On the 25th of April, 1863, Garfield issued a circular to the Army of the Cumberland, upon the barbarities and unspeakable outrages of the Southern prison-pens. The circular contained a verbatim statement by an escaped prisoner of his treatment by the rebels. After a few burning words, General Garfield concluded: “We can not believe that the justice of God will allow such a people to prosper. Let every soldier know that death on the battle-field is preferable to a surrender followed by such outrages as their comrades have undergone.” Every word of the circular was true. The time may come, when the South will be forgiven for fighting for principles which it believed to be right. The time may come when the sorrows of the North and South will become alike the sorrows of each other, over the ruin wrought by human folly. The right hand of fellowship will be extended. The Southern people, as a people, may be relieved of the fearful charge of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and posterity may come to look at it as the infernal offspring of a few hell-born hearts. The day is upon us when much of this is already true. But the men who directly or indirectly caused or countenanced the starvation, the torture, the poisoned and rotten food, the abandonment to loathsome disease, the crowding of thousands of Union prisoners into stockades, opening only heavenward, and all the other unparalleled atrocities of the Southern prisons, atrocities that violated every rule of warfare; atrocities, to find the equals of which the history of barbarous and savage nations, without the light of religion, or the smile of civilization, will be ransacked in vain, shall be handed down to an eternity of infamy. They shall take rank with the Caligulas, the Neros, the inquisitors, all the historic monsters in human form, whose names and natures are the common dishonor and disgrace of mankind. About this time there appeared in Rosecrans’s camp, with drooping feathers, but brazen face, the thing which patriotism denominated “a copperhead.” He was a northern citizen by the name of Vallandigham, from Garfield’s own State, who had been ostracised by his neighbors for his treason, and compelled to leave the community of patriots to seek congenial company within the rebel lines. He was to have an escort to the enemy’s camp. A squad waited outside to perform this touching task, under the cover of a flag of truce. Vallandigham, who had the mind, if not the heart, of a man, in forced jocularity dramatically spoke the lines from _Romeo and Juliet_— “Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.” Quick as thought Garfield completed the quotation— “I must begone and live, or stay and die.” The joke was funny to every one but Vallandigham, but he was the only man in the room who laughed aloud.