As usual it stopped at the water-tank near our camp. In ten minutes
important news had leaped from the engine to head-quarters; from
head-quarters to the guard-house, and from the guard-house straight
through the line of sentries into our bunks. The news was this: twelve
Yankee gun-boats, twenty-four large transports, and six thousand men lay
off Sabine.
The next day the train confirmed the news. We learnt, too, that Union
men, in Houston, were bold and defiant, and talked openly of a change of
masters. Our guards were in a ferment. They talked with us freely, and
confessed that there were not three hundred troops between Houston and
Sabine. “Your folks will seize the railroad and march straight on to
Houston,” they said, “and then Galveston will have to go, and like as
not you’ll be guarding us within a week.” “What splendid strategy,” said
everybody. “Blunt has drawn all the forces in the State up to
Bonham—there is nothing to prevent our coming in below; Magruder is
completely out-generalled. We must forgive the two months of idleness
since Vicksburg and Port Hudson fell.”
Another day came, and the excitement increased; another, and affairs
seemed in suspense; a third, and there was a rumor that two gun-boats
had been sunk, their crews captured, and that the “Great Expedition” was
“skedaddling” (such was the ignominious term applied) back to New
Orleans. There came yet another day, when we sat waiting for the train.
“The cars are late,” said one. “It is past three o’clock, and they
should have been here at two.”
“That’s a good sign,” said another; “it shows they have something to
keep them. When they come you will see Magruder is sending off his
ordnance stores.”
“Then you don’t feel any fear about that rumor?”
“That rumor, oh no! It is the best sign of all. They never fail to get
up such rumors when they are being beaten. Don’t you remember how, just
before Vicksburg surrendered, we used to hear that Breckenridge had
taken Baton Rouge, and Taylor was besieging New Orleans, and Lee had
burnt Philadelphia?”
“Oh no,” said everybody, stoutly, “there is no danger. And how can there
be? We know that there is nothing down there but a little mud fort, with
fifty men in it, and six forty-two pounders. Our hundred-pound Parrots
will knock it to pieces, and a couple of companies can carry it by
assault. Oh no, all I am afraid of is, that _we_ shall be run off,
nobody knows where.”
The whistle sounded and we waited for the news. The track ran through a
deep cutting, which at first hid the body of the cars from our sight,
but a man stood on the roof of the foremost baggage car and waved his
hat. Presently a howl was given by those of our guard who were waiting
at the station.
“What can that mean?” said everybody. “Very strange! surely there can be
no bad news for us.”
The next moment, some one exclaimed, “Good heavens, what a sight! Look
there!” I looked; the train was covered with the blue-jackets of our
navy.
The officers of the “Clifton” and “Sachem” did not accompany their men.
We heard that they were guilty of spiking their cannon, flooding their
magazines, secreting their money, and other like offences, for which
they were kept at Houston; later, however, they unexpectedly came up. A
new Captain, who then commanded Camp Groce, ushered them in, and we
welcomed them. The youngest of us then had been prisoners more than
three months, and felt ourselves to be “old prisoners.” The Captain of
the “Clifton” supped with us, and as he surveyed our little shanty,
replete with black-jack lines, hat-racks of curiously twisted branches,
knives, and spoons, and salt-cellars, neatly carved from wood, and pipes
fashioned out of incomparable corn-cob, he said that these little
luxuries made him feel sorry for us, for they showed him what straits we
had been reduced to. I felt sorry for him as he said it, for the speech
reminded me of the lessons reserved for him to learn. Later than usual
we retired, excited with this unusual event. The barracks had just grown
quiet, when the Captain in command suddenly re-appeared, his guard at
his back. “The gentlemen who arrived to-day,” he said, in an agitated
voice, “will please to rise immediately.” The new-comers rose, groped
round for clothes and baggage in the dark; and as they dressed, asked
what all this meant. The Captain vouchsafed no reply, but in a still
more agitated voice, begged them to be as quick as possible. Whether
they were going to be searched, or executed, or sent back to Houston,
nobody could determine. They were marched off, and we, now wide awake,
discussed the matter for some hours. The next morning disclosed our
friends haplessly shivering around a small building, some three hundred
yards distant. It appeared that strict orders had been sent up with the
prisoners, directing that they should be confined separately, and hold
no communication with us. The now unhappy Captain had not thought it
worth while to read his orders until bed-time. Then he stumbled on the
fiat of the stern Provost Marshal General, whose chief delight was to
court-martial Confederate captains. Deeply dismayed, he had rushed to
the guard-house for his guard, to the barracks for his prisoners, and
executed the painful work of separation.
The Provost Marshal General had not enclosed subsistence in his order.
In the absence of dodger-pots, the “old prisoners” had to take care of
these new ones. We were not allowed to write or talk, to send messages
or to receive them. The baskets, as they went and came, were searched,
the dodgers broken open, and everything was done in a very military and
terrible way. In a few days we received a present of pea-nuts from our
friends. We were not fond of pea-nuts, and did not appreciate the gift.
The basket travelled over as usual with their dinner, but carried no
acknowledgment of the pea-nuts. In the afternoon Lieutenant Dane, of the
signal corps, was seen approaching our lines with a prize—a prize that
had neither predecessor nor successor—a leg of mutton. The lieutenant
delivered the mutton across the line to one of us, and the notability of
the event warranted him in saying before the guard:
“This is a present from Major Barnes. Did you get the pea-nuts we sent
you this morning?”
“Yes, yes,” responded Captain Dillingham, on behalf of our mess; “yes,
they’re very nice. We are much obliged to you.”
“Eat them,” said the lieutenant, “eat them. They won’t hurt you—eat them
all.”
The Captain carried the leg of mutton in, and hurriedly took down the
pea-nuts. We looked sharply at them, but saw nothing unusual. Why eat
them _all_? “If they want us to do so, it must be done!” We proceeded to
break the shells. Presently there was a shell—a sound and healthy
shell—within which had grown a long, narrow slip of paper, rolled up
tightly. It contained a single message, viz., that the covered handle of
Mr. Fowler’s basket was in fact a mail-bag. From that time on, the
watchful patrols would lift out the plates, and inspect the beef, and
scrutinize the dodger, and then carry the mail-bag backward and forward
for us.
With the increased number of prisoners, there had been a change in the
command of the camp. The company of volunteers were relieved by a
battalion of militia. To our surprise, the militia very far surpassed
the volunteers, and did their business in a very soldierly way. The
battalion was commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel John Sayles, a lawyer of
considerable distinction in Texas. The Lieutenant-Colonel was a man of
few words, very quiet, very kind, and rarely gave an order that did not
effect an improvement.
On the Sunday after he assumed command, Colonel Sayles informed me in
his quiet way, that there would be Divine service in the grove, and
invited me and all the prisoners to accompany him. There had been a
reverend gentleman preaching at Camp Groce the Sunday before I arrived,
who had been seeking a chaplaincy, and had assumed what he supposed was
a popular train of argument; as for instance, warning his beloved
brethren that the chief horror of eternal punishment would be meeting
the President of the United States there. I do not care to hear
irreverent things said in the pulpit, nor do I think it the part of an
officer to listen voluntarily to denunciations of his government, yet I
felt assured that Colonel Sayles would not invite me to anything of that
kind, and I thought I could best acknowledge his civility by accepting.
When the clergyman who officiated first caught sight of the prisoners,
forming one-half of his audience, he evinced a little embarrassment. He
alluded to this as he began his sermon, and spoke happily of the breadth
of the Christian faith, extending to all conditions of men, and enabling
enemies to stand together and worship at one altar. His prayer was
chiefly an affecting and beautiful petition on our behalf. He spoke of
the tender ties that were severed, and besought consolation for our
distant dear ones, who must be now in anxiety watching our fate. He
prayed, too, that “we their captors and keepers, may have grace to treat
them as becomes Christian soldiers, resisting the evil passions of our
hearts and the evil counsels of wicked and cruel men.”
After the services were concluded, we were introduced to the clergyman,
Mr. McGown, of Huntsville. He visited us in our quarters, ministered to
our sick, and was always one of our most welcome visitors. He had been
with Houston in the war of Texan independence, and was one of the heroes
of San Jacinto. His acquaintance with the General had been intimate, and
he entertained us with many interesting anecdotes of him and tales of
the former war.
These anecdotes of General Houston then possessed for us unusual
interest. When some of the older prisoners had been sent to the State
Prison at Huntsville, they were halted a few minutes on the outskirts of
the town. As they waited there, a tall, imposing old man approached and
asked, who was the United States officer highest in rank. Captain
Dillingham was pointed out to him as the senior naval officer. Walking
up to him and extending his hand, he said, in a deep, emphatic voice,
“My name is Houston, sir. I have come to say to you, gentlemen, that I
do not approve of such treatment for prisoners of war. No prisoner of
war shall ever be put in a jail with my consent.”
The death of General Houston occurred just before I reached Texas. Many
stories were told of his great personal power, and strange incidents of
his wondrously romantic life. The forebodings of his celebrated letter
were all realized before he died, for his oldest son was in the
ranks—his warmest friends and supporters were scattered and slain, and
ruin and desolation brooded over the State which he had established and
so long directed and controlled. He was guarded in the expression of his
political sentiments, but occasionally addressed the troops, speaking
from the _Texan_ point of view. He never took the oath of allegiance to
the Confederate Government. A short time before his death travellers
were required to have a Provost Marshal’s pass, and to procure a pass
they must take the oath. The General had neither taken the oath nor
procured a pass. He set out, however, on a journey and proceeded till
one of the provost guard halted him and demanded his pass.
“My pass through Texas,” said the old man, in his sternest tone, “is San
Jacinto.”
The Texan soldier looked at him for a moment. “I reckon,” he said,
“_that_ pass will go as far in Texas as any a Provost Marshal ever
wrote. Pass an old San Jacinto.”
Colonel Sayles was soon succeeded by Major James S. Barnes of the same
battalion. The Major was a Georgian by birth, an old Texan by residence,
and a man of great general information, and so far as we were concerned,
in every thought and word and deed a perfect Christian gentleman. He
told stories with a graphic simplicity I have never heard excelled, and
was so pleasantly reasonable and so enticingly good-natured that even
our wayward sailors consented to be led by a landsman, and allowed that
he was as good a man as a rebel could be. One day as the Major passed
through the barracks chatting with the well and cheering up the sick, he
hinted at the uncertainty of exchange and at coming “northers,” and
advised us to prepare for the worst by building ourselves chimneys and
fire-places. He promised to provide an old negro chimney-builder to
engineer the work and teams to haul the material. The dwellers in the
shanty quickly availed themselves of the offer. But nothing could induce
those in the barracks to go and do likewise. So weak and dispirited were
all that the difficulties appeared insurmountable. When the frost came
and found them still prisoners, they piled sand on the floor, and making
fire upon it sat there and shivered, while the smoke floated over them
and found its way out through the holes in the roof.
We, who were wise betimes, cut our logs in the woods, dug up our clay on
the neighboring hill-side, and waited the arrival of “Uncle George.”
This uncle came in time, and led the work. A hole was cut in Mr.
Stratford’s room—the logs were notched and crossed, the chimney splints
were split and laid up, and the whole was properly cemented together,
and daubed over with rich clay mortar.
Hardly was the chimney complete, when one of the guard announced that he
reckoned there’d be a norther; the beeves, he said, were making for the
timber. In Texas it is an established fact that nobody can tell anything
about the weather, so we gave little heed to the prediction. Early in
the afternoon, however, some one said that the norther was in sight. The
day was warm; the sun was bright; birds were singing, and the leaves
still were green. There was nothing to indicate a change save a black
cloud rapidly rising in the north. Our men were sitting round in their
shirt-sleeves, whittling and working as usual, and every thing continued
pleasant. The black cloud, however, bore swiftly down upon us. As it
drew near, we saw an immense flock of turkey-buzzards driven before it,
whirling in the air and screaming wildly. A moment later the breeze
struck us. It felt not unlike the gust that precedes a thunder-shower,
but as I watched the cloud I found that I had suddenly grown cold. I had
heard fearful stories of these northers, and read of a hardy Vermonter,
who, scorning a cold that merely skimmed the ponds with ice, had
ventured out in one; and how his blood congealed, and he was carried
back by his horse insensible. I saw that all the men had gone in, and
that the sentries had wrapped themselves in their blankets. Within the
shanty I found our little fire-place bright and its owners sitting in a
close circle around it. But the cold seemed to beat directly through the
walls, and the wind blew a steady blast. We passed all the long evening
closely crouched around the fire, warming first one side and then the
other, talking of home and pitying the poor wretches in the barracks.
When bed-time came we carried hot stones with us into our bunks and
hurried to bed before we should be chilled. I wrapped myself in my
double army blanket with which I had braved ice and snow and then rolled
myself in my buffalo. I thought it sufficient for an Arctic winter, but
ere morning the horrible cold crept in and penetrated to the very bones.
As I moved about to try and make my blood circulate, Colonel Burrill
spoke and said that he was so cold that he feared he was dying. The
Colonel had been quite ill, and this startled me; so I rose, threw a
coat or two upon him, and then drawing the blankets over his head,
tucked them tightly in and left him to take the chances of suffocation
or freezing. I went back to my own couch and shivered away till morning.
The cold drove us all out early, and we met again around our fire-place.
A sailor boy brought up a hot breakfast, for cooking over a hot stove
that morning was a high privilege which no one threw away. He told us
that one of his shipmates lay frozen in his bunk, and that they had just
found him there dead. During the morning we suspended our blankets from
the rafters so as to form a little tent immediately around the fire, and
there in darkness we sat the live-long day. Another dismal evening
followed and another bitter night. Then, after thirty-six hours of fury,
the norther went down and we ventured to crawl out and resume our work.
VII.
TEA.
There was some coffee in Camp Groce, when we arrived—not much—and a
little was bought afterward for “morning coffee,” with some tea for the
sick, at fifteen dollars per pound. It was poor stuff, and not worth the
price.
The messes that I found there used corn; or, as they called it, corn
coffee. This was made from the meal. Burnt in a frying-pan upon the
stove, by a sailor-cook, some particles in charcoal and some not singed
at all, it formed a grayish compound, and made as horrible a beverage as
any one could be supposed willing to drink. I thought at first that I
would go back, for my own part, to an old habit of cold water; and if we
had possessed pure water I might have done so. But our well-water had a
sulphurous taste; and then, in this southern climate, there is an
insatiable appetite for nervine food. Thus those who never touched
pepper, nor cared a fig for seasoning, and spices at home (not because
they disliked them, but because they thought it wisest not to eat what
they did not want), have had a constant craving in the army for coffee,
tea, and spices, and for the bad catsups, and worse imitation sauces,
that sutlers sell and soldiers buy. So I drank these slops, and, like
the others, called them coffee.
A little mess, indeed, as I have hinted, applied the Louisiana lesson we
had learnt, and made their “morning coffee.” Turning out with the first
glimmer of dawn, we ground and re-ground exactly twenty of the precious
berries, watchful that not one should be lost, nor a speck of the
priceless dust spilt. An old tin cylinder, with a piece of flannel bound
tightly round the end, formed the strainer, and a large-sized tin mug
our coffee-pot; and by keeping a week’s grounds, at least, in the
strainer, it was wonderful what strength this ingenious apparatus did
extract.
But the enterprising Yankee mind, never long contented with any thing,
quarrelled with the corn-meal coffee and proposed a change. A hardy
sailor, of New England origin, objected to the _meal_, and insisted that
it would be better to make the coffee directly out of corn—we should, he
said, get all the flavor then. There was a furious debate over this, of
course, for the enterprising Yankee mind much prefers a theory to a
fact. It was argued on the one side, that the flavor was just what you
did not want; that corn was corn, and it made no difference if it was
also meal; and that it was much wiser to use the meal and thereby make
the enemy grind our coffee, than to burn the corn and grind it
ourselves. These arguments were met by others equally strong, and the
debate continued till some stupid person of Dutch descent, suggested
that the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and that if any one
wanted to try corn for coffee, he might.
We traded some of our meal ration for corn; the corn was burnt and
ground and tried, and found far preferable to meal and all other
substitutes. Its opponents drank it, and our little coffee-mill creaked
and rattled at all hours under the load which the discovery threw upon
it.
A further improvement was effected, for it was discovered one day, that
the outside of the kernel would be well parched, while the inside would
have a yellow, undone appearance. The fact is, it was impossible to
roast it through, and this gave to the coffee a raw, mealy taste. The
remedy was simple, and consisted merely in not grinding the corn, and
thus using only the outside of the kernel.
“We thought then that we had reached the perfection of corn, and the
last of substitutes.”
There was, however, a tea made by the Texans from the leaves of a half
bush, half tree, called _yapon_, which was said to taste wonderfully
like the real. They drank it three times a day, at Captain Buster’s
head-quarters, and many of the sailors followed the fashion. Yet it had
a bad name. It was said, that it caused certain unpleasant medical
effects, and one young gentleman, who had once taken a mug full, averred
that he shortly thereafter felt a burning sensation in that part of his
body where he supposed (erroneously) was his stomach.
I never could find the men whom it was said to have made sick, and I had
little belief in the rumor. Yet, as I do not like tea except when ill,
there was little inducement to experiment with this unknown, untried
plant. Still I meant to test it, some time or other, as a matter of
scientific curiosity, and if it were like the Chinese plant, to carry a
handful home for the edification of tea drinkers there.
This “some time or other” did not come, probably because the material
was always close at hand. The yapon grew thickly along the brook and up
to the borders of the camp. It was generally from ten to twenty feet
high, and as thick as a man’s arm; it had furnished us with nearly all
the poles for a rustic arbor, that ran along the sunny side of the
barracks, and helped to shade and cool the sick-bunks. Its branches,
too, had been used to fill up in roofing the arbor, and there were
leaves enough there to furnish an army with bohea.
Thus time glided away under the influence of corn coffee, till one day
it was said, that the commanding officer had proclaimed corn coffee
unhealthy, nay, dangerous. There were then numerous medical symptoms,
all pointing forward to intermittent fever and backward to corn coffee.
When a dozen men compare notes, and find that they are all afflicted in
the same way, and never in their lives have been so before, it alarms
them.
The surgeon was informed of this, and he thought there must be something
in it, the intermittent cases had increased so unaccountably. As we thus
deliberated, Colonel Sayles came up and we consulted him. The Colonel
gave his facts and recommended sweet potatoes as a substitute for corn
and coffee.
“Let us look at the analysis,” said the surgeon, walking into his office
and taking down a big book.
“‘Corn or maize, sometimes called Indian corn. This grain is cultivated
throughout the United States.’” “Yes, we know that.” “‘Its analysis
shows starch, sugar, _sulphate of lime_.’ That must be the agent (if
any) which is doing us all the damage. I really think you had better
follow the Colonel’s advice and take up the sweet potatoes.”
“Let us see what the potato has in it. Doctor, who knows but that
there’s some other atom to be roasted into poison there?”
“Batata, yes, ‘batata, or common potato,’ ‘seed poisonous,’ and so
forth. Analysis sugar, and so forth. It has the sulphate again and more
of it than there is in corn. That will never do, to say nothing of
costing ten dollars a bushel.”
October was drawing toward its end when there came a “wet norther,” and
with it a sharp frost, ice thick as a pane of glass—much suffering—some
agues and countless colds.
The “norther” found me ill with a periodical return of my Louisiana
malarial, and brought me a cold of the severest kind. It blew through
the cracks and crannies of the barracks, through my blankets and through
me. I felt as though my blood had ceased to circulate and I should never
be warm again.
“Try some of Mr. Fowler’s sumach,” suggested some one; “it cured my
cold.”
“I have tried everything,” I said, “and find the only thing is
prevention—nothing cures these colds with me when they have come.”
“And I never got any help from medicine,” said my friend. “But this
stuff of Fowler’s cured mine in a night. I never knew any thing like
it.”
I went to Mr. Fowler and got the sumach berries. A cluster or two thrown
in a quart mug of boiling water made the remedy. It was fearfully acid,
and it took fearful quantities of sugar to make it palatable, but it
then had quite a pleasant taste and worked (let me say for the benefit
of the victims of violent catarrh) a miraculous cure.