And how was it with Clara? Alas, the contrariety of the affections! Clara simply thought Kenrick a very agreeable young man: handsome, but not so handsome as Onslow; clever, but not so clever as Vance! ----- Footnote 27: General Ullmann writes from New Orleans, June 6, 1863, to Governor Andrew: “Every man (freed negro) presenting himself to be recruited, strips to the skin. My surgeons report to me that _not one in fifteen_ is free from marks of severe lashing. More than one half are rejected because of disability from lashing with whips, and the biting of dogs on calves and thighs. It is frightful. Hundreds have welts on their backs as large as one of your largest fingers.” Footnote 28: Abercrombie relates an authenticated case of the same kind. A woodman, while employed with his axe, was hit on the head by a falling tree. He remained in a semi-comatose state for a whole year. On being trepanned, he uttered an exclamation which was found to be the completion of the sentence he had been in the act of uttering when struck twelve months before. Footnote 29: Among the foul records the Rebellion has unearthed is one, found at Alexandria, La., being a stray leaf from the diary of an overseer in that vicinity, in the year 1847. It chronicles the whippings of slaves from April 20 to May 21. Of thirty-nine whippings during that period, _nineteen were of females_. We give a few extracts from this precious and authentic document:— “April 20. Whipped Adam for cutting cotton too wide. Nat, for thinning cotton.—21. Adaline and Clem, for being behind.—24. Esther, for leaving child out in yard to let it cry.—27. Adaline, for being slow getting out of quarters.—28. Daniel, for not having cobs taken out of horse-trough.—May 1. Anna, Jo, Hannah, Sarah, Jim, and Jane, for not thinning corn right. Clem, for being too long thinning one row of corn. Esther, for not being out of quarters quick enough.—10. Adaline, for being last one out with row.—15. Esther, for leaving grass in cotton.—17. Peggy, for not hoeing as much cane as she ought to last week.—18. Polly, for not hoeing faster.—20. Martha. Esther, and Sarah, for jawing about row, while I was gone.—21. Polly, for not handling her hoe faster.” A United States officer from Cambridge, Mass., sent home this stray leaf, and it was originally published in the Cambridge Chronicle. Footnote 30: See Chapter XII. page 112. CHAPTER XXVIII. A LETTER OF BUSINESS. “This war’s duration can be more surely calculated from the moral progress of the North than from the result of campaigns in the field. Were the whole North to-day as one man on the moral issues underlying the struggle, the Rebellion were this day crushed. God bids us, I think, _be just and let the oppressed go free_. Let us do his bidding, and the plagues cease.”—_Letter from a native of Richmond, Va._