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330 HISTORY OF ERIE COUNTY
edge previous to their undertaking the task of rearing a southern confederacy.
Previous to that event they considered it degrading and beneath
the dignity of a gentleman to perforin manual labor of any kind.
Be that as it may, Ave knoAv they manufactured many little articles such
as chairs, tables, bedsteads, etc., with Avhich to render prison life comfortable.
Many of the articles were very fair specimens of southern
furniture and mechanism and not totally devoid of rustic beauty. In the
line of chairs they manufactured hundreds of the old split bottom
variety, bottomed with the leather of old boots, cut into strings and
neatly interwoven together. Owing to a scarcity of tools the wooden
frames were made with only the use of the jacknife and auger, and were
really a very staunch made chair. On the release of the prisoners
hundreds of these chairs were sold at public auction. . . . Every
chair was marked with the name of the owner on the top slat of the back,
OLD POAVDER HOUSE ON JOHNSON'S ISLAND
together with the number of his regiment, and the state from Avhich he
came. They were not marked, Ave suppose, because they suspected the
honesty of their fellow prisoners, but simply that they might be able to
tell their own and be able to reclaim their property should it stray from
their quarters. It is not, an uncommon thing IIOAV to see a chair sitting
around once owned by Col. Sawyer of the 14th Mississippi or of Brigadier
Generals Johnson, Marmaduke or other notables of the once rebel
bull pen. Fifty years hence such articles will be looked upon as greater
curiosities than many that IIOAV frame our public museums and cost
hundreds of dollars."
The Register of October 19, 1876, contains the folloAving extract from
the report of Jake Thompson, the Canadian agent of Jeff Davis, to the
Confederate Government of the conspiracy to release the prisoners, which
report AA'as made in 1864 from Toronto:
"It had been previously ascertained that an organization existed