PLACED IN AN IRON CAGE--BREAKING OUT AND ATTEMPTING TO DIG THROUGH A BRICK
WALL--AN UNEXPECTED SURPRISE.
The next morning, we were all marched into a room on the opposite side of
the hall, and to the south side of the jail, and were placed in an iron
cage, made of flat bars two inches wide, and half an inch thick, firmly
riveted together, and as I told the Sergeant, although we could not wear
diamonds, we could look through them. We were packed into this cage like
sardines in a box, scarcely having room to move. There were iron benches
along the sides for us to sit upon, but lying down was quite out of the
question.
When all was quiet that night, we thought as we could not sleep we would
try and get out.
The door was fastened with a round iron prop that fitted into a socket in
the floor, and was fastened to the door by a padlock. This prop we
wrenched from its fastenings by reaching out through the diamond in the
door, and then with it broke the lock, and the iron door swung back,
giving us free egress to the room. The cage was about twenty feet long
and eight feet wide, with a partition in the centre. This cage set in the
middle of the room, and was about six feet from the walls of the room on
all sides. With the bar thus wrenched off, we at once attacked the brick
wall, and while some detached the brick, others held a blanket underneath
to prevent the falling brick and mortar from falling to the floor, as they
would make a noise that would attract the attention of those beneath us.
We had made an opening nearly halfway through the outer wall, which was
large enough for a good sized man to pass out, when most unexpectedly two
more prisoners were brought in, and our operations were discovered, and
the attempt to escape was again frustrated.
A guard was then placed in the room, and as we could not sleep, we spent
the night in singing "Rally 'Round the Flag," and other Union songs, and
chaffing with the guard, who were nearly all, more or less, tinctured with
Union sentiments, and only kept us from escaping, for fear of the
consequence to themselves. Morning came and with it an order to get ready
to go to Danville, Va.
I told the officer that I could not march on account of my inflamed legs,
but he said that if I had got out of jail my legs would not have bothered
me much, and he reckoned that it would do me good to take a walk anyway.
And he would put us d--d Yanks where we wouldn't bother him any more. So,
after furnishing us with two days rations to last to Morgantown, they
started four of us, Captain Alban, myself, and the two Union prisoners
brought in the night before, whose names I do not now remember, under a
guard consisting of a Lieutenant and four men, for a tramp over the
mountains.
Our march over the mountains was a tedious one, interspersed now and then,
however, with some amusing incident. We were in good humor with the guard,
and laughed and joked along the road in a free and easy sort of way, and
succeeded in making ourselves agreeable to them, gaining their confidence
as much as we could, and after we had been marching half a day, a casual
observer would have hardly distinguished the prisoners from the guard. We
straggled along much the same as a dozen rebs would have done on a march
by themselves.
On the afternoon of the first day's march, we came along to a hickory
grove, where about a dozen black and gray squirrels were sporting about on
the top branches, gathering nuts, and I asked one of the guard to let me
take his gun a minute and I would get a couple of them for our supper. He
was about handing the gun to me, when the Lieutenant stopped him by
saying: "You d--d fool, do you know what you are carrying that gun for?
That Yankee might miss the squirrel and shoot you."
I laughed, and said he must think I wasn't much of a shot. But he said he
was afraid I was too good a shot to be handling one of their guns; anyway
the squirrels were probably tame ones belonging to the house near by, and
his orders were not to disturb anything along the line of march. That
night we stopped at an old farmer's and I thought that if we had a room
with a window looking outside there might be a chance for escape, and
asked to be given a room to sleep in that was well ventilated, as I always
liked lots of fresh air in my room; but we were placed in a middle room up
stairs, and a guard placed in the room with us all night.
The next morning, after a good hearty breakfast with the family, for which
the Lieutenant gave the farmer a receipt, we started on again, and at noon
we descended a mountain that was so steep that the road was made zig-zag
to allow wagons to gain the summit; and as we came to the foot of the
mountain we found a rude, log hut in which lived a hunter. We stopped
there to get dinner, and were all at a loss to guess what kind of fresh
meat we were eating, and in answer to my inquiry the host said: "That,
Mister, is bar meat; I was up on the mounting one day last week, and came
upon this varmint eatin' blackberries, and I fetched him home for winter.
Don't be afeared; bar meat won't hurt ye more'n liftin' on a stick o'
basswood."
That afternoon one of the most amusing incidents of the march occurred.
We came to a farm house, and the farmer being at home, we all sat down on
a log he had hauled up to the front of the house, for cutting up into fire
wood, for a chat with him and to rest a little. The farmer sat on one end
of the log, the Lieutenant next, and the rest of us were strung along.
The fellow who sat next to me had an ear of corn, and there were quite a
number of chickens picking around the wood pile. While the Lieutenant and
farmer were talking, this fellow took out his iron ramrod and laid it
against the log beside him, and then commenced shelling the corn and
feeding the chickens. Watching the farmer, he would tap a chicken across
the back of the neck with his ramrod, stuff him in the breast of his
overcoat, and innocently go on shelling the corn for the other chickens.
In this way I saw him gobble three good fat chickens, when he told the
Lieutenant he was going to walk on a piece. When we overtook him about
eighty rods further on, he was sitting in the woods beside the road,
picking the chickens he had stolen from the farmer. The Lieutenant called
to him and said, sternly: "I thought I told you not to plunder while on
the march." "Well," said he, with a comical drawl, "I don't allow no
doggone chicken to come out and bite at me." That settled it; we had
chicken for supper that night, and the Lieutenant seemed to relish the
supper as much as any of us.
The next day we marched to Morgantown, and there took the cars for
Danville, Va. We saw no opportunity to escape, for we were guarded very
strictly, though at the same time we were treated with all the courtesy
that could possibly be shown us, and I believe our guard would have
defended us with force, against any one who had attempted to molest us.
When we arrived at Salisbury, which was one of the most notorious rebel
slaughter houses of the South, a place that vied with Andersonville in
atrocities, cruelties, starvation and death. A place where thirteen
thousand Union soldiers, became victims to the vindictiveness of their
captors--no not their captors but their jailors--for the soldier, whether
federal or confederate, who had the courage to risk his life in the field
where prisoners were captured, possessed too great a sense of honor to
treat with such heartless cruelty, those who so gallantly opposed them.
I say that when we arrived at Salisbury, we learned that there had been a
desperate attempt made by the enlisted men confined there, to overpower
the guard and make their escape that afternoon, and the artillery had
opened on the prison pen with grape and cannister, killing, and wounding,
many of the Union prisoners confined there. Great excitement still
prevailed when we arrived, and threats of shooting the d--d Yanks were
freely indulged in by the "new issue," as the home guard were called.
But we were not molested; probably owing to the fact that we had a guard
over us, of soldiers who were ready and willing to protect their prisoners
from interference from outside parties.
We staid in Salisbury until about eleven o'clock p. m., during which time
the reb guard, and their lady friends, were parading around the depot
where we were waiting for the train, singing, flirting, and talking about
the Yankee prisoners.
While we were sitting on the depot platform waiting, we were smoking, and
as the platform was filled with bales of cotton, we were, while apparently
uninterested spectators of what was going on, emptying our pipes into the
cotton bales.
We thus managed to set fire to a number of these bales of cotton, well
knowing that after we were gone and the guard had retired, there would be
apt to be a blaze; and the next day we heard that the depot at Salisbury
was burned the night before, destroying a large amount of cotton stored
there. On my arrival at Danville, I met Colonel W. C. Raulston, of the
24th New York Cavalry, with whom I was acquainted, and who introduced me
to the members of his mess, Brigadier-General A. N. Duffie,
Brigadier-General Hays, and Lieutenants Leydon and VanDerweed, who were
all anxious to talk with me about the chances of escape. Knowing that I
had had considerable experience in that line, they naturally concluded
that I could give them some valuable points on how to escape, and how best
to reach our lines after we had got out.
Well, we held a long and animated conference, in which I gave some of my
own experience, in and out of rebel prisons, telling them of the
hardships and exciting scenes through which I and my comrades had passed
in trying to reach our lines, of the difficulties we had encountered, and
the privations we had been obliged to endure. To get out of prison was not
a difficult task for one or two, but a successful prison delivery was
quite another thing to accomplish.
Two hundred officers, each having ideas of their own, were harder to
control than five times that number of enlisted men, who had been
disciplined to obey; and as no one had any authority to command, or
control the actions, of his fellow officers, we lacked the greatest
essential to success--organization. Various plans were suggested and
discussed, but none which seemed to promise success, appeared to be
practical just at that time. Almost daily conferences were held, but the
prevailing opinion seemed to be, that an attempted general outbreak,
without thorough organization, would prove disasterous, and only end in an
unnecessary sacrifice of life, and almost certain failure.