HON. MADISON Y. JOHNSON.

ON. MADISON Y. JOHNSON resides at Galena, Illinois, and is one of the ablest and most successful lawyers in that part of the State. He is a gentleman of fine personal appearance, and about fifty-five years of age. He is independent and self-reliant in his character, but of generous impulses and courteous manners. His arbitrary arrest and imprisonment were, perhaps, among the most remarkable that occurred during the war, whether considered in a political light, or otherwise, from the fact that he had been the warm personal and political friend of Mr. Lincoln when they were old Whigs together. The personal friendship, which had so long existed between them, was not in the least disturbed up to the time of Mr. Johnson's arrest.

Mr. Lincoln, on his last visit to Galena, in the presence of several of their mutual friends, urged Mr. Johnson to join his party; and on being told that it would drift into an Abolition party, and that if it got into power it would cause a separation of the Union of the States, Mr. Lincoln said: "We can control the matter if the old Whigs and Conservatives will take hold; that there would be a change, they were coming into power, and that new men were to fill the positions; and that he (Mr. J.) could have anything he desired if he would go with them." Mr. Johnson replied, that "his political views, like his religious opinions, were not a matter for barter; that he could hold no political fellowship with such men as Codding and Lovejoy, and that such as they would control the party."

Mr. Lincoln then said, "he regretted to part with him more than from any man in that part of the State, but they should always respect each other."

We allude to these things now to show how faithless to his promises Mr. Lincoln was, after he became President. We . need not notice the history of events in this narrative further than to say, that all the propositions made looking to a settlement of the troubles between the North and the South, without a resort to arms, Mr. Johnson favored; and when the actual conflict came, and during its progress, he was found the uncompromising advocate of peace.

He was the author of a peace resolution passed at a mass meeting held at Springfield, during the war; and as a part of the history of the country, and as particularly expressing his views, we copy it:

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Resolved, That the further offensive prosecution of the war tends to subvert the Constitution and Government, and entail upon the nation all the disastrous consequences of misrule and anarchy. That we are in favor of peace upon the basis of a restored Union; and for the accomplishment of which, we propose a National Convention to settle upon terms of peace, which shall have in view the restoration of the Union as it was, and the securing by constitutional amendments such rights to the States and the people thereof as honor and justice demand."

He always advocated the doctrine that the theory of the American Government was that of consent, and not force.

The particular cause of his arrest, or who instigated it, has never been known. After a most searching investigation at the War Department, and an examination of the public archives in Washington, it does not appear that any specific charge was ever made or filed against him; but it would seem that the act was directed by the President himself, as established in a judicial proceeding subsequently had, in which the United States Marshal pleaded that the arrest was made by order of the President as a "military necessity, and that he was held as a belligerent and prisoner of war.'

Mr. Johnson, while engaged in the defence of a murder case, was arrested in open court, on the afternoon of the 28th of August, 1862, by the United States Marshal, on a tele

graphic despatch from Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, without complaint, warrant, or form of law, hurried off, more than a thousand miles, to a foreign State, and incarcerated within the dark walls of an American Bastile. As it will be regarded a matter of curiosity in American history to know how these arrests were made, and how citizens, not charged with an offence, were treated under the brutal system adopted during Mr. Lincoln's Administration, we have been at some trouble to learn the facts, and here present them.

Mr. Johnson's case is not dissimilar to the general history of many others. He was conveyed from his home, in Galena, Illinois, to Chicago, where he overtook Mr. Sheean, who had been arrested only a few hours before him; thence, in company with that gentleman, he was transported to New York city, and handed over, at Elm Street, to the tender care of Kennedy, Superintendent of Police. This man was the wellknown jailer of Mrs. Isabel Brinsmade, who was confined, for forty days, in a dungeon in one of the station-houses in New York, without any one knowing where she was, and without any charge against her. Mr. Johnson was confined in what was known as the "Inner Temple," a low, dirty, illventilated room, partially under ground. Here, for the first time, the prisoner began to realize what it meant to be a "prisoner of state."

From there, he was conveyed, closely guarded, to Fort Hamilton, where Lieutenant-Colonel Burke, a gruff old soldier, on seeing the despatch from Stanton to incarcerate him in Fort Lafayette, ordered out a file of soldiers under an officer, by whom he was escorted to the vessel which carried him to the Fort.

While crossing to the Fort, he could observe the dark, dungeon-like walls of the octagonal-shaped Fort, black, frowning, and solitary, arising from

"those hidden rocks, where sleep The channelled waters, dark and deep."