It was a beautiful sight to see regiment after regiment mount the second breastwork, and watch them successively halt and cheer, and wave their colors as they crossed. I pushed on, scrambled over it, and found myself in the midst of five hundred of the prisoners. They were strange figures, in white blanket or carpet coats, having the same unintelligent faces as the one who had been killed outside. I stared at them, and they at me. They looked crestfallen and confused, but showed little feeling; and during the day I saw but few faces of common soldiers that awakened any pity. They, poor fellows, sat sadly looking at the scene. To one of them I spoke. He said he had done nothing to bring on the war; he had been for the Union, and had only enlisted a month before to avoid being impressed. His family lived, or had lived (he did not know where they were now), within a mile, and he would give a great, great deal to see them for only a minute. "Will your officers let me write to tell them I am alive?" "To be sure they will." "And will we be furnished with food?" "Yes, the same as our own soldiers." "Most of our men expected, if we surrendered unconditionally, that you would kill us." "You see we have not done so." "No, they have treated us very kindly: we have been deceived." Such was the tenor of our conversation. I may here say that our men behaved admirably; and I did not hear of a single indignity being offered to any of our prisoners. A few sentinels were placed around a regiment of prisoners, and, so far as appearances went, half of them might have escaped. But the woods around the fort contained regiments of our troops, and they knew the attempt would be hopeless. We were assigned the quarters of the Fiftieth Tennessee, and I slept in what had been the colonel's. It was a nice little house of oak blocks, laid up so that the wood and bark alternated, giving a very pretty tesselated appearance. They had all sorts of comforts, which we had never even hoped for at Camp Benton; and while we supposed they had been roughing it, found we had been roughing it ourselves. We invited the colonel and some of his officers to spend the night with us. I confess they behaved with dignity. They made no complaints, and submitted with quiet resignation to their changed circumstances; but they were Tennesseans, and though they made no professions in words, convinced us that they had been Union men at heart and wished the Union back again. One of us remarked, that if those who had been released heretofore had not abused it, and violated their pledges and oaths, the prisoners at Fort Donelson would probably be released in the same way. The lieutenant-colonel said he wished it could be so; he was confident none of his men would be thus guilty. "But," he added, "I don't blame the Government for sending us North; I acknowledge that I am a rebel taken in arms, and it is fully justified in treating me accordingly."