INTRODUCTION TO PRISON LIFE--THE PEMBERTON BUILDING AND ITS
OCCUPANTS --NEAT SAILORS--ROLL CALL--RATIONS AND CLOTHING--CHIVALRIC
“CONFISCATION.”
I began acquainting myself with my new situation and surroundings. The
building into which I had been conducted was an old tobacco factory,
called the “Pemberton building,” possibly from an owner of that name,
and standing on the corner of what I was told were Fifteenth and Carey
streets. In front it was four stories high; behind but three, owing to
the rapid rise of the hill, against which it was built.
It fronted towards the James River and Kanawha Canal, and the James
River--both lying side by side, and only one hundred yards distant,
with no intervening buildings. The front windows afforded a fine view.
To the right front was Libby, with its guards pacing around it on the
sidewalk, watching the fifteen hundred officers confined within its
walls. At intervals during each day squads of fresh prisoners could
be seen entering its dark mouth, to be registered, and searched, and
then marched off to the prison assigned them. We could see up the James
River for a mile or so, to where the long bridges crossing it bounded
the view. Directly in front, across the river, was a flat, sandy plain,
said to be General Winfield Scott’s farm, and now used as a proving
ground for the guns cast at the Tredegar Iron Works.
The view down the river was very fine. It extended about twelve miles,
to where a gap in the woods seemed to indicate a fort, which we
imagined to be Fort Darling, at that time the principal fortification
defending the passage of the James.
Between that point and where we were lay the river, in a long, broad
mirror-like expanse, like a pretty little inland lake. Occasionally
a busy little tug would bustle up or down, a gunboat move along with
noiseless dignity, suggestive of a reserved power, or a schooner
beat lazily from one side to the other. But these were so few as to
make even more pronounced the customary idleness that hung over the
scene. The tug’s activity seemed spasmodic and forced--a sort of
protest against the gradually increasing lethargy that reigned upon
the bosom of the waters --the gunboat floated along as if performing
a perfunctory duty, and the schooners sailed about as if tired of
remaining in one place. That little stretch of water was all that was
left for a cruising ground. Beyond Fort Darling the Union gunboats
lay, and the only vessel that passed the barrier was the occasional
flag-of-truce steamer.
The basement of the building was occupied as a store-house for the
taxes-in-kind which the Confederate Government collected. On the first
floor were about five hundred men. On the second floor--where I was
--were about four hundred men. These were principally from the First
Division, First Corps distinguished by a round red patch on their
caps; First Division, Second Corps, marked by a red clover leaf; and
the First Division, Third Corps, who wore a red diamond. They were
mainly captured at Gettysburg and Mine Run. Besides these there was
a considerable number from the Eighth Corps, captured at Winchester,
and a large infusion of Cavalry-First, Second and Third West
Virginia--taken in Averill’s desperate raid up the Virginia Valley,
with the Wytheville Salt Works as an objective.
On the third floor were about two hundred sailors and marines, taken
in the gallant but luckless assault upon the ruins of Fort Sumter, in
the September previous. They retained the discipline of the ship in
their quarters, kept themselves trim and clean, and their floor as
white as a ship’s deck. They did not court the society of the “sojers”
below, whose camp ideas of neatness differed from theirs. A few old
barnacle-backs always sat on guard around the head of the steps leading
from the lower rooms. They chewed tobacco enormously, and kept their
mouths filled with the extracted juice. Any luckless “sojer” who
attempted to ascend the stairs usually returned in haste, to avoid the
deluge of the filthy liquid.
For convenience in issuing rations we were divided into messes of
twenty, each mess electing a Sergeant as its head, and each floor
electing a Sergeant-of-the-Floor, who drew rations and enforced what
little discipline was observed.
Though we were not so neat as the sailors above us, we tried to keep
our quarters reasonably clean, and we washed the floor every morning;
getting down on our knees and rubbing it clean and dry with rags.
Each mess detailed a man each day to wash up the part of the floor it
occupied, and he had to do this properly or no ration would be given
him. While the washing up was going on each man stripped himself
and made close examination of his garments for the body-lice, which
otherwise would have increased beyond control. Blankets were also
carefully hunted over for these “small deer.”
About eight o’clock a spruce little lisping rebel named Ross would
appear with a book, and a body-guard, consisting of a big Irishman,
who had the air of a Policeman, and carried a musket barrel made
into a cane. Behind him were two or three armed guards. The
Sergeant-of-the-Floor commanded:
“Fall in in four ranks for roll-call.”
We formed along one side of the room; the guards halted at the head of
the stairs; Ross walked down in front and counted the files, closely
followed by his Irish aid, with his gun-barrel cane raised ready for
use upon any one who should arouse his ruffianly ire. Breaking ranks
we returned to our places, and sat around in moody silence for three
hours. We had eaten nothing since the previous noon. Rising hungry, our
hunger seemed to increase in arithmetical ratio with every quarter of
an hour.
These times afforded an illustration of the thorough subjection of
man to the tyrant Stomach. A more irritable lot of individuals could
scarcely be found outside of a menagerie than these men during the
hours waiting for rations. “Crosser than, two sticks” utterly failed
as a comparison. They were crosser than the lines of a check apron.
Many could have given odds to the traditional bear with a sore head,
and run out of the game fifty points ahead of him. It was astonishingly
easy to get up a fight at these times. There was no need of going
a step out of the way to search for it, as one could have a full
fledged article of overwhelming size on his hands at any instant, by
a trifling indiscretion of speech or manner. All the old irritating
flings between the cavalry, the artillery and the infantry, the older
“first-call” men, and the later or “Three-Hundred-Dollar-men,” as
they were derisively dubbed, between the different corps of the Army
of the Potomac, between men of different States, and lastly between
the adherents and opponents of McClellan, came to the lips and were
answered by a blow with the fist, when a ring would be formed around
the combatants by a crowd, which would encourage them with yells to do
their best. In a few minutes one of the parties to the fistic debate,
who found the point raised by him not well taken, would retire to the
sink to wash the blood from his battered face, and the rest would
resume their seats and glower at space until some fresh excitement
roused them. For the last hour or so of these long waits hardly a word
would be spoken. We were too ill-natured to talk for amusement, and
there was nothing else to talk for.
This spell was broken about eleven o’clock by the appearance at the
head of the stairway of the Irishman with the gun-barrel cane, and his
singing out:
“Sargint uv the flure: fourtane min and a bread-box!”
Instantly every man sprang to his feet, and pressed forward to be one
of the favored fourteen. One did not get any more gyrations or obtain
them any sooner by this, but it was a relief, and a change to walk the
half square outside the prison to the cookhouse, and help carry the
rations back.
For a little while after our arrival in Richmond, the rations were
tolerably good. There had been so much said about the privations
of the prisoners that our Government had, after much quibbling and
negotiation, succeeded in getting the privilege of sending food and
clothing through the lines to us. Of course but a small part of that
sent ever reached its destination. There were too many greedy Rebels
along its line of passage to let much of it be received by those for
whom it was intended. We could see from our windows Rebels strutting
about in overcoats, in which the box wrinkles were still plainly
visible, wearing new “U. S.” blankets as cloaks, and walking in
Government shoes, worth fabulous prices in Confederate money.
Fortunately for our Government the rebels decided to out themselves off
from this profitable source of supply. We read one day in the Richmond
papers that “President Davis and his Cabinet had come to the conclusion
that it was incompatible with the dignity of a sovereign power to
permit another power with which it was at war, to feed and clothe
prisoners in its hands.”
I will not stop to argue this point of honor, and show its absurdity by
pointing out that it is not an unusual practice with nations at war. It
is a sufficient commentary upon this assumption of punctiliousness that
the paper went on to say that some five tons of clothing and fifteen
tons of food, which had been sent under a flag of truce to City Point,
would neither be returned nor delivered to us, but “converted to the
use of the Confederate Government.”
“And surely they are all honorable men!”
Heaven save the mark.