From Salisbury to Danville--The Forlorn Situation--Effort to "Extract
Sunshine from Cucumbers"--The Vermin--The Prison Commandant a Yale
Man--Proposed Theatricals--Rules Adopted--Studies--Vote in Prison
for Lincoln and McClellan--Killing Time.
At six o'clock, Wednesday evening, October 19, 1864, we officers, about
350 in number, were packed in five freight cars, and the train was
started for Danville, Va. The tops of the cars were covered with armed
guards, two or three being also stationed within at the side door of
each car. In the darkness about half-past nine Lieut. Joseph B. Simpson
of the 11th Indiana slyly stole all the food from the haversacks of the
guards at the door of our car and passed it round to us, while we loudly
"cussed and discussed" slavery and secession! About midnight Captain
Lockwood, Lieutenant Driscoll, and eight or ten other officers leaped
from the cars. The guards opened fire upon them. Lockwood was shot dead.
Several were recaptured, and some probably reached the Union lines in
safety. We arrived at Danville at noon October 20th.
The town at this time contained four, formerly six, military prisons,
each a tobacco house about eighty to a hundred feet long by forty to
fifty wide, three stories high, built of brick, low between joints. The
officers were put into the building known as prison number three. We
were informed by the guards that it had formerly contained about two
hundred negro prisoners; but that some had died, others had been
delivered to their masters or set at work on fortifications, and the
number remaining just before our arrival was only sixty-four. These were
removed to make room for us.
Except about twenty large stout wooden boxes called spittoons, there was
no furniture whatever in prison number three. Conjecture was rife as to
the purpose of the Confederates in supplying us with spittoons and
nothing else. They were too short for coffins, too large for wash bowls,
too shallow for bathing tubs, too deep for tureens! To me much
meditating on final causes, a vague suspicion at length arose that there
was some mysterious relation between those twenty oblong boxes and a
score of hogsheads of plug tobacco, said to be stored in the basement. A
_tertium_ QUID, a solution of the tobacco, might afford a solution of
the spittoon mystery!
A dozen water buckets were put into each of the two upper rooms to which
all the officers were restricted; also a small cylinder coal stove;
nothing else until December, when another small stove was placed there.
Winter came early and unusually cold. The river Dan froze thick. It was
some weeks before we prevailed upon the prison commandant to replace
with wood the broken-out glass in the upper rooms. The first floor was
uninhabitable.
So with no bed nor blanket; no chairs, benches, nor tables; no
table-ware nor cooking utensils; not even shovel, poker, or coal-scoop;
most of us were in a sorry plight. The little stoves, heated white-hot,
would have been entirely inadequate to warm those rooms; but the coal
was miserably deficient in quality as well as quantity. The fire often
went out. To rekindle it, there was no other way than to upset the
whole, emptying ashes and cinders on the floor. At best, the heat was
obstructed by a compact ring of shivering officers, who had preëmpted
positions nearest the stoves. They had taken upon themselves to "run"
the thing; and they did it well. We called them "The Stove Brigade." In
spite of their efforts, they like the rest suffered from cold.
Three or four of us, as a sanitary measure, made it a point to see, if
possible, the funny, or at least the bright side of everything, turn
melancholy to mirth, shadow to sunshine. When every officer complained
of cold, we claimed to anticipate the philosophers, Tyndall, Huxley, and
the other physicists, in declaring that "heat is a mode of _motion_,"
and brisk bodily exercise will infallibly demonstrate the fact! When, as
was usually the case, all were hungry, we announced as a sure cure for
indigestion, "stop _eating_!" When our prisoner chaplain Emerson on a
Sunday afternoon prayed for the dear ones we expected to see no more,
and even the roughest and most profane were in tears, we said with old
Homer, "_Agathoi aridakrues andres_" ("Gallant men are easily moved to
tears"), or with Bayard Taylor, "The bravest are the tenderest, the
loving are the daring."
Most humiliating of all was the inevitable plague of vermin. "Hard
indeed," one officer was accustomed to say, "must have been Pharaoh's
heart, and tougher yet his epidermis, if the lice of the third Egyptian
plague were like those of Danville, and yet he would not 'let Israel
go.'" Wearing the same clothing night and day, sitting on the bare
floors, sleeping there in contact with companions not over-nice, no
patient labor, no exterminating unguent, afforded much relief. We lost
all squeamishness, all delicacy on the subject, all inclination for
concealment. It was not a returned Danville prisoner who was reported to
have gone into a drug store in New York stealthily scratching and
saying, "I want some unguentum; don't want it for myself; only want it
for a friend." But it was reported and believed that in April one of
them entered an apothecary shop in Annapolis plying his finger-nails and
hurriedly asking, "Have you any bmsquintum?"--"From your manner,"
answered the courteous druggist, "I think what you want is
unguentum."--"Yes, _run git 'em_; I guess that _is_ the true
name."--"Unguentum, sir"; said the shopkeeper. "How much unguentum do
you want?"--"Well, I reckon about two pound!"--"My dear sir, two pounds
would kill all the lice in Maryland."--"Well, I vow I believe I've got
'em!"
Lieut.-Col. Robert C. Smith of Baltimore, who took command of the
Danville prisons soon after our arrival, appeared to be kind-hearted,
compassionate, but woefully destitute of what Mrs. Stowe calls
"faculty." He was of medium height, spare build, fair complexion, sandy
hair, blue eyes, of slightly stooping figure; on the whole rather
good-looking. He was slow of speech, with a nasal twang that reminded me
of Dr. Horace Bushnell. His face always wore a sad expression. He had
been a student at Yale in the forties a few years before me. Once a
prisoner himself in our hands and fairly treated, he sympathized with
us. He had been wounded, shot through the right shoulder. When I visited
on parole the other Danville prisons in February, a Yankee soldier was
pointed out to me as wearing Colonel Smith's blood-stained coat, and
another was said to be wearing his vest. I had repeated interviews with
him, in which he expressed regret at not being able to make us more
comfortable. He said more than once to me, "I have no heart for this
business. It requires a man without any heart to keep a military prison.
I have several times asked to be relieved and sent to the front." An
officer of forceful executive ability might have procured for us lumber
for benches, more coal or wood for the stoves, some straw or hay for
bedding, blankets or cast-off clothing for the half naked; possibly a
little food, certainly a supply of reading matter from the charitably
disposed. Single instances of his compassion I have mentioned. I shall
have occasion to speak of another. But the spectacle of the hopeless
mass of misery in the four Danville prisons seemed to render him
powerless, if not indifferent. As Mrs. Browning puts it:
A red-haired child,
Sick in a fever, if you touch him once,
Though but so little as with a finger-tip,
Will set you weeping; but a million sick!
You could as soon weep for the rule of three,
Or compound fractions!
Like too many officers both Union and Confederate, he was often in
liquor; liquor was always in him. This "knight of the rueful
countenance," of the sad heart, the mourning voice, the disabled right
arm, and the weakness for apple-jack!--his only hope was to have an
exchange of prisoners; but Lincoln and Stanton and Grant would not
consent to that. The last I heard of him was when a letter of his was
shown me by Lieutenant Washington, a Confederate, a distant relative of
the great George. In it Smith, who had been absent a week from Danville,
complained that he had had "no liquor for three days," and that he was
"painfully sober"!
"Necessity," says the old apothegm, "is the mother of invention." It was
surprising, how much we accomplished in a few weeks towards making
ourselves comfortable. Bone or wood was carved into knives, forks,
spoons, buttons, finger-rings, masonic or army badges, tooth-picks,
bosom pins, and other ornaments; corn-cobs were made into smoking
pipes; scraps of tin or sheet-iron were fashioned into plates for eating
or dishes for cooking; shelves were made by tying long wood splinters
together; and many "spittoons," which were soon rendered superfluous,
because the two entire rooms were transformed into vast spittoons, were
inverted, and made useful as seats which we called sofas.
Many ingeniously wrought specimens of Yankee ingenuity were sold
clandestinely to the rebel guards, who ventured to disobey strict
orders. No skinflint vender of wooden nutmegs, leather pumpkin-seeds,
horn gunflints, shoe-peg oats, huckleberry-leaf tea, bass-wood cheeses,
or white-oak hams, ever hankered more for a trade. Besides the products
of our prison industry, they craved watches, rings, gold chains, silver
spurs, gilt buttons, genuine breast-pins, epaulets; anything that was
not manufactured in the Confederacy. Most of all, they longed for
greenbacks in exchange for rebel currency. So in one way or another many
of us contrived to get a little money of some sort. With it we could buy
of the sutler, who visited us from time to time, rice, flour, beans,
bacon, onions, dried apple, red peppers, sorghum syrup, vinegar, etc.
Perhaps the best result of our engaging in handicraft work was the
relief from unspeakable depression of spirits. Some of us saw the
importance of making diversion on a large scale. To this end we planned
to start a theatre. Major Wm. H. Fry, of the 16th Pa. Cavalry, who knew
all about vaudeville in Philadelphia, was a wise adviser. Young Gardner,
who had been an actor, heartily joined in the movement. I procured a
worn-out copy of Shakespeare. It seemed best to begin with the
presentation of the first act in _Hamlet_. Colonel Smith and other rebel
officers promised to aid us. We assigned the parts and commenced
studying and rehearsing. Gardner was to be Hamlet; Lieut.-Col. Theodore
Gregg, 45th Pa., was to be Claudius, the usurping king; the smooth-faced
Capt. William Cook was to be the queen-mother Gertrude; Capt. W. F.
Tiemann, 159th N. Y., was to personate Marcellus; Lieut. C. H. Morton of
Fairhaven, Mass., I think, was Horatio; and I, having lost about forty
pounds of flesh since my capture--it was thought most appropriate that I
should be the Ghost! Every morning for some weeks on the empty first
floor we read and rehearsed, and really made fine progress. But when we
got ready to produce in theatric style, with slight omissions, the first
act, the rebels seemed suspicious of some ulterior design. They refused
to furnish a sword for Hamlet, a halberd for Marcellus, muskets for
Bernardo and Francisco, a calico gown for the queen, or even a white
shirt for the Ghost. This was discouraging. When the lovely queen-mother
Gertrude appealed to her son--
Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted color off,--
he answered, "I swear I can't do it!" One November morning, as we were
rehearsing and shivering on the windy first floor, he ejaculated with
some emphasis, and with ungentle expletives not found in the original
text,
The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold;
"I move, Colonel, that we 'bust up' this theatre." So the "legitimate
drama" vanished from Danville.
About this time my copy of the Greek New Testament was stolen from me,
an instance, perhaps, of piety run mad.
A week or two before this, the lower room, in which I then lodged,
containing about a hundred and seventy officers, was getting into such a
condition that I felt it my duty to call a meeting to see what measures
could be adopted to promote comfort and decency. I was not the senior in
rank, but Colonel Carle did not feel himself authorized to issue
orders. Some sort of government must be instituted at once. Nearly all
recognized the necessity of prompt action and strict discipline. A
committee was appointed consisting of myself, Major John W. Byron, 88th
N. Y., and another officer whose name escapes me, to draw up rules and
regulations. We presented the following:
RULES UNANIMOUSLY ADOPTED IN THE LOWER ROOM,
DANVILLE, VA., PRISON, OCT. 26, 1864:
1. The room shall be thoroughly policed (swept, etc.) four times
each day by the messes in succession; viz., at sunrise and
sunset, and immediately after breakfast and dinner.
2. There shall be no washing in this room.
3. No emptying slops into spittoons.
4. No washing in the soup buckets or water buckets.
5. No shaking of clothes or blankets in this room.
6. No cooking inside the stoves.
7. No loitering in the yard to the inconvenience of others.
8. No person shall be evidently filthy or infested with vermin.
9. No indecent, profane, or ungentlemanly language in this room.
10. No conduct unbecoming an officer and gentleman about these
premises.
11. No talking aloud at night after nine o'clock.
12. An officer of the day shall be appointed daily by the senior
officer, whose duty shall be to see that these rules are
strictly enforced, and to report to the senior officer any
violation thereof.
13. In case of any alleged violation of any of these rules, the
senior officer of the room shall appoint a Court[7] to consist
of thirteen disinterested officers, who shall fairly try and
determine the matter, and in case of conviction the offender's
rations shall be stopped, or the commander of the prison be
requested to confine the offender in a cell according to the
sentence of the Court; and it shall be the duty of every officer
to have such offender court-martialed after rejoining his
command.
For the Committee. H. B. Sprague, Oct, 26, 1864.
The prison commandant promised that he would execute any sentence short
of capital punishment. But one case was tried by such court. The offense
was a gross violation of rule 9. The culprit was let off with a sharp
reprimand by General Hayes; but my first act after the exchange of
prisoners was to prefer charges and specifications against him. The
beast was court-martialed at Annapolis in the latter part of July, '65.
The observance of these rules wrought wonders in correcting evils which
had become almost unendurable, and in promoting cheerfulness, good
behavior, and mutual esteem.
Many letters were written to us. Few of them reached their destination.
The first I received was from Miss Martha Russell, a lady of fine
literary ability, a friend of Edgar A. Poe, living at North Branford,
Conn. In raising my company (Co. H., 13th Conn.), I had enlisted her
brother Alfred. Under strict military discipline he had become a
valuable soldier, and I had appointed him my first sergeant. At the
battle of Irish Bend, La., in which I was myself wounded, he was shot
through the neck. The wound seemed mortal, but I secured special care
for him, and his life was spared as by miracle. His sister's letter
brought a ray of sunshine to several of us. It assured us that we were
tenderly cared for at home. She quoted to cheer us the fine lines of the
Cavalier poet Lovelace,
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for a hermitage.
A well-grounded conviction prevailed among the prisoners that the
Confederate government was anxious to secure an exchange of prisoners,
but that the Federal government would not consent. The reason was
evident enough. The Confederate prisoners in the North, as a rule, were
fit for military duty; the Union prisoners in the South were physically
unfit. A general exchange would have placed at once, say, more than
forty thousand fresh soldiers in the rebel ranks, but very few in ours.
Conscription for military service had been tried in the North with
results so bitter that it seemed unwise to attempt it again. Better let
the unfortunates in southern prisons perish in silence--that appeared
the wisest policy. But to us prisoners it appeared a mistake and gross
neglect of duty. Between our keen sense of the wrong in allowing us to
starve, and our love for Lincoln and the Union, there was a struggle.
Our patriotism was put to the test on the day of the Presidential
election, Tuesday, November 8th. Discouraging as was the outlook for us
personally, we had confidence in the government and in the justice of
our cause. Pains was taken to obtain a full and fair vote in the
officers' prison. There were two hundred seventy-six for Lincoln;
ninety-one for McClellan. Under the circumstances the result was
satisfactory.
Very earnest, if not acrimonious, were the discussions that immediately
preceded and followed. Some of us realized their importance, not so much
in arriving at a correct decision on the questions at issue, as in
preventing mental stagnation likely to result in imbecility if not
actual idiocy. By the stimulus of employment of some kind we must fight
against the apathy, the hopeless loss of will power, into which several
of our comrades seemed sinking. Mrs. Browning well says:
Get leave to work
In this world,--'tis the best you get at all.
... Get work; get work;
Be sure 'tis better than what you work to get!
Some of us started historical debates, and new views were presented
which furnished both amusement and instruction. One colonel, more
redoubtable in battle than in dialectics, who had been shot through from
breast to back, gravely informed us that the geometer Euclid was an
early English writer! A kindly visitor, Dr. Holbrook, made me a present
of Hitchcock's _Elementary Geology_. It was not quite up to date, having
been published about twenty-five years before, but I found the study
interesting. Grieved at having lost from my books three years in
military service, I endeavored with three or four companions to make up
for the deficiency by taking lessons in French. Our teacher was Captain
Cook, already mentioned as teaching us French at Salisbury. As we had no
books, the instruction was oral. I was delighted to observe how much a
knowledge of Latin facilitated the acquisition of the modern tongue. A
few weeks later upon the arrival of Major George Haven Putnam, Adjutant
at that time of the 176th N. Y., several of us commenced under him the
study of German. Here too the teaching was oral; but I was able to buy
Oehlschläger's _German Reader_; took special pleasure in memorizing some
of the selections, particularly from the poets Gleim, Claudius, Goethe,
Schiller, and Uhland; and I was already familiar with some stanzas of
Arndt's noble _The German Fatherland_, sung so often to me by my
Lieutenant Meisner, slain by my side in battle. Some of those songs
still ring in my ears. General Hayes, Major Putnam, and two or three
others took lessons in Spanish from a native of Mexico, 2d Lieut. John
Gayetti (I think that was his name), of Battery B, 2d Pa. Artillery.
Checkerboards and chessboards were prepared from the rudest materials,
and many were the games with which some of our comrades sought to
beguile the weary hours. Capt. Frank H. Mason of the 12th Cavalry had
the reputation of being our best chess player and young Adjutant Putnam
was his most persistent opponent.
No one needs to be told that old soldiers are great story-tellers,
drawing upon their imagination for facts. This talent was assiduously
cultivated in our prison.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] See Appendix.