have been in unison; while many of the economic problems which vex to-day our domestic policies would have been avoided, problems which threaten the life of our civilization if not the purity of the Anglo-Saxon race. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments would never have been written. The awful nightmare of reconstruction would never have been suffered. The bitter hatreds growing out of a consciousness of unmerited injuries suffered, the still bitterer ones arising from a knowledge of vindictive injuries inflicted—these would never have been engendered and the slavery problem would have been gradually and definitely settled by the South herself. From her education, experience, environments, self-interest, intimate acquaintance with the subject, and personal sympathy and affection for the slave she would have been best fitted to cope with it, under laws equally in the interests of both races, because tempered by the sympathy which then existed between master and slave. The delusion of a social and political equality, with its long train of evil consequences; discontent of both races with the existing order of things; outrages against young babes and aged women, crimes revolting to the very demons themselves; the consequent innumerable lynchings, debasing to our civilization, repugnant to our religion, and horrible to our consciences, but which from the force of blunted sensibilities are in danger of becoming law; mutual hatreds and animosities degrading alike to whites and blacks, and which can be defended, if at all, only on the plea of self-preservation, and which replace in a brief half century the love and confidence which had existed between the races for generations before; a saturnalia of vengeance the like of which modern times has never beheld, and at the memory of which the North may well hang her head in shame; the demoniac antipathy of the races, fast hurrying us along a path the distant future end of which no man can foresee, save that it must end in the extermination or subjugation (probably the former) of the weaker race, and for which the North will be directly and immediately responsible—all these and more would have been saved. Christianity would have received no shock, civilization no backset, as is now threatened, before this great and burning problem is finally and forever settled. Should the Northern people awake to a sense of their own moral responsibility on the one hand, their incapacity to cope with the subject on the other, and be prevailed on to withhold their hands from further interference with a matter of which they have no practical knowledge or experience, possibly the picture might be brightened. Will they do it? Doubtful
ROCK ISLAND—AN INCIDENT.
BY SEP W. ABBAY, NASHVILLE, TENN.
My old comrade and fellow-prisoner, Dr. J. B. Foster, now of Enzor, Miss., relates for you an incident that occurred when he was the principal actor at Rock Island Prison. He would give his only loaf of bread to a fellow-prisoner whom he thought was more in need of it than himself. We were always hungry, as rations were very scant. Foster undertook to get money to buy rations for the sufferers of Rock Island Prison. About twenty-one hundred of our men had deserted and joined the "Frontier Service." As an inducement to get the prisoners to desert and join the United States army, that government offered each one hundred dollars bounty. Foster determined to try to get some of this money for the use indicated.
These deserters were allowed to come in to the main prison to get water. Foster got some one to go up to the well where they were and see if he could not find some one who had received one hundred dollars bounty and say to him that he had a friend who would join them if he was certain they would give him the one hundred dollars bounty. Foster's man was successful, and he told the deserter that he would go and send the man up there to the well if he would return bringing the money with him. The deserter promised to do so. Foster, according to appointment, went to meet the deserter, who said: "I have five of the prettiest twenty-dollar bills in my hand you ever saw." Going behind the barrack and opening his hand to show his money, Foster clasped his left hand into the fellow's open hand and his right hand went to the man's throat, and he choked him down and got the one hundred dollars and ran for our barrack, where he belonged. As he passed me he said: "Abbay, there is going to be h—to pay in here in a few minutes." He never stopped, but kept on through the barrack, and in a little while he returned in an entire different suit of clothes.
Soon a lieutenant, with a file of soldiers and the owner of the hundred dollars, came to the barrack and asked for the orderly. I responded, when he ordered me to call my men in line. Then the officer, with the deserter following him, came first to me and said: "Is this the man who got your money?"
He replied, "No." He then went to each man and, placing his hand on him, asked the same question, the fellow answering no, until he came to Foster, when the deserter seemed to be puzzled. At last he said no, and they went on down the line, the fellow answering no to every man. The officer returned to Foster and asked again if he was the man who got the money.
Foster by this time became angry. He always twisted his mouth in speaking when in anger, and that twist of the mouth confirmed the man who had lost the one hundred dollars. Shaking his clinched fist in the fellow's face, Foster said:
"Don't you say I got your money." The poor fellow said:
"He's the man because he twisted his mouth that way when he choked me down."
The officer took Foster and carried him out. Foster reported afterwards that they stripped him nude and turned him loose in the prison. The snow was about eight inches deep, and a north wind was blowing, with the mercury nearly down to zero. He had come about two hundred yards in the snow. We saw him coming, and he was nearly frozen and very blue. We got him into the barrack as quickly as possible, and it was but a few minutes before we had him clothed, sharing our scant supply. Foster was kind-hearted and genial. He was full of life and fond of a joke, but sometimes carried a joke too far. On several occasions when he drew his loaf of bread he would divide it and go without until the next day. He was reckless, therefore, to a true comrade, but he despised spies and deserters. He was born near Liberty, Dekalb County, Tenn., and studied law under Col. John Savage. He went to Mississippi about the beginning of the Civil War. He joined the 15th Mississippi Infantry. He always has been a kind, good fellow and a true friend. He read medicine several years after the war and located near Meridian, Miss., where he has been practicing medicine for about thirty years.
Report of Losses at Vicksburg—Flag of an Illinois Regiment.—D. W. McMichael writes: "I visited Vicksburg not long ago and I saw on the tablets as well as I can remem-
