The Sun.
London, England, 1862-12-02 00:00:00

PERSONAL LIBER7Y LV 7HE FEDERAL

STATES.

(From Vie Aew York World of .Nov. 12.)

'Whoever has a sister, a wife, or a daughter, and I
desires to know what pangs may come to him
through those tender ties ; whoever would learn
(beyond what Naples and the Inquisition can teach)
to what outrageous lengths the unbridled, un-
punished exercise of unlawful, despotic power will
run, may learn from the correspondence in the case
of Mrs. Brinsmade which we publish this morning.
Mrs. Brinsmade., a young and beautiful woman,
hardly out of her teens, possessing therefore neither
the self•restraint which comes with years nor the
cautious reticence of the other sex, two months ago
came North, under a pass from General Butler, in
the New Orleans steamer, in order to spend the
winter with her relativs in Washington and Troy.
Arrived in the former city, she is arrested without
warrant, imprisoned without trial, denied commu-
nication with her friends, kept closely guarded, at
length brought on to this city and thrown into
prison in the Forty-seventh-street station-house.
Tlll'ollo a hackman employed by the officer in
charge of her, her friends in this city learn of the
outrage; they apply civilly to the infamous Ken-
nedy, who made the arrest, to know its cause. They
are assailed with imprecations and threats that they
too shall be locked up if the inquiry is repeated.
Assured by a deputy that the prisoner is to be sent
to her father in New Orleans by the next steamer,
her friends cr.intent themselves with the hope that,
although 'every form of law, every guarantee of
civil and personal liberty has been violated by one
of the:r appointed custodians, the sufferer had at least
can'Aped without loss of life or of that which is dearer.

lint her wrongs were not yet ended. They did
not know the Kennedy. Perhaps they had never
heard of cell No. 4. 35 days afterwards a letter was
received by one of her friends, from which it was
le'.rnt that she was a close prisoner in the Forty-
seventh-street station-house, waited upon only by
male attendants, fed with prisoner's fare, a part of
the time prostrated by illness as well as grief, every
instinct of decency thus violated as well as every
form of law.
Two ladies then apply to the Kennedy for permis-
sion to see their friend. It is denied. They ask what
are the charges and who the accusers. " I, the Ken-
nedy, am the accuser; I arrested her. I put her and
keep her 'where she is, and she ought to be hanged."
Hopeless of redress from the brute whom this
infamy blasts up and down through all his lineage
and all in his posterity, Mrs. Brinamade's friends
applied to Provost Marshal Gen. Draper (Mr. Dra-
per promptly addressed himself to the Judge Advo•
cate Genr.:3ral, who said that he knew nothing of the
"ae) to Mr. Kennedy, who replied that she was
held. by order of Colonel Baker, Provost Marshal of
Washington ; to Colonel Baker and the Assistant
Secretary of War, who replied (proving that Ken-
nedy of course had lied) that the arrest had been
made by one of Mr. Kennedy's officers, and that
Mrs. Brinsmade was detained by him without any
authority whatever from the War Department;
whereupon Mr. Draper got from the Kennedy an
order for the lady's release, went in person and
executed it, and left her in the charge of her friends.
It is but justice to say that the War Department
is no further responsible for this particular outrage
than as responsibility as implied in its having been
guilty of similar ones, in its having committed
despotic and illegal power into the hands of a petty
Caligula, and in its having hitherto connived at
every license to which the itchings of a paltry police
despot and the instincts of a brute had goaded him
on.