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as they "had an opportunity of being. But, if the situation of those who were fortunate enough to enjoy good health was almost insupportable, the condition of the sick was far worse. No provision whatever was made for them. Men suffering from various diseases were compelled to remain in their close and damp quarters, and struggle through as best they could. One man, "a political prisoner," had an acute attack of pneumonia, and lay for ten days in a damp, dark gun battery, with some thirty other prisoners. Ons of the privateersmen was dangerously ill with the same disease in the casemate in which so many of them were huddled together. When I obtained permission to carry him some little luxuries, I found him lying on the floor upon two blankets in a high fever, and without even a pillow under his head. He would have remained in the same condition had not the "political prisoners" relieved his necessities. It was not until he seemed to be drawing rapidly towards his end, that he was sent to a Hospital, somewhere on Staten Island.
Another man, a "political prisoner," manifested symptoms of insanity. His friends, and some of the physicians, who were among the prisoners, called Lieutenant Wood's attention to the case. He treated the statement with contemptuous indifference at the time, but a few days afterwards we learned that the man had been sent to the guard-house. Here he became thoroughly insane. Instead of being sent instantly to an Asylum, he was kept, for some ten days, in the guard-house, and in double irons. His friends were not allowed free access to him, and surrounded by strange soldiers, he was, at times, apparently in an agony of dread. His shrieks were fearful, and one night, as he imagined he was about to be murdered, his screams were painfully startling to hear. In some of these paroxysms, he was actually gagged by the soldiers. He was subsequently removed to an Asylum, where, I believe, he eventually improved or recovered. A letter, written by one of our number to the counsel of the unfortunate man, in Baltimore, urging the exercise of his influence with the Government, on behalf of the sufferer,
