Secrets of the American Bastile
- Second edition. 8vo, paper wraps, 64pp. Wraps with wear to edges, library stamps, and some manuscript notes; contents excellent
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: John Campbell, 1863
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: John Campbell, 1863. Second edition. 8vo, paper wraps, 64pp. Wraps with wear to edges, library stamps, and some manuscript notes; contents excellent to Near Fine. Overall excellent to Near Fine.. A short booklet by William H. Winder (1808–1879), son of the Brigadier General and Baltimore lawyer of the same name, concerning his 1861 arrest and imprisonment for treason for his opposition to the Civil War. Winder attributes his arrest to his correspondences with Secretary of State William H. Seward and Secretary of War Simon Cameron. In his letters, Winder laid out his case that not only would a war spell the end of any union between North and South, but that an agreement between the two would be easy to reach. Winder was imprisoned in Fort Lafayette, where the "abominable treatment of prisoners [...] is too well known to require any notice in this statement” (23), and then at Fort Warren. He was released in 1862 after fifteen months.
Secrets reproduces Winder’s correspondence alongside his editorializing: that he was falsely arrested under the Secretary of State’s name without the Secretary’s knowledge, that he was denied his Constitutional rights, and especially that the Republican government’s “corruption and imbecility” in its suppression of opposition to the war amounted to “terrorism” (vii).
OCLC locates twenty copies of the second edition.
Secrets reproduces Winder’s correspondence alongside his editorializing: that he was falsely arrested under the Secretary of State’s name without the Secretary’s knowledge, that he was denied his Constitutional rights, and especially that the Republican government’s “corruption and imbecility” in its suppression of opposition to the war amounted to “terrorism” (vii).
OCLC locates twenty copies of the second edition.