Those who yet believe that the rebels were in the main chivalric and honourable foes, may be asked what would they have thought of the French, if, during the German war, they had sent chests of linen, surcharged with small-pox venom, into Berlin, under charge of agents officially recognised by Government? What would they have thought of Germany, if official agents from that country had stolen into Paris and attempted to burn the city. Yet both of these things were attempted by the agents of the Confederate _Government_--not by unauthorised individuals. On one night, fires were placed in thirteen of the principal hotels of New York, while, as regards incendiarism, plots were hatched from the beginning in the South to treacherously set fire to Northern cities, to murder their public men, and otherwise make dishonourable warfare, the proof of all this being in the avowals and threats of the Southern newspapers. Immediately after the taking of Nashville by Thomas, the writer, with a friend, occupied a house in that town which had belonged to a rebel clergyman, among whose papers were found abundant proof that this reverend incendiary had been concerned in a plot to set fire to Cincinnati. In connection with these chivalric deeds of introducing small-pox and burning hotels, must be mentioned other acts of the rebel agents, sent by their Government on “detached service.” On the 19th October, a party of these “agents” made a raid into St. Albans, Vermont, where they robbed the banks, and then retreated into Canada. These men were, however, discharged by the Canadian Government; the money which they had stolen was given up to them, as Raymond states, “under circumstances which cast great suspicion upon prominent members of the Canadian Government.” The indignation which this conduct excited in the United States is indescribable, and the Canadian Government, recognising their mistake, re-arrested such of the raiders as had not made their escape. But the American Government, finding that they had few friends beyond the frontier, properly established a strict system of passports for all immigrants from Canada. The year 1864 closed under happy auspices. “The whole country had come to regard the strength of the rebellion as substantially broken.” There were constant rumours of peace and reconciliation. The rebels, in their exhaustion, were presenting the most pitiable spectre of a sham government. The whole North was crowded with thousands of rebel families which would have starved at home. They were not molested; but, as I remember, they seemed to work the harder for that to injure the Government and Northern people among whom and upon whom they lived, being in this like the teredo worms, which destroy the trunk which shelters and feeds them. CHAPTER XII.