DRAWING LOTS FOR DEATH. (From the Trenton State "Gazette.")

Tuapeka Times, Volume II, Issue 100, 8 January 1870, Page 7

DRAWING LOTS FOR DEATH. (From the Trenton State "Gazette.")

Colonel Henry W. Sawyer, who ha 3 lately been appointed superintendent of bhe life-saving apparatus on the New Jersey Coast, once passed through a very perilous adventure. He was among the Federal prisoners in Lib'by Prison at the time when the Confederate Grovernment determined to retaliate in kind the execution of two rebel officers by one of our Western Generals. Mr. Sawyer was at that time a captain in the Ist New Jersey Cavalry, and was of the grade of officers from whom selections were to be made for the victims to Confederate vengeance. The officer who was in charge of the prisoners at the time was a kind-

hearted and agreeable man, and was regarded by them with feelings of gratitude and affection. On the morning in question this officer entered the room where the pi'isoners were confined, and told all the officers to walk out into another room. This order was obeyed with particular alacrity, as the prisoners were daily expecting to bo exchanged, and it was supposed that the order had arrived, and that they were about to exchange their prison quarters for home and freedom. After they had all gathered in the room, their countenances lighted up with this agreeable hope, the officer came in among them, and with a very grave face took a paper out of his pocket, and told them that he had a very melancholy duty to perform, the purport of which would be better understood by the reading of the, order he held in his hand, which ho had just received from the War Department. He then proceeded to read to the amazed and horrified group an order for the immediate execution of two of their number, in retaliation for the hanging of two Confederate officers. As the reader ceased, the men looked at each other with blanched faces, and a silence like death prevailed for some minutes in the room. The Confederate officer then suggested that perhaps the better Avay would be to place a number of slips of paper equal to the whole number of officers from whom the victims were to be selected, in a box, with the Avord " Death " written on two of them, and the rest blank — the two who drew the fatal slips to be the doomed men. This plan was adopted, and a chaplain was appointed to prepare the slips. The drawing had proceeded fot some time, and fully a third of the officers had exchanged gloomy looks of apprehension for a relieved aspect they could not avoid showing after escaping from such terrible peril before a fatal death slip had been drawn. At the end of about this period, however, the first slip had been drawn, and the name of " Captain Henry W. Sawyer, of the Ist New Jersey Cavalry," was called out as the unfortunate man. The captain was, of course, deeply agitated, but did not lose his self-possession. He immediately began revolving in his mind some plan for averting, or at least postponing the immediate carrying out of the sanguinary edict of the Eebel Grovernmeut, and by the time that he was joined by his companion in misfortune, who turned out to be a Captain Flynn, of an Indian regiment, he had l'esolved upon his course. The officer in command, as soon as the drawing was completed, ordered the two men to be taken out and immediately executed. Captain Sawyer, however, demanded as a request that no civilised nation could refuse under such circumstances, that he should have permission to write to his wife, to inform her of the terrible fate that awaited him, and to have her come on and bid him an eternal farewell. Eespite for a day or two was thus obtained, and Sawyer subsequently obtained an interview with the Eebel Secretary of War, and secured permission to write to his wife, which he did. His object in writing to her was principally for our Grovernment to be made acquainted with the predicament in which the officers were placed, and to secure hostages and threatened retaliation should the order of the rebels be carried out. It turned out precisely as Sawyer hoped and expected. Our Grovernment was informed of the condition of affairs, and promptly seized a son of Gfeneral Lee and one of some other prominent rebel, and threatened to hang them if tho Union officers were executed. By this means the lives of the two doomed men were saved, as the Confederate Grovernment did not dare to carry out their threats. After a few months' more confinement Captain Sawyer was exchanged. Captain Flynn, his companion in misfortune, came out of the ordeal with his hair as white as snow, turned grey by the mental sufferings he endured. Captain Sawyer served through the war.