25
                   Southern Prisoners.
thought of the Queen�s proclamation and inter-
national obligations ! I told him that as he had
had voluntarily entered the Southern army
in defiance of said proclamation he must ac-
cept the consequences.  Discussing the war,
I admitted the right of secession, but asserted
that the South had exercised it in such a man-
ner as absolutely to compel the North to go to
war, hence I sided with it.  This didn�t
please my friends at all.  Furthermore I ob-
jected to some Southern peculiarities in waging
it, instancing the Yorktown torpedoes.  This my
�Louisianian tiger� considered a d____d yankee
lie.  I told him I had seen it, when he said
something about my being only a reporter, who
was never in any danger, who stayed in the
rear and wrote any d____d lies they told me,
I said that if I were captured by the enemy,
perhaps no man in the Union army would have
a worse look-out than I.  �Why ? you�re a
civilian and non-combatant.� �Yes, but I
represent a paper particularly obnoxious to the
South � you may have hear of it? � The New
York Tribune ! �  It was curious to notice the
looks that were turned on me.  �Oh ! Greeley,
eh?  They�d string you up to a tree damned
quick ! � said the Louisianian.  �I knew that,