.A., chief of the Provost-Marshal's corps, to encourage me to write letters, which were to be subjected to the inquisitorial examination. Of this fact I was, however, to be kept in ignorance. To the honour of Lieutenant Sheldon, he did not lend himself to the plot. I availed myself, however, of the privilege of writing, and have certainly to thank this most sagacious captain for having afforded me the means of communication.

I was at this time seized with a taste for tapestry-work. The colours necessary for its prosecution came to me through the Provost-Marshal's Office, wound in balls, with simply a memorandum, by which I could always know the original arrangement of colours. I had made a vocabulary of colours, which, though not a very prolific language, served my purpose. My letters, above all things, puzzled these ‘wise men of the East,’ who finally came to the conclusion that, for a ‘clever woman, Mrs. Greenhow wrote the greatest pack of trash that was ever read.’

By way of justifying this opinion, I will submit a specimen of my epistolary efforts: ---

‘Tell Aunt Sally that I have some old shoes for the children, and I wish her to send some one down town to take them, and to let me know whether she has found any charitable person to help her to take care of them.’ My immediate correspondent was of course ignorant of the true meaning But, carried to that respectable old lady, ‘Aunt Sally,’ she read it thus:---‘I have some important information to send across the river, and wish a messenger immediately. Have you any means of getting reliable information?’

Of course my versatility of mind was exercised to vary the style and character of these effusions, so as not to attract attention to them, and I am glad to state that in this effort I was eminently successful.

Miss Mackall, although not a prisoner, was subjected to most of the restrictions in this house of bondage, the freedom originally allowed her being, as I rightly judged, for the purpose of ensnaring others. These clumsy tricksters could not comprehend the sacrifices which a woman will make in the performance of a duty which commends itself alike to her judgment and feelings. I could have escaped the snare set for me, but I should thereby have one great injury to our cause. Few would have ventured, after such an example of timidity, to furnish the necessary information, or encounter the odium of being supposed to sympathise with the rebels.

I felt it to be my post of duty whatever danger threatened, and that I at least would cast no reproach upon my party in going through the trying ordeal; that every woman's heart throughout the South, would make my cause their own; and that, so far from intimidating, the knowledge that one of their sex was suffering for the same faith, in the prisons of the tyrant, would nerve the most timid to deeds of daring.

The idea of the Yankees at first was to hold me up conspicuously before the eyes of the public as a terrible example and a warning. In this they signally failed, for I became, even amongst their own people, an object of interest. And one of their own papers, the ‘New York Times,’ some months later, said, ‘Had Madam Greenhow been sent South immediately after her arrest, as we recommended, we should have heard no more of the heroic deeds of Secesh women, which she has made the fashion.’

On the 7th of September my child was taken very ill. In consequence I wrote to Provost-Marshal Porter, asking that my family physician might be allowed to visit her. With characteristic humanity he refused, and proposed to send me one of his own creatures, whom I declined to receive, preferring to trust her life to the care of the good Providence which had so often befriended me.

A few days after, a Dr. Steward was introduced. He was a vulgar, uneducated man, bedizened with enough gold-lace for three field-marshals; and endowed with a considerable degree of ‘modest assurance.’ He evidently expected, by affected bonhomie, to overcome my repugnance to his visits; but he reckoned without his host, for, if my confessor had come to me under such auspices, I should think that the devil had been tampering with him, and refuse to receive him.

The routine of my prison-life was constantly varied by some new device, on the part of my captors, to obtain legal evidence against me. They had already subjected me to an ordeal little short of the ‘celebrated question’ of the Spanish Inquisition, by a total disregard of all the laws of decency. Every feeling of the woman had been shocked and outraged, and they now sought to act upon my nervous system, by dark insinuations and threats against my life and reputation. My papers had been examined with a minuteness bordering upon the farcical. Letters were found from most of the gifted and great in our Southern land, whom they now branded as traitors; copies of some of my own letters, also, both before and after Lincoln's ill-fated elevation, expressing in earnest language my appreciation of the coming dangers, and, in some instances, warning my correspondents to ‘take time by the forelock.’ These, however, added no link in the chain of evidence, but only served to magnify in their eyes my mental I ability, and consequent capacity to injure them, and redouble their anxiety to convict me.

The despatches already in their hands, and which had caused them to tremble even in the midst of their armed Hessians, at best would be but circumstantial evidence against me; and my connection with these even would have to be established upon the testimony of that double spy, Applegate, whom Cameron had sent in that capacity to Manassas, under the pretext of obtaining the body of his brother; and this man I could have proved to have been in the pay of our army, and had furnished some valuable information.

Mr. Seward, in spite of the obfuscation of his perceptive faculties, retained enough of his legal acuteness to know that, in so grave a matter as trial for treason, the charge must be sustained by two respectable witnesses, and that any case made out against me, upon the evidence before them, would have been dismissed from every court in Christendom. I did not shrink from this trial; and when repeatedly warned that it might take place, said, ‘Let it come. I will claim the right to defend myself, and there will be rich revelations.’

The Government having come to the sage conclusion that Mrs. Hasler was one of my agents, hoped, through her credulity or fears, to obtain additional testimony against me. With this object, the spy Applegate was brought to see her. She received him with unsuspecting confidence, and drank in with greedy ears his marvellous tales. He complained bitterly of having been searched and badly treated, before he was allowed to see her, and exhibited his torn hat in evidence. His great object, he said, was to fall upon some plan of communicating with me, as he had information of importance for me, and asked her if she could communicate.

This programme had been all arranged at the Provost- Marshal's by General Porter and his subordinate knaves; Captain Averil being entitled to the suggestion of tearing the hat.

I had been warned of all this in advance, but had not thought it advisable to apprise Mrs. Hasler of it. She could not commit herself further to this man than she had already done; neither had I any apprehensions concerning myself, as she knew nothing, having simply acted as agent, on several occasions, for the transmission of despatches, of the purport of which she was as ignorant as the mail boy of the contents of his bag.

It was proposed to confront this worthy agent with me, but his own fears rendered abortive every effort of this kind. He lived in mortal dread of his life, and when a friend of mine went to see him, in order to obtain for me some information, he found him double-locked in his room, with a pistol lying on either side of him. He soon after left the city, lest he should pay the penalty of his crimes.*

This incident, as well as others which had preceded it, will convince the Abolitionists that, although they held me in close confinement, my system of espionage was more perfect than their own.

This Dr. Stewart was, I fancy, destined to be my bête noire. He said that he was ordered by Provost- Marshal Porter to make a daily inspection of my sanitary condition. His vanity was enlisted in this. He wished to be able to say, in the course of his morning rounds, ‘I have just been to see the rebel prisoner Mrs. Greenhow, and she says so and so.’ I had no idea of permitting this, and therefore told him that I did not desire to receive his professional visits, as I was perfectly well, &c. He wrote * This man, Applegate, was subsequently chief of the detective police at Memphis, where it is said he did a good business by restoring to their masters, at 200 dollars per head, the negroes stolen by General Sherman, who was then in command at this place. a prescription for Miss Mackall, in English, every word of which was misspelt, and signed himself ‘Brigand Sargent.’ I laughingly mentioned the circumstance of a physician's writing a prescription in other than Latin. By some means my remarks reached him; so, on the repetition of his visit on the following day, he addressed me with ‘Good morning, Mistress Greenhow; is there anything Materia Medica can do for you to-day?’ Recalling forcibly to my mind the story of the Irishman: - ‘Parlez-vous Français? - Oui. - Then lend me the loan of a gridiron.’

I now told Materia Medica that his visits were intrusions on my privacy, offensive to me, and requested that they might be discontinued. It will hardly be credited that after this I should have been subject to the annoyance again. On the day succeeding he came in as usual, with unblushing effrontery, not even deigning to knock at my door. I took no notice of him, but sent for Lieutenant Sheldon to take charge of my formal protest against the continuance of the outrage. This he did, making also verbal representations which relieved me from further sanitary inspection.

About this time a stable in the rear of my whilom home - my prison - caught on fire, through the neglect of some drunken soldiers by whom it was occupied. It created the wildest alarm; the whole of the provost-guard, headed by Captain Averil, rushed to the scene of action, and surrounded the house. The following morning the Government organ contained an account of ‘a very daring attempt at rescue of the rebel prisoners (with a diatribe against me personally), of so resolute and desperate a character that it had to be repulsed at the point of the bayonet.’

This veracious statement was concluded by a high compliment to the intrepidity and courage of Captain Averil, for having defeated this imaginary effort to defraud justice, which was furnished, I was told, by himself.

Somewhere about the 8th of September, Honourable Edwin M. Stanton, accompanied by Judge-Advocate Colonel Key, came to see Mrs. Philips and family, to make arrangements for their being sent South on parole, which was effected a day or two afterwards.

Mr. Stanton came also to see me. I had, of course, no idea of the position he was subsequently to hold in the Abolition Cabinet; neither had he at that time. After some preliminary conversation, he asked me what I had done to bring down the wrath of the Abolitionists upon my head. I answered, I had been guilty of lèze-majesté, and hence my incarceration; in fact, that I knew not the charge, and, for the purpose of ascertaining it, and forcing the Government to a consideration of my case, I now wished to employ him as my counsel, to obtain a writ of habeas corpus.

This he declined, accompanied by expressions of high appreciation and proffer of service in any other way - to which I of course attached no value. I had previously applied to Judge Black, Attorney-General under Mr. Buchanan, and to the Honourable R.J. Walker, both of whom I had known intimately; and this last effort convinced me that no Northern man had the courage or the desire to attempt to stem the tide of Northern usurpation, which was destined to sweep like an avalanche over the land, destroying civil liberty, and establishing in its stead an irresponsible military despotism.

I felt now that I was alone, and that the wall of separation from my friends was each hour growing more formidable

A new grievance was also put upon me. Miss Mackall, who up to this time had remained with me, was, on the 25th of September, abruptly taken away, and all intercourse or communication with me interdicted. So rigid had become the rules that persons were warned, under penalty of arrest, from walking or driving by the prison. A police-officer dogged eternally poor Lily's footsteps, which so harassed and annoyed her, that she often prayed for the protection of her prison-life.

Wearily and heavily now passed the days and weeks. Another plan was also adopted to reduce me to submission. My food, which up to this time, though plain and often uneatable, had been sufficiently abundant, was now so reduced in quantity and quality, as to be inadequate often to satisfy the cravings of hunger. My child, as well as myself, suffered greatly under this new infliction. I wrote to Provost-Marshal Porter, protesting against this inhumanity, but he turned a deaf ear to my remonstrance; and my little Rose (who was allowed to play on the pavement, under escort of a guard) was often indebted to the kind friends who sent her food whilst there, that she should not cry herself to sleep from hunger.

Those Yankee descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers had improved upon the ancestral practice of burning and hanging and quartering their enemies, by quartering and starving theirs.

An outrage was now perpetrated, more foul, more galling to me as a woman, than any which had preceded it. A woman of bad repute, known and recognised by several of the guard as such, having been seen in the streets of Chicago in the exercise of her vocation, calling herself Mrs. Onderdunk, was brought to my house, and placed in the chamber of my deceased child adjoining mine. For what object I know not, but this woman was allowed unrestricted intercourse with me, the order being given that our meals should be served together. Here again my thanks are due to Lieutenant Sheldon; for so soon as the character of the woman became known to him, he restricted her to her apartment, in which she frequently received Mr. Frederick Seward, Under-Secretary of State; Mr. Webster, Private Secretary of the Secretary of State, and other persons officially connected with the Government.

It might have been supposed that my former social position, and that which members of my immediate family still held in the Federal city, would have protected me from this attempt to degrade me. But surprise will cease when the character of this people has been exhibited more clearly, and the unscrupulous and demoralising influences, brought by them to bear amidst the social relations of life, exposed.