spy and informer. This Baker admitted to Dr. Ellis that his arrest was caused by parties implicated in frauds on the Government, in New York, of which he had often expressed himself, and, to get him out of the way, had him arrested. The parties to these outrages were high army officials, some of whom had grown jealous of the well earned praise bestowed on Dr. Ellis by the most prominent members of both houses of Congress, and while in prison they suppressed his letters to these gentlemen and his friends. At length the British Minister, Lord Lyons was informed of his imprisonment, but as Dr. Ellis had worn the United States uniform he hesitated to interfere in his case. Thus the very services he had rendered the country were made a barrier to his obtaining redress. However, Lord Lyons, on becoming fully satisfied of the injustice done him, and on conferring with the English Government, made a formal demand on Secretary Seward for his release, which, as soon as Secretary Stanton learned, he ordered his discharge, and falsely assured him he never heard of, much less ordered, his arrest. Dr. Ellis is now through his minister seeking indemnity for wrongs and outrages committed on him, and the United State Government is still his debtor, not alone for those valuable services rendered to the wounded soldiers, but for money expended to purchase necessaries for the Hospital Transperts which the ignorance and imbecility of the heads of the Medical Department had failed to provide. While he was in prison his wife was subjected to every imaginable kind of annoyance, followed by spies, insulted by Detective Baker, robbed of her house and furniture, and slandered to attempt to justify the cruel treatment she and her husband had received.

Among the numerous incidents and aggravating circumstances connected with Dr. Ellis' arrest and

imprisonment, I will mention that when the detectives visited his house on the night of his arrest, they took forcible possession of all his private papers and brought them to Washington, and on Dr. E.'s release Dectective Baker admitted to Dr. E. that one of the persons implicated in these frauds on the Government had frequently tried to get possession of them, evidently for the purpose of destroying them, and thus prevent their being used as evidence to convict them in their gigantic swindling. Dr. E., on his papers being demanded, made no delay to surrender them, and freely showed the officers every part of his house. These officers, named Morse and Radford, freely admitted that they could not find anything to convict him, and expressed their censure of the injustice done him, and their conviction of his innocence, and for which Morse, the one in the employ of the War Department, was dismissed from his situation as Detective of the War Department.

Dr. Ellis, on his arrival in Washington in the custody of this Morse, was taken to the office of Chief Detective Baker. He demanded an investigation, or to be informed of the nature of the charges against him, if any, as he had, during the journey from New York, heard from Detective Morse that the statement he made him in New York of Dr. E.'s being only wanted as a witness in Washington, was false, this being the means usually adopted by them to make arrests, so as to prevent their victim being rescued. To his demand, a person acting as deputy for Detective Baker, named Lawrence, replied that he did not know the nature of the charge against him, and if he did he would not tell it, that his orders from the Secretary of War were to commit him to the Old Capitol prison. But ten weeks after this date the Secretary of War, his assistant, and the Judge-Advocate, as before stated, assured his wife that they had no

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knowledge of his arrest, and had not authorised it to be made. While Dr. Ellis was acting Medical Director in Virginia with the Army of the Potomac, he met Senator Chandler, Assistant Secretary of War Tucker, General Dix, and many other prominent supporters of the Lincoln administration, and as he had rendered valuable services to the government of which they expressed their approbation, and for which they offered their influence, he naturally appealed to them on his being sent to prison to use their influence to get him a trial or statement of the charge against him, but more than one of them informed his friends that such was the state of affairs in Washington, that they dare not interfere, no matter how aggravated the case might be, without jeopardising their own position and perhaps their own liberty.

After the battle of Fair Oaks, Dr. Ellis had the sole charge and care of the wounded amounting to four thousand Union soldiers and nearly five hunred rebels; for these he had to provide transports, clothing, medicines, food, and the necessary articles of nourishment, and such was the want of system in the Medical Department, that on his arrival at the White House the last day of the battle, there were nearly five hundred mutilated soldiers lying on the railroad track as they had been thrown out of the cars without any provision being made for their care or removal. He at once proceeded to get steamboats to the railroad wharf, got them on board, had their filthy and blood-stained uniforms removed, procured food and stimulants for them, as many had lain on the battle-field twenty hours without any care. He procured nurses, performed any necessary operations, and selected surgeons for each steamboat, which as soon as filled, he despatched to a Northern port. In the execution of these laborious. duties he continued night and day with remission

for a week, having gone three days without eating food and during the whole time he never lay down until he had despatched over four thousand. The last three hundred and sixty-four he put on board of the steamer Louisiana to Philadelphia, where citizens turned out en masse to welcome back her brave but unfortunate troops, and to manifest their appreciation for Dr. Ellis's unceasing devotion to their interests. On arrival at Philadelphia, Dr. Ellis on consultation with the Medical Director at that city, decided on giving furloughs to such of the wounded soldiers as were able to reach their homes, and this measure gave very general satisfaction; he also reformed the mode of using as hospital nurses the idle, lazy and dishonest men found in the ranks, believing that a soldier when suffering from wounds or sickness contracted in the discharge of his duties, should not be left at the mercy of the idle, vicious, or dishonest. These reforms, which have since been sanctioned by Congress, were at the time opposed by the head of the Medical Department, as being too progressive and ahead of his plans, and though at this time he informed Dr. Ellis that he had heard of his valuable services and "felt grateful for them," as they had "saved him and the country from disgrace," yet he never after lost an opportunity to make light of those services, and Dr. Ellis is of opinion that he was mainly instrumental in procuring his arrest, and prolonging his imprisonment, by causing the suppression of his communications to the authorities demanding an investigation. His release however was effected by the interposition of Lord Lyons and gentlemen of New York, who brought the matter to Mr. Stanton's notice, and obtaining an order for his unconditional discharge, on the 8th January last.

THE OTHER VICTIMS IN O. C. P.

ALTHOUGH but a few of the cases of victims of despotism in the Old Capitol Prison are given in this work, it is not because the others did not possess equal interest with those specially referred to. Every one of these cases has a history of its own; but the scope of this work will not enable the writer to give them all. To do so would put the book he designs to publish out of the reach of the millions. for whose perusal it is specially designed. The time might come when every case of outrage to American freemen, by the sworn guardians of their persons and property, will be sought for by their fellow citizens, and when these victims of despotism will be vindicated, so far as their grievances were caused by devotion to the Constitution of their country, and by their efforts to preserve constitutional liberty in these United States; and when, too, appreciating their fidelity to the cause of their country, the names of these martyrs to liberty will be garnered and preserved as precious evidences that, even in the days of Abraham Lincoln, when the country was ruled by tyrants, and when the people were subjected to an odious and intolerable despotism, there were left a few who dared the worst penalties inflicted upon whoever presumed to exercise his God-given and constitutional rights.