The General was still occupying, with his hospitable family, the elegant residence of an absent Rebel, in the Garden District. General Sheridan was not less comfortably quartered; and one who had heard of Sheridan and his bold riders only from the newspapers, would have been surprised at being led over velvet carpets, through spacious saloons, to find them. “I’d a great deal rather be allowed to take a good cavalry brigade and cross the Rio Grande,” said the uneasy soldier. “I’d ride, with such a force as that, from Matamoras to Mexico.” ----- Footnote 34: See Appendix, note C. CHAPTER XXVII. A Free-labor Sugar Plantation. At last came the inevitable hour which forever clouds our pleasantest experiences of travel—the hour for parting. It was once or twice postponed, but the advancing summer admonished us to make no more delays. Mr. May insisted that we should not cease to be his guests till he had shown us his sugar plantation, and so a pleasant party was made up to accompany us. Among them was Mr. B. F. Flanders, a gentleman who, as the candidate of the Radical Free-State men for Governor against the Banks ticket, had been generally called the leader of that party. He is a man of fine presence, with clear, handsome Grecian face. As Special Agent of the Treasury Department, he has had control of millions, yet, I think, no one ever accused him of corruption, though many have pronounced his rulings unjust, and even Secretary McCulloch once went so far as to call him “a very mischievous officer.” Like a large proportion of the prominent men in the South, he has been there so long as to be generally considered a native, although he originally came from the North. A quarter of a century ago he was a young school-teacher, attracted Southward by the larger salaries common in that region. Before the outbreak of the war he was Treasurer of the New Orleans and Opelousas Railroad. Some time after the establishment of the Confederacy, New Orleans became too hot to hold him, and, in common with Cuthbert Bullitt, who persisted in hoisting the United States flag on Jeff. Davis’s day of thanksgiving, and a number of other more or less prominent politicians, he had to make his escape to the North. Mr. Denison, a young Texas planter before the war (and during Mr. Lincoln’s administration, and a part of Mr. Johnson’s, Collector of the Port of New Orleans), was another of the party. He, too, had been compelled to abandon everything, and escape North, by a painful and tedious journey through the mountains of East Tennessee. He lost sixty or seventy slaves by the war. “Several of them were preachers, too; none of your common negro preachers, but orthodox fellows, sound in doctrine, and good members of the Baptist Church.” “Yes,” explained another, “Denison owned six Baptist preachers, two blacksmiths, and a first-rate carpenter among his gang.” The expression was almost equal to that in Sherman’s famous