Head-quarters, Armies
of the United States, City Point, Va.,
November 15, 1864.
Major-general J. A. Dix, Commanding Department of the
East:
General, — I
understand General Butler, while in New York, had one Mr. Bergholz, a citizen
of Columbia, South Carolina, arrested and sent to Fort Hamilton. I have never
seen Mr. B., but have heard from him and of him, and believe he is and always
has been a friend of the Government. He is a German — Prussian, I think — who
left the North for the South prior to the war, and, on account of having
accumulated some property there, felt himself compelled to remain, until,
fearing the conscription, probably, he has left. Before hearing that Mr. B. was
in arrest I had sent a pass to him to visit me at my head-quarters, for the
purpose of getting from him more particular or minute information upon matters
in the South than that already received from him in writing.
If there are not special charges against him of which I know
nothing, I wish you would have Mr. Bergholz released and permitted to visit me
at head-quarters, without exacting from him an oath of allegiance.
Very respectfully,
your obedient servant,
U. S. Grant, Lieutenant-general.
P.S. — I have no doubt but Mr. Bergholz may have had a
permit to leave the South obtained solely on account of intimacy between
himself and Mr. Trcnholm, the rebel Secretary of the Treasury.
U. S. G.
SOURCE: Morgan Dix, Memoirs of John Adams Dix,
Volume 2, p. 95-6
No comments:
Post a Comment