Exact Record of Rations in Danville--Opportunity to Cook--Daily
Routine of Proceedings from Early Dawn till Late at Night.
Our imprisonment at Danville lasted from October 20, '64, to February
17, '65, one hundred and twenty days. I kept a careful daily record of
the rations issued to us, as did also Lieut. Watson W. Bush, 2d N. Y.
"Mounted Rifles." After our removal from Danville to Richmond for
exchange, we compared our memoranda, and found they substantially
agreed. During the one hundred and twenty days the issues were as
follows:
_Bread._ A loaf every morning. It was made of unsifted corn-meal,
ground "cobs and all." Pieces several inches in length of cobs
unground were sometimes contained in it. It always seemed wholesome,
though moist, almost watery. Its dimensions were a little less than
7 inches long, 3 or 4 wide, and 3 thick. I managed to bring home a
loaf, and we were amazed at the shrinkage to a quarter of its
original size. It had become very hard. We broke it in two, and
found inside what appeared to be a dishcloth!
_Meat._ Forty-three times. I estimated the weight at from 2 to 5 or
6 ounces. In it sometimes were hides, brains, heads, tails, jaws
with teeth, lights, livers, kidneys, intestines, and nameless
portions of the animal economy.
_Soup._ Sixty-two times; viz., bean soup forty-seven times; cabbage
nine times; gruel six. It was the thinnest decoction of small black
beans, the slightest infusion of cabbage, or the most attenuated
gruel of corn-cob meal, that a poetic imagination ever dignified
with the name of _soup_!
_Potatoes._ Seven times. Seldom was one over an inch in diameter.
_Salt fish._ Five times. They call it "hake." It was good. "Hunger
the best sauce."
_Sorghum syrup._ Three times. It was known as "corn-stalk molasses."
It was not bad.
Nothing else was given us for food by the Confederates at Danville. The
rations appeared to deteriorate and diminish as the winter advanced. My
diary shows that in the fifty-three days after Christmas we received
meat only three times.
Manifestly such supplies are insufficient to sustain life very long. By
purchase from the rebel sutler who occasionally visited us, or by
surreptitious trading with the guards, we might make additions to our
scanty allowance. I recollect that two dollars of irredeemable treasury
notes would buy a gill of rice or beans or corn, a turnip, onion,
parsnip, or small pickled cucumber!
The Confederate cooking needed to be supplemented. Here the cylinder
coal-stoves were made useful. The tops of them were often covered with
toasting corn bread. Tin pails and iron kettles of various capacities,
from a pint to several quarts, suspended from the top by wooden hooks a
foot or two in length, each vessel resting against the hot stove and
containing rice, beans, Indian corn, dried apple, crust coffee, or other
delicacy potable or edible slowly preparing, made the whole look like a
big black chandelier with pendants. We were rather proud of our prison
cuisine. Cooking was also performed on and in an old worn-out
cook-stove, which a few of our millionaires, forming a joint-stock
company for the purpose, had bought for two hundred Confederate dollars
late in the season, and which the kind prison commander had permitted
them to place near the southwest end of the upper room, running the pipe
out of a window. Culinary operations were extensively carried on also in
the open yard outside, about forty feet by twenty, at the northeast end
of the building. Here the officer would build a diminutive fire of chips
or splinters between bricks, and boil or toast or roast his allowance.
We were grouped in messes of five to ten or twelve each. Happy the club
of half a dozen that could get money enough and a big enough kettle to
have their meal prepared jointly.
Such was the case with my own group after the lapse of about two months.
We had been pinched; but one morning Captain Cook came to me with
radiant face and said: "Colonel, I have good news for you. _I_'m going
to run this mess. My folks in New York have made arrangement with
friends in England to supply me with money, and I've just received
through the lines a hundred dollars. We'll live like fighting-cocks!"
Adjt. J. A. Clark, 17th Pa. Cav., was our delighted cook. Shivering for
an hour over the big kettle amid the ice and snow of the back yard, he
would send up word, "Colonel, set the table for dinner." To "set the
table" consisted in sweeping a space six or eight feet square, and
depositing there the plates, wood, tin, or earthen (mine was of wood; it
had cost me a week's labor in carving). The officers already mentioned,
Cook, Clark, Bush, Sprague, with Lieut. E. H. Wilder, 9th N. Y. Cav.,
sit around in the elegant Turkish fashion, or more classical recline
like the ancients in their symposia, each resting on his left elbow,
with face as near as possible to the steaming kettle, that not a smell
may be lost!
Wood was scarce. It was used with most rigid economy. Many joists
overhead had been sawed off by Lieut. Lewis R. Titus of the _Corps
D'Afrique_, using a notched table-knife for a saw. In this way the
Vermont Yankee obtained pieces for cooking, but he weakened the
structure till some officers really feared the roof might come tumbling
about our heads; and I remember that the prison commandant, visiting the
upper room and gazing heavenward, more than once ejaculated irreverently
the name of the opposite region!
Through the kindness of a Confederate officer or bribing the guards a
log four or five feet in length is sometimes brought in. Two or three
instantly attack it with a blunt piece of iron hoop to start the
cleaving, and in less time than one could expect such a work to be done
with axes it is split fine with wooden wedges.
Naturally one of the ever-recurring topics of discussion was the
glorious dishes we could prepare, if we but had the materials, or of
which we would partake if we ever got home again. In our memorandum
books we are careful to note down the street and number of the most
famous restaurant in each of the largest cities, like Delmonico's in New
York or Young's in Boston.
With few exceptions one day is like another. At earliest dawn each of
the two floors is covered with about a hundred and seventy-five
prostrate forms of officers who have been trying to sleep. Soon some one
of them calls in a loud voice. "_Buckets for water!_" The call is
repeated. Five or six, who have predetermined to go early to the river
Dan that seemed nearly a quarter of a mile distant, start up and seize
large wooden pails. They pass to the lower floor. One of them says to
the sentinel on duty at the southwest corner door, "Sentry, call the
sergeant of the guard; we want to go for water." He complies. In five,
ten, or fifteen minutes, a non-commissioned officer, with some half a
dozen heavily armed soldiers, comes, the bolts slide, the doors swing,
our squad passes out. They are escorted down the hill to the river, and
back to prison. By this time it is broad daylight. Many are still lying
silent on the floor. Most have risen. Some are washing, or rather wiping
with wet handkerchief, face and hands; others are preparing to cook,
splitting small blocks of wood for a fire of splinters; a few are
nibbling corn bread; here and there one is reading the New Testament.
There is no change or adjustment of clothing, for the night dress is the
same as the day dress. We no longer wonder how the cured paralytic in
Scripture could obey the command, "Take up thy bed and walk"; for at
heaviest the bed is but a blanket!
Now, for a half-hour, vengeance on vermin that have plagued us during
the night! We daily solve the riddle of the fishermen's answer to "What
luck?" the question which puzzled to death
"The blind old bard of Scio's rocky isle,"
"_As many as we caught we left; as many as we could not catch we
carry with us_!"
About eight o'clock the cry is heard from the southwest end of the room,
"Fall in for roll-call! fall in!" to which several would impudently add,
"Here he comes! here he is!" A tall, slim, stooping, beardless,
light-haired phenomenon, known as "the roll-call sergeant," enters with
two musketeers. We officers having formed in two ranks on the northwest
side of the room, he passes down the front from left to right slowly
counting. Setting down the number in a memorandum book, he commands in a
squeaky feminine voice, "Break ranks," which most of us have already
done. Much speculation arose as to the nature and status of this
singular being. His face was smooth and childlike, yet dry and wrinkled,
so that it was impossible to tell whether he was fifteen or fifty. A
committee was said to have waited upon him, and with much apparent
deference asked him as to his nativity, his age, and whether he was
human or divine, married or single, man or woman. They said he answered
sadly, "Alas! I'm no angel, but a married man, thirty-seven years old,
from South Carolina. I have three children who resemble me."
Immediately after roll-call, corn bread is brought in for breakfast. It
is in large squares about two feet in length and breadth, the top of
each square being marked for cutting into twenty or twenty-five rations.
Colonel Hooper and Capt. D. Tarbell receive the whole from the rebel
commissary, and then distribute to each mess its portion. The mess
commissary endeavors to cut it into equal oblong loaves. To make sure of
a fair distribution, one officer turns his back, and one after another
lays his hand upon a loaf and asks, "Whose is this?" The officer who has
faced about names some one as the recipient.
Clear the way now for sweepers. From one end of the room to the other
they ply their coarse wooden brooms. Some officers are remarkably neat,
and will scrape their floor space with pieces of glass from the broken
windows; a few are listless, sullen, utterly despondent, regardless of
surroundings, apparently sinking into imbecility; the majority are
taking pains to keep up an appearance of respectability.
Many who have been kept awake through the night by cold or rheumatism
now huddle around the stoves and try to sleep. Most of the remainder, as
the weeks pass, glide into something like a routine of occupations. For
several weeks I spent an hour or two every day carving with a broken
knife-blade a spoon from a block of hard wood. Sporadic wood-splitting
is going on, and cooking appears to be one of the fine arts. An hour
daily of oral exercises in French, German, Spanish, Latin, or Italian,
under competent teachers, after the Sauveur or Berlitz method, amused
and to some extent instructed many. Our cavalry adjutant, Dutch Clark,
so called from his skill in the "Pennsylvania Dutch" dialect made
perhaps a hundred familiar with the morning salutation, "_Haben Sie gut
geschlafen?_" ("Have you slept well?") Lieut. Henry Vander Weyde, A. D.
C., 1st Div., 6th Corps, the artist chum of our principal German
instructor, amused many by his pencil portraits of "Slim Jim," the
nondescript "roll-call sergeant" of uncertain age and gender; also of
some of the sentries, and one or two of his fellow prisoners. A worn-out
pack of fifty-two cards, two or three chess and checker boards of our
manufacture, and twenty-four rudely carved checker-men and thirty-two
fantastic chess-men, furnished frequent amusement to those who
understood the games.
On an average once in two days we received about one o'clock what was
called soup. We were told, and we believed it to be true, that all the
rich nitrogenous portion had been carefully skimmed off for use
elsewhere; not thrown away as the fresh maid threw the "scum" that
formed on top of the milk!
The topic of most frequent discussion was the prospect of an exchange of
prisoners. Our would-be German conversationalists never forgot to ask,
"_Haben Sie etwas gehörten von Auswechseln der Gefangenen?_" ("Have you
heard anything of exchange of prisoners?") It was hard to believe that
our government would leave us to die of starvation.
At the close of the soup hour and after another turn at sweeping, almost
every officer again sat down or sat up to rid himself of the _pediculidæ
vestimenti_. We called it "skirmishing"; it was rather a pitched battle.
The humblest soldier and the brevet major-general must daily strip and
fight. Ludicrous, were it not so abominable, was this mortifying
necessity. No account of prison life in Danville would be complete
without it. Pass by it hereafter in sorrow and silence, as one of those
duties which Cicero says are to be done but not talked about.
The occupations of the morning are now largely resumed, but many prefer
to lie quiet on the floor for an hour.
An interesting incident that might happen at any time is the arrival in
prison of a Confederate newspaper. A commotion near the stairway! Fifty
or a hundred cluster around an officer with a clear strong voice, and
listen as he reads aloud the news, the editorials, and the selections.
The rebels are represented as continually gaining victories, but
singularly enough the northern armies are always drawing nearer!
Toward sunset many officers walk briskly half an hour to and fro the
length of the room for exercise.
Another roll-call by the mysterious heterogeneous if not
hermaphroditical Carolina sergeant!
Brooms again by the mess on duty. Again oral language-lessons by Cook
and Putnam. Then discussions or story-telling.
It is growing dark. A candle is lighted making darkness visible. We have
many skilful singers, who every evening "discourse most excellent
music." They sing _Just before the battle, mother; Do they miss me at
home? We shall meet, but we shall miss him_ (a song composed on the
death of one of my Worcester pupils by Hon. Charles Washburn); _Nearer,
My God, to thee_, etc. From the sweet strains of affection or devotion,
which suffuse the eyes as we begin to lie down for the night, the music
passes to the _Star-spangled Banner_, _Rally round the flag_, _John
Brown's body lies a'mouldering in the grave_, and the like. Often the
"concert" concludes with a comic Dutch song by Captain Cafferty, Co. D,
1st N. Y. Cav.
Sleep begins to seal many eyelids, when someone with a loud voice heard
through the whole room starts a series of sharp critical questions,
amusing or censorious, thus:
"Who don't skirmish?" This is answered loudly from another quarter.
"Slim Jim." The catechism proceeds, sometimes with two or three distinct
responses.
"Who cheats the graveyard?"
"Colonel Sprague."
"Who sketched Fort Darling?"
"Captain Tripp." (He was caught sketching long before, and was refused
exchange.)
"Who never washes?"
"Lieutenant Screw-my-upper-jaw-off." (His was an unpronounceable foreign
name.)
"Who knows everything?"
"General Duffié." (Duffié was a brave officer, of whom more anon.)
"Who don't know anything?"
"The fools that talk when they should be asleep." (The querists subside
at last.)
For warmth we lie in contact with each other "spoon-fashion," in groups
of three or more. I had bought a heavy woolen shawl for twenty
Confederate dollars, and under it were Captain Cook, Adjutant Clark, and
Lieutenant Wilder; I myself wearing my overcoat, and snuggling up to my
friend Cook. All four lay as close as possible facing in the same
direction. The night wears slowly away. When the floor seemed
intolerably hard, one of us would say aloud, "Spoon!" and all four would
flop over, and rest on the other side. So we vibrated back and forth
from nine o'clock till dawn. We were not comfortable, but in far better
circumstances than most of the prisoners. Indeed Captain Cook repeatedly
declared he owed his life to our blanket.