ten this letter on my bed, sitting on the floor, upon a carpet bag, there being neither table, chair, stool or bench in the room.
"I have the honor to be
"Your obedient servant,
"CHARLES HOWARD."
"Fort La Fayette, N. Y. Harbor, August 7th, 1861. "Hon. SIMON CAMERON, Sec’ry of War,
"Sir:—
"I addressed a communication yesterday to Colonel Burke, which he advised me he has forwarded to Washington. In reply, he has written a note to Lieutenant Wood, and instructed him to read it to us. The substance of this note was, that as some of the letters we had written to our families, if they were to find their way into the newspapers, 'might influence the public mind,' the Colonel had thought it proper to forward them all to the headquarters of the army. He further stated that the orders he had received were, to 'treat us kindly, but keep us safely.' As to the first part, allow me to say, that whatever our condition may be, the minds of our friends, and of all others, who may feel any interest in the matter, will surely be less apt to be influenced unfavorably towards the government by knowing the truth about us, than they will be by their finding that our communications with them are intercepted, and that they are allowed to hear nothing whatever as to how we are treated. They will necessarily conclude that our imprisonment is exactly like that of those who used to be confined in the Bastile, (as in fact it is,) who were allowed to hold no communications except such as might be entirely agreeable and acceptable to their custodians. They will, of course, be kept in a continual state of great anxiety and uneasiness, and their sympathies will be constantly excited in our behalf. The distress that will thus be inflicted upon our families, can be termed nothing less than cruelty. In the next place, it is hard to conceive how it can be reconciled, with anything like the idea of 'kind treatment,' to prohibit our reception of all newspapers whatever, or the unrestricted delivery to us, without examination, of all letters that may be addressed to us ; whilst it certainly cannot be shown that such prohibitions are at all necessary to ensure our 'safe-keeping.' The
