SAVANNAH PROVES TO BE A CHANGE FOR THE BETTER--ESCAPE FROM THE BRATS
OF GUARDS--COMPARISON BETWEEN WIRZ AND DAVIS--A BRIEF INTERVAL OF GOOD
RATIONS--WINDER, THE MAN WITH THE EVIL EYE--THE DISLOYAL WORK OF A
SHYSTER.
After all Savannah was a wonderful improvement on Andersonville.
We got away from the pestilential Swamp and that poisonous ground.
Every mouthful of air was not laden with disease germs, nor every cup
of water polluted with the seeds of death. The earth did not breed
gangrene, nor the atmosphere promote fever. As only the more vigorous
had come away, we were freed from the depressing spectacle of every
third man dying. The keen disappointment prostrated very many who had
been of average health, and I imagine, several hundred died, but there
were hospital arrangements of some kind, and the sick were taken away
from among us. Those of us who tunneled out had an opportunity of
stretching our legs, which we had not had for months in the overcrowded
Stockade we had left. The attempts to escape did all engaged in them
good, even though they failed, since they aroused new ideas and hopes,
set the blood into more rapid circulation, and toned up the mind and
system both. I had come away from Andersonville with considerable
scurvy manifesting itself in my gums and feet. Soon these signs almost
wholly disappeared.
We also got away from those murderous little brats of Reserves, who
guarded us at Andersonville, and shot men down as they would stone
apples out of a tree. Our guards now were mostly, sailors, from the
Rebel fleet in the harbor--Irishmen, Englishmen and Scandinavians, as
free hearted and kindly as sailors always are. I do not think they
ever fired a shot at one of us. The only trouble we had was with that
portion of the guard drawn from the infantry of the garrison. They had
the same rattlesnake venom of the Home Guard crowd wherever we met it,
and shot us down at the least provocation. Fortunately they only formed
a small part of the sentinels.
Best of all, we escaped for a while from the upas-like shadow of Winder
and Wirz, in whose presence strong men sickened and died, as when near
some malign genii of an Eastern story. The peasantry of Italy believed
firmly in the evil eye. Did they ever know any such men as Winder and
his satellite, I could comprehend how much foundation they could have
for such a belief.
Lieutenant Davis had many faults, but there was no comparison between
him and the Andersonville commandant. He was a typical young Southern
man; ignorant and bumptious as to the most common matters of school-boy
knowledge, inordinately vain of himself and his family, coarse in
tastes and thoughts, violent in his prejudices, but after all with
some streaks of honor and generosity that made the widest possible
difference between him and Wirz, who never had any. As one of my chums
said to me:
“Wirz is the most even-tempered man I ever knew; he’s always foaming
mad.”
This was nearly the truth. I never saw Wirz when he was not angry; if
not violently abusive, he was cynical and sardonic. Never, in my little
experience with him did I detect a glint of kindly, generous humanity;
if he ever was moved by any sight of suffering its exhibition in his
face escaped my eye. If he ever had even a wish to mitigate the pain or
hardship of any man the expression of such wish never fell on my ear.
How a man could move daily through such misery as he encountered, and
never be moved by it except to scorn and mocking is beyond my limited
understanding.
Davis vapored a great deal, swearing big round oaths in the broadest of
Southern patois; he was perpetually threatening to:
“Open on ye wid de ahtillery,” but the only death that I knew him to
directly cause or sanction was that I have described in the previous
chapter. He would not put himself out of the way to annoy and oppress
prisoners, as Wirz would, but frequently showed even a disposition to
humor them in some little thing, when it could be done without danger
or trouble to himself.
By-and-by, however, he got an idea that there was some money to be made
out of the prisoners, and he set his wits to work in this direction.
One day, standing at the gate, he gave one of his peculiar yells that
he used to attract the attention of the camp with:
“Wh-ah-ye!!”
We all came to “attention,” and he announced:
“Yesterday, while I wuz in the camps (a Rebel always says camps,)
some of you prisoners picked my pockets of seventy-five dollars in
greenbacks. Now, I give you notice that I’ll not send in any moah
rations till the money’s returned to me.”
This was a very stupid method of extortion, since no one believed that
he had lost the money, and at all events he had no business to have
the greenbacks, as the Rebel laws imposed severe penalties upon any
citizen, and still more upon any soldier dealing with, or having in
his possession any of “the money of the enemy.” We did without rations
until night, when they were sent in. There was a story that some of
the boys in the prison had contributed to make up part of the sum, and
Davis took it and was satisfied. I do not know how true the story was.
At another time some of the boys stole the bridle and halter off an
old horse that was driven in with a cart. The things were worth, at a
liberal estimate, one dollar. Davis cut off the rations of the whole
six thousand of us for one day for this. We always imagined that the
proceeds went into his pocket.
A special exchange was arranged between our Navy Department and
that of the Rebels, by which all seamen and marines among us were
exchanged. Lists of these were sent to the different prisons and
the men called for. About three-fourths of them were dead, but many
soldiers divining, the situation of affairs, answered to the dead men’s
names, went away with the squad and were exchanged. Much of this was
through the connivance of the Rebel officers, who favored those who
had ingratiated themselves with them. In many instances money was paid
to secure this privilege, and I have been informed on good authority
that Jack Huckleby, of the Eighth Tennessee, and Ira Beverly, of the
One Hundredth Ohio, who kept the big sutler shop on the North Side at
Andersonville, paid Davis five hundred dollars each to be allowed to go
with the sailors. As for Andrews and me, we had no friends among the
Rebels, nor money to bribe with, so we stood no show.
The rations issued to us for some time after our arrival seemed
riotous luxury to what we had been getting at Andersonville. Each
of us received daily a half-dozen rude and coarse imitations of our
fondly-remembered hard tack, and with these a small piece of meat or a
few spoonfuls of molasses, and a quart or so of vinegar, and several
plugs of tobacco for each “hundred.” How exquisite was the taste of the
crackers and molasses!
It was the first wheat bread I had eaten since my entry into Richmond
--nine months before--and molasses had been a stranger to me for
years. After the corn bread we had so long lived upon, this was manna.
It seems that the Commissary at Savannah labored under the delusion
that he must issue to us the same rations as were served out to
the Rebel soldiers and sailors. It was some little time before the
fearful mistake came to the knowledge of Winder. I fancy that the
news almost threw him into an apoplectic fit. Nothing, save his being
ordered to the front, could have caused him such poignant sorrow as
the information that so much good food had been worse than wasted in
undoing his work by building up the bodies of his hated enemies.
Without being told, we knew that he had been heard from when the
tobacco, vinegar and molasses failed to come in, and the crackers gave
way to corn meal. Still this was a vast improvement on Andersonville,
as the meal was fine and sweet, and we each had a spoonful of salt
issued to us regularly.
I am quite sure that I cannot make the reader who has not had an
experience similar to ours comprehend the wonderful importance to us
of that spoonful of salt. Whether or not the appetite for salt be, as
some scientists claim, a purely artificial want, one thing is certain,
and that is, that either the habit of countless generations or some
other cause, has so deeply ingrained it into our common nature, that
it has come to be nearly as essential as food itself, and no amount of
deprivation can accustom us to its absence. Rather, it seemed that the
longer we did without it the more overpowering became our craving. I
could get along to-day and to-morrow, perhaps the whole week, without
salt in my food, since the lack would be supplied from the excess I
had already swallowed, but at the end of that time Nature would begin
to demand that I renew the supply of saline constituent of my tissues,
and she would become more clamorous with every day that I neglected her
bidding, and finally summon Nausea to aid Longing.
The light artillery of the garrison of Savannah--four batteries,
twenty-four pieces--was stationed around three sides of the prison, the
guns unlimbered, planted at convenient distance, and trained upon us,
ready for instant use. We could see all the grinning mouths through
the cracks in the fence. There were enough of them to send us as high
as the traditional kite flown by Gilderoy. The having at his beck this
array of frowning metal lent Lieutenant Davis such an importance in
his own eyes that his demeanor swelled to the grandiose. It became
very amusing to see him puff up and vaunt over it, as he did on every
possible occasion. For instance, finding a crowd of several hundred
lounging around the gate, he would throw open the wicket, stalk in
with the air of a Jove threatening a rebellious world with the dread
thunders of heaven, and shout:
“W-h-a-a y-e-e! Prisoners, I give you jist two minutes to cleah away
from this gate, aw I’ll open on ye wid de ahtillery!”
One of the buglers of the artillery was a superb musician--evidently
some old “regular” whom the Confederacy had seduced into its service,
and his instrument was so sweet toned that we imagined that it was made
of silver. The calls he played were nearly the same as we used in the
cavalry, and for the first few days we became bitterly homesick every
time he sent ringing out the old familiar signals, that to us were
so closely associated with what now seemed the bright and happy days
when we were in the field with our battalion. If we were only back in
the valleys of Tennessee with what alacrity we would respond to that
“assembly;” no Orderly’s patience would be worn out in getting laggards
and lazy ones to “fall in for roll-call;” how eagerly we would attend
to “stable duty;” how gladly mount our faithful horses and ride away to
“water,” and what bareback races ride, going and coming. We would be
even glad to hear “guard” and “drill” sounded; and there would be music
in the disconsolate “surgeon’s call:”
“Come-get-your-q-n-i-n-i-n-e; come, get your quinine; It’ll make you
sad: It’ll make you sick. Come, come.”
O, if we were only back, what admirable soldiers we would be! One
morning, about three or four o’clock, we were awakened by the ground
shaking and a series of heavy, dull thumps sounding oft seaward. Our
silver-voiced bugler seemed to be awakened, too. He set the echoes
ringing with a vigorously played “reveille;” a minute later came an
equally earnest “assembly,” and when “boots and saddles” followed, we
knew that all was not well in Denmark; the thumping and shaking now had
a significance. It meant heavy Yankee guns somewhere near. We heard
the gunners hitching up; the bugle signal “forward,” the wheels roll
off, and for a half hour afterwards we caught the receding sound of
the bugle commanding “right turn,” “left turn,” etc., as the batteries
marched away. Of course, we became considerably wrought up over the
matter, as we fancied that, knowing we were in Savannah, our vessels
were trying to pass up to the City and take it. The thumping and
shaking continued until late in the afternoon.
We subsequently learned that some of our blockaders, finding time
banging heavy upon their hands, had essayed a little diversion by
knocking Forts Jackson and Bledsoe--two small forts defending the
passage of the Savannah--about their defenders’ ears. After capturing
the forts our folks desisted and came no farther.
Quite a number of the old Raider crowd had come with us from
Andersonville. Among these was the shyster, Peter Bradley. They kept up
their old tactics of hanging around the gates, and currying favor with
the Rebels in every possible way, in hopes to get paroles outside or
other favors. The great mass of the prisoners were so bitter against
the Rebels as to feel that they would rather die than ask or accept
a favor from their hands, and they had little else than contempt for
these trucklers. The raider crowd’s favorite theme of conversation
with the Rebels was the strong discontent of the boys with the manner
of their treatment by our Government. The assertion that there was any
such widespread feeling was utterly false. We all had confidence--as we
continue to have to this day--that our Government would do everything
for us possible, consistent with its honor, and the success of military
operations, and outside of the little squad of which I speak, not
an admission could be extracted from anybody that blame could be
attached to any one, except the Rebels. It was regarded as unmanly and
unsoldier-like to the last degree, as well as senseless, to revile our
Government for the crimes committed by its foes.
But the Rebels were led to believe that we were ripe for revolt against
our flag, and to side with them. Imagine, if possible, the stupidity
that would mistake our bitter hatred of those who were our deadly
enemies, for any feeling that would lead us to join hands with those
enemies. One day we were surprised to see the carpenters erect a rude
stand in the center of the camp. When it was finished, Bradley appeared
upon it, in company with some Rebel officers and guards. We gathered
around in curiosity, and Bradley began making a speech.
He said that it had now become apparent to all of us that our
Government had abandoned us; that it cared little or nothing for us,
since it could hire as many more quite readily, by offering a bounty
equal to the pay which would be due us now; that it cost only a few
hundred dollars to bring over a shipload of Irish, “Dutch,” and French,
who were only too glad to agree to fight or do anything else to get
to this country. [The peculiar impudence of this consisted in Bradley
himself being a foreigner, and one who had only come out under one of
the later calls, and the influence of a big bounty.]
Continuing in this strain he repeated and dwelt upon the old lie,
always in the mouths of his crowd, that Secretary Stanton and General
Halleck had positively refused to enter upon negotiations for exchange,
because those in prison were “only a miserable lot of ‘coffee-boilers’
and ‘blackberry pickers,’ whom the Army was better off without.”
The terms “coffee-boiler,” and “blackberry-pickers” were considered
the worst terms of opprobrium we had in prison. They were applied to
that class of stragglers and skulkers, who were only too ready to give
themselves up to the enemy, and who, on coming in, told some gauzy
story about “just having stopped to boil a cup of coffee,” or to do
something else which they should not have done, when they were gobbled
up. It is not risking much to affirm the probability of Bradley and
most of his crowd having belonged to this dishonorable class.
The assertion that either the great Chief-of-Staff or the still greater
War-Secretary were even capable of applying such epithets to the mass
of prisoners is too preposterous to need refutation, or even denial.
No person outside the raider crowd ever gave the silly lie a moment’s
toleration.
Bradley concluded his speech in some such language as this:
“And now, fellow prisoners, I propose to you this: that we unite in
informing our Government that unless we are exchanged in thirty days,
we will be forced by self-preservation to join the Confederate army.”
For an instant his hearers seemed stunned at the fellow’s audacity, and
then there went up such a roar of denunciation and execration that the
air trembled. The Rebels thought that the whole camp was going to rush
on Bradley and tear him to pieces, and they drew revolvers and leveled
muskets to defend him. The uproar only ceased when Bradley was hurried
out of the prisons but for hours everybody was savage and sullen, and
full of threatenings against him, when opportunity served. We never saw
him afterward.
Angry as I was, I could not help being amused at the tempestuous rage
of a tall, fine-looking and well educated Irish Sergeant of an Illinois
regiment. He poured forth denunciations of the traitor and the Rebels,
with the vivid fluency of his Hibernian nature, vowed he’d “give a year
of me life, be J---s, to have the handling of the dirty spalpeen for
ten minutes; be G-d,” and finally in his rage, tore off his own shirt
and threw it on the ground and trampled on it.
Imagine my astonishment, some time after getting out of prison, to find
the Southern papers publishing as a defense against the charges in
regard to Andersonville, the following document, which they claimed to
have been adopted by “a mass meeting of the prisoners:”
“At a mass meeting held September 28th, 1864, by the Federal prisoners
confined at Savannah, Ga., it was unanimously agreed that the following
resolutions be sent to the President of the United States, in the hope
that he might thereby take such steps as in his wisdom he may think
necessary for our speedy exchange or parole:
“Resolved, That while we would declare our unbounded love for the
Union, for the home of our fathers, and for the graves of those
we venerate, we would beg most respectfully that our situation as
prisoners be diligently inquired into, and every obstacle consistent
with the honor and dignity of the Government at once removed.
“Resolved, That while allowing the Confederate authorities all due
praise for the attention paid to prisoners, numbers of our men are
daily consigned to early graves, in the prime of manhood, far from home
and kindred, and this is not caused intentionally by the Confederate
Government, but by force of circumstances; the prisoners are forced to
go without shelter, and, in a great portion of cases, without medicine.
“Resolved, That, whereas, ten thousand of our brave comrades have
descended into an untimely grave within the last six months, and as
we believe their death was caused by the difference of climate, the
peculiar kind and insufficiency of food, and lack of proper medical
treatment; and, whereas, those difficulties still remain, we would
declare as our firm belief, that unless we are speedily exchanged, we
have no alternative but to share the lamentable fate of our comrades.
Must this thing still go on! Is there no hope?
“Resolved, That, whereas, the cold and inclement season of the year is
fast approaching, we hold it to be our duty as soldiers and citizens
of the United States, to inform our Government that the majority of
our prisoners ate without proper clothing, in some cases being almost
naked, and are without blankets to protect us from the scorching sun by
day or the heavy dews by night, and we would most respectfully request
the Government to make some arrangement whereby we can be supplied with
these, to us, necessary articles.
“Resolved, That, whereas, the term of service of many of our comrades
having expired, they, having served truly and faithfully for the
term of their several enlistments, would most respectfully ask their
Government, are they to be forgotten? Are past services to be ignored?
Not having seen their wives and little ones for over three years, they
would most respectfully, but firmly, request the Government to make
some arrangements whereby they can be exchanged or paroled.
“Resolved, That, whereas, in the fortune of war, it was our lot to
become prisoners, we have suffered patiently, and are still willing to
suffer, if by so doing we can benefit the country; but we must most
respectfully beg to say, that we are not willing to suffer to further
the ends of any party or clique to the detriment of our honor, our
families, and our country, and we beg that this affair be explained to
us, that we may continue to hold the Government in that respect which
is necessary to make a good citizen and soldier.
“P. BRADLEY,
“Chairman of Committee in behalf of Prisoners.”
In regard to the above I will simply say this, that while I cannot
pretend to know or even much that went on around me, I do not think it
was possible for a mass meeting of prisoners to have been held without
my knowing it, and its essential features. Still less was it possible
for a mass meeting to have been held which would have adopted any such
a document as the above, or anything else that a Rebel would have
found the least pleasure in republishing. The whole thing is a brazen
falsehood.