Page:The woman in battle .djvu/524

468 by every means, and at all hazards. A number of Confederates, myself included, were, however, associated with them in many of their transactions, just as we were associated with some other rogues, for the purpose of embarrassing the Federal government, and for the prosecution of the various schemes we had on hand, up to the very hour of the downfall of the government to which our adherence was given. To carry on our operations, money, and a great deal of it, was needed, and we had little or no hesitation in making the Federal treasury pay our expenses, as far as we were able to. A large portion of the funds used in purchasing substitutes, and in carrying on the bounty -jumping frauds, was furnished by Confederate agents, who obtained a good deal of their cash, directly or indirectly, from the United States treasury. How this was done, it is my purpose to explain.

I had little or nothing to do with the bounty-jumpers until after my return from the West Indies. My relations with the officials of the treasury department, however, commenced not a great while after my arrival at the North, and it was mainly my transactions with them that made me so much afraid of being discovered by Colonel Baker, and so extremely anxious to stand well in his good graces. I am convinced that my intimate relations with Baker, as one of his employees, and the confidence in me which I succeeded in inspiring in his mind, alone saved me from detection when he went to work to find out what was worth finding out in the treasury department. Whether, in case he had discovered the game I was playing, and had attempted to bring me to punishment, the secretary, the solicitor, and prominent members of Congress would have rushed to my rescue with the same alacrity that they did in the case of those whom Baker succeeded in laying his hands on, is one of those interesting questions that must remain for ever unanswered. I am very glad, however, that, as matters turned out, there was no occasion for me to appeal to them for aid.

When I first learned of the uses which some of my Confederate friends were making of the facilities of the Federal treasury for obtaining cash, I was rather shocked ; and it took some time ,to convince me that even the license of warfare, and the right we had to injure our adversaries in every man-