As to the prisoners, there were some two hundred of them standing about in groups, many of them smoking, listening to some talker in each group spinning yarns. To my astonishment, they did not all wear the Confederate grey, but many had butternut-colored jeans, and among the lot there was scarcely a well-dressed man. So far as I could judge, they were not feeling their imprisonment very badly, and I noticed that when the officer of the guard was absent they talked and joked quite freely with the guards upon the fence. Keen-eyed, sharp-looking fellows they were, and generally quite young men. At this time in my life I had not seen Europe with its fuss and feathers, and could not draw the comparison which I now can; but I can conscientiously say now, having been under almost every flag in the world, that America (Canada of course, as well, being the greater part of America) is pre-eminently a land of freedom, first, last and always. Going on to Chicago I remember I sold gold to pay my expenses; one dollar for $2.86 in greenbacks. Think of $2.86 for one of our dollars! Now was the time, I felt, to buy the bonds, and I was fully alive to the opportunity. My father and I, on looking over the situation, concluded we could put $200,000 of our money into United States currency. Now this sum at the premium of $2.86 would have given me, at a jump, $572,000. Yes, but again the 7-30’s and 5-20’s, as the bonds of those days were called, were sold so low and so much depreciated that one dollar of greenbacks would buy three dollars in bonds, or thereabout, as I now remember. Thus my $572,000 would have given me in bonds $1,716,000, which is another jump so big as to almost take one’s breath. There is yet more to tell, for after the war was done those very same bonds soon sold at an average of thirty per cent. premium. Of course, I am justified in adding this premium (that would amount to $515,800) to my bonds in calculation, which would give me $2,131,800. These are the millions I had in view all the time I was in Grant’s army when looking about to form an opinion. I never wavered for an instant in my faith, and I knew all the time that the North would conquer, if Louis Napoleon but kept his hands off and did not aid the South. Of the pluck of the South and their heroic efforts, which only Anglo-Saxons can and will make, it is not for me to speak in this article. Older men, and men educated in military affairs, told me as I met them in Washington, attached to the embassies, that the North must and would win, and that the God of battles would be on the side of the heaviest ordnance. Why I did not buy the bonds it is now necessary for me to tell to complete this tale.