73 Vale Dixie
74 Exchange Commenced
75 My turn comes
77 Homeward bound
77 Conclusion
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ERRATA.
On page 3, 23d line, 1st column, for “right” read regiment.
On page 74, 16th line, for “adopt” read adopted.
On page 74, 23d line, for “slowing” read slowly.
On page 74, 2d column, 2d paragraph, 10th line, for “regions” read
designs.
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FIFTEEN MONTHS IN DIXIE,
OR
MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
IN REBEL PRISONS.
BY W. W. DAY.
INTRODUCTION.
On the 12th day of April, 1861, in Charleston Harbor, a shot was fired
whose echo rang round the world. The detonation of that cannon, fired at
Fort Sumter, reverberated from the pine-clad hills and rock-bound coast
of Maine across the continent to the placid waters of the Pacific,
thrilling the hearts of the freemen of the north and causing the blood,
inherited from Revolutionary sires, to course through their veins with
maddening speed. That cannon was fired by armed rebellion at freedom of
person, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the Union of
States. That echo roused those freemen to a resolution to do and to die,
if need be, for the maintenance of the Union, and the supremacy of law.
The outbreak of the rebellion found the writer, then a little past
majority, on a farm near a little village in Wisconsin. I was just
married, had put in my spring crop and when the first call was made for
troops, was not situated so that I could leave home, but on the 10th of
October following I enlisted in Co. D. 10th Wis. Inf. Vols.
As this is to be a history of prison life, it is not my purpose to write
a history of my regiment but a short sketch is proper in order to give
the reader a fair understanding of my capture.
The 10th left Camp Holton, near Milwaukee, about the middle of Nov.
1861. We went by railway via Chicago, Indianapolis and Evansville to
Louisville, Ky., thence to Shepherdsville, thence to Elizabethtown,
where we were assigned to Sill’s Brigade of Mitchell’s Division.
Wintered at Bacon Creek and on the 11th of Feb. 1862, marched with
Buell’s army to the capture of Bowling Green. Buell’s army and part of
Grant’s army arrived almost simultaneously at Nashville, Tenn. Grant
with his forces proceeded to Pittsburg Landing, Buell to Murfreesboro.
After Buell with the greater part of his army had marched to Grant’s
support, Mitchell’s Division marched on Huntsville, Ala., capturing that
place together with about 500 prisoners, 12 engines and a large amount
of rolling stock, the property of the Memphis & Charleston R. R.
The 10th guarded the M. & C. R. R. from Huntsville to Stevenson, the
junction of the M. & C. and the Nashville & Chattanooga R. R. during the
summer of ’62.
Early in September we commenced that famous retreat from the Tennessee
to the Ohio, and to show the reader how famous it was to those who
participated in it, I will say we averaged twenty-four miles per day
from Stevenson, Ala., to Louisville, Ky. On the 8th of October,
supported Simonson’s battery at the Battle of Perryville, losing 146,
killed and wounded out of 375 men. Our colors showing the marks of
forty-nine rebel bullets, in fact they were torn into shreds. Dec. 31st,
’62 and Jan. 1st and 2nd, ’63, in the Battle of Stone’s River, or
Murfreesboro.
The army of the Cumberland, then under command or Gen. Rosecrans, was
divided into four army corps. The 14th, under Gen. Thomas, was in the
center. The 20th, under Gen. A. McD. McCook, on the right. The 21st,
under Gen. Crittenden, on the left and the Reserve Corps, under Gen.
Gordon Granger, in supporting distance in the rear.
We remained at Murfreesboro until June 23rd, ’63, when the whole army
advanced against Bragg, who was entrenched at Tullahoma, drove him out
of his entrenchments, across the mountains and Tennessee River into
Chattanooga and vicinity. Here commenced a campaign begun in victory and
enthusiasm, and ending at Chickamauga in disaster and gloom, but not in
absolute defeat.
THE BATTLE OF CHICKAMAUGA.
Rosecrans showed fine strategic ability in maneuvering Bragg out of
Tennessee without a general engagement, but he made a serious and almost
fatal mistake after he had crossed the Tennessee River with his own
army. He should have entrenched at Chattanooga and kept his army well
together. Instead of doing so, he scattered his forces in a mountainous
country. Crittenden’s Corps followed the north bank of the Tennessee to
a point above Chattanooga, there crossed the river flanking Chattanooga
on the east and cutting the railroad south, thus compelling the
evacuation of that place.
McCook crossed two ranges of mountains to Trenton, while Thomas with his
corps still remained at Bridgeport, on the Tennessee, and Granger was
leisurely marching down from Nashville.
In the reorganization of the Army of the Cumberland in Oct. ’62, our
Brigade was called 1st Brig. of 1st Div., 14th Corps. The Brigade was
commanded by Col. Scribner of the 38th Indiana. The Division was
commanded through the Perryville and Murfreesboro campaigns by Gen.
Rousseau, but through the Chickamauga campaign by Gen. Absalom Baird,
now Inspector General of the Army.
I shall not attempt to give an historical or official description of the
Battle of Chickamauga, but a description as seen from the standpoint of
a private soldier.
On the 18th of September our Division was bivouacked at Maclamore’s
Cove, a few miles from Lee & Gordon’s Mills. Heavy skirmishing had been
going on all day at Lee & Gordon’s Mills and Rossville between
Crittenden and McCook’s forces and those of the enemy. About 4 P. M.,
the “Assembly” sounded and we “fell in” and commenced our march for the
battlefield. At dark my Regt. was thrown out as flankers. We marched
until 10 o’clock along the banks of a small creek while on the opposite
side of the creek a similar line of the enemy marched parallel with us.
We reached Crawfish Springs about 10 P. M., here we took the road again
and continued our march until sunrise on the morning of the 19th when we
halted and prepared breakfast. Before we had finished our breakfast we
heard a terrible roar and crash of musketry to our front, which was
east. This was the opening of the battle of Chickamauga. Immediately
afterward an Aide came dashing up to Lieut. Col. Ely, commanding 10th
Wis. We were ordered to fall in and load at will. Then the order was
given “forward, double quick, march,” and forward we went through brush,
over rocks and fallen trees, keeping our alignment almost as perfect as
though we were marching in review. Very soon we began to hear the sharp
“fizt and ping” of bullets, a sound already familiar to our ears for we
were veterans of two years service, and then we began to take the
Johnies in “out of the wet.” Forward, and still forward, we rushed all
the time firing at the enemy who was falling back. After advancing
nearly a mile in this manner we found the enemy, en masse, in the edge
of a corn field. Our Division halted, the skirmishers fell back into
line and the business of the day commenced in deadly earnest. We were
ordered to lie down and load and fire at will. Reader, I wish I had the
ability to describe what followed. Not more than twenty-five rods in
front of us was a dense mass of rebs who were pouring in a shower of
bullets that fairly made the ground boil. To the rear of my regiment was
a section of Loomis’ 1st Mich. Battery which was firing double shotted
canister over our heads. How we did hug the ground, bullets from the
front like a swarm of bees, canister from the rear screeching and
yelling like lost spirits in deepest sheol. But this could not last
long, mortal man could not stand such a shower of lead while he had
willing legs to carry him out of such a place.
The rebels soon found a gap at the right of my Regt. and began to pour
in past our right flank. I was lying on the ground loading and firing
fast as possible when I saw the rebels charging past our right, with
their arms at a trail, looking up I discovered that there was not a man
to the right of me in the Regt. I did not wait for orders but struck out
for the rear in a squad of one. I could not see a man of my regiment so
I concluded to help support the battery, accordingly I rushed up nearly
in front of one of the guns just as they gave the Johnies twenty pounds
of canister. That surprised me. I found I was in the wrong place, twenty
pounds of canister fired through me was liable to lay me up, so I filed
left and came in front of the other gun just as the men were ready to
fire. They called out to me to hurry as they wanted to fire, facing the
gun and leaning over to the right I called to them to fire away and they
did fire away with a vengeance. After this things seem mixed up in my
mind. I remember getting to the rear of that gun, of hearing the bullets
whistling, of seeing the woods full of rebs, of thinking I shall get hit
yet, of trying to find a good place to hide and finally of stumbling and
falling, striking my breast on my canteen, and then oblivion.
How long I remained unconscious I never knew, probably not long, but
when I came to my understanding the firing had ceased in my immediate
vicinity except now and then a scattering shot. I started again for the
rear and had not gone more than a quarter of a mile before I found Gen.
Baird urging a lot of stragglers to rally and protect a flag which he
was holding. Here I found Capt. W. A. Collins and several other men of
my Company. When he saw me he asked me if I was hurt. I told him “no,
not much, I had a couple of cannons fired in my face and fell on my
canteen which had knocked the breath out of me but that I would be all
right in a little while.” He then told me I had better go to the rear to
the hospital. To this I objected, telling him that I had rather stay
with the “boys.”
We then marched to the rear and halted in a corn field. The stragglers
from the regiment began to come in and the brigade was soon together
again, but we did no more fighting that day. But just before night we
were marched to the front and formed in line of battle. About 8 o’clock
in the evening Johnson’s Division attempted to relieve another division
in our front, Wood’s, I think it was, when the latter division poured a
galling fire into the former, supposing they were rebels. Some of the
balls came through the ranks of the 10th, whereupon Company K opened
fire without orders and a sad mistake it proved for it revealed our
position and a rebel battery opened on us with shells. To say that they
made it lively for us is to say but part of the truth. The woods were
fairly ablaze with bursting shells. The way they hissed and shrieked and
howled and crashed was trying to the nerves of a timid man.
After the firing had ceased we were marched a short distance to the rear
and bivouacked for the night. I laid down by a fire but “tired nature’s
sweet restorer” did not visit me that night. I had received a terrible
shock during the day. We had been whipped most unmercifully. The 1st
Division of the 14th Corps had turned its back on the enemy for the
first time, that day; and, too, there was to-morrow coming, and what
would it bring? Do coming events cast their shadows before? Perhaps they
do, at any rate the thoughts of all these things passing through my mind
made me pass a sleepless night.
Sunday morning, September 20th, came. The same sun that shone dimly
through the hazy atmosphere which surrounded the battlefield of
Chickamauga, and called those tired soldiers to the terrible duties of
another day of battle, shone brightly upon our dear ones at home,
calling them to prepare for a day of rest and devotion, and while they
were wending their way to church to offer up a prayer, perhaps, in our
behalf, their way enlivened by the sweet sounds of the Sabbath bells, we
were marching to the front to meet a victorious and determined foe, our
steps enlivened by the thundering boom of the murderous cannon, the
sharp rattle of musketry and the din and roar of battle, together with
the shrieks and groans of our wounded and dying comrades. What a scene
for a Sabbath day? But I am moralizing, I must on with my story.
Our division formed in line of battle on a ridge, with Scribner’s
Brigade in the center, Starkweather’s on the right and King’s on the
left. Soon the rebels came up the ascent at the charge step. We wait
until they are in short range then we rise from behind our slight
entrenchments and pour such a well directed volley into their ranks that
they stagger for a moment, but for a moment only, and on they come again
returning our fire, then the batteries open on them and from their steel
throats belch forth iron hail and bursting shells, while we pour in our
deadly fire of musketry. They halt! THEY BREAK! THEY RUN! Those heroes
of Longstreet’s, they have met their match in the hardy veterans of the
west. Three times that day did we send back the rebel foe. In the
meantime McCook and Crittenden had not fared so well. Bragg had been
reinforced by Longstreet, Joe Johnson and Buckner, so that he had a much
larger force then did Rosecrans.
Shortly after noon Bragg threw such an overwhelming force upon those two
corps that they were swept from the field and driven toward Chattanooga,
carrying Rosecrans and staff with them.
Here it was that Thomas, with the 14th Corps, reinforced by Granger,
earned the title of “The Rock of Chickamauga.” Holding fast to the base
of Missionary Ridge he interposed those two corps between the corps of
McCook and Crittenden and the enemy, giving them time to escape up the
valley toward Chattanooga.
But to return to my division. Three times that day did we repel the
charge of the enemy, but the fourth time they came in such numbers and
with such impetuosity that they fairly lifted us out of our line. When
we broke for the rear I started out with Capt. Collins, but he was in
light marching order, while I was encumbered with knapsack, gun and
accoutrements, and he soon left me behind.
When I left the line I fired my gun at the enemy, and as I retreated I
loaded it again, on the run, all but the cap. When Capt. Collins left me
I began to look for some safe place and seeing a twenty-four pounder
battery, with a Union flag, I started toward it. They were firing
canister at the time as I supposed, at the enemy, but they fell around
me so thickly that they fairly made the sand boil. I began to think it
was a rebel battery with a Union flag as a decoy, so I filed right until
I got out of range.
Soon after getting out of range of the battery I came across a dead
rebel and noticing a canteen by his side, I stooped, picked it up and
shook it and found that it was partly filled with water. This was a
Godsend for I had been without water all day. The canteen was covered
with blood, but, oh, how sweet and refreshing that water tasted. Here I
threw away my knapsack to facilitate my flight. I soon came to a wounded
rebel who begged of me to give him a drink of water. I complied with his
request and again started out for Chattanooga. I had gone but a short
distance before I saw a soldier beckoning to me, supposing by the
uniform that he was a member of the 2nd Ohio. I approached within a
short distance of him, when the following colloquy took place:
Reb,—“He’ah yo Yank, give me yo’ah gun.”
Yank,—“Not by a thundering sight, the first thing I learned after I
enlisted was to keep my gun myself.”
Reb,—“Give me yo’ah gun, I say.”
Yank,—“Don’t you belong to the 2nd Ohio?”
Reb,—“No, I belong to the 4th Mississippi. Give me yo’ah gun.”
At the same time pointing his gun point blank at my breast.
Yank,—“The devil you do.” At the same time handing him my gun for, you
will remember, I had loaded my gun but had not capped it.
I think I hear some of my readers say “you was vulgar.” No, I was
surprised and indignant and I submit that I expressed my feelings in as
concise language as possible. Consider the situation, I was in the
woods, it was nearly dark, I supposed I had found a friend but there was
a good Enfield rifle pointing at me, not ten feet away, in that gun was
an ounce ball, behind that ball was sufficient powder to blow it a mile,
on the gun was a water-proof cap, warranted to explode every time, and
behind the whole was a Johnny who understood the combination to a
nicety. The fact was, he had the drop on me, I handed him my gun and he
threw it into a clump of bushes.
While he was disposing of my case another Union soldier crossed his
guard beat, for he was one of Longstreet’s pickets. He called to him to
halt but the soldier paying no attention to him, he brought his gun to
an aim and again called, “halt or I’ll shoot yo.” “Don’t shoot the man
for God’s sake, he is in your lines,” said I, and while Johnny was
paying his addresses to the other soldier, I gave a jump and ran like a
frightened deer. Around the clump of brush I sped, thinking, “now for
Chattanooga.” “Hello, Bill! Where you going?” “Oh, I had got started for
Chattanooga, but I guess I will go with you,” and I ran plump into a
squad of men of my company and regiment under guard.
Men, styling themselves statesmen, have stood up in their places in the
halls of Congress and called prisoners of war “Coffee Coolers” and
“Blackberry Pickers.” I give it up. I cannot express my opinion,
adequately, of men who will so sneer at and belittle brave men who have
fought through two days of terrible battle, and only yielded themselves
prisoners of war because they were surrounded and overpowered, as did
those men at Chickamauga.
The Battle of Chickamauga was ended and that Creek proved to be what its
Indian name implies, a “river of death.” The losses on the Union side
were over 17,000, and on the Confederate side over 22,000.
I said in the introduction that the Chickamauga campaign did not end in
absolute defeat. And, although we were most unmercifully whipped, I
still maintain that assertion, Gen. Grant to the contrary,
notwithstanding. Rosecrans saved Chattanooga and that was the bone of
contention, the prime object of the campaign. But it was a case similar
to that of an Arkansas doctor, who when asked how his patients, at a
house where he was called the night before, were getting on replied:
“Wall, the child is dead and the-ah mother is dead, but I’ll be dogoned
if I don’t believe I’ll pull the old man through all right.”
CHAPTER II.
A PRISONER OF WAR.
“Woe came with war and want with woe;
And it was mine to undergo
Each outrage of the rebel foe:”—
Rokeby, canto 5, verse 18.
Scott.
When I had thus unceremoniously run into the lion’s mouth, I surrendered
and was marched with my comrades a short distance to Gen. Humphrey’s
headquarters and placed under guard.
I then began to look around among the prisoners for those with whom I
was acquainted.
Among others, I found Lieut. A. E. Patchin and Geo. Hand of my company,
both wounded. Having had considerable experience in dressing wounds, at
Lieut. Patchin’s request, I went to Gen. Humphrey and obtained written
permission to stay with him (Patchin) and care for him. Patchin, Hand
and myself were then marched off about half a mile to a field hospital,
on a small branch or creek, as we would say.
Seating Patchin and Hand by a fire, I procured water and having
satisfied our thirst, I proceeded to dress their wounds. We sat up all
night, not having any blankets, and all night long the shrieks and
groans of wounded and dying men pierced our ears.
In the morning I went to a rebel surgeon and procured a basin, a sponge,
some lint and bandages, and after dressing the wounds of my patients, I
took such of the wounded rebels in my hands as my skill, or lack of
skill, would permit me to handle.
I worked all the forenoon relieving my late enemies and received the
thanks and “God bless you, Yank,” from men who had, perhaps the day
before, used their best skill to kill me. Who knows but that a bullet
from my own gun had laid one of those men low?
In the afternoon those of the wounded Union prisoners who could not walk
were placed in wagons and those who could, under guard and we were taken
to McLaw’s Division hospital, on Chickamauga Creek.
On the way to the hospital we passed over a portion of the battlefield.
While marching along I heard the groans of a man off to the right of the
road, I called the guard’s attention to it and together we went to the
place from whence the sound proceeded; there, lying behind a log, we
found a wounded Union soldier. He begged for water saying he had not
tasted a drop since he was wounded on the 19th, two days before. He was
shot in the abdomen and a portion of the caul, about four inches in
length, protruded from the wound. I gave him water, and the guard helped
me to carry him to the wagon. His name was Serg. James Morgan, of some
Indiana Regiment, the 46th, I think. He lived five days. I cared for him
while he lived. One morning I went to see him and found him dead. I
searched his pockets and found his Sergeant’s Warrant and a photograph
of his sister, with her name and post-office address written upon it.
These I preserved during my fifteen months imprisonment and sent to her
address after I arrived in our lines. I received a letter from her
thanking me for preserving those mementoes of her brother; also for the
particulars of his death. I also received a letter from Capt.
Studebaker, Morgan’s brother-in-law, and to whose company Morgan
belonged, dated at Jonesboro, N. C., May 1865, in which he said that my
letter gave the family the first news of the fate of Morgan.
We arrived at the hospital just before night and I proceeded to make my
patients as comfortable as possible. There were at this place 120
wounded Union soldiers besides several hundred wounded Confederates. Our
quarters were the open air. These wounded men lay scattered all around,
in the garden, the orchard, by the roadside, any and every where.
The first night here I sat up all night building fires, carrying water
for the wounded and dressing their wounds. Besides myself, there was a
surgeon of an Illinois Battery and James Fadden, of the 10th Wis., who
had a scalp wound, to care for these poor men, and a busy time we had. I
assisted the surgeon in performing amputations, besides my other duties.
The rebels seemed to think we could live without food as they issued but
three days rations to us in eleven days.
How did we live? I will tell you. On both sides of us was a corn field
but the rebels had picked all the corn but we skirmished around and
found an occasional nubbin which we boiled, then shaved off with a
knife, making the product into mush. Besides this, we found a few small
pumpkins and some elder berries, these we stewed and divided among the
men.
About a week after we arrived here, I applied to the rebel surgeon in
charge for permission to kill some of the cattle, which were running at
large, telling him that our men were starving. He replied that he could
do nothing for us, that he had not enough rations for his own men, that
he could not give me permission to kill cattle, as Gen. Bragg had issued
orders just before the battle authorizing citizens to shoot any soldier,
Reb or Yank, whom they found foraging. But he added that he would not
“give me away” if I killed one. I took the hint, and hunting up an
Enfield rifle the Union surgeon and I started out for beef. We went into
the corn field to the east of us where there were quite a number of
cattle, and selecting a nice fat three-year-old heifer, I told the
doctor that I was going to shoot it. He urged me not to shoot so large
an animal as the citizens would shoot us for it, and wanted me to kill a
yearling near by. I told him “we might just as well die for an old sheep
as a lamb,” and fired, killing the three-year-old. You ought to have
seen us run after I fired. Great Scott! How we skedaddled. Pell mell we
went, out of the corn field, over the fence, and into the brush. There
we lay and watched in the direction of two houses, but seeing no person
after a while we went back to our game. It did not take long to dress
that animal and taking a quarter we carried it back to the hospital. We
secured the whole carcass without molestation and then proceeded to give
our boys a feast. We ate the last of it for breakfast the next morning.
After this feast came another famine. I tried once more to find a beef,
but found instead two reb citizens armed with shot guns. I struck out
for tall timber. Citizens gave me chase but I eluded them by dodging
into the canebrakes which bordered the creek, thence into the creek down
which I waded, finally getting back to the hospital minus my gun.
You may be sure that I did not try hunting after this little episode.
Rosecrans and Bragg had just before this made arrangements for the
exchange of wounded prisoners. Our hospitals were at the Cloud Farm,
five miles north-west from us, and Crawfish Springs, five miles south of
Cloud Farm.
The next morning I secured an old rattle-bones of a horse and went over
to the Cloud Farm for rations. I reported to the Provost Marshal on Gen.
Bragg’s staff, and not being able to procure any rations here, he sent a
cavalryman with me as a safe guard. We went down to Crawfish Springs,
where I procured a sack full of hard tack and returned to the hospital.
I traveled fifteen miles that day over the battlefield. Such a sight as
I there saw I hope never to see again. This was eleven days after the
battle and none of our dead had been buried then; in fact, the most of
our brave men who fell at Chickamauga were not buried until after the
battle of Missionary Ridge and the country had come in possession of the
Union forces. The sight was horrible. There they lay, those dead heroes,
just as they fell when stricken with whistling bullet, or screaming
canister, or crashing shell.
Some of them had been stripped of their clothing, all were badly
decomposed. The stench was beyond my power to tell, or yours to imagine.
Taken all together it was the most horrible scene the eye of man ever
rested upon.
Let me try to give the reader a description of what I saw that day. When
I first reached the battlefield my attention was attracted to a number
of horsemen dressed in Federal uniforms. These were evidently rebel
cavalrymen who had dressed themselves in the uniforms of our dead
soldiers. In every part of the field was evidence of the terrible havoc
of war. Bursted cannons, broken gun carriages, muskets, bayonets,
accoutrements, sabres, swords, canteens, knapsacks, haversacks, sponges,
rammers, buckets, broken wagons, dead horses and dead men were mixed and
intermingled in a heterogeneous mass.
Fatigue parties of rebel soldiers and negroes were gleaning the fruits
of the battlefield.
In one place I saw cords of muskets and rifles piled up in great ricks
like cord-wood. The harvest was a rich one for the Confederacy.
In one place I saw more than twenty artillery horses, lying as they had
fallen, to the rear of the position of a Rebel battery, showing the
fierce and determined resistance of the Union soldiers.
At another place, near where my regiment breakfasted on the morning of
the 19th, a Union battery had taken position, it was on the Chattanooga
road and to the rear was heavy timber. Here the trees were literally cut
down by cannon shots from a Rebel battery. Some of the trees were
eighteen or twenty inches in diameter. Havoc, destruction, ruin and
death reigned supreme. In some places, where some fierce charge had been
made, the ground was covered with the dead. Federal and Confederate lay
side by side just as they had fallen in their last struggle. But why
dwell on these scenes? They were but a companion piece to just such
scenes on a hundred other battlefields of the civil war.
We remained at the Chickamauga hospital for three weeks. Then all who
could ride in wagons were carried to Ringgold, where we took the cars
for Atlanta. Many of the wounded had died and we had buried them there
on the banks of the “River of Death.” I presume they have found
sepulture at last in the National Cemetery, at Chattanooga, along with
the heroes of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge. Peace to their
ashes. They gave all that men can give, their lives, for their country,
and we gave them the best gifts of comrades, honor and a soldier’s
grave.
At Ringgold some ladies came into the cars and distributed food to our
party. It was a kindly but unexpected act, and we appreciated it the
more as we were nearly starved. We traveled all night and arrived at
Atlanta about 11 o’clock A. M. the next day. We were removed to the
“Pen” and here I was introduced to the “Bull Pens” of the South.
The Prison Pen here was small, being used only as a stopping place for
prisoners en route for Richmond. The enclosure was made of boards and
was twelve feet in height. On two sides were barracks which would
shelter probably five hundred men. In the center was a well of good
water. The guards were on the platforms inside and nearly as high as the
fence.
The next day after our arrival the Commandant of the Prison put me in
charge of twenty-one wounded officers. These officers elected me nurse,
commissary general, cook and chambermaid of the company.
Our rations were of fair quality but of very limited quantity. A fund
was raised and entrusted to me with instructions to purchase everything
in the line of eatables that I could get.
Here we found Gen. Neal Dow, sometimes called the father of the “Maine
Law.” He had been taken prisoner down near the Gulf and was on his way
to Richmond for exchange.
Here we also found Lieut. Mason, of the 2nd Ohio Infantry, and he, too,
had a history. In the latter part of April 1862, Gen. Mitchell sent a
detail of twenty-one men, members of the 2nd, 21st and 33rd Ohio and a
Kentuckian, named Andrews, I believe, on a raid into Central Georgia,
with instructions to capture a locomotive, then proceed north to
Chattanooga, and to destroy railroads and burn bridges on the way. They
left us at Shelbyville, Tennessee, and went on their perilous errand,
while we marched to the capture of Huntsville, as narrated in the
introduction.
These men were the celebrated “Engine Thieves” and their story is told
by one of their number, in a book entitled, “Capturing a Locomotive.”
They left our brigade in pairs, traveling as citizens to Chattanooga,
thence by rail to Marietta, where they assembled, taking a return train.
The train halted at a small station called Big Shanty, and while the
conductor, engineer and train men were at breakfast, they uncoupled the
train, taking the engine, tender and two freight cars and pulled out for
Chattanooga. All went lovely for a time but after running a few hours
they began to meet wild trains which had been frightened off from the M.
& C. R. R. by the capture of Huntsville. This caused them much delay but
Andrews, the leader, was plucky and claiming that he had a train load of
ammunition for Chattanooga he contrived at last to get past these trains
and again sped onward.
In the meantime the conductor at Big Shanty discovered his loss. Taking
with him the engineer, and two officials of the road, they started out
on foot in pursuit of the fugitive train. They soon found a hand-car
which they took, and forward they went in the race, a hand-car in
pursuit of a locomotive. Luck favored the pursuers, they soon found an
engine, the Yonah, on a Spur road, and with steam up, this they pressed
into the service and away they go. This time locomotive after
locomotive. They pass the blockade of wild trains and on they go. As
they round a curve they see, away ahead, the smoke of the fugitive
train. The engineer pulls the throttle wide open and on they go as never
went engine before. But the fugitives discover the pursuers, and at the
next curve they stop, pull up a rail and put it on board their train,
and then away with the speed of a hurricane. But they have pulled up the
rail on the wrong side of the track and the pursuing engine bumps across
the ties and on they come. Then the fugitives stop and pull up another
rail and take it with them. The pursuers stop at the break in the road,
take up a rail in the rear of their engine, lay it in front and then
away in pursuit they go. The fugitives throw out ties upon the track,
but the Yonah pushes them off as though they were splinters. Then the
fugitives set fire to a bridge but the Yonah dashes through fire and on,
ever on, like a sleuth hound it follows the fugitives. Rocks, trees and
houses seem to be running backward, so swift is the flight. But the wood
is gone, the oil is exhausted, the journals heat, the boxes melt and the
fugitive engine dies on the track.
But our heroes jump from the train and take to the woods. They are
pursued with men and blood-hounds, are captured and thrown into prison
and treated as brigands. Some die, some are hanged, some are exchanged
and some make their escape. Lieut. Mason was of the last named class. He
was promoted to a 1st Lieutenancy, fought at Chickamauga in my brigade
and was taken prisoner and identified as one of the engine thieves, and
held for trial. He told me this story seated upon a sixty pound ball,
which was attached to his ankle by a ten foot chain.
Besides the Federal prisoners, there were in this prison a number of
Union men from the mountains of East Tennessee and Northern Georgia.
They were conscripted into the Confederate army, but refused to take the
oath of allegiance to the Confederacy.
We arrived at Atlanta on the 12th of October 1863, and on the 18th we
were put on board of the cars and started for Richmond.
ONWARD TO RICHMOND.
Leaving Atlanta on the 18th, we reached Augusta early on the morning of
the 19th. There had been heavy rains and as the railroad track was
washed out ahead, we were compelled to wait here until the track was
repaired. We were put into a cotton shed and a guard stationed around
us.
No rations had been issued to us since leaving Atlanta. It seemed to be
part of the duty of the officer in charge to FORGET to feed us, and I
never saw a man more attentive to duty than he was, in that respect.
However, I procured a pass from him, and with a guard, went down town to
buy food for my squad of wounded officers. I found bread in one place at
a dollar a loaf and at another place I bought a gallon of sorghum syrup.
As my guard and I were looking around for something else to eat, we met
a pompous old fellow who halted us and asked who we were. I told him
that I was a prisoner of war with a Confederate guard looking for a
chance to buy something to eat for wounded soldiers. “I will see to
this,” said he. “I will know if these Northern robbers and vandals are
to be allowed to desecrate the streets of Augusta.”
I could never find out what the people of Augusta lived on during the
war. I could not find enough food for twenty-two men, but I imagine that
old fellow lived and grew fat on his dignity.
Shortly after my return to the cotton shed a company of Home guards,
composed of the wealthy citizens of Augusta, marched up and posted a
guard around us, relieving our train guard.
The company was composed of the wealthy men of the city, too rich to
risk their precious carcasses at the front, but not too much of
gentlemen to abuse and starve prisoners of war. They did not allow any
more “Yanks” to desecrate their sacred streets that day.
Morning came and we bade a long, but not a sad, farewell to that Sacred
City. We crossed the Savannah River into the sacred soil of South
Carolina. Hamburg, the scene of the Rebel Gen. Butler’s Massacre of
negroes during Ku-Klux times, lies opposite Augusta.
Onward we went, our old engine puffing and wheezing like a heavy horse,
for by this time the engines on Southern railroads began to show the
need of the mechanics who had been driven north by the war. Along in the
afternoon of the 21st, while we were yet about 60 miles from Columbia,
S. C., the old engine gave out entirely and we were compelled to wait
for an engine from Columbia. We arrived at Columbia sometime in the
night and as we were in passenger cars we did not suffer a great deal of
fatigue from our long ride. On the morning of the 22d as our train was
leaving the depot a car ran off the track which delayed us until noon.
While the train men were getting the car back on the track, I went with
a guard down into the city to buy rations, but not a loaf of bread nor
an ounce of meat could I procure.
Columbia was a beautiful city. I never saw such flower gardens and
ornamental shrubbery as I saw there, but you may be sure that I did not
cry when I heard that it was burned down. I don’t know whether any of
those brutes who refused to sell me bread for starving, wounded men,
were burned or not, if they were, they got a foretaste of their manifest
destiny.
We arrived at Raleigh, N. C., on the morning of the 23rd. Here we had
rations issued to us, consisting of bacon and hard tack, and of all the
HARD tack I ever saw, that was the hardest. We could not bite it,
neither could we break it with our hands until soaked in cold water.
At Weldon, on the Roanoke River, we laid over until the morning of the
24th. Here we had a chance to wash and rest and we needed both very
much.
We reached Petersburg, Va., during the night of the 24th and were
marched from the Weldon depot through the city and across the Appomattox
River to the Richmond depot, where we waited until morning.
Midday found us within sight of Richmond, the capital of the
Confederacy.
As the train ran upon the long bridge which crosses the James River at
the upper part of the Falls, we looked to our left, and there, lying
peacefully in that historic river, was Belle Isle, a literal hell on
earth. A truthful record of the sufferings, the starvation and the
misery imposed by the Confederates upon our helpless comrades at that
place, would cause a blush of shame to suffuse the cheek of a Comanche
chief.
Arrived on the Richmond side, we dragged our weary bodies from the cars,
and forming into line, were marched down a street parallel with the
river. I suppose it was the main business street of the city. Trade was
going on just as though there was no war in progress.
As we were marching past a tall brick building a shout of derision
saluted our ears, looking up we saw a number of men, clad in Confederate
gray, looking at our sorry company and hurling epithets at us, which
were too vile to repeat in these pages. This was the famous, or perhaps
infamous is the better word, Castle Thunder. It was a penal prison of
the Confederacy and within its dirty, smoke begrimed walls were confined
desperate characters from the Rebel army, such as deserters, thieves and
murderers, together with Union men from the mountains of Virginia and
East Tennessee, and Union soldiers who were deemed worthy of a worse
punishment than was afforded in the ordinary military prisons.
Many stories are told of the dark deeds committed within the walls of
that prison. It is said that there were dark cells underneath that
structure, not unlike the cells under the Castle of Antonia, near the
Temple in Jerusalem, as described in Ben Hur, into which men were cast,
there to remain, never to see the light of day or breathe one breath of
pure air until death or the fortunes of war released them.
The horrors of the Spanish Inquisition in the middle ages were repeated
here. Men were tied up by their thumbs, with their toes barely touching
the floor, they were bucked and gagged and tortured in every conceivable
way, and more for the purpose of gratifying the devilish hatred of their
jailors, then because they had committed crimes.
On we march past Castle Lightning, a similar prison of unsavory
reputation, to Libby Prison, which opened its ponderous doors to receive
us. But I will reserve a description of this prison for another chapter.
CHAPTER III.
LIBBY PRISON.
“They entered:—’twas a prison-room
Of stern security and gloom,
Yet not a dungeon;”—
The Lady of the Lake,
Scott.
Libby Prison, up to this time, was the most noted and notorious prison
of the South. It was a large building two stories high on its north or
front side, and three stories high on its south or rear side, being
built on land sloping toward the James River.
The building had been used before the war as a store for furnishing ship
supplies.
The upper story was used as a prison for officers. The second story was
divided into three rooms. The east room was a hospital, the middle, a
prison for private soldiers and the west room was the office of the
prison officials. The lower story was divided into cook room, storage
rooms and cells. It was down in one of these storage rooms, that Major
Straight’s party started their famous tunnel. Over the middle door was
painted
───┬───────────────────────────────┬───
│ THOMAS LIBBY & SON. │
│ │
│ Ship Chandlers and Grocers. │
───┴───────────────────────────────┴───
Across the west end of the building the same sign was painted in large
letters.
Before we entered the prison, all the commissioned officers were
separated from us and sent up into the officers rooms and we were
registered by name, rank, company and regiment by a smart little fellow
dressed in a dark blue uniform. This was “Majah” Ross, a refugee from
Baltimore, whose secession sympathies took him into Richmond but not
into the active part of “wah.” He was a subordinate of “Majah Tunnah,”
the notorious Dick Turner, known and cursed by every prisoner who knows
anything of Libby Prison.
There seemed to be no person of lower rank than “Majah” in the
Confederate service. I think the ranks must have been filled with them
while “Cunnels” acted as file closers. O, no, I am mistaken. I did hear
afterward of “Coplers of the Gyaard,” but then, they were only fighting
men, while these “Majahs” and “Cunnels” were civilians acting as prison
sergeants.
Soon after our entrance into the Prison we heard some of our officers
calling from the room over our heads. They had been appraised of our
arrival by the officers who came with us. I went to a hole in the back
part of the room and heard my name called and was told by the officer
speaking to come up on the stairs. There was a broad stairway leading
from our floor up to the floor overhead, but the hatchway was closed. I
went up on the stairs as requested. A narrow board had been pried up
and, looking up, I saw Captain Collins whom I had not seen since we left
the line of battle together on that eventful 20th of September. To say
that we were rejoiced to see each other is to say but little. Questions
were asked as to the whereabouts of different comrades, as to who was
dead and who alive, and, last but not least, “was I hungry?” Hungry!
Poor, weak word to express the intense gnawing at my stomach. Hungry!
Yes, from head to foot, every nerve and fiber of my system was hungry.
He gave me a handful of crackers, genuine crackers, not hard tack with
B. C. marked upon them, but crackers. Some of the readers of this sketch
were there and know all about it. Those of you who were never in a rebel
prison can never imagine how good those crackers tasted. One man who was
there and witnessed the above, and who was making anxious inquiries for
comrades, was Lieutenant G. W. Buffum, of the 1st Wisconsin Regiment,
now the Hon. George W. Buffum, of Clinton Falls Township, Steele county,
Minnesota. Ask him whether I was hungry or not.
While we were talking together some one called out the name of some
comrade. No answer was given. Again the name was called and just at that
instant “Majah” Ross stepped into the room. Down went the strip of board
and we vacated those stairs in one time and one motion. But the “Majah”
had caught that name, or one similar to it, and he too became desirous
of interviewing that individual. He called the name over and over again,
but no response; finally becoming exasperated, he swore, with a good,
round Confederate oath, that he would not issue us any rations until
that man was trotted out. The man could not be found and little Ross
kept his word for two days, then, not being able to find him, he issued
rations to us. Hungry, did you say? Reader just think of it, we were
living on less than half rations all the time and then to have them all
cut off for forty-eight hours, was simply barbarous, and all to satisfy
the whim, or caprice, of a little upstart rebel who was not fit to black
our shoes. Yes, it makes me mad yet. Do you blame me?
Thinking back upon Libby to-day, I think it was the best prison I was
in:—That comparison does not suit me, there was no BEST about it. I will
say, it was not so BAD as any of the others I was in.
There was a hydrant in the room, also a tank in which we could wash both
our bodies and our clothes, soap was furnished, and cleanliness, as
regards the prison, was compulsory. We scrubbed the floor twice a week
which kept it in good condition.
But when we come to talk about food, there was an immense, an
overpowering lack of that. The quality was fair, in fact good,
considering that we were not particular. But as the important question
of food or no food, turned upon the whims and caprices of Dick Turner
and Ross, we were always in doubt as to whether we would get any at all.
I remained in Libby Prison a week when I was removed, with others, to
Scott’s building, an auxilliary of Libby. There were four prison
buildings which were included in the economy of Libby Prison. Pemberton,
nearly opposite to Libby, on the corner of 15th and Carey streets, I
think that is the names of those streets. Another building, the name of
which I did not learn, north of Pemberton on 15th street, and Scott’s
building opposite the last mentioned building.
These three buildings were tobacco factories and the presses were
standing in Scott’s when I was there.
The rations for all four prisons were cooked in the cook-house at Libby.
The same set of officers had charge of all of them, so that, to all
intents and purposes they were one prison, and that prison, Libby.
Heretofore I had escaped being searched for money and valuables, but one
day a rebel came up and ordered all Chickamauga prisoners down to the
second floor. I did not immediately obey his orders and soon there was
much speculation among us as to what was wanted. Some were of the
opinion that there was to be an exchange of Chickamauga prisoners.
Others thought they were to be removed to another prison. To settle the
question in my own mind I went down. I had not got half way down the
stairs before I found what the order meant, for there standing in two
ranks, open order, were the Chickamauga boys, a rebel to each rank,
searching them.
I had but little money. Not enough to make them rich, but the loss of it
would make me poor indeed. I immediately formed my plan and as quickly
acted upon it. Going down the stairs, I passed to the rear of the rear
rank, down past the rebel robbers, up in front of the front rank, and so
on back upstairs, past the guard. I discovered then and there, that a
little “cheek” was a valuable commodity in rebel prisons.
We were divided into squads, or messes, of sixteen for the purpose of
dividing rations.
I was elected Sergeant of the mess to which I belonged, and from that
time until my release had charge of a mess.
Our rations were brought to us by men from our own prison and divided
among the Sergeants of messes, who in turn divided it among their
respective men. Each man had his number and the bread and meat were cut
up into sixteen pieces by the Sergeant, then one man turned his back and
the Sergeant pointing to a piece, asked “whose is this?” “Number ten.”
“Whose is this?” “Number three,” and so on until all had been supplied.
Our rations, while in Richmond, consisted of a half pound of very good
bread and about two ounces of very poor meat per day. Sometimes varied
by the issue of rice in the place of meat. Sometimes our meat was so
maggoty that it was white with them, but so reduced were we by hunger
that we ate it and would have been glad to get enough, even of that
kind.
To men blessed with an active mind and body, the confinement of prison
life is exceeding irksome, even if plenty of food and clothing, with
good beds and the luxuries of life, are furnished them, but when their
food is cut down to the lowest limit that will sustain life, and of a
quality at which a dog, possessed of any self respect, would turn up his
nose in disgust, with a hard floor for a bed, with no books nor papers
with which to feed their minds, with brutal men for companions, with no
change of clothing, with vermin gnawing their life out day after day,
and month after month, it is simply torture.
Time hung heavy on our hands. We got but meagre news from the front and
this came through rebel sources, and was so colored in favor of the
rebel army, as to be of little or no satisfaction to us. The news that
Meade had crossed the Rapidan, or had recrossed the Rapidan, had become
so monotonous as to be a standing joke with us. Our first question to an
Army of the Potomac man in the morning would be, “has Meade crossed the
Rapidan yet this morning?” This frequently led to a skirmish in which
some one usually got a bloody nose.
News of exchange came frequently but exchange did not come. Somebody
would start the story that a cartel had been agreed upon, then would
come a long discussion upon the probabilities of the truth of the story.
The rebels always told prisoners that they were going to be exchanged
whenever they moved them from one point to another. This kept the
prisoners quiet and saved extra guards on the train.
While we were at Richmond we had no well concerted plan for killing time
for we were looking forward hopefully to the time when we should be
exchanged, but we learned at last to distrust all rumors of exchange and
all other promises of good to us for hope was so long deferred that our
hearts became sick.
We were too much disheartened to joke but occasionally something would
occur which would cause us to laugh. It would be a sort of dry laugh,
more resembling the crackling of parchment but it was the best we could
afford under the circumstances and had to pass muster for a laugh.
One day salt was issued to us and nothing but salt. I suppose “Majah”
Turner thought we could eat salt and that would cause us to drink so
much water that it would fill us up. A German, who could not talk
English, was not present when the salt was divided. He afterward learned
that salt had been issued and went to the Sergeant of his mess and
called, “zult, zult.”
“What?” said the Sergeant.
“Zult, zult.” said Dutchy.
“O, salt! The salt is all gone. All been divided. Salt ausgespiel,” says
the Sergeant.
“Zult, zult!” says Duchy.
“Go to h—l” says the Sergeant.
“Var ish der hell?” And then we exploded.
I remained in Richmond until November 24th, when I, with 699 other
prisoners was removed to Danville, Va.
We were called out before daylight in the morning. Each man taking with
him his possessions. Mine consisted of an old oil-cloth blanket, and a
haversack containing a knife and fork and tin plate, also one day’s
rations. We formed line and marched down 15th street to Carey, and up
Carey street a few blocks, then across the wagon bridge to the Danville
depot. Here we were stowed in box cars at the rate of seventy prisoners
and four guards in each car. A little arithmetical calculation will show
the reader that each of us had a fraction over three square feet at our
disposal. Stock buyers now-a-days allow sixty hogs for a car load, and
with larger cars than we had. Don’t imagine, however, that I am
instituting any comparison between a car load of hogs and a car load of
prisoners:—it would be unjust to the hogs, so far as comfort and
cleanliness go.
Our train pulled out from the depot, up the river, past the Tredegar
Iron Works, and on toward Danville. Our “machine” was an old one and
leaked steam in every seam and joint. Sometimes the track would spread
apart, then we would stop and spike it down and go ahead. At other times
the old engine would stop from sheer exhaustion, then we would get out
and walk up the grade, then get on board and away again. Thus we spent
twenty-four hours going about one hundred and fifty miles. During the
night some of the prisoners jumped from the cars and made their escape,
but I saw them two days afterward, bucked and gagged, in the guard-house
at Danville.
CHAPTER IV.
DANVILLE PRISON.
“So within the prison cell,
We are waiting for the day
That shall come to open wide the iron door,
And the hollow eye grows bright,
And the poor heart almost gay,
As we think of seeing home and friends once more.”
We arrived at Danville on the morning of November 25th, and were
directly marched into prison No. 2. There were six prison buildings
here, all tobacco factories. Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4 being on the public
square. Nos. 2 and 3 being on the west side. No. 1 on the north side
adjoining a canal, and No. 4 on the south side. The other prisons were
in other parts of the city.
In each prison was confined 700 men. Each building was three stories
high with a garret, making four floors in each prison. Thus we had 175
men on each floor. The prisons were, as near as I can guess, 30×60 feet
so that we had an average of ten and one-third square feet to each man
or a little more than a square yard apiece.
Our rations at first consisted of a half pound of bread, made from wheat
shorts and about a quarter of a pound of pork or beef. The quality was
fair.
I had for a “chum,” or “pard,” from the time I arrived at Atlanta until
I came to Danville, an orderly Sergeant, of an Indiana Regiment, by the
name of Billings. He was a graduate of an Eastern College and at the
time he enlisted left the position of Principal of an Academy in
Indiana. He was one of nature’s noblemen, intelligent, brave,
true-hearted and generous to a fault. I was very much attached to him as
he was a genial companion far above the common herd. But after I had
been in Danville about a week, I learned that there were a number of the
comrades of my company in Prison No. 1. So I applied for, and obtained,
permission to move over to No. 1. I parted with Billings with regret. I
have never seen him since and know nothing of his fate, but I imagine he
fell a victim to the hardships and cruelties of those prisons.
I found, when I arrived in No. 1, not only members of my own company but
a number of men from Company B of my regiment. We were quartered in the
south-east corner on the second floor. Nearly opposite where I was
located comrade Dexter Lane, then a member of an Ohio regiment, now a
citizen of Merton, Steele county, Minnesota, had his quarters. We were
strangers at that time but since then have talked over that prison life
until we have located each other’s position, and feel that we are old
acquaintances.
I think I did not feel so lonesome after I joined my comrades of the
10th Wis. There is something peculiar about the feelings of old soldiers
towards each other. Two years before these men were nothing to me. I had
never seen them until I joined the regiment at Milwaukee. But what a
change those two years had wrought. We had camped together on the tented
field and lain side by side in the bivouac. We had touched elbows on
those long, weary marches through Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and
Georgia, had stood shoulder to shoulder in many hard fought battles, and
now we are companions in Southern prisons. They were not as
kind-hearted, nor as intelligent as Billings but there was the feeling
of comradeship which no persons on earth understand as do old soldiers.
The “majah” in charge of Prison No. 1 was a man by the name of Charley
Brady, a southern gentleman from Dublin or some other seaport of the
“Green Isle,” and to his credit, I will say, he was a warm hearted Irish
gentlemen. I do not call to mind any instance where he was unnecessarily
harsh or cruel, but on the other hand, he was kind and pleasant in his
manner and in his personal intercourse with us treated us as though we
were human beings in marked contrast with the treatment of the prison
officials who were genuine Southerners brought up under the influences
of that barbarous institution, slavery.
Perhaps some of my readers who were confined in Prison No. 1 will not
agree with me in my estimate of Charley Brady, but if they will stop a
moment and consider, they will remember that our harsh treatment came
from the guards who were a separate and distinct institution in prison
economy, or was the result of infringement of prison rules.
About a week after my arrival in No. 1 some of the prisoners on the
lower floor were detected in the attempt to tunnel out. They had gone
into the basement and started a tunnel with the intention of making
their escape. They were driven up and distributed on the other three
floors. This gave us about two hundred and thirty men to a floor and
left us about eight square feet to the person.
About this time the cook-house was completed and we had a radical change
of diet. There were twelve large kettles, set in arches, in which our
meat and soup were cooked. Before proceeding farther let me say, that
the cooking was done here for 3,500 men.
Our soup was made by boiling the meat, then putting in cabbages, or “cow
peas” or “nigger peas,” or stock peas, (just suit yourself as to the
name, they were all one and the same) and filling up AD LIBITUM with
water. The prisons first served were usually best served for if the
supply was likely to fall short a few pails full of Dan River water
supplied the deficiency.
Our allowance was a bucket of soup to sixteen men, enough of it, such as
it was, for the devil himself never invented a more detestable compound
than that same “bug soup.” The peas from which this soup was made were
filled with small, hard shelled, black bugs, known to us as pea bugs.
Their smell was not unlike that of chinch bugs but not nearly as strong.
Boil them as long as we might, they were still hard shelled bugs. The
first pails full from a kettle contained more bugs, the last ones
contained more Dan River water, so that it was Hobson’s choice which end
of the supply we got.
(I notice there is considerable inquiry in agricultural papers as to
these same cow peas whether they are good feed for stock. My experience
justifies me in expressing the opinion that you “don’t have” to feed
them to stock, let them alone and the bugs will consume them.)
Our supply of shorts bread was discontinued and corn bread substituted.
This was baked in large pans, the loaves being about two and a half
inches in thickness. This bread was made by mixing meal with water,
without shortening or lightening of any kind. It was baked in a very hot
oven and the result was a very hard crust on top and bottom of loaf, and
raw meal in the center.
The water-closets of the four prisons, which surrounded the square, were
drained into the canal already mentioned, and as the drains discharged
their filth into the canal up stream from us, we were compelled to drink
this terrible compound of water and human excrement, for we procured our
drinking and cooking water from this same canal.
The result of this kind of diet and drink was, that almost every man was
attacked with a very aggravated form of camp diarrhea, which in time
became chronic. Many poor fellows were carried to their graves, and many
more are lingering out a miserable existence to-day as a result of
drinking that terrible hell-broth. And there was no excuse for this, for
not more than ten rods north of the canal was a large spring just in the
edge of Dan River, which would have furnished water for the whole city
of Danville. The guards simply refused to go so far.
Some of the men attempted to make their escape while out to the
water-closet at night. One poor fellow dropped down from the side of the
cook-house, which formed part of the enclosure, and fell into a large
kettle of hot water. This aroused the guard and all were captured on the
spot. This occurred before the cook-house had been roofed over.
So many attempts were made to escape, that only two were allowed to go
out at a time after dark. The effect of this rule can be partly imagined
but decency forbids me to describe it. Suffice it to say that with
nearly seven hundred sick men in the building it was awful beyond
imagination.
We resorted to almost every expedient to pass away time. We organized
debating clubs and the author displayed his wonderful oratorical powers
to the no small amusement of the auditors. Well, I have this
satisfaction, it did them no hurt and did me a great deal of good.
Two members of my regiment worked in the cook-house during the day,
returning to prison at night. They furnished our mess with plenty of
beef bones. Of these we manufactured rings, tooth picks and stilettos.
We became quite expert at the business, making some very fine articles.
Our tools were a common table knife which an engineer turned into a saw,
with the aid of a file, a broken bladed pocket knife, a flat piece of
iron and some brick-bats. The iron and brick were used to grind our
bones down to a level surface.
We also procured laurel root, of which we manufactured pipe bowls.
Carving them out in fine style, I made one which I sold for six dollars
to a reb, but I paid the six dollars for six pounds of salt.
I hope my readers will remember the saw-knife described above, as it
will be again introduced in a little scene which occurred in
Andersonville.
Some one of our mess had the superannuated remains of a pack of cards,
greasy they were and dog-eared, but they served to while away many a
weary hour. One evening our old German who wanted “zult,” entertained us
with a Punch and Judy show. The performance was good, but I failed to
appreciate his talk.
But what we all enjoyed most was the singing. There was an excellent
quartette in our room and they carried us back to our boyhood days by
singing such songs as, “Home, Sweet Home,” “Down upon the Swanee River,”
and “Annie Laurie.” When they sang patriotic songs all who could sing
joined in the chorus. We made that old rebel prison ring with the
strains of “The Star Spangled Banner,” “Columbia’s the Gem of the
Ocean,” and the like. The guards never objected to these songs and I
have caught the low murmur of a guard’s voice as he joined in “Home,
Sweet Home.” But when we sang the new songs which had come out during
the war, such as, “Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!” and the “Battle Cry of
Freedom,” they were not so well pleased.
We use to tease them by singing,
“We will hang Jeff Davis on a sour apple tree,
As we go marching on.”
And—
“We are springing to the call from the east and from the west,
Shouting the battle cry of freedom,
And we’ll hurl the rebel crew from the land we love the best,
Shouting the battle-cry of freedom.”
About that time a guard would call out. “Yo’, Yanks up dah, yo’ stop dat
kyind of singing or I’ll shoot.” “Shoot and be dammed.”—
“For we’ll hurl the rebel crew from the land we love the best, &c.”
would ring out loud and clear for an answer, and then BANG would go the
guard’s gun, answered by a yell of derision from the prison.
We suffered very much from cold that winter at Danville for we had no
fire. It is true we had a stove and some green, sour gum wood was
furnished but it would not burn, and then we made some weak and futile
attempts to burn stone coal but it was a failure. The proportions were
not right, there was not coal enough to heat the stone, and so we went
without fire.
For bedding, I had an oil-cloth blanket and my “pard” had a woolen
blanket. But an oil-cloth blanket spread on a hard floor, does not “lie
soft as downy pillows are.” It did seem as though my hips would bore a
hole through the floor.
One day a rebel officer with two guards came in and ordered all the men
down from the third and fourth floors, then stationing a guard at the
stairs, he ordered them to come up, two at a time.
I was in no hurry this time to see what was going on, so I awaited
further developements. Soon after the men had commenced going up, a note
fluttered down from over head. I picked it up, on it was written, “They
are searching us for money, knives, watches and jewelry.” Word was
passed around and all who had valuables began to secrete them. I had
noticed that this class of fellows were expert at finding anything
secreted about the clothing, so I tried a plan of my own. Taking my
money I rolled it up in a small wad and stuffed it in my pipe. I then
filled my pipe with tobacco, lit it and let it burn long enough to make
a few ashes on top, then let it go out. Then I went up stairs with my
haversack. The robbers took my knife and fork, but did not find my
money.
A Sergeant of a Kentucky Regiment saved a gold watch by secreting it in
a loaf of bread. Lucky fellow, to be the owner of a whole loaf of bread.
Small-pox broke out among us shortly after our arrival at Danville.
Every day some poor fellow was carried out, and sent off to the pest
house up the river.
About the 17th of December, a Hospital Steward, one of our men, came in
and told us he had come in to vaccinate all of us who desired it. I had
been vaccinated when a small boy, but concluded I would try and see if
it would work again. It did. Many of the men were vaccinated as the
Steward assured them that the virus was pure. Pure! Yes, so is
strychnine pure. It was pure small-pox virus, except where it was
vitiated by the virus of a disease, the most loathsome and degrading of
any known to man, leprosy alone excepted. We were inoculated and not
vaccinated. On the 26th I was very sick, had a high fever and when the
surgeon came around I was taken out to the Hospital.
CHAPTER V.
“Blow, blow, ye winds, with heavier gust!
And freeze thou bitter-biting frost!
Descend, ye chilly, smothering snows!
Not all your rage, as now united shows
More hard unkindness, unrelenting,
Vengeful malice unrepenting,
Than heaven illumined man on brother man bestows!”
Burns.
After I left the prison, I was marched around to three other prisons and
waited outside while the Surgeon went through them to visit the sick. It
was a damp, chilly day, and I was so sick and tired and my bones ached
so badly that I was compelled to lie down upon the cold, wet, stone
sidewalk, while the Surgeon went through the prisons. But all things
earthly have an end, so did that Surgeon’s visits, and I was at last
marched to the Hospital.
Here allow me to describe the Hospital buildings. There were four of
them; three stood on the hill at the south part of the city, the fourth
was on the banks of the river, near the Richmond Railroad bridge. They
were about 40×120 feet and two stories high, with a hall running the
whole length, dividing them into wards, each building contained four
wards. They were erected in 1862 for the use of the wounded in the
celebrated Peninsular Campaign.
To the rear of the north hospital building was the pest-house, a defunct
shoe shop, in which convalescent shoemakers, who were soldiers in the
rebel army, worked for the benefit of the C. S. A. To the rear of the
center building was the cook-house and eating room, where convalescents
took their meals, and to the rear of the cook-house stood the dead
house, where the dead were placed prior to burial. To the rear of the
south building was the bakery, where all the bread of the hospital and
prisons was baked. This arrangement brought the three hospital buildings
in a line, while the bakery, dead house and pest-house were in a line to
the rear. A line of guards paced their beats around the whole.
I supposed when I was sent to the hospital that I had fever of some
kind, but in two days the soreness of my throat and the pustules on my
face and hands told the story too plainly, that the inoculation of a few
days before was doing its work. I was down with a mild form of
small-pox, varioloid, the doctors called it, but a Tennessee soldier
pronounced it a case of the “Very O Lord.” I was taken from the hospital
to the pest-house and laid on a straw pallet. My clothes were taken from
me and sent to the wash-house and I was given a thin cotton shirt and a
thin quilt for a covering.
The pest-house was but a slim affair, being built for summer use. It
stood upon piles four feet high, was boarded up and down without battens
and as the lumber was green when built, the cracks were half an inch in
width at this time.
January 1st, 1864, was a terribly cold day. The Rebel Steward thinking
we were not getting air enough, opened two windows in the ward I was in
and then toasted himself at a good fire in another ward. I was
charitably inclined and wished from the bottom of my heart that that
Steward might have the benefit of a hot fire, both here and hereafter.
I nearly froze to death that day. My limbs were as cold as those of a
corpse, but relief came about nine o’clock that night in the shape of a
pint of hot crust coffee which I placed between my feet until all the
heat had passed into my limbs, which, with constant rubbing, thawed me
out.
Our rations at the hospital consisted of a slice of wheat bread and a
half pint of thick beef soup, this was given us twice a day.
After staying in the pest-house a week a suit of clothes was given me
and I was sent to Hospital No. 3, which had been turned into a small-pox
hospital. Nearly forty per cent. of the Danville prisoners had small-pox
yet the death rate was not high from that disease; diarrhea and scurvy
were the deadly foes of the prisoners, and swept them off as with a
besom.
After I had regained strength I entered into an agreement with half a
dozen others to attempt an escape. Our plan was to get into a ditch
which was west of the dead house, crawl down that past the guard into a
ravine, and then strike for the Blue Ridge Mountains, thence following
some stream to the Ohio River. But the moon was at the full at the time
and we were compelled to wait for a dark night. There is an old saying
that a “watched pot never boils,” so it was in our case; before a dark
night came we were sent back to prison.
Exchange rumors were current at this time. We talked over the good times
we would have when we got back into “God’s country.” We swore eternal
abstinence from bug soup and corn bread, and promised ourselves a
continual feast of roast turkey, oysters, beefsteak, mince pies, warm
biscuit and honey, but here came a difference of opinion, some voted for
mashed potatoes and butter, others for baked potatoes and gravy. There
were many strong advocates of each dish. The mashed potatoe men affirmed
that a man had no more taste than an ostrich who did not think that
mashed potatoes and butter were ahead of anything else in that line;
while the baked potatoe men sneeringly insinuated that the mashed
potatoe men’s mothers or wives did not know how to bake potatoes just to
the proper yellow tint, nor make gravy of just the right consistency and
richness. The question was never settled until it was settled by each
man selecting his own particular dish after months more of starvation.
There was restiveness among the men all the time, hunger and nakedness
were telling upon their spirits as well as their health. I lay it down
as a maxim that if you want to find a contented and good natured man,
you must select a well fed and comfortably clothed man. Philosophize as
much as you will upon the subject of diet but the fact remains that we
are all more or less slaves:—to appetite.
During the month of December a number of the prisoners in No. 3
attempted a jail delivery by crawling out through the drain of the
water-closet. They were detected however and most of them captured and
returned to prison. Among those who got away was John Squires, of Co.
K., 10th Wis. He had part of a rebel uniform and managed to keep clear
of the Home guards for a number of days, but was finally captured and
returned to prison. But this did not discourage him. He had finished out
his uniform while at large and was ready to try it again at the first
opportunity. But Johnny was no Micawber who waited for something to turn
up; he made his own opportunities. One day he took his knife and
unscrewed the “catch” of the door lock and walked out, as he passed
through the door he turned to his fellow prisoners and remarked “Now
look he’ah yo’ Yanks, if yo’ don’t have this flo’ah cleaned when I git
back yo’ll git no ration to-day.” Then turning he saluted the guard,
walked down stairs, saluted the outer guard, walked across the square,
over the bridge, passing two guards, past where a number of rebel
soldiers were working on a fort and on to “God’s Country” where he
arrived after weeks of wandering and hunger and cold in the Blue Ridge
Mountains and the valleys of West Virginia:—another case of “cheek.”
One day a rebel Chaplain came into our prison and preached to us. He
informed us with a great deal of circumlocution that he was Chaplain of
a Virginia Regiment, that he was a Baptist minister, and that his name
was Chaplain. He then proceeded to hurl at our devoted heads some of the
choicest selections of fiery extracts, flavored with brimstone to be
found in the Bible. In his concluding prayer he asked the Lord to
forgive us for coming into the South to murder and burn and destroy and
rob, at the same time intimating that he, himself, could not do it. I
suppose he felt better after he had scorched us and we felt just as
well. He would have had to preach to us a long time before he could have
made us believe that there was a worse place than rebel prisons.
One source of great discomfort, yea, torture, was body lice,
“grey-backs,” in army parlance. They swarmed upon us, they penetrated
into all the seams of our clothing. They went on exploring expeditions
on all parts of our bodies, they sapped the juices from our flesh, they
made our days, days of woe, and our nights, nights of bitterness and
cursing. We could not get hot water, our unfailing remedy in the army.
Our only resource was “skirmishing.” This means stripping our clothes
and hunting them out:—and crushing them.
On warm days it was a common sight to see half of the men in the room
with their shirts off, skirmishing.
One day, a number of Reb. citizens came in to see the “Yanks.” Among
them was a large finely built young man. He was dressed in the height of
fashion and evidently belonged to the F. F. V.’s. We were skirmishing
when they came in, and young F. F. V. strutted through the room, with
his head up, like a Texas steer in a Nebraska corn field. His nose and
lips suggested scorn and disgust. Thinks I, “my fine lad I’ll fix you.”
Just as he passed me I threw a large “Grey-back” on his coat; many of
the prisoners saw the act, and contributed their mite to the general
fund, and by the time young F. F. V. had made the circuit of the room,
he was well stocked with Grey-backs. It is needless to add he never
visited us again.
Scurvy and diarrhea were doing their deadly work even at Danville. These
diseases were due, largely, to causes over which the rebels had control.
Dr. Joseph Jones, a bitter rebel, professor of Medical Chemistry, at the
Medical College in Augusta, was sent by the Surgeon General of the
Confederate army, to investigate and report upon the cause of the
extreme mortality in Andersonville. He attributed scurvy to a lack of
vegetable diet and acids. Diarrhea and dysentery, he said, were caused
by the filthy conditions by which we were surrounded, polluted water,
and the fact that the meal from which our bread was made was not
separated from the husk.
There have been many stories told with relation to this meal; let me
make some things plain, and then there will not be the apparent
contradiction, that there is at present in the public mind.
The difference in opinion arises from the different interpretations of
the word “husk.”
A true northern man understands husk to mean;—the outer covering of the
ear of corn; while a southerner, or Middle States, man calls it a
“shuck.”
The husk referred to by Dr. Jones, would be called by a northerner, the
“hull,” or bran. His meaning was that it was unsifted.
The fetid waters of the canal, the unsifted corn meal made into half
baked bread, and a lack of vegetables and acids, together with the rigid
prison rules, which resulted in filth, and stench, beyond description,
were the prime causes of the great mortality at Danville. During the
five months in which I was confined at Danville, more than 500 of 4,200
prisoners died, or about one in eight.
Our clothing too, was getting old, many of the men had no shoes, others
were almost naked. Our government sent supplies of food and clothing to
us, but they were subjected to such a heavy toll that none of the food,
and but little of the clothing ever reached us, and what little was
distributed to our men was soon traded to the guards for bread, or rice,
or salt. I never received a mouthful of food, or a stitch of clothing
which came through the lines.
In February reports came to us that the Confederate government was
building a large prison stockade somewhere down in Georgia, and that we
were to be removed to it; that our government had refused to exchange
prisoners, and that we were “in for it during the war.”
About the 1st of April 1864 the prisoners in one of the buildings were
removed. The prison officials said they had gone to City Point to be
exchanged, but one of the guards told us they had gone to Georgia. But
we soon found out the truth of the matter for on the 15th we were all
taken from No. 1 and put on board the cars. We were stowed in at the
rate of sixty prisoners, and four guards to a car.
The lot of my mess fell to a car which had been used last, for the
conveyance of cattle. No attempt had been made to clean the car and we
were compelled to kick the filth out the best we could with our feet.
Our train was headed toward Richmond and the guards swore upon their
“honah” that we were bound for City Point to be exchanged.
A LETTER FROM COMRADE DEXTER LANE.
Since the foregoing chapter was printed in THE PEOPLE’S PRESS, we have
received the following endorsement of the story from a comrade who knows
HOW IT WAS by a personal experience.
EDITOR.
MERTON, MINN., March 26, ’89.
Editor PEOPLE’S PRESS:
I have been much interested in perusing a series of articles published
in THE PEOPLE’S PRESS from the pen of Hon. W. W. Day, Lemond, giving
reminiscences of army life, what he saw and experienced while held a
prisoner of war in various prisons in the South during the late
Rebellion. I confess an additional interest, perhaps, in the story
above the casual reader from the fact that I, too, was a guest of the
southern chivalry from Sept. 20th, 1863, until the May following. In
company with the boys of the 124th Ohio, I attended that Chickamauga
Picnic. There were no girls to cast a modifying influence over the
Johnnies, or any one else. As early as the morning of the 19th,
something got crooked producing no little confusion and excitement,
which increased as the hours wore away, up to the afternoon of the
following day, when suddenly it seemed that that whole corner of
Georgia was turned into one grand pandemonium. Everything that could
be gotten loose was let loose, many a boy got hurt that day badly.
Some bare-footed gyrating, thing got onto my head, worked in under the
hair, and twitched me down. It brought about a quiescence quicker than
any dose of morphia I ever swallowed, and I have eaten lots of it
since that time; I can feel its toes to-day.
Time passed, night was approaching, when several Johnnies approached,
one of whom came up to where I was sitting on the ground, and spoke to
me. The man was a blamed poor talker, but I understood fully what was
wanted, and acquiesced promptly. The outcome of which was, I was
toddled off to Atlanta; from thence to Richmond and Danville, Va. I
make no attempt to write of my own personal adventures, or prison
experience. Much of it, with but few exceptions, as well as the
experience of thousands of others, may be gleaned from the papers of
Comrade Day. For a time I owned and occupied a chalk mark, as my bed,
on the same floor with Comrade Day at Danville, and I wish to say,
what he has written of the rebel management of those prisons, both at
Richmond and Danville, the general treatment of prisoners, rations, in
kind, quantity, quality, manner of cooking, &c., &c., are the COLD
FACTS. Many incidents and happenings which he refers to in his
narrative came to my own personal observation, and as related by him
accord fully with my recollections of them at the time of their
occurrence. In fact I heartily endorse, as being substantially true,
every word of the Comrade’s Prison experiences, except, perhaps, his
reference to Belle Isle. I think his statement there imbibes a little
of the imaginary, when he characterizes the place as a literal “hell
on earth.” Where did he get his facts? That’s the puzzle. No matter,
if he were there—It is a small matter however, and may be true after
all. I know something of Belle Isle, but have only this to say, if the
emperor of the infernal regions, who is said to reign below the great
divide, has a hole anywhere in his dominions, filled with souls that
are undergoing pains and miseries equaling those to which our boys
were subjected on Belle Isle, I pray God I may escape it.
DEXTER LANE.
CHAPTER VI.
EN ROUTE TO ANDERSONVILLE.
“Tis a weary life this—
Vaults overhead and gates and bars around me,
And my sad hours spent with as sad companions,
Whose thoughts are brooding o’er their own mischances,
Far, far too deeply to take part in mine.”
—Scott.
As the train pulled out of Danville that morning, our hopes began to
rise in proportion to the distance we placed between ourselves and our
late prison.
We had now been in the Confederate prisons seven months, and we had high
hopes that our guards were telling us the truth, for once.
I am not prepared to say that the people of the South are not as
truthful as other people; but I will say, that truth was a commodity,
which appeared to be very scarce with our guards.
When we left the Danville prison, we took with us, contrary to orders, a
wooden bucket belonging to my mess.
The way we stole it out of prison was this. One of the men cut a number
into each stave, then knocked off the hoops and took it down, dividing
hoops, staves and bottom among us, these we rolled up in our blankets
and keeping together we entered the same car. After the train had
started we unrolled our blankets, took out the fragments of bucket, and
set it up again. This was a very fortunate thing for us, as it furnished
us a vessel in which to procure water on that long and dreary trip.
Nothing of note occurred until we reached Burkeville Junction, near the
scene of the collapse of the Confederacy. Here we were switched off from
the Richmond road on to the Petersburg road. Some of us who were least
hopeful considered this a bad omen; others argued that it was all right,
as we could take cars from Petersburg to City Point. Among the latter
class were some men who had been prisoners before, and were supposed to
know more than the rest of us about the modes of exchange. We therefore
said no more and tried hard to believe that all would end well.
We arrived at Petersburg a little before midnight. We were immediately
marched across the Appomattox River bridge into Petersburg. As we were
marching along I noticed a large building, which I recognized as one I
had seen the previous November, while we were marching through this
place on our way to Richmond. I told the boys we were going to the
Weldon Depot, the right direction for the South. The hopeful ones still
insisted that it was all right, but I could not see it that way. But the
question was soon settled, for we arrived at the Weldon Depot in a short
time. How our hearts sank within us as we came to the low sheds and
buildings, which form the Station of the Petersburg and Weldon R. R.
Heretofore during the day, “God’s Country,” and home had seemed very
near to us, but now all these hopes were suddenly dashed to the ground,
and dark despair, like a black pall, enshrouded us. I believe that most
of us wished that dark, rainy night, that it had been our fate to have
fallen upon the field of battle, and received a soldier’s burial.
Those of us who had read Shakspere could have exclaimed with Hamlet.—
“To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing end them—To die—to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,—’tis a consummation
Devoutedly to be wished. To die,—to sleep;—
To sleep! perchance to dream, aye there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause, there’s the respect,
That makes calamity of so long a life;
For who would bear the whips and scorn of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of misprized love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would these fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life:
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzled the will;
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;”
The all-wise Being has placed within us all, an instinctive dread of
death; had it not been so, I fear many poor, miserable, hopeless,
prisoners would have gone out of their misery by the suicide’s route.
Morning came and we were in North Carolina. We took the same route back
as far as Augusta, Ga., that we had taken when on our way to Richmond,
the autumn previous.
We suffered extremely on the way. We were not allowed to get off the
cars for any purpose whatever, except to change cars. The guards brought
us water in the bucket we had purloined from Danville. They were not
particular where they procured it. They supplied us from the handiest
place whether it was the water tank at a station, or from a stagnant
pond or ditch by the side of the R. R. track.
The reader can imagine that such water was rank poison. The water in the
ditches of the Carolina swamps was loaded with decayed vegetable matter;
slimy snakes and filthy water reptiles crawled and swam in it, and taken
all together it was not much better than the fetid waters of the
Danville canal.
Our guards, after leaving Petersburg told us we were on our way to a new
prison which had been made at Andersonville, Ga. They cheered us
somewhat, by saying it was a large stockade, and that we would have
plenty of room, wood and water, and more rations. Anything seemed better
than Danville to us, and visions of a camp with tents for shelter, good
water, more and better food, and opportunity to exercise, floated
through our minds, and we thought that our situation would be more
tolerable.
From Augusta we went to Macon, thence to Andersonville, where we arrived
on the 22d of April 1864.
Andersonville is in Sumter county, Georgia, sixty-four miles southwest
of Macon, on the Macon & Albany Railroad. The country through all that
region is a sandy barren, interspersed with swamps which were filled
with rank growths of timber, vines and semi-tropical shrubbery.
They were the home of serpents, and reptiles of all kinds indigenous to
that latitude, and of many kinds of wild animals. The land was rolling
but could not be called hilly.
The timber was mostly southern, or pitch pine, with the different
varieties of gum. In the swamps, cypress abounded, from the branches of
which the grey, or Spanish moss hung like the beard of a Brobdignagian
giant, through which the wind sighed and soughed most dismally.
My impression, received at the time I was in prison, was, that it was
the most God-forsaken country I ever beheld, with the exception of the
rice swamps of South Carolina. South Carolina however, had a history
running back to Revolutionary times, while that portion of Georgia had
no history, but has acquired one which will last as long as the history
of the Spanish Inquisition. And yet at this time, Southern Georgia is
redeemed somewhat, by being the location of Thomasville, the winter
resort of some of our citizens.
The Prison Pen, or Stockade, was located about three-fourths of a mile
east of the station, on the opposing face of two slight hills, with a
sluggish swampy, stream running through it from west to east and
dividing the prison into two unequal parts, the the northern, being the
larger part.
The Stockade was in the form of a parallelogram, being longest from
north to south. I estimated that it was fifty rods east and west, by
sixty rods north and south and that it contained eighteen acres, but
from this must be subtracted the land lying between the Dead-line and
Stockade, and the swamp land lying each side of the little stream, known
to us as “Deadrun,” leaving, according to my estimate, twelve acres
available for the use of the prisoners.
The author of “Andersonville” gives the area of the prison as sixteen
acres and the amount available for prisoners twelve acres.
Dr. Jones, in his report, gives the area as seventeen acres, but does
not intimate that part of it was not available, so that his estimate of
the number of square feet to each prisoner, is nearly one-third too
high.
The Stockade was built of hewn timbers, twenty-four feet in length, set
in the ground side by side, to a depth of six feet, leaving the walls of
the Stockade eighteen feet high. The guards stood upon covered platforms
or “pigeon roosts” outside of, and overlooking the Stockade.
Not far from the northwest, and southwest corners, on the west side,
were the north and south gates. These were made double, by building a
small stockade outside of each gate, which was entered by another gate,
so that when prisoners or wagons entered the stockade they were first
admitted to small stockade, then the gate was closed, after which they
were admitted to the main stockade.
These small stockades were anterooms to the main prison, and were for
the purpose of preventing a rush by the prisoners.
Outside of the main stockade the rebels built another stockade, at a
distance of about ten rods. This was for the double purpose of
preventing a “break” of the prisoners and to prevent tunnelling.
This second stockade was built of round timbers set in the ground six
feet and stood twelve feet above the ground.
Outside of this second stockade a third one was started, but was not
completed when I left. This was for protection against “Uncle Billy
Sherman’s Bummers.”
Commanding each corner of the stockade was a fort, built a sufficient
distance to give the guns a good range. These four forts mounted all
told eighteen guns of light artillery, as I was informed, and had a
general rush been made, they would have slaughtered us as though we were
a flock of pigeons.
The cook-house was built on low ground on the border of a small stream
which ran through the stockade, and west from it.
The guards camp was west and southwest, from the southern portion of the
stockade.
West from the south gate Gen. Winder had his head-quarters, also the
guard house and Wirz’ quarters.
About a quarter of a mile north of the stockade was the cemetery, then a
sandy barren, with occasional jack pine growing.
I have now given the reader a general description of the Prison Pen, or
Stockade, of Andersonville, as seen from the outside.
I will now attempt to give a view of the inside, as seen during five
months confinement.
Upon our arrival at Andersonville on the 22d of April, we were halted at
Gen. Winder’s quarters and registered by name, rank, company, and
regiment. I will give the reader the form as written, in the case of one
of my tent mates who died at Charleston, S. C. the following October.
GEORGE W. ROUSE, Co. D. 10th Wisconsin Inf.—16-3.
Which meant that he was assigned to the 3d company and 16 detachment.
Wirz had originated a very clumsy and unmilitary organization of the
prisoners. He had organized them into companies of ninety men and
assigned three companies to a detachment. At the head of these companies
and detachments was a sergeant. For convenience in dividing rations, we
subdivided these companies into squads, or messes, each mess electing
their own sergeant. As at Richmond and Danville I was elected sergeant
of my mess at Andersonville.
We were marched into the north gate and assigned grounds on the east
side of the prison, next to the Dead-line, and near the swamp on the
north side.
We were not subjected to the searching process at Winder’s
head-quarters, as most of the prisoners were. I suppose we were not a
promising looking crowd. Had we been searched, the rebs would have found
nothing but rags and graybacks.
Thus we were turned into the Prison Pen of Andersonville, like a herd of
swine, with the chance to “root hog or die.” No shelter was furnished
us; no cooking utensils provided; no wood, nothing but a strip of barren
yellow sand, under a hot sun.
The situation did not look inviting. Our dream was not realized. We had
fresh air it is true, for the air had not become contaminated then. We
had room for exercise, for 5,000 men do not look very much crowded on
twelve acres, it takes 33,000 men to cover that amount of space in good
shape according to the views of Winder and Wirz; but somehow it did not
seem homelike. There was a wonderful paucity of the conveniencies, the
necessities, to say nothing of the luxuries of life.
About 4,000 men had been sent here during the months of February and
March, from Libby and Belle Isle, and 1,000 from Danville, about two
weeks before us. First come, first served, was the rule here. The first
settlers who “squatted” in Andersonville found plenty of wood and brush
and with these had, with true Yankee ingenuity and industry, constructed
very fair houses, or hovels rather. But they had used up all the
building material, had not left a brush large enough for a riding whip,
they had left us nothing but sand and a miserable poor article of that.