That same year, in the month of February, 1865, in one of the coups de main by which General Grant attempted, though in vain, to possess himself of Richmond, several of his officers fell into the power of the enemy and were detained in the town.  One of the most distinguished was Captain Cyrus Harding.  He was a native of Massachusetts, a first-class engineer, to whom the government had confided, during the war, the direction of the railways, which were so important at that time.  A true Northerner, thin, bony, lean, about forty-five years of age; his close-cut hair and his beard, of which he only kept a thick mustache, were already getting gray.  He had one-of those finely-developed heads which appear made to be struck on a medal, piercing eyes, a serious mouth, the physiognomy of a clever man of the military school.  He was one of those engineers who began by handling the hammer and pickaxe, like generals who first act as common soldiers.  Besides mental power, he also possessed great manual dexterity.  His muscles exhibited remarkable proofs of tenacity.  A man of action as well as a man of thought, all he did was without effort to one of his vigorous and sanguine temperament.  Learned, clear-headed, and practical, he fulfilled in all emergencies those three conditions which united ought to insure human success—­activity of mind and body, impetuous wishes, and powerful will.  He might have taken for his motto that of William of Orange in the 17th century:  “I can undertake and persevere even without hope of success.”  Cyrus Harding was courage personified.  He had been in all the battles of that war.  After having begun as a volunteer at Illinois, under Ulysses Grant, he fought at Paducah, Belmont, Pittsburg Landing, at the siege of Corinth, Port Gibson, Black River, Chattanooga, the Wilderness, on the Potomac, everywhere and valiantly, a soldier worthy of the general who said, “I never count my dead!” And hundreds of times Captain Harding had almost been among those who were not counted by the terrible Grant; but in these combats where he never spared himself, fortune favored him till the moment when he was wounded and taken prisoner on the field of battle near Richmond.  At the same time and on the same day another important personage fell into the hands of the Southerners.  This was no other than Gideon Spilen, a reporter for the New York Herald, who had been ordered to follow the changes of the war in the midst of the Northern armies.

Gideon Spilett was one of that race of indomitable English or American chroniclers, like Stanley and others, who stop at nothing to obtain exact information, and transmit it to their journal in the shortest possible time.  The newspapers of the Union, such as the New York Herald, are genuine powers, and their reporters are men to be reckoned with.  Gideon Spilett ranked among the first of those reporters:  a man of great merit, energetic, prompt and ready for anything, full of ideas, having traveled over the whole world, soldier