gentleman (his father) has been very earnest in devising plans all through the difficulties to reach, aid, or get you away as might be best. He came to me in Washington for your address and all particulars long months ago, hoping that he could reach you through just some such opening as the present. I state all this because it is due you that you should know the state of feeling held towards you by your old friends and acquaintances whether you choose to come among them or not. Even old Brine was in here a few minutes ago, and is trying to have Sam take a hundred dollars of _his_ money out to you, lest you should need it and cannot get it there; the old fellow urged it upon me with the tears running down his cheeks. There is no bitterness here, even towards the Southerners themselves, and men would give their lives to save the Union men of the South. The North feel it to be a necessity to put down a rebellion, and there the animosity ends. Now, my advice to you would be this; if you do not see fit to follow it, you will promise not to take offense or think me conceited in _presuming_ to advise you; under ordinary circumstances I would not think of the thing, as you very well know. I get my privilege merely from the different standpoint I occupy. No word or expression has ever come from you, and you are regarded as a Union man closed in and unable to leave, standing by your property to guard it. This expedition is supposed to have opened the way for your safe exit or escape to your native land, friends, and loyal Government, and if now you should take the first opportunity to leave and report yourself at your own Government you would find yourself a hundred times more warmly received than if you had been here naturally, all the time. So far as lay in the power of our troops your property would be sacredly protected, far more so than if you remained on it in a manner a little hostile or doubtful. I am not certain but the best thing for Mr. Riddick would be for you to leave just in this way, and surely I would have his property harmed no more than yours. I have understood Mr. Riddick to be a Union man at heart like hundreds of other men whom our Government desires to protect from all harm and secure against all loss. This being the case, the best course for both of you which could be adopted, in my judgment, is for you to leave with our troops. This will secure the property against them; they would never harm a hair of it intentionally knowing it to belong to you, a Union man who had come away with them, and you could so represent the case of Mr. Riddick that his rights and property would be respected by them. _He would be infinitely more secure for such a move on your part_, while his connection with you would, I trust, be sufficient to secure your property from molestation by his neighbors, who would be slow to offend or injure him. If you leave and your property be