Southern Inhumanity—A Prison Telegraph—Mobile—Conversation with a
Fire-Eater—Negro Sale Stables—A Bad Sign—Mule-Beef—Montgomery—In the
Penitentiary—Felon Soldiers—Hanging for Theft—Visit to a Condemned
Prisoner—Who Shall Answer?
Our condition now became so painful and distressing, that, as a last
resort, we determined to petition the authorities for a redress of our
grievances. We had neither beds nor blankets, and the allowance of
rations doled out to us was insufficient to sustain life. A lieutenant
in the Confederate service, a poor, illiterate fellow, not possessed
of education sufficient to call the muster-roll correctly, entered the
prison and threatened to place Major Crockett—of whom we have spoken
before—in irons, simply because he had referred, in the Lieutenant’s
presence, in no very favorable terms, to the character of our
treatment. We had made application personally to Colonel McClain, then
commandant of the post, and who, we learned, was a professed Christian.
We were careful to appeal to his Christianity as a means of awakening
an interest in our behalf. His reply was as follows:
“You invaders! you abolitionists! you that are _stealing_ our
property! _you_ talk about Christianity! You should be the last men to
utter a word on that subject.”
A lieutenant in our ranks, named Herbert, answered him by saying:
“If your so-called Southern Confederacy cannot furnish us with enough
to eat, just inform us and we will acquaint our government of the fact.”
This seemed to irritate the doughty Colonel, and he replied very
fiercely:
“I’ll let you know that we have a government strong enough to hold
_you_. You will have to go into close confinement.”
In a short time four men with loaded guns entered, and took Lieutenant
Herbert from the prison. What was to be his fate we knew not, but in
five days he returned, his appearance indicating that he had been
exposed to severe treatment. He told me that he was taken to the old
county jail, was there incarcerated in a damp, filthy, and bedless
cell, swarming with odious vermin, and from which a negro had recently
been taken to be executed. This barbarous outrage was inflicted for the
sole purpose, in the language of his tormentor, “of letting him know
that there was a Southern Confederacy.”
The sick and wounded prisoners in the room above us were suffering
intensely, and we were not allowed the privilege of visiting them. In
order to hold any communication at all with the inmates above, we were
compelled to resort to an expedient which answered our purpose for the
time. We obtained a small wire, and by letting it down from the upper
window to the one below, and attaching a written communication to it,
opened up a kind of telegraphic connection between the two departments
of the prison. In this way we were daily informed of the transactions
of our friends above.
We were now about to leave the prison, and we quitted it, feeling with
Bishop King, that
“A prison is in all things like a grave,
Where we no better privileges have
Than dead men; nor so good.”
We were next taken to Mobile, Alabama. On our way thither, I conversed
with a number of Southrons, among whom was an insignificant personage
from South Carolina. He complained because their officers were not
allowed to have their servants with them. He called it one of the most
inhuman deprivations imaginable!
“Sir,” said I, “we have been treated like beasts and half-starved here
on your southern soil; what do you think of that?”
“O,” he replied, “that’s all right enough for you ’uns; but _we_ belong
to the first families of South Carolina!”
“Your logic is vain, sir, for we of the free North recognize no officer
in the army as made of better stuff than the least drummer-boy in the
service. Your ‘first families’ were the prime movers in this rebellion,
being the degenerate descendants of bankrupt royalists and luckless
adventurers.” The truth cut him severely, and he began to curse the
“mudsills” of the North, ridiculing that pure democracy which lifts up
the poor and levels down the rich. When I referred to our free schools
and our general information as a people, he raved like a madman.
His ignorance boiled over in froth and fury, only to emphasize the
corrupting effects of the bastard aristocracy of the South.
We arrived in Mobile on Sabbath morning, the 26th of May. Here, too,
we could detect an undercurrent of Union sentiment in the humane
treatment we received. I knew full well, however, the odium in which
the Mobilians held all who opposed human bondage as legalized in the
Confederacy. I felt that we were indeed among enemies and barbarians.
We were driven like yoked bondmen to the heart of the city, and there
halted in the crowded streets for about two hours and a half beneath a
sweltering Alabama sun, after which we were thrust into the negro sale
stables. Of course we were fatigued and sickened by such outrageous
treatment, but we bore it all as patiently as grace would allow. As we
entered these human chattel stalls where many poor hearts had sorrowed
before, we noticed this inscription over our stable door.
“NEGROES FOR SAIL AND GOOD FEALD HANDS.”
During our stay in this place there was quite a stir among the rebels.
The astounding fact was revealed that the mules slain at Shiloh had
been barreled up and forwarded to Mobile to feed Yankee prisoners!
When this abomination was made known to the commandant, he immediately
ordered the mule-beef to be thrown into the river; and in order to
redeem his government from the merited contempt of the civilized world,
he published the facts in the Mobile papers. A copy of a daily paper
containing the information was furnished us by a negro, and we had the
satisfaction of reading the history of our rations!
The commandant’s motives in publishing this barbarity were not
appreciated by the chivalrous (?) authorities, and he was himself
arrested and imprisoned for an act that even cannibals might blush to
condemn.
The negroes, who were shrewder and more manly than their masters, were
our faithful friends and news-bearers. They all understood how to
furnish us papers in the manner described in a previous chapter. The
results of the mule-beef investigation plainly proved that the whole
transaction was sanctioned by the Government. It was not an individual
speculation by an unprincipled army contractor, but an official
outrage, perpetrated by the chivalrous Confederacy!
From Mobile we were taken to Selma, from thence to Tuscaloosa, and
from thence to Montgomery. Here we were placed in the penitentiary
over night, until arrangements could be made for our accommodation
in the military prison. Here we shared the fare of criminals, which
proved to be the best I ever received in Dixie. As to the truthfulness
of the report that the Confederacy had liberated their felons as
soldiers, I am not prepared to speak. But while I was in the Montgomery
penitentiary, during the brief space of thirty hours, two inmates were
released and paid eight hundred dollars each to enter the service as
substitutes. This I witnessed. The keeper of the prison informed me, on
inquiring the nature of their crimes, that they were murderers. From
reliable sources I learned that many criminals, from different southern
prisons, were received into the army as soldiers. The two I saw were
desperate-looking men.
While here I was deeply impressed at seeing a negro in an adjoining
cell under condemnation of death. In order to frighten him to make such
confessions as his accusers desired, the rope with which he was to be
suspended from the gallows, was put in the cell with the culprit. I
asked the keeper the nature of the man’s offence, and was told that he
was sentenced to die for stealing a watch.
“What! are you going to hang a man for stealing a watch?”
“O, yes,” said my informant, “we must be severe with these niggers, or
we couldn’t live for them.”
“But he is a valuable-looking piece of property.”
“True, sir, but the State is obligated to pay one-half his value to the
master, and he was appraised at sixteen hundred dollars,—so you see
only one-half the loss will fall upon his master.”
All this was spoken with that serious business air which showed a real
sympathy with the slaveholder who was about to suffer the loss of eight
hundred dollars!
On account of my crippled hand and general debility, I was privileged
to walk about the hall. There I could see the doomed man who was
so soon to suffer the ignominious death of the scaffold. The
keeper’s sympathy was altogether with the owner of the negro; but he
congratulated himself in the master’s behalf by saying that, since the
beginning of the war, negroes were poor sale, and that for the owner
of this condemned one to get half his appraised value would be very
consoling in the hour of trouble! One circumstance in connection with
this incident gladdened my heart. On one occasion I overheard two men
conversing with the negro in his cell. They were godly men, and had
come to offer the sympathy of supplication in prayer. One of these
visitors was gifted in a special manner. His pleadings before the court
of heaven in behalf of his unfortunate fellow-man, were touchingly
eloquent. He sang and prayed alternately, and with tearful eyes and
tender tones, pointed the criminal to the Saviour who blessed the dying
thief on Calvary. But all his instructions and persuasions seemed
alike in vain. The stoic prisoner remained hard-hearted and unmoved.
I asked and obtained permission from the keeper to speak a few words to
the man so soon to die. The conditions on which I obtained the favor
were that my instructions should be given in the keeper’s presence.
Looking through the iron bars at my sinful but unfortunate auditor, I
said,
“Do you believe that Christ died for all?”
“I don’t know, massa,” he replied.
“Well, you know something about the Bible, don’t you?”
“No, massa.”
“Have you never heard the Gospel preached?”
“Yes, massa, I used to hear old parson Cooper preach, and I guess dat
was what he preached about.”
“Can you read?”
“No, massa.”
“Did you ever pray?”
“No, massa. I’se heard folks a-prayin’. My massa never prayed like dis
nigga,”—referring to the visitor who had been praying with him in the
cell.
“Well, my dear fellow, you know you have to die, don’t you?”
“Yes, massa.”
“What do you think will become of you when you die?”
“I dun know, massa.”
“Did you ever talk with white people on this subject?”
“No, massa.”
Here our conversation was interrupted by the keeper, who told me I
must return to my cell. I had no further opportunity to converse with
the poor negro prisoner. My thoughts troubled me. I reflected on the
destiny of these immortal beings, thus oppressed in body and soul by
their tyrant masters. What a fearful weight of responsibility rests
_somewhere_! Who shall give account in the great day for the ignorance
of the four millions of slaves, going up to judgment from a land of
boasted light and knowledge? This slave was a representative man.
Although he knew little about secular matters, he had opportunity to
learn even less of religion!
But despite all the efforts to keep the slaves in ignorance, both by
legal enactments and tyrannical vigilance, very many of them gained a
surprising fund of information. What an accursed system of wrong is
that which locks the Bible from the homes and hearts of the poor! May
the uttermost overthrow come upon an institution that prohibits the
education of any class or color of God’s children!
The next day, before leaving the prison, I asked permission to visit
the colored convict once more, but the privilege was not granted. That
very day a dark man was hung, and a darker crime registered in the book
of Judgment-day accounts, the penalty of which will by-and-by rest upon
the head of the guilty perpetrators.