“He was arrested at a quarterly meeting on Friday night, and marched on foot on Saturday nine miles, being refused the privilege of riding his own horse: and on Sabbath he was landed at Knoxville. He is a large, fleshy man, weighs two hundred and eighty-one pounds, and was recovering from a long spell of fever. He gave out at a spring some seven miles from where he started. The day was warm, and his feet were sorely blistered. He begged permission to ride; he was refused, cursed, denounced and threatened with bayonets! His horse was led after him as if to aggravate him. They even refused him water to drink or anything to eat until Sunday.” He is represented in the same editorial to have had “the confidence of men of other denominations.” That he was “a very poor man, with a wife and six helpless children” could have availed him nothing had he been guilty, but the absence of all evidence that he had done anything for which he should be punished, induced his discharge after three days custody in camp, “without entering into bonds or taking any oath.” Some of the Union men arraigned before Judge Humphreys were temporarily imprisoned. It was not, however, until his departure from the scene and after the bridge-burnings, that more severe measures were adopted against that class of citizens. Commissioner Robert B. Reynolds presided over these stringent proceedings at first and for some time. He was a native Tennesseean, had “the courage of his opinions” and had been conspicuous as one of the few and faithful, who at the home of Hugh Lawson White, adhered to Martin Van Buren as Andrew Jackson’s lineal successor. Afterwards he was a Paymaster in the United States Army. Probably his appointment to the office of Confederate States Commissioner was more due to two of his qualifications than to anything else. These were, his great zeal for “the South,” according to a current phrase, “in its contest for its rights,” and his understood inflexibility of will. There were members of the Bar who thought his knowledge of the Law to be deficient, and his adversaries attributed brusqeness and austerity to his judicial manner. On the other hand, his political friends commended his performance of duty to the Government he served with such full and ardent sympathy. No one could complain of him for want of diligence and energy as a worker.