From the Richmond Examiner, 3/9/1864, p. 1, c. 4

MAYOR’S COURT – Tuesday, March 8, 1864 - …Michael Dolan was charged with stealing a horse from the Confederate States.

Detective Doyle stated that, on Sunday last, about noon, the accused came to the police office and stated that he had sold a Government horse to a man for a three thousand dollar check and a thousand dollars in money, omitting to mention a gold watch he had also received in the transaction; and that he (the prisoner) believed the man that had bought the horse was trying to get off to the Yankees. – The next morning prisoner came back to the police officer, and witness took him into custody.

Prisoner, being asked if he desired to interrogate witness, made a statement. He said he was employed in taking care of the Government cows attached to Chimborazo Hospital. About sixteen months ago he took up a stray horse, and some one saying it was a Government horse, he carried him to Major Wood, at Bacon’s Quarter Branch, who had told him the horse was no account, and he might have him. He had kept the horse ever since. On Sunday morning, whilst he was out in the fields beyond Rocketts, a man came up to him from towards the river, in a mighty hurry, and wanted to buy the horse. The man offering him a check for $3,000, one thousand dollars in money and a gold watch, he let him have the horse. Suspecting afterwards that something was wrong about the man, he went up to Chimborazo and narrated the circumstances, and was advised to lodge information at the detective office, which he did without delay. Going by the detective office on Monday to see after the check which the detective had taken from him, he was arrested and handed over to the Mayor.

A surgeon from Chimborazo stated that he knew the prisoner had taken up the horse more than a year ago and carried him to Bacon’s Quarter Branch, and that he had been using him publicly ever since, without attempting to conceal how he had come by him.

The Mayor said prisoner had been guilty of no larceny and he would discharge him. The check, money and watch he would hold on to for the present. If the horse belonged to the Confederate States, the amount for which he had been sold belonged to them too.

Though it did not come out in evidence, it is proper to give some explanation of this horse trade. A guest of the Ballard House was, on Sunday, seized with mania potu, and by some means going out into Rocketts old field and there imagining himself to be pursued by forty thousand monkeys, he gave all he had for Dolan’s old horse, a beast not worth ten dollars, and fled over the hills and far away. Open air equestrian exercise restored his reason and shattered nerves to that degree that he returned to the city and his hotel that same night.

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