----- Not a soul But felt a fever of the mad, and played Some
tricks of desperation.--TEMPEST.
All trouble, torment, wonder, and amazement Inhabit
here.--IBID.
[Sidenote: GREAT INFLUX OF PRISONERS.]
Early in October, the condition of the Salisbury garrison suddenly
changed. Nearly ten thousand prisoners of war, half naked and without
shelter, were crowded into its narrow limits, which could not
reasonably accommodate more than six hundred. It was converted into a
scene of suffering and death which no pen can adequately describe. For
every hour, day and night, we were surrounded by horrors which burned
into our memories like a hot iron.
We had never before been in a prison containing our private soldiers.
In spite of many assurances to the contrary, we had been skeptical as
to the barbarities which they were said to suffer at Belle Isle and
Andersonville. We could not believe that men bearing the American name
would be guilty of such atrocities. Now, looking calmly upon our last
two months in Salisbury, it seems hardly possible to exaggerate the
incredible cruelty of the Rebel authorities.
When captured, the prisoners were robbed of the greater part of their
clothing. When they reached Salisbury, all were thinly clad, thousands
were barefooted, not one in twenty had an overcoat or blanket, and many
hundreds were without coats or blouses.
[Sidenote: STARVING IN THE MIDST OF FOOD.]
For several weeks, they were furnished with no shelter whatever.
Afterward, one Sibley tent and one A tent was issued to each hundred
men. With the closest crowding, these contained about one-half of them.
The rest burrowed in the earth, crept under buildings, or dragged out
the nights in the open air upon the muddy, snowy, or frozen ground.
In October, November, and December, snow fell several times. It was
piteous beyond description to see the poor fellows, coatless, hatless,
and shoeless, shivering about the yard.
They were organized into divisions of one thousand each, and subdivided
into squads of one hundred. Almost daily one or more divisions was
without food for twenty-four hours. Several times some of them received
no rations for forty-eight hours. The few who had money, paid from
five to twenty dollars, in Rebel currency, for a little loaf of bread.
Some sold the coats from their backs and the shoes from their feet to
purchase food.
When a subordinate asked the post-Commandant, Major John H. Gee, "Shall
I give the prisoners full rations?" he replied: "No, G-d d--n them,
give them quarter-rations!"
Yet, at this very time, one of our Salisbury friends, a trustworthy and
Christian gentleman, assured us, in a stolen interview:
"It is within my personal knowledge that the great commissary
warehouse, in this town, is filled to the roof with corn and pork. I
know that the prison commissary finds it difficult to obtain storage
for his supplies."
After our escape, we learned from personal observation that the region
abounded in corn and pork. Salisbury was a general dépôt for army
supplies.
[Sidenote: FREEZING IN THE MIDST OF FUEL.]
That section of country is densely wooded. The cars brought fuel
to the door of our prison. If the Rebels were short of tents, they
might easily have paroled two or three hundred prisoners, to go out
and cut logs, with which, in a single week, barracks could have been
constructed for every captive; but the Commandant would not consent. He
did not even furnish half the needed fuel.
Cold and hunger began to tell fearfully upon the robust young men,
fresh from the field, who crowded the prison. Sickness was very
prevalent and very fatal. It invariably appeared in the form of
pneumonia, catarrh, diarrh[oe]a, or dysentery; but was directly
traceable to freezing and starvation. Therefore the medicines were of
little avail. The weakened men were powerless to resist disease, and
they were carried to the dead-house in appalling numbers.
By appointment of the prison authorities, my two comrades and myself
were placed in charge of all the hospitals, nine in number, inside the
garrison. The scenes which constantly surrounded us were enough to
shake the firmest nerves; but there was work to be done for the relief
of our suffering companions. We could accomplish very little--hardly
more than to give a cup of cold water, and see that the patients were
treated with sympathy and kindness.
Mr. Davis was general superintendent, and brought to his arduous duties
good judgment, untiring industry, and uniform kindness.
"Junius" was charged with supplying medicines to the "out-door
patients." The hospitals, when crowded, would hold about six hundred;
but there were always many more invalids unable to obtain admission.
These wretched men waited wearily for death in their tents, in
subterranean holes, under hospitals, or in the open air. My comrade's
tender sympathy softened the last hours of many a poor fellow who had
long been a stranger to
"The falling music of a gracious word,
Or the stray sunshine of a smile."
[Sidenote: REBEL SURGEONS GENERALLY HUMANE.]
I was appointed to supervise all the hospital books, keeping a record
of each patient's name, disease, admission, and discharge or death.
At my own solicitation, the Rebel surgeon-in-chief also authorized me
to receive the clothing left by the dead, and re-issue it among the
living. I endeavored to do this systematically, keeping lists of the
needy, who indeed were nine-tenths of all the prisoners. The deaths
ranged from twenty to forty-eight daily, leaving many garments to be
distributed. Day after day, in bitterly cold weather, pale, fragile
boys, who should have been at home with their mothers and sisters,
came to me with no clothing whatever, except a pair of worn cotton
pantaloons and a thin cotton shirt.
Dr. Richard O. Currey, a refugee from Knoxville, was the surgeon in
charge. Though a genuine Rebel, he was just and kind-hearted, doing his
utmost to change the horrible condition of affairs. Again and again he
sent written protests to Richmond, which brought several successive
inspectors to examine the prison and hospitals, but no change of
treatment.
We were reluctantly driven to the belief that the Richmond authorities
deliberately adopted this plan to reduce the strength of our armies.
The Medusa head of Slavery had turned their hearts to stone. At this
time, they held nearly forty thousand prisoners. In our garrison the
inmates were dying at the rate of thirteen per cent. a month upon the
aggregate. About as many more were enlisting in the Rebel army. Thus
our soldiers were destroyed at the rate of more than twenty-five per
cent. a month, with no corresponding loss to the enemy.
[Sidenote: TERRIBLE SCENES IN THE HOSPITALS.]
Frequently, for two or three days, Dr. Currey would refrain from
entering the garrison, reluctant to look upon the revolting scenes from
which _we_ could find no escape. I am glad to be able to throw one ray
of light into so dark a picture. Nearly all the surgeons evinced that
humanity which ought to characterize their profession. They were much
the best class of Rebels we encountered. They denounced unsparingly
the manner in which prisoners were treated, and endeavored to mitigate
their sufferings.
To call the foul pens, where the patients were confined, "hospitals,"
was a perversion of the English tongue. We could not obtain brooms to
keep them clean; we could not get cold water to wash the hands and
faces of those sick and dying men. In that region, where every farmer's
barn-yard contained grain-stacks, we could not procure clean straw
enough to place under them. More than half the time they were compelled
to lie huddled upon the cold, naked, filthy floors, without even that
degree of warmth and cleanliness usually afforded to brutes. The wasted
forms and sad, pleading eyes of those sufferers, waiting wearily for
the tide of life to ebb away--without the commonest comforts, without
one word of sympathy, or one tear of affection--will never cease to
haunt me.
At all hours of the day and night, on every side, we heard the terrible
hack! hack! hack! in whose pneumonic tones every prisoner seemed to be
coughing his life away. It was the most fearful sound in that fearful
place.
[Sidenote: THE RATTLING DEAD-CART.]
The last scene of all was the dead-cart, with its rigid forms piled
upon each other like logs--the arms swaying, the white ghastly faces
staring, with dropped jaws and stony eyes--while it rattled along,
bearing its precious freight just outside the walls, to be thrown in a
mass into trenches and covered with a little earth.
When received, there were no sick or wounded men among the prisoners.
But before they had been in Salisbury six weeks, "Junius," with better
facilities for knowing than any one else, insisted that among eight
thousand there were not five hundred well men. The Rebel surgeons
coincided in this belief.
The rations, issued very irregularly, were insufficient to support
life. Men grew feeble before living upon them a single week; but
could not buy food from the town; and were not permitted to receive
even a meal sent by friends from the outside. Our positions in the
hospitals enabled us to purchase supplies and fare better. Prisoners
eagerly devoured the potato-skins from our table. They ate rats, dogs,
and cats. Many searched the yard for bones and scraps among the most
revolting substances.
They constantly besieged us for admission to the hospitals, or for
shelter and food, which we were unable to give. It seemed almost sinful
for us to enjoy protection from the weather and food enough to support
life in the midst of all this distress.
On wet days the mud was very deep, and the shoeless wretches wallowed
pitifully through it, seeking vainly for cover and warmth. Two hundred
negro prisoners were almost naked, and could find no shelter whatever
except by burrowing in the earth. The authorities treated them with
unusual rigor, and guards murdered them with impunity.
No song, no athletic game, few sounds of laughter broke the silence of
the garrison. It was a Hall of Eblis--devoid of its gold-besprinkled
pavements, crystal vases, and dazzling saloons; but with all its
oppressive silence, livid lips, sunken eyes, and ghastly figures, at
whose hearts the consuming fire was never quenched.
[Illustration: INTERIOR VIEW OF A HOSPITAL IN THE SALISBURY PRISON.]
Constant association with suffering deadened our sensibilities. We were
soon able to pass through the hospitals little moved by their terrible
spectacles, except when patients addressed us, exciting a personal
interest.
[Sidenote: CREDULITY OF OUR GOVERNMENT.]
The credulity and trustfulness of our Government toward the enemy
passed belief. Month after month it sent by the truce-boats many tons
of private boxes for Union prisoners, while the Rebels, not satisfied
with their usual practice of stealing a portion under the rose, upon
one trivial pretext or other, openly confiscated every pound of them.
At the same time, returning truce-boats were loaded with boxes sent
to Rebel prisoners from their friends in the South, and express-lines
crowded with supplies from their sympathizers in the North.
The Government held a large excess of prisoners, and the Rebels were
anxious to exchange man for man; but our authorities acted upon the
cold-blooded theory of Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, that we
could not afford to give well-fed, rugged men, for invalids and
skeletons--that returned prisoners were infinitely more valuable to the
Rebels than to us, because their soldiers were inexorably kept in the
army, while many of ours, whose terms of service had expired, would not
re-enlist.
The private soldier who neglects his duty is taken out and shot.
Officials seemed to forget that the soldier's obligation of obedience
devolves upon the Government the obligation of protection. It was
clearly the duty of our authorities either to exchange our own
soldiers, or to protect them--not by indiscriminate cruelty, but by
well-considered, systematic retaliation in kind, until the Richmond
authorities should treat prisoners with ordinary humanity. It was very
easy to select a number of Rebel officers, corresponding to the Union
prisoners in the Salisbury garrison, and give them precisely the same
kind and amount of food, clothing, and shelter.
[Sidenote: GENERAL BUTLER'S EXAMPLE OF RETALIATION.]
When the Confederate Government placed certain of our negro prisoners
under fire, at work upon the fortifications of Richmond, General
Butler, in a brief letter, informed them that he had stationed an equal
number of Rebel officers, equally exposed and spade in hand, upon _his_
fortifications. When his letter reached Richmond, before that day's sun
went down, the negroes were returned to Libby Prison and ever afterward
treated as prisoners of war. But, by the mawkish sensibilities of a
few northern statesmen and editors, our Government was encouraged to
neglect the matter, and thus permitted the needless murder of its own
soldiers--a stain upon the nation's honor, and an inexcusable cruelty
to thousands of aching hearts.