When General Mackall was exchanged out of Fort Warren he told me of two other prisoners, civilians, Andrew Low and Charles Green. The latter had married my cousin, and both were Englishmen of the regular holdfast, energetic type. They constituted the most important business house in Savannah, were making quantities of money, but had quarrelled and were about separating on the worst terms, when Seward's detectives, suspicious of their movements (they had both married in Savannah and were truly Southern and Confederate), clapped them in Fort Warren. There by the irony of fate they were the sole occupants of the same casemate, these quondam friends, now bitter, non-speaking enemies. The situation was difficult and rather enjoyed by some gentlemen outside who knew of the partners' troubles.
Treatment of prisoners of war at Fort Warren (Boston Harbor) appears to have been proper and unobjectionable. The governor, Colonel Dimmock, was a gentleman and knew what was due to his own reputation, as well as what his prisoners had a right to expect. There were marked contrasts elsewhere, as at Fort Johnston, but in all the four years there was yet to be found a prison commandant surpassing the brutalities of Miles. His chief distinction then appears to have been in manacling the helpless President of the Confederate States, who was advanced in years, feeble in health, with no friends near, and that in the strongest fortress in the United States, with a large garrison and a guard literally standing over the prisoner night and day, and not a Confederate organized force in existence.
Lee was an aggressive general, a fighter. To succeed, he knew battles were to be won, and battles cost blood, and blood he did not mind in his general's work. Although always considerate and sparing of his soldiers, he would pour out their blood when necessary or when strategically advisable. His army had become much strengthened, troops filled its ranks from Georgia, South and North Carolina, being drawn from the coast, where they were doing nothing. His divisions had among them Longstreet's, A. P. Hill's, Magruder's, D. H. Hill's, McLane's, D. R. Jones's, Huger's, and Whiting's--a splendid force, nearly eighty thousand men, including Jackson's. The latter was in the Valley, soon to be with us. Lawton had just taken his immense brigade of six thousand men from Savannah to reinforce him, and the Georgians were having some lively marching and fighting in "Stonewall" Jackson's way. It was evident that the General was soon to make his great attack to crush McClellan, whose dispositions were so faulty as to offer a tempting mark. His army greatly outnumbered ours. He had thrown it across the Chickahominy and its two wings were again exposed. There were quiet but intense preparations for the important movement.