“
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greater trouble to disprove” --evidently alluding to that of treason.
Other subjects were mentioned, and during the conversation he sent for and introduced his little boy. His conduct throughout was dignified, and eminently self-possessed.
He spoke with great precision, and with more than an ordinary degree of suavity, but, withal, producing upon me the impression that he was acting, and not unnaturally, a borrowed character.
After learning the disposition that I was ordered to make of him, he said: “I suppose, as a matter of course, that
Colonel Pritchard is to be my custodian hereafter as heretofore, and I desire to express my satisfaction at this, for,” continued he, “it is my duty to say that
Colonel Pritchard has treated me with marked courtesy and consideration.
I have no fault to find with him, and hope you will tell him so. I should do so myself but for the fact that it might look like a prisoner's effort to make fair weather with his captors.”
He spoke particularly of the dignity and self-possession of
Colonel Pritchard, and did not conceal a regret that he had not been so fortunate in his own conduct at the time of his capture.
The body of this article was prepared, from official documents and private memoranda, shortly after the end of the war, when the events referred to were fresh in my mind.
In re-writing it now, I have striven to set down naught in malice, and am sure that my narrative has not been colored in the slightest degree by the fact that the principal persons whom it concerns were leaders of the “lost cause.”
I have gathered all the information that could be had, and, such as it is, I now submit it to the public as my contribution to the history of the last days of the Confederacy, feeling fully assured that it cannot be controverted in any essential particular.
