Not a wink of sleep did we get that night. We had eaten too much supper for one thing, and besides our prison day seemed to be almost ended. We were marched to the railroad next morning, but the wind was blowing so hard that we were not sent away, as the vessels could not run in the harbor at Charleston. Just before night a ration of corn meal was issued to us and I have that ration yet. About ten o’clock that night we were ordered on board the cars and away we went to Charleston, where we arrived soon after daylight. We debarked from the cars and were marched into a vacant warehouse on the dock, where we remained until two o’clock p. m. when we were marched on board a ferry boat. The bells jingled, the wheels began to revolve and churn up the water and we are speeding down the harbor. All seems lovely as a June morning, when lo, we are ordered to heave to and tie up to the dock. We were marched off from the boat and up a street. It looked as though the Charleston jail was our destination, instead of that long wished for God’s Country. It seemed that the last train load had not been delivered on account of the high winds, and that we were to wait our turn. But we were soon countermarched to the boat and this time we left Charleston for good and all. My thoughts were busy as our boat was steadily plowing her way down the harbor to the New York, our exchange commissioner’s Flag Ship, which lay at anchor about a mile outside of Fort Sumter. To my left and rear Fort Moultrie and Castle Pinkney stood in grim silence. Away to the front and left, upon that low, sandy beach, are some innocent looking mounds, but those mounds are the celebrated “Battery Bee” on Sullivans Island. To my right are the ruins of the lower part of Charleston. Away out to the front and right stands Fort Sumter in “dim and lone magnificence.” To the right of Fort Sumter is Morris Island and still farther out to sea is James Island. What a scene to one who has had a deep interest in the history of his country from the time of its organization up to and including the war of the rebellion. Here the revolutionary fathers stood by their guns to maintain the independence of the Colonies. Here their descendants had fired the first gun in a rebellion inaugurated to destroy the Union established by the valor, and sealed with the blood of their sires. Misguided, traitorous sons of brave, loyal fathers. Such thoughts as these passed through my mind as we steamed down the harbor to the New York, but it never occurred to me that the waters through which our boat was picking her way, was filled with deadly torpedoes, and that the least deviation from the right course would bring her in contact with one of these devilish engines and we would be blown out of water. But look! what is that which is floating so proudly in the breeze at the peak of that vessel? “’Tis the Star Spangled Banner, oh! long may it wave, O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”