BACK TO FORT DELAWARE—DISAPPOINTMENT AND
GREAT SUFFERING—THREE DEATHS AND
BURIALS AT SEA
About the 3d or 4th of March, I think it was, the soldiers guarding us
said an order had been received from General Grant, "an autograph
letter," they said, to take us to Norfolk; thence up James River to City
Point, for exchange. This was joyful news, indeed, and with eagerness
and high hopes the prisoners made preparations to leave that dismal
place. The next day we boarded a small steamer and were off for Dixie,
as all believed. We left many a poor comrade buried in the sand on that
Tybee Island, victims of Yankee cruelty and hatred.
After taking on board the prisoners at Hilton Head, the ship was so
heavily loaded that the captain refused to put to sea. All the prisoners
were then transferred to the steamship _Illinois_, a larger and better
boat, which sailed for Norfolk. So certain were all that an exchange
would be effected, no effort was made to carry out the plan to capture
the ship. The guards on the ship paid little or no attention to the
prisoners; they virtually had the freedom of the ship, could go on deck
at will, and could have taken possession without the loss of a single
man. There was no gunboat escort.
On this trip up the coast there was a great deal of seasickness. There
was no storm, but the ship rolled considerably. I was sick myself, and
as I lay in a bunk down on the lower deck, looking out a small porthole
at the huge billows, feeling very miserable, I made up my mind if
anything happened to the ship, to just lay still and go down with it
without making any effort to save myself. I remember one poor fellow who
was suffering terribly, groaning and heaving as if trying to throw up
his very "gizzard," when some one called out, "Give that man a piece of
fat meat, it will help him." The sick man cried out in his agony, "O
Lord God, don't talk about fat meat to me." Any one who has been
sea-sick knows what an aversion the nausea produces to food, especially
fat meat.
On the night of the 7th of March we dropped anchor at Norfolk, thinking
of nothing but that the next morning we would steam up the historic
James to City Point, and there be exchanged.
DISAPPOINTMENT AND GREAT SUFFERING
The next morning the ship weighed anchor, with many of us on deck in
high spirits. Soon after getting under way, the ship was hailed by a
gunboat, lying in Hampton Roads, with "Where are you bound?" The captain
of the _Illinois_ shouted back through his trumpet, "Fort Delaware." Oh,
horror of horrors! our hearts sank within us; visions of exchange, of
home and friends, vanished in a twinkling. Doomed to further
incarceration in a detestable Yankee prison, when we had expected in a
few short hours to be free and with friends! With hope, aye, certainly
of relief, dashed to the ground, our feelings may be better imagined
than expressed in words. The doom of the damned, "Depart from me ye
cursed into everlasting fire," can not be much worse. The Yankee guards
on board the ship were at once on the alert, and with harsh and insolent
commands, ordered and compelled, at point of bayonet, all the prisoners
to get off the deck, and would not allow, after this, more than six or
eight men on deck at a time; sentinels with loaded guns and fixed
bayonets stood at the hatchways above us, and there was no chance to
take the ship. One scoundrel threatened to shoot me as I stood at the
foot of the ladder, with my hand on it, awaiting my turn to go on deck.
He said to me in an insolent tone, "Take your hand off that ladder." I
did so, then he said, "If you are an officer, why don't you dress like
an officer?" I replied, "It is none of your business how I dress." Then
he said, "Damn you, I will shoot you," bringing down his cocked gun on
me, when I stepped back out of sight, thinking "discretion the better
part of valor." How much the seventy men in the plot regretted not
putting that plot into execution can never be told.
THREE DEATHS AND BURIALS AT SEA
While on the way up the coast to Fort Delaware, the suffering among the
prisoners was greatly intensified. The sick and disabled especially were
downcast, and in utter despair; a more miserable set of men were perhaps
never seen on board a ship. The floor of the lower deck was covered with
vomit, which sloshed from side to side as the ship rolled back and
forth.
Gloom and despair sat like a black pall on every face. Before Fort
Delaware was reached, three officers died and were buried at sea. I
witnessed one of the burials. The body was sewed up in a blanket with a
cannon ball at the feet, then placed on a plank, feet foremost, which
was pushed out over the side of the ship and the plank tilted up, when
all that was mortal of the poor fellow slid off, and dropped into the
sea, many feet below, to rest in a watery grave until the final roll
call at the Judgment Day, "when the sea shall give up its dead."
Seventy-five sick were taken from the ship to the hospital, and many
more were hardly able to walk, but the hospital was full. We disembarked
at Fort Delaware on the 12th of March, 1865.
It was said the reason we were not exchanged, was that upon the arrival
of the prisoners at Hampton Roads their condition was so horrible the
Yankees did not want the Confederate authorities and the world to know
their condition, hence they were shipped back to Fort Delaware.
That the exchange was ordered by General Grant I here present proof from
the same volume of "War Records," before quoted from, on page 417, where
will be found the following:
* * * * *
"CITY POINT, VA., _March 21, 1865_.
"Brigadier-General Mulford, Commanding General: I do not know what has
been done with the officers at Fort Pulaski; I sent orders to have them
delivered at Charleston. Before the order had been received, Charleston
had fallen into our possession. I then sent orders to have them sent to
the James River. Before that order was received, General Gilmore wrote
to me that, having received my first order, which had been directed to
General Foster, he had sent a flag to find the enemy to deliver the
prisoners to. I have heard nothing since.
(Signed) "U. S. GRANT,
Lieutenant-General."
* * * * *
Proof of Grant's order to Foster for exchange at Charleston is in the
same volume, page 219, and is dated 14th of February, 1865. "So near,"
we were to exchange and relief from suffering, "and yet so far."