five minutes after his arrival at the hotel before the train

came.

He was then taken, accompanied by the Marshal and some seven of his deputies, and handed over to the custody of Colonel Burke, then commanding at Fort Hamilton, and by him transferred to the custody of Lieutenant Wood, at Fort Lafayette, in New York Harbor. Here he remained a close prisoner until the 24th day of September of the same year; when he was released by order of Wm. H. Seward, Secretary of State. Mr. Wall was confined in cell No. 3, in that Fortress. It was an arched casemate with a brick floor, and lighted with two narrow barred windows. This cell was some fifteen feet in width by twenty in depth, and at the time of his incarceration contained some twenty prisoners. It was exceedingly damp, so much so that the moisture ran down the walls, saturating the bedding. Several of the prisoners, and himself among the rest, in consequence suffered from severe attacks of rheumatism. During the day, the prisoners had the range of the Fort, upon obtaining permission from the guards. In the evening at five o'clock they were locked in their cells, and not released until early in the morning. There were no conveniences of course for washing, and all that had to be done outside, with fetid water taken from a cistern containing the foulest of wells; indeed, for the first week, the water from the cistern was the only water that they had to drink, and several in consequence suffered from dysentery. Those of the prisoners who had money were permitted to form a mess, employing the steward of the Fort to furnish two meals a day; but those who had no means, were compelled to partake with the soldiers of the garrison, of their rough and scanty fair.

Their correspondence was submitted to the most rigid surveillance of the commander of the post, and all letters containing applications for release, or the employment of counsel, were returned to them, with a statement that by orders of the "Government," no such letters were allowed to pass out the Fort. Lieutenant Wood himself exhausted his ingenuity in devising

ways and means to annoy and irritate the prisoners, by the exercise of every species of petty tyranny. This man had formerly been a railroad conductor, and was rewarded by Lincoln with a commission in the army, on account of his services in carrying him safely from Harrisburg, at the time he went secretly to Washington, disguised in a Scotch cloak and military cap. At the time of Mr. Wall's confinement, there must have been over four hundred prisoners in the Fort. Some were blockade-runners, some were prisoners of war; but the greater part were prisoners of state, most of them from the Border States. The members of the Maryland Legislature only arrived the evening before he left, a new casemate having been opened for their accommodation.

He never to this day, has been able to ascertain the grounds of his arrest. He had been very active in denouncing the war and the constitutional violations of the rights of the citizen; and had for three months previously written the principal editorials of the New York "Daily News." He had also addressed a letter, which was published, to Montgomery P. Blair, then Postmaster General, denouncing severely the interference with the liberty of the press by that Department, in which, among other things, he said :

"Your recent high-handed unconstitutional act in preventing certain newspapers from being circulated through the mails, will meet, as it deserves, the indignant protest of every freeman. If the proscribed papers have reflected severely upon this tyrannical Administration, they had a perfect right so to do in a republic, where it has been our most cherished boast that the acts of our rulers were open to the freest scrutiny. In fact, the right of examining the character of our public servants, and commenting freely upon their public conduct, is the sentinel standing at the door, and guarding every other right. If the people relinquish this, they deserve to be slaves. . . . .

"Our fathers were intimate friends, and although your father to-day belongs to the Republican party, I cannot believe that he indorses the recent arbitrary acts of your Department; or else he must prove recreant to the doctrine he proclaimed years ago

in the Globe,' of which he was, at the time, the editor. In that able and influential journal, in speaking of the attempt made to pass a bill through the Senate, preventing the interference of Federal officers in elections, against which my father had made a report in his place in the Senate, as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, he once said: 'Under no possible circumstances, not even in insurrection, or amid the throes of civil war, could the Government justify official interference with the freedom of speech, or of the press, any more than with the freedom of the ballot. The licentiousness of the tongue or the pen is a minor evil, compared with the licentiousness of arbitrary power.' Little could he have then supposed that one of his own sons would lend himself to carry out an arbitrary edict, that prostrated this boasted freedom at a blow. Yet he has lived to see it.

the intense hatred of the lying Abolitionists of the city of Burlington. The Mayor of the city, Wm. R. Allen, and Jacob Lawmaster, the Postmaster, despatched a letter to Washington, declaring that he was a dangerous person, and the order came in response over the telegraphic wires, such as we have given above. "Those were times," as Mr. Wall said afterward in the U. S. Senate, on the Indemnity Bill, "when the post-offices had become each like the lion's mouth at Venice, where the secret and dastardly informer might lodge his lying accusation, and from a tribunal as inexorable as the far-famed Council of Ten, would come as swift and as sure over the telegraphic wires, the mandate that consigned the unsuspecting citizen to some military dungeon of the republic-it might be Fort Warren, it might be Fort Lafayette."

On his return home from his imprisonment, Mr. Wall was honored with a public ovation by the citizens of his town, which is thus described in the journals of his county:

"The release of Colonel Wall from Fort Lafayette, and his reception on Friday night, when he returned to his family, his home, and numerous friends, produced a rejoicing exceeding anything ever before known in that city. Notwithstanding the disappointment of a large number of people who had assembled at Mount Holly to come in by railroad, and the severity of a heavy storm of wind and rain, which made it impossible for hundreds of others to leave Beverly, Rancocas, Jacksonville, and other villages in our county-and so with many others in Philadelphia and Bristol, and many of our own citizens-there were not less than one thousand persons at the depot waiting his arrival.

He

"As he stepped upon the platform, the dense mass greeted him in the fulness of their hearts. It was no strained effort on the part of many who had sympathized with himself and family, for the cheers of welcome came long, loud, full, and free. entered a carriage in waiting, preceded by a large transparency, bearing the words: 'James W. Wall, the Defender of the Constitution, Welcome Home,' with the American flag. The carriage was encircled by a large number of men bearing torchlights,

followed by a band of music and some five hundred torch-bearers in procession.

"As the procession moved along, Main Street was filled with men, women, and children, while all the houses of prominent Democrats were illuminated. Continued cheering rent the air. At the steps of his residence he was received between two lines of young ladies, dressed in white, who strewed flowers along his pathway, from the carriage to the house. As he entered his door, the band struck up the air of 'Home, sweet home!' After a few moments spent with his family, he returned to his steps. and thus addressed the immense crowd that completely blocked up the square, as follows:

"MY FELLOW-TOWNSMEN: My heart is full to-night, so full that I can scarcely give adequate expression to the emotions that crowd upon me, as I look out upon this heartfelt, this magnificent demonstration. What a striking contrast is presented to the melancholy scene, hardly a fortnight ago, when I was dragged ruthlessly from these steps, torn mercilessly from the clinging embraces of the dear ones at home, and consigned to the tender mercies of the brutal military despotism that rules with iron sway within the gloomy walls of the American Bastile. This enthusiastic reception, my friends; these shouts of hearty welcome; these bright and happy faces; these beautiful flowers strewn in my pathway by such fair hands; the cheering, dancing light of your flaming torches; and the inscription on your transparencies all unite to convince me how lovingly you bear me in your hearts. Such a reception is the more welcome, because it wears a double significancy. It assures me, in the first place, that you, my neighbors and friends, among whom I have gone in and out so many years, sympathize with me in the cruel. wrongs and outrages to which I have been subjected. In the second place, it is a manifestation, strong as holy writ, that you believe that I am wholly innocent of any charge of disobedience to the laws, or any imputation upon my fame as a Constitutionloving citizen. "Charge," did I say? Why, my friends, would you believe it, from the hour that I was torn so ruthlessly from my home, through the long and tedious moments of my cruel imprisonment, up to this joyful moment, when I look out once more a freeman, over these kindly, gladsome faces, now upturned to