Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1868-11-20
THE LAMAR CASE.
How Southern Citizens Were Arrested
and How Treated-A Pharisaical
ByPOerife Exposed.


How Southern Citizens Were Arrested
and How Treated-A Pharisaical
ByPOerife Exposed.
To the Editor of the Journal of Commerce.
| beg the privilege of your columns in
order to'correct some errors in your report
OF my case by Charles A. Dana, ESQ, for
false imprisonment in 1865, and to give
some OF the features Of the case, that it NAV
be IN some degree better understood,
L was not arrested during the rebellion"
nor IN Charleston, but on the 9th of
April, 1865, in the city of Savannah, three
months or more after had taken the am
nesty oath under President Lincoln, and
had been restored to all my rights of per-
son and property thereby-more than two
weeks after the cessation of hostilities. and
more than three months aftsr l had been
under the protection of the constitution of
the United States, which I had sworn TO
support.
was SICK, and was arrested in my
dwelling, under the following order:
WASHINGTON, April %, 1S69.-Gen-
eral You will proceed Immediately to
Savannah and arrest G. 2. Lamar, and TO
South Carolina and arrest -, and keep
them in separate and close confinement
under strict guard, and bring them to
Washington City, reporting to the COM
handing general.
By order Of the President.
G. A. DANA,
Assistant Secretary of War.
To BEevet Rrigadief Gen. N. L. Jeffriea.
A guard Of six armed soldiers we're
placed in my house and at my bedroom
door, who were not remiss in stealing
everything they could secrete and remove.
The next day, with two soldiers on each
side, l was walked down to the steamer,
transported to Hilton Head, and then re-
moved to another steamer, with soldier
or officer always iby my side, and no con-
sideratiOn made for my sick condition /;
and thus, in defiance of the Declaration of
Independence, and of the constitution of
the United States, was transported eight
hundred miles, not for trial, but for re-
venge.
Gen. Jeiiries had consented that my
daughter, nineteen years of age, should &C
company me as my nurse, assuring me
that all my friends should have access to
me. Ga reporting TO the Department, he
was lectured for his lenity, and assured she
HuOulu uOh lClldlu III INT CITY. lnETG were
three ladies going from the hotel to New
York the next day, and arranged for her
to go with them to a house of a relative
there; but that was not allowed, and a
lieutenant Of the army was seat to the no.
tel, who took her by force and carried her
! to New York.
was cent to the Old Capitol Prison, and
placed in room seventeen by twenty
three, with fifteen persons already in it,
each with single bsdstead, and with dirty
blankets, no sheets, soldiers rations, and
millions of bedbugs. OF course my disease
grew worse, my attacks more frequent and
greater duration. The surgeon, DR.. Ford,
gave, at intervals of five days, two official
certificates that | could not recover with
out exercise in the fresh air. They were
sent in the official channel to the Depart
meat, with the request for such exercise,
| but no notice was ever received Of them.
After more than two months incarCera-
lion, l saw, in July, notice of Mr.. D1na'5
| intentiOn to retire from the Department.
| Whereupon | addressed him note by Col.
Colby, then in command of the prison
guards, asking to be informed, before he left,
what were the charges against me, and
when l might have a trial. He replied
that ne knew of no charges against me,
and, of course, could not say when a trial
would take place, and from that day TO
this never heard Of any charges against
me, and | am sure none can be brought,
with truthful foundation. But while 1
was thus shut up in prison, and my friends
| refused access to me, measures were taken
and executed, contrary to law, by which the
Treasury agents deprived me of upwards Of
twenty-five hundred bales of cotton, be-
sides some which we're taken by persons OF
whom had bought and paid for it.
Mr.. Dana is probably descendant ofthe
Puritaus "a genuine Pharissical one-who
processes great reverence for the Bible, but
omits entirely to practice any of its pre-
cepts-which command him to relieve
those who are sick and in prison.
Of what crime had my daughter been
tried and convicted, that she was trans.
ported from the metropolis of the country
by an armed military stranger? But trials
and convictions are not in vogue in the
War Department except by military
tribunals, specially organized and in
structed 10 convict.
1t was intended to put me under that
kind of tribunal, and two suborned wit
nesses Of the Department had sworn that ]
employed them, in Richmond to assassinate
President Lincoln in 1864 But they re-
canted their own periuries without my
hearing anything Of 1t, until year after.
wards. | had not been in Richmond since
1861. G. B. LAMAR, SR.
Savannah, November 7, 1868.