Daniel Dickinson

MARCH 4, 1865.]

HARPER'S WEEKLY.

141

HON. DANIEL S. DICKINSON.—[PHOTOGRAPHED BY BRADY.]

(Previous Page) his room and passed by where she stood she shot him dead.

The lady gave her name as MARY HARRIS. She had resided in Chicago. She seemed about twenty years of age, was quite pale and delicate in complexion, with dark hair and eyes and an aquiline nose. The reason which she gave for committing the crime was that BURROUGHS had violated his promise of marriage to her, and had married another lady. Except in the simple violation of his word it seems he had done her no harm. She had met BURROUGHS in Burlington, Iowa, where her parents resided. Her parents had objected to her receiving his addresses, he being fifteen years her senior. But an attachment grew up between them, and they appear to have kept up a pretty regular correspondence. Their affair was broken off by BURROUGHS'S marriage to another lady. On the 5th of last July Miss HARRIS instituted against Mr. BURROUGHS an action for breach of promise of marriage. At the close of the year she went on to Washington to carry on the prosecution, and the sequel of the painful story is given in the tragic event which we have related.

HON. DANIEL S. DICKINSON.

DANIEL STEVENS DICKINSON, besides holding various minor offices of public trust, has been Lieutenant-Governor of the State of New York, Presidential Elector at Large, United States Senator from that State from 1844 to 1851, and Attorney-General. Mr. DICKINSON was born at Goshen, Connecticut, in the year 1800. His father removed to the Chenango Valley, in Western New York, in 1806. He was brought up as a farmer's son and received only a common school education. Gifted with a strong will, and an acute and quick intellect, he studied Latin without a master so as to be able to teach it himself. He also mastered and taught some of the higher mathematical studies, and among them the art of Surveying, which in early life he practiced extensively. He was for a number of years a teacher of common and higher schools studied law, became a successful manager of justice cases, steadily rose in position and influence, and entered the higher sphere of political life by becoming State Senator in 1836. Mr. DICKINSON'S political views are those of a patriotic and honest Christian man rather than of a partisan. He was an ardent Democrat from his youth up, but refused to act with that party when, in his opinion, it deserted its proper standard, taking then the position merely of an unconditional supporter of the Union and of the Administration, the success of which he believed indispensable to the success of the nation against the rebellion, and to the existence and prosperity of real American principles. Mr. DICKINSON is a strong and ready lawyer, an easy and forcible speaker ; and what is far better, has an unspotted personal and political reputation. He is a believer in truth and justice and the real

Democracy of our nation. He is still endowed with an almost youthful vigor, and we hope he may yet be spared to serve his country many years. Mr. DICKINSON has recently accepted the Presidency of an influential and enterprising new city Corporation the New York and Liverpool Petroleum Company.

CAMP FORD, TEXAS.

CAMP FORD, the chief prisoners' camp of Texas, of which we give a sketch on page 132, lies on a sandy side hill, three miles from the little town of Tyler, and one hundred miles west of Shreveport. A

slight ravine bounds it on the southerly side, and in this rises a large spring of clear water not remarkable to Northern eyes, but far the best that any Yankee prisoner was ever refreshed with in Texas. Before the war the gay and festive youth of Tyler rode out to picnic at the spring ; but now the trees around it have been cut away, its waters turned into a large long trough, and momentarily troubled by dirty panikins and buckets ; while a hideous stockade fence cuts the spring in two and incloses many wretched home sick hearts and weary broken forms. " The treatment of the prisoners, " the subject of the day, has varied in a hundred ways. When a few officers were confined there, and the camp was commanded by Colonel Robert T. P. ALLEN, they were allowed to go out and play ball on parole, and the amiable wife of the Colonel daily visited their sick and brought them little luxuries of her own preparing. The authorities, however, reprimanded and then removed Colonel ALLEN for this, and under the rule of Lieutenant-Colonel BORDERS men were shot down without notice, and recaptured fugitives were put in irons. An officer, for the crime of escaping, was made to " mark time" on a stump, bareheaded, in the scorching sun for three clays (his guard under orders to shoot him the moment he stopped) ; an unfortunate sailor, for taking the name and place of a dead soldier, was bound hand and foot and buried alive for forty eight hours. Filth, disorder, want, and wretchedness were allowed to have their way.

The oldest prisoners in the Confederacy are in this camp. Their imprisonment is now measured by years. On 21st January, 1863, the officers and crew of the Morning Light were captured off Sabine, and they still remain prisoners of war. A fatality seems to have attended all the naval prisoners who have found their way to a Texan prison camp. Those of the Clifton and Sachem, captured at Sabine Pass, September 8, 1863, also share the same fate. Exchange after exchange of army prisoners takes place, but the boon never reaches these sailors. Soldiers have been taken from the same camp and sent back to our lines who have not been held as prisoners a month. Yet the gallant tars have shown a devotion to their flag unsurpassed, perhaps unequaled during the war. With the feeling that they have suffered gross injustice, with sense of neglect by their own Government, they have never deserted. There have been desertions to the enemy from this camp, but they have not been by sailors.

KINGS COUNTY COURT-HOUSE.

We give on this page an exterior view of KINGS COUNTY COURT HOUSE, in the City of Brooklyn. This edifice is near the City Hall ; it has been in the process of erection for the last four years, and is now completed. Mr. GAMALIEL KING is the architect. The Court House, we understand, was thrown open to the public on the twenty second of February.

KINGS COUNTY COURT HOUSE, BROOKLYN .—[SKETCHED By J. WELLS.]