Under fire of our own guns at Charleston--Trying to capture a railway
train--The secret band--Betrayed--The desolation of Charleston.
I was scarcely returned to the Macon prison again when two hundred of
us, all officers, were selected to be placed under the fire from our
navy then bombarding Charleston. By some wonderful fiction of military
law the "Confederates," as the Rebels called themselves, pretended to
regard the bombardment of Charleston as a crime. I do not remember now
how the selection of victims to be sent to Charleston was made one
evening about the end of July, 1864. This, however, happened that night,
to add adventure and excitement to the Charleston trip. The greater
number of those selected were members of a "Secret Band" of prisoners
who had resolved to mutiny or to do any act in our power that could
result in our escape from captivity. I recall how Major Marshall one
afternoon secretly administered to me the oath of this desperate band.
With my hand on my heart I swore to instantly obey every order given to
me by the "head captain." I was to ask no questions, but to strike,
whenever told; to kill, no matter whom, even were my own brother to be
the victim. I was ready to do anything. I had been mistreated and
starved long enough. Death could be little worse than all of us had been
undergoing for months. The news coming to us from our prison comrades at
Andersonville was perfectly horrible. History had never related the like
of it. We received the _Telegraph_, a Macon newspaper, into the prison
pen every morning. At the head of one of its columns each day the editor
reported the awful number of poor starving creatures who had died at
Andersonville the day before. It was not unlike the reports of the
number of dumb beasts killed each day in the Chicago slaughter pens.
Pretty soon I learned that the eighty comrades of my regiment captured
with me at Missionary Ridge were nearly every one dead. The details of
their sufferings were too horrible to dilate upon. WE WONDERED SOMETIMES
IF GOD HAD FORSAKEN THE WORLD.
We who joined the "Band," and took the awful oath we did, knew what it
all meant. Outside our stockade loaded cannon waited but the least alarm
to fire upon us. On top of the stockade guards walked day and night with
orders to instantly kill any prisoner who should approach within twelve
feet of the high wall. We were only eight hundred prisoners all told,
and nothing to fight with but naked hands. Outside whole regiments armed
to the teeth lay with guns in their hands waiting to destroy every one
of us should we offer to escape. What was our chance? Almost nothing; or
if anything, death! Still we resolved to try.
Then came that night when we were to get on the cars and start for
Charleston. Instantly the word was passed along for every member of the
secret "Band" to quietly arm himself with a short club, made from our
bunks and sheds, and to keep it hid under his coat or blanket. Now we
were counted and put into a train of box cattle cars. Twenty-five
prisoners were in a car, and in the side door of each car stood a guard
with his loaded musket. We who were not leaders of the "Band" wondered
what desperate thing we were about to try. I do not know where the tools
came from, but when the train was well in motion, and the noise deadened
our movements, a big hole, large enough to permit a man to creep
through, was knocked in the end of each car. The darkness, the crowd in
the cars and the noise prevented the guards knowing what was going on.
This was the first "_vestibule_" railroad train ever made.
Shortly now one of our leaders came creeping along from car to car, and
in a low voice he told us what was about to happen. The train on its way
to Charleston would halt close to the sea at a little town called
Pocotaligo. We knew that some ships of the Union navy lay out in the
water there, scarce a dozen miles away. The design was to seize on our
guards as we reached the village, disarm them, kill them, if necessary,
ditch the train, destroy the road and the telegraph, and then escape to
the ships. I think not a soul of us doubted the likelihood of our
success. We would be free men on the morrow if all went well. It would
be two or three o'clock in the night when the train would pass the point
of action. Every one of us had his club and his pocket knife in his hand
ready to strike. At the proper moment Colonel ----, our leader, with
three comrades, was to spring through the end of the front car where he
was, onto the tender, seize the engineer and fireman and wave a lantern
violently as a signal for us to suddenly lay hold of every Rebel soldier
on the train. Ten miles out from Pocotaligo our hearts beat in terrible
excitement. No one spoke; we only waited. It was silence, all save the
rumbling of the car wheels. So far our guards seemed in perfect
ignorance of the approaching danger. Five miles out, so sure were we of
success, a few began to act without waiting for the signal. In one or
two of the cars the guards had been suddenly seized and their muskets
were in our hands. In the car where I was, one of the astonished guards,
finding himself without a gun, coolly said: "And what are you 'uns going
to do with we 'uns?" It was a tremendous moment, as the train sped along
in the dark. Three miles to Pocotaligo; two miles; one mile. With quick
beating heart I leaned from our car door, straining my eyes for the
lantern signal. Then the whistle blew loudly, but the train only
hastened its speed, and in two minutes, instead of stopping, we shot
past the station at lightning speed.
What had happened? Were we discovered? Not a signal had been given to
us. In the morning we were all hurried inside the jail yard of
Charleston. Now we knew it all. At the crucial moment our leader _had
lost his nerve_ and _become a coward_; or had he betrayed us? He had not
waved the lantern, though he had captured it, and held it in his hand.
We were now much alarmed as to what would be done with us for seizing
the guards. We might lose our lives. Colonel ----, the false leader, was
taken to another prison to save him from being torn to pieces by his own
comrades.
The newspapers of Charleston that morning contained flaming articles,
describing how a terrible catastrophe had been averted by the cowardice
or treason of one man. Where they got the details of the proposed
capture of the train, no one will ever know. Was the leader simply a
coward, or was he paid for betraying us?
After a while we were transferred to what was called the "Roper
Hospital." It was close to the jail, and the danger of being killed by
the shells from our own fleet was still very great, though, in fact, few
of us were hurt. The yellow fever was to be a greater scourge than
Yankee cannon.
Our fleet officers had learned the locality where the prisoners were
guarded, and fired their shells mostly in other directions. It was a
grand spectacle at night--the soaring through the heavens of so many
blazing bombshells and their bursting in the city. Parts of Charleston
that we could see were perfect pictures of desolation; whole quarters
stood in black ruins and uninhabited. The weather was exceedingly hot,
and the yellow fever broke out and raged fearfully among both prisoners
and guards. It seemed as if we should all die there. At last they
transported us away to a little open field in the woods, close to the
town of Columbia, the capital of South Carolina.
The surgeon of the prison camp at Charleston was Dr. Todd, a brother of
President Lincoln's wife. A more rabid Secessionist was nowhere to be
found. It was a curious situation, that the brother-in-law of the great
President should be so attached to the country's opponents.
On our way to the prison at Columbia Major Marshall of my regiment and
two captains escaped from the train and reached the North by tramping at
night through the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. They had
horrible experiences for many weeks.