In Libby Prison--Life there--"Belle Isle"--All prisons bad--The great
escape--"Maryland, My Maryland."
The story of Libby Prison at Richmond has been told so often I shall not
dwell on details about it here. Besides, the experiences of one man
there were not materially different from the experiences of another. I
was to stay there some seven months, always in the same room, and
oftenest denied the poor privilege of looking out of the window. Our
lives were to be very wretched there. That is now a thread-worn tale. At
their very best, war prisons in every country are wretched places. One's
friends do not stand guard there; it is our enemies. They are not penal
establishments; they are simply places for keeping captives who, until
in our so-called civilized days, would have been put to death on the
battlefield.
Our little company of captives from Chattanooga reached Libby Prison
just after daylight of December 8, 1863. As we crossed the big bridge
over the James River we looked down into the stream and saw "Belle
Isle." It was a cold wet sandbar, and there, shivering in the wind, we
saw five thousand ragged and emaciated human beings. They were prisoners
of war. Some of them were from my own regiment. Most of them were never
to see their homes again. The tales of their experiences would stagger
human belief. These were all private soldiers; the commissioned officers
were to be locked up in Libby Prison.
The old tobacco warehouse of Libby & Son had been transformed into a
monster guardhouse for officers captured from the Federal army. Little
the two old tobacco merchants must have dreamed with what infamy their
names would go down to history, through no fault of their own.
The big brick building stood close to the James River. It had no glass
in its windows, and the cold wind from the bay swept through its vast
rooms day and night. Six hundred other prisoners were already there on
our arrival, picked up from many battlefields.
Libby Prison was three stories high and its floors were divided into
several rooms each. The prisoners slept on the floor, with only old army
blankets around them. When thus lying down, the floor was entirely
covered with shivering human beings. Each group of half a dozen men had
extemporized tables, made from old boxes. A few seats were made by
cutting barrels in two. At night the seats, and whatever else might be
there, were piled on top of the tables, while the prisoners stretched
themselves on the floor to try to sleep. In my diary of the time I read:
"The food doled out to us is miserable and scanty in the extreme. A
species of corn bread, ground up cobs and all, and a little rice form
the principal part of the ration. The fact that this bread is burned
black outside and is raw inside renders it more detestable. Occasionally
letters from the North reach us by a flag of truce, and at very rare
intervals a prisoner is allowed to receive a little box of coffee,
sugar, and salt, sent to him by his friends in the North."
As the time went on this privilege was denied us. The high price of
everything South in the war times was the flimsy excuse for giving the
captured ones so little.
Prices of provisions were indeed terrible in Richmond. This list I
copied from a Richmond paper, December 20, 1863: Bacon, $3 per pound;
potatoes, $18 per bushel; turkeys, $25 each; sugar, $3 per pound; beef,
$1 per pound; butter, $5 per pound; shad, $34 per pair; whisky, $75 a
gallon. This was in the discounted money of the Confederates.
The beginning of the new year 1864 came in cold and gloomy. We could
keep warm only by running and jumping and pushing each other about the
prison. I was in the upper east room, and had for messmates Captains
Page and Bascom and Lieutenants Austin and Hoffman, all of my own
regiment. In the little box of provisions sent me by my mother in the
North was a copy of a Latin grammar, put there by good old Professor
Drake, my former school-teacher. Evidently he thought the mind needed
feeding as well as the body. I took the hint and studied the book
faithfully. I recited to Major Marshall, and eight times I went through
this Latin grammar. I had nothing else to do, but Latin is no go on an
empty stomach. When, later, I got out of prison Latin was as strange to
me as if I had never seen a grammar in my life. My memory had been
well-nigh ruined by my confinement. One day, fearing our escape, the
authorities put iron bars on all our windows. They did not think to put
glass in them to keep the cold air out.
On the night of February 10 occurred the famous escape of one hundred
and nine prisoners. For many weeks certain officers had been missing.
They were in the earth under the prison, digging a tunnel to liberty.
The length of this secret tunnel, dug under the prison, under stone
walls, under the street and under the very feet of the guards, was
eighty-six feet.
Forty-six nights were consumed in digging it. Only certain of the
prisoners knew anything about it. On the night of the escape I was told
of it. I stood in the dark at an upper window and watched the prisoners
as they came out at the farther end of the tunnel and slipped away. I
did not try to enter the tunnel when I heard of it; there was already
five times as many men in the cellar as could possible get away by
daylight. As it was, a third of those escaping were captured and brought
back again to the prison.
On the 20th of March some exchanged Confederates were sent into Richmond
under flag of truce. The President, Jefferson Davis, and all the
dignitaries welcomed them. The President also came into Libby Prison one
day, possibly to see with his own eyes and hear with his own ears if all
the terrible tales of hardship and cruelties occurring there were true.
Whatever conclusion he may have reached, the hard lines of our life in
the prison were not visibly altered. They have been told of a hundred of
times.
All the nights now it was very cold. I had but one blanket. I, like all
the others, slept on the floor, and in my clothes, with my boots under
my head for a pillow. One night,--it was at the close of February,
1864,--we in the prison were greatly excited over a report that Union
cavalry under Generals Kilpatrick and Dahlgren were making a raid on
the city for the purpose of releasing us. It was raining outside, and
very dark, but we were sure we heard the Union cannon close at hand. We
thought the hour of our deliverance had come. Instantly, but secretly,
we organized ourselves into bands to break out and help.
Soon Major Turner, the prison commander, came into the prison, making
mysterious threats of something awful that would happen should we lift a
single hand. Some negro help about the prison whispered to us all that,
under Turner's direction, they had been compelled to carry thirty kegs
of gunpowder into the cellar of the prison. Rumor said that it was
Turner's intention, if our troops should get into Richmond, to blow up
the prison and destroy us. A horrible plan, if true. Sadly for us, the
great raid proved a failure. Dahlgren was killed, and his body was
mutilated and exposed to an enraged public at one of the railroad depots
in the city. These things were not done by honorable Confederate
soldiers, but by irresponsible home guards and undisciplined rowdies.
Now we saw no hopes of ever getting away. We would at last all die here,
we thought. The nights seemed colder than ever; perhaps our blood was
getting thinner. Some of us played chess; numbers sat with cards in
their hands from early morning till bedtime. A few, experts with the
knife, made bone rings and the like to sell, and so increased their
rations a little. Generally now the rations were getting poorer, if such
a thing were possible. Many prisoners were breaking down and were
carried out to die. My own health--and I was young and strong--was
beginning to give way. Once I fell on the floor in an utter swoon from
weakness and hunger. From Andersonville, where the private soldiers
were, came the horrible reports that "all were dying."
One day a lot of Marylanders, most of whom had run through the Union
lines from Baltimore, were organized into a battalion called "The
Maryland Line." They were led by Marshall Wilder. They were marched past
the prison, singing "Maryland, My Maryland." It was the first time I
ever heard the song sung by Southerners. The music seemed to stir the
whole city.[A]
[A] Years afterwards I wrote a song to this music myself ("The Song
of Iowa"). To this day it is well known, and has become the official
State song.
Great battles were being fought in Virginia, and sometimes Grant's
soldiers approached close to Richmond. Before daylight of May 7 our
captors, fearing mutiny and escape, placed all the prisoners in cattle
cars and hurried us across the Confederacy to Macon, Ga. For seven
long, dreary, awful months I had been in one room in Libby Prison, with
little to eat or wear. It all seems a horrible dream as I write of it
now.
Now there were rumors that we were to be taken to a prison farther
South.