FIRST DAYS AT FLORENCE--INTRODUCTION TO LIEUTENANT BARRETT, THE
RED-HEADED KEEPER--A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF OUR NEW QUARTERS--WINDERS
MALIGN INFLUENCE MANIFEST.
It did not require a very acute comprehension to understand that the
Stockade at which we were gazing was likely to be our abiding place for
some indefinite period in the future.
As usual, this discovery was the death-warrant of many whose lives had
only been prolonged by the hoping against hope that the movement would
terminate inside our lines. When the portentous palisades showed to
a fatal certainty that the word of promise had been broken to their
hearts, they gave up the struggle wearily, lay back on the frozen
ground, and died.
Andrews and I were not in the humor for dying just then. The long
imprisonment, the privations of hunger, the scourging by the elements,
the death of four out of every five of our number had indeed dulled and
stupefied us--bred an indifference to our own suffering and a seeming
callosity to that of others, but there still burned in our hearts, and
in the hearts of every one about us, a dull, sullen, smoldering fire of
hate and defiance toward everything Rebel, and a lust for revenge upon
those who had showered woes upon our heads. There was little fear of
death; even the King of Terrors loses most of his awful character upon
tolerably close acquaintance, and we had been on very intimate terms
with him for a year now. He was a constant visitor, who dropped in upon
us at all hours of the day and night, and would not be denied to any
one.
Since my entry into prison fully fifteen thousand boys had died around
me, and in no one of them had I seen the least, dread or reluctance to
go. I believe this is generally true of death by disease, everywhere.
Our ever kindly mother, Nature, only makes us dread death when she
desires us to preserve life. When she summons us hence she tenderly
provides that we shall willingly obey the call.
More than for anything else, we wanted to live now to triumph over
the Rebels. To simply die would be of little importance, but to die
unrevenged would be fearful. If we, the despised, the contemned, the
insulted, the starved and maltreated; could live to come back to our
oppressors as the armed ministers of retribution, terrible in the
remembrance of the wrongs of ourselves and comrade’s, irresistible as
the agents of heavenly justice, and mete out to them that Biblical
return of seven-fold of what they had measured out to us, then we
would be content to go to death afterwards. Had the thrice-accursed
Confederacy and our malignant gaolers millions of lives, our great
revenge would have stomach for them all.
The December morning was gray and leaden; dull, somber, snow-laden
clouds swept across the sky before the soughing wind.
The ground, frozen hard and stiff, cut and hurt our bare feet at every
step; an icy breeze drove in through the holes in our rags, and smote
our bodies like blows from sticks. The trees and shrubbery around were
as naked and forlorn as in the North in the days of early Winter before
the snow comes.
Over and around us hung like a cold miasma the sickening odor peculiar
to Southern forests in Winter time.
Out of the naked, repelling, unlovely earth rose the Stockade, in
hideous ugliness. At the gate the two men continued at their monotonous
labor of tossing the dead of the previous day into the wagon-heaving
into that rude hearse the inanimate remains that had once tempted
gallant, manly hearts, glowing with patriotism and devotion to
country--piling up listlessly and wearily, in a mass of nameless,
emaciated corpses, fluttering with rags, and swarming with vermin, the
pride, the joy of a hundred fair Northern homes, whose light had now
gone out forever.
Around the prison walls shambled the guards, blanketed like Indians,
and with faces and hearts of wolves. Other Rebels--also clad in dingy
butternut--slouched around lazily, crouched over diminutive fires,
and talked idle gossip in the broadest of “nigger” dialect. Officers
swelled and strutted hither and thither, and negro servants loitered
around, striving to spread the least amount of work over the greatest
amount of time.
While I stood gazing in gloomy silence at the depressing surroundings
Andrews, less speculative and more practical, saw a good-sized pine
stump near by, which had so much of the earth washed away from it
that it looked as if it could be readily pulled up. We had had bitter
experience in other prisons as to the value of wood, and Andrews
reasoned that as we would be likely to have a repetition of this in the
Stockade we were about to enter, we should make an effort to secure
the stump. We both attacked it, and after a great deal of hard work,
succeeded in uprooting it. It was very lucky that we did, since it was
the greatest help in preserving our lives through the three long months
that we remained at Florence.
While we were arranging our stump so as to carry it to the best
advantage, a vulgar-faced man, with fiery red hair, and wearing on his
collar the yellow bars of a Lieutenant, approached. This was Lieutenant
Barrett, commandant of the interior of the prison, and a more inhuman
wretch even than Captain Wirz, because he had a little more brains than
the commandant at Andersonville, and this extra intellect was wholly
devoted to cruelty. As he came near he commanded, in loud, brutal tones:
“Attention, Prisoners!”
We all stood up and fell in in two ranks. Said he:
“By companies, right wheel, march!”
This was simply preposterous. As every soldier knows, wheeling by
companies is one of the most difficult of manuvers, and requires
some preparation of a battalion before attempting to execute it. Our
thousand was made up of infantry, cavalry and artillery, representing,
perhaps, one hundred different regiments. We had not been divided off
into companies, and were encumbered with blankets, tents, cooking
utensils, wood, etc., which prevented our moving with such freedom as
to make a company wheel, even had we been divided up into companies
and drilled for the maneuver. The attempt to obey the command was, of
course, a ludicrous failure. The Rebel officers standing near Barrett
laughed openly at his stupidity in giving such an order, but he was
furious. He hurled at us a torrent of the vilest abuse the corrupt
imagination of man can conceive, and swore until he was fairly black in
the face. He fired his revolver off over our heads, and shrieked and
shouted until he had to stop from sheer exhaustion. Another officer
took command then, and marched us into prison.
We found this a small copy of Andersonville. There was a stream running
north and south, on either side of which was a swamp. A Stockade of
rough logs, with the bark still on, inclosed several acres. The front
of the prison was toward the West. A piece of artillery stood before
the gate, and a platform at each corner bore a gun, elevated high
enough to rake the whole inside of the prison. A man stood behind each
of these guns continually, so as to open with them at any moment.
The earth was thrown up against the outside of the palisades in a
high embankment, along the top of which the guards on duty walked, it
being high enough to elevate their head, shoulders and breasts above
the tops of the logs. Inside the inevitable dead-line was traced by
running a furrow around the prison-twenty feet from the Stockade--with
a plow. In one respect it was an improvement on Andersonville: regular
streets were laid off, so that motion about the camp was possible, and
cleanliness was promoted. Also, the crowd inside was not so dense as at
Camp Sumter.
The prisoners were divided into hundreds and thousands, with Sergeants
at the heads of the divisions. A very good police force-organized and
officered by the prisoners--maintained order and prevented crime.
Thefts and other offenses were punished, as at Andersonville, by the
Chief of Police sentencing the offenders to be spanked or tied up.
We found very many of our Andersonville acquaintances inside, and for
several days comparisons of experience were in order. They had left
Andersonville a few days after us, but were taken to Charleston instead
of Savannah. The same story of exchange was dinned into their ears
until they arrived at Charleston, when the truth was told them, that
no exchange was contemplated, and that they had been deceived for the
purpose of getting them safely out of reach of Sherman.
Still they were treated well in Charleston--better than they had been
anywhere else. Intelligent physicians had visited the sick, prescribed
for them, furnished them with proper medicines, and admitted the worst
cases to the hospital, where they were given something of the care that
one would expect in such an institution. Wheat bread, molasses and rice
were issued to them, and also a few spoonfuls of vinegar, daily, which
were very grateful to them in their scorbutic condition. The citizens
sent in clothing, food and vegetables. The Sisters of Charity were
indefatigable in ministering to the sick and dying. Altogether, their
recollections of the place were quite pleasant.
Despite the disagreeable prominence which the City had in the Secession
movement, there was a very strong Union element there, and many men
found opportunity to do favors to the prisoners and reveal to them how
much they abhorred Secession.
After they had been in Charleston a fortnight or more, the yellow fever
broke out in the City, and soon extended its ravages to the prisoners,
quite a number dying from it.
Early in October they had been sent away from the City to their
present location, which was then a piece of forest land. There was no
stockade or other enclosure about them, and one night they forced the
guard-line, about fifteen hundred escaping, under a pretty sharp fire
from the guards. After getting out they scattered, each group taking
a different route, some seeking Beaufort, and other places along the
seaboard, and the rest trying to gain the mountains. The whole State
was thrown into the greatest perturbation by the occurrence. The
papers magnified the proportion of the outbreak, and lauded fulsomely
the gallantry of the guards in endeavoring to withstand the desperate
assaults of the frenzied Yankees. The people were wrought up into
the highest alarm as to outrages and excesses that these flying
desperados might be expected to commit. One would think that another
Grecian horse, introduced into the heart of the Confederate Troy, had
let out its fatal band of armed men. All good citizens were enjoined
to turn out and assist in arresting the runaways. The vigilance of
all patrolling was redoubled, and such was the effectiveness of the
measures taken that before a month nearly every one of the fugitives
had been retaken and sent back to Florence. Few of these complained
of any special ill-treatment by their captors, while many reported
frequent acts of kindness, especially when their captors belonged to
the middle and upper classes. The low-down class--the clay-eaters--on
the other hand, almost always abused their prisoners, and sometimes, it
is pretty certain, murdered them in cold blood.
About this time Winder came on from Andersonville, and then everything
changed immediately to the complexion of that place. He began the
erection of the Stockade, and made it very strong. The Dead Line was
established, but instead of being a strip of plank upon the top of
low posts, as at Andersonville, it was simply a shallow trench, which
was sometimes plainly visible, and sometimes not. The guards always
resolved matters of doubt against the prisoners, and fired on them when
they supposed them too near where the Dead Line ought to be. Fifteen
acres of ground were enclosed by the palisades, of which five were
taken up by the creek and swamp, and three or four more by the Dead
Line; main streets, etc., leaving about seven or eight for the actual
use of the prisoners, whose number swelled to fifteen thousand by the
arrivals from Andersonville. This made the crowding together nearly
as bad as at the latter place, and for awhile the same fatal results
followed. The mortality, and the sending away of several thousand on
the sick exchange, reduced the aggregate number at the time of our
arrival to about eleven thousand, which gave more room to all, but was
still not one-twentieth of the space which that number of men should
have had.
No shelter, nor material for constructing any, was furnished. The
ground was rather thickly wooded, and covered with undergrowth, when
the Stockade was built, and certainly no bit of soil was ever so
thoroughly cleared as this was. The trees and brush were cut down and
worked up into hut building materials by the same slow and laborious
process that I have described as employed in building our huts at
Millen.
Then the stumps were attacked for fuel, and with such persistent
thoroughness that after some weeks there was certainly not enough
woody material left in that whole fifteen acres of ground to kindle a
small kitchen fire. The men would begin work on the stump of a good
sized tree, and chip and split it off painfully and slowly until they
had followed it to the extremity of the tap root ten or fifteen feet
below the surface. The lateral roots would be followed with equal
determination, and trenches thirty feet long, and two or three feet
deep were dug with case-knives and half-canteens, to get a root as
thick as one’s wrist. The roots of shrubs and vines were followed up
and gathered with similar industry. The cold weather and the scanty
issues of wood forced men to do this.
The huts constructed were as various as the materials and the tastes of
the builders. Those who were fortunate enough to get plenty of timber
built such cabins as I have described at Millen. Those who had less
eked out their materials in various ways. Most frequently all that a
squad of three or four could get would be a few slender poles and some
brush. They would dig a hole in the ground two feet deep and large
enough for them all to lie in. Then putting up a stick at each end
and laying a ridge pole across, they, would adjust the rest of their
material so as to form sloping sides capable of supporting earth enough
to make a water-tight roof. The great majority were not so well off as
these, and had absolutely, nothing of which to build. They had recourse
to the clay of the swamp, from which they fashioned rude sun-dried
bricks, and made adobe houses, shaped like a bee hive, which lasted
very well until a hard rain came, when they dissolved into red mire
about the bodies of their miserable inmates.
Remember that all these makeshifts were practiced within a half-a-mile
of an almost boundless forest, from which in a day’s time the camp
could have been supplied with material enough to give every man a
comfortable hut.