same, do hereby pledge my word of honor as a gentleman that I will not either directly or indirectly aid, assist or give comfort to any enemies of the United States of America.

SAMUEL FIELD.

SHIP ISLAND, MISS., September 13, 1862.

JEFFERSON DAVIS, President of the Confederate States.

SIR: A close prisoner on this desolate island with some fifty others of my fellow-citizens, I have thought it my duty at every risk to communicate to you some at least of the incidents of the administration of the brutal tyrant who has been sent by the United States Government to oppress, rob, assault and trample upon our people in every manner which the most fiendish ingenuity and most wanton cruelty could devise and in gross violation of all the laws and usages of the most remorseless wars between civilized and even savage nations and tribes. Previous to my committal to Ship Island as a close prisoner, where I was consigned with seven other respectable citizens to a small hut fifteen feet by twenty, exposed to rain and sun, without permission to leave except for a bath in the sea once or twice a week, I had prepared an elaborate statement of the outrages perpetrated by Butler upon our people or rather of the more flagrant ones which I committed to Reverdy Johnson, a commissioner of the United States who had been sent out to investigate and report upon certain transactions of Butler. Mr. Johnson received this document, but stated that his mission related exclusively to certain issues which had arisen between Butler and the foreign consuls. He manifested, however, some sympathy for our wronged people and some disgust for the excesses and villainies of Butler. Shortly after Mr. Johnson's departure I was sent to Ship Island. A description of the causes and circumstances of the imprisonment of our citizens who are now held on this island will afford some of the mildest illustrations of Butler's brutality. There are about sixty prisoners here, all of whom are closely confined in portable houses and furnished with the most wretched and unwholesome condemned soldiers' rations. Some are kept at hard labor on the fort; several in addition to labor are compelled to wear a ball and chain which is never removed. Among these is Mr. Shepherd, a respectable, elderly and weakly citizen, who is charged with secreting certain papers belonging to the naval officer of the Confederate States, which in his charge when he departed from New Orleans. Mr. Shepherd had the proof that the officer who had deposited these documents afterwards returned and took them and that they had been carried into the Confederate States. This testimony Butler would not receive and declared that if it existed it would make no difference in his case. Doctor Moore, a dealer in drugs, is also at hard labor with ball and chain, on the charge of having sent a few ounces of quinine into the Confederate States. There are five prisoners condemned and employed at hard labor on the charge of intending to break their parole as prisoners of war, captured at Fort Jackson. There is also a delicate youth from the country who is subjected to the same treatment on the charge of being a guerrilla, the term which Butler applies to the partisan rangers organized under the act of Congress of the Confederate States. Alderman Beggs, on the charge of denouncing those who, having taken the oath to the Confederate States, afterwards swore allegiance to the United States, and Mr. Keller, a vender of books, stationery and scientific apparatus, on the charge of permitting