UNDER FIRE AT CHARLESTON.
Under siege.--Charleston Jail.--The Stars and Stripes.--Federal
compliments.--Under the guns.--Roper Hospital.--Yellow
Jack.--Sisters of Charity.--Rebel Christianity.--A Byronic
stanza.--Charleston to Columbia.--"Camp
Sorghum."--Nemesis.--Another dash for liberty.--Murder of
Lieutenants Young and Parker.--Studying topography.--A
vaticination.--Back to reality.
The next we see of Lieutenant Glazier is in the city of Charleston,
South Carolina, on the twelfth of September, 1864. Coming Street on the
morning of that day was crowded with people of every variety of calling,
from the priest and sister of charity, out on their merciful errands, to
the riff-raff and _sans-culottes_ out on no errand at all but to help
the excitement. The city was under siege.
At the end of the street a body of six hundred emaciated,
broken-spirited, ragged men, escorted by a strong guard, marched along,
and the busiest of the pedestrians paused to gaze upon them as they
passed. Coarse and scurrilous was the greeting the captives received
from the motley and shameless groups. A few of the more respectable
citizens, however, spoke words of grace to them, and some added hopeful
predictions of the final triumph of the Union cause. The prisoners were
hurried forward to the yard of Charleston Jail, where for the first time
in many weary months they beheld the glorious flag of their country
floating in the breeze over Morris Island. Weak as they were the
patriotic sentiment was still strong within and they gave one rousing
cheer! Some, despite the curses of their guard, dancing like children,
while others wept tears of joy.
[Illustration: Charleston Jail--charleston, South Carolina.]
The jail, as Captain Glazier describes it, was a large octagonal
building of four stories, surmounted by a tower. In the rear was a large
workshop, in appearance like a bastile, where some of the prisoners were
confined. As a lugubrious accessory to his own quarters, he had a
remarkably clear view of a gallows, erected directly in front of his
fragment of a tent. "The ground floor of the jail was occupied by
ordinary criminal convicts; the second story by Confederate officers and
soldiers, under punishment for military offences; the third by negro
prisoners, and the fourth by Federal and Confederate deserters, and it
is complimentary to the good sense of the rebels that deserters from
_either_ side were treated by them with equal severity." He gives a sad
account of the terrible condition of the negro soldiers and their
officers who were captured at Fort Wagner, and says the hospital at this
place was "a lazar-house of indescribable misery."
On the twenty-second of September, Glazier makes the following note on
the progress of the siege:
"Shelling is kept up vigorously. From sixty to a hundred huge, smoking
two-hundred-pounders convey Federal compliments daily to the doomed
city."
It appears, however, that, for the most part, the destructive effects of
this bombardment were confined to what was known as the "burnt
district," and caused little damage to the inhabited portion of the
city.
Seven days after the above entry in his journal his heart was gladdened
by an order for removal, with his fellow-prisoner and messmate,
Lieutenant Richardson, to Roper Hospital; a place much more tolerable as
to its situation and appointments, though still within shell-range of
the bombarding force. Prior to the transfer, a parole was obtained from
each, by which they pledged themselves, while in their new quarters, to
make no attempt to escape.
Here our prisoner found opportunity under the usual restrictions for
writing the following letter home:
[Only one page allowed.]
C. S. Military Prison,
Charleston, South Carolina,
Roper Hospital, _October 4th, 1864_.
My Dear Mother:
For a long time you have doubtless waited with anxiety some
intelligence of your absent son, which would tell you of his
health, and his prospects of release from the disagreeable
restraints of prison life; and I am now delighted to find this
opportunity of writing to you. Since my last letter, which was
dated at Libby Prison, I have been confined at Danville, Virginia;
Macon and Savannah, Georgia; and at this point. My health for the
most part has been very poor, which I attribute to the inactivity
of prison life. I have also suffered much for want of clothing. I
have a pair of shoes on to-day that I bought more than a year ago;
have run about barefoot for days and weeks during the past summer;
many of my comrades have been compelled to do the same. I do not
look for a _general exchange_ before winter, though I hope and pray
that it may take place to-morrow. There is now an opportunity for
sending boxes to prisoners. I should be glad to receive one from
home if convenient. Please give my love to all the family circle.
Remember me to my friends, and believe me ever
Your affectionate son,
Willard.
The days passed anxiously with Glazier, when the yellow fever began its
inroads upon the prisoners. He had now, at the same moment, to face
death at the hands of man, and by the pestilence--a condition of things
to which the bravest spirit might succumb. One great source of
consolation was derived from the visits of the Sisters of Charity, who
were always found where suffering and peril prevailed. Writing of these
angelic women, Captain Glazier says:--"Confined as we are, so far away
from every home comfort and influence, and from all that makes life
worth living, how quickly do we notice the first kind word, the passing
friendly glance! Can any prisoner confined here ever forget the 'Sisters
of Charity?' Ask the poor private now suffering in the loathsome
hospital so near us, while burning with fever, or racked with pain, if
he can forget the kind look, the gracious word given him by that sister.
Many are the bunches of grapes--many the sip of their pure juice, that
the sufferer gets from her hands. They seem, they _are_ 'ministering
angels;' and while all around us are our avowed enemies, they remain
true to every instinct of womanhood. They dare lift the finger to help,
they do relieve many a sufferer. All through the South our sick and
wounded soldiers have had reason to bless the 'Sisters of Charity.' They
have ministered to their wants and performed those kind womanly offices
which are better to the sick than medicine, and are so peculiarly
soothing to the dying. These noble women have attended their sick-beds
when other _Christian_ ladies of the South looked on unpityingly, and
turned away without even tendering the cheap charity of a kind word.
_They_ have done what others were too scornful and cruel to do--they
have done what others did not dare do. They were, for some inscrutable
reason, permitted to bestow their charities wherever charities were
needed. Their bounties were bestowed indiscriminately on Federal and
Confederate sufferers, and evidenced a broad philanthropy untainted by
party-feeling or religious bigotry. Many a poor soldier has followed
them from ward to ward with tearful eyes.... Were other Christian
denominations in the South as active in aiding us as the Catholics have
been, I might have some faith in 'Rebel Christianity.'"
This is no mean tribute to the beneficent influences of the Catholic
church, albeit the pen of a Protestant records it; but the facts fully
justify him. Protestant England had _one_--the Church of Rome has her
_legions_ of Florence Nightingales. They are found in the camp, and the
hospital, and the prison--wherever human sympathy can palliate human
suffering; they are to be found where even wives and mothers flee before
the dreaded pestilence, and these ministers of divine love, like light
and air, and the dews of Heaven, visit alike the rich and poor, the
sinner and the saint; the only claim they recognize being the claim of
suffering and misfortune.
Willard Glazier remained _under the guns_ of his friends until the fifth
of October, and during his sojourn here had various opportunities of
forming an acquaintance with vagrant shot and shell that struck or
exploded near the hospital building, but fortunately did no greater
damage to its inmates than create "a scare."
What was much more serious was the prevalence of the deadly fever, which
was of a most malignant type, and carried off, among its many victims,
the Confederate commander and his adjutant. The prisoners therefore
were removed--the authorities assigning as their reason for the step,
the "danger to which they would be exposed on account of the fever;" and
although, at the time, it appeared an anomaly to the prisoners, "after
bringing them there to be murdered by their own guns, to remove them for
the purpose of saving them from death in another shape,"--yet it is
possible such was the case. At all events they were removed, and their
"Poet Laureate"--Lieutenant Ogden, of Wisconsin--wrote a farewell poem,
containing among others, the following "Byronic" stanza:
"Thy Sanctuaries are forsaken now;
Dark mould and moss cling to thy fretted towers;
Deep rents and seams, where struggling lichens grow,
And no sweet voice of prayer at vestal hours;
But voice of screaming shot and bursting shell,
Thy deep damnation and thy doom foretell.
The 'fire' has left a pile of broken walls,
And Night-hags revel in thy ruined halls!"
Who will say that a dread Nemesis has not overtaken the metropolis of
the Palmetto State? Streets, once the busy scene of commerce and
industry, now covered with grass, in this city of secession--formerly
the head and front of treason and rebellion and the defiant advocate of
human slavery!
Escorted by the Thirty-second Georgia Volunteers, Glazier and his
fifteen hundred companions were marched through the principal streets of
the city to the depot, where they took the cars for Columbia, the State
capital. None will ever forget the parade of ragged and bearded men
through King Street. But the Georgian guards, while strictly attentive
to duty, showed the politeness and demeanor of gentlemen. He says of
them, at this point in the history of his imprisonment, "the Georgia
troops seem to be by far the most civil and gentlemanly of all the
Southern army. They were the most respectable in appearance, most
intelligent and liberal in conversation, and to a greater extent than
others, recognized the principle that a man is a man under whatever
circumstances he may be placed, and is entitled to humane treatment.
They very generally addressed the prisoners as 'gentlemen.'"
The same kind of unventilated and filthy cattle-cars were employed in
their transportation as had been used in their various previous
removals. All suffered from want of water, air and space. The arrival of
the captives at Columbia took place in the midst of a drenching
rain-storm, and during the entire night, with scarcely any clothing, no
rations, and no shelter, they were exposed to the merciless elements,
while not twenty yards off, in front of their camping ground, glared the
muzzles of a park of loaded artillery. The prisoners, being in a
starving condition, looked the picture of despair. A discovery however
was made of some bacon suspended to the rafters of the building that
enclosed them, in one corner separated by a partition. As the famished
men looked through the bars of a window and saw this tempting food,
their eyes watered, and their inventive faculties were aroused. Hooks,
strings and poles were brought into requisition, and in a short time
most of the meat, by Yankee talent, was transferred from the rafters of
the building to the stomachs of the prisoners!
The day following, they were moved to a spot about two miles from the
town, and bivouacked in an open field, without any shelter whatever.
Surrounded by the usual cordon of sentries, and menaced with the
customary "dead-line," they were turned loose to provide for themselves,
neither axe, spade, nor cooking utensils being supplied them. Two days
after their arrival some corn-meal and _sorghum_ were issued, the latter
a substitute for molasses. A great many suffered from diarrhoea and
dysentery in consequence, and the place from this circumstance acquired
the sobriquet of "Camp Sorghum."
They had no quarters to protect them from the cold November storms, only
huts constructed by themselves of brush and pine boughs. The treatment
at "Camp Sorghum" was so exceptionally brutal, that almost every dark
night starving men would run the guard and risk their lives to escape
dying by inches. Sometimes as many as thirty or forty would run in one
night. Generally some daring fellow would act as _forlorn hope_ and rush
past the sentries, drawing their fire, at the imminent risk of
forfeiting his own life, his comrades joining him before the guards
could reload their rifles. The latter would then fire a volley into the
camp, killing or wounding some of the prisoners. Lieutenant Young, of
the Fourth Pennsylvania Cavalry, was thus shot dead whilst sitting at
his hut, and according to Captain Glazier, "no reason for this atrocity
was apparent, and none was assigned by the guards." The poor young
fellow had been a prisoner twenty-two months. About this time the guards
accidentally killed two of their own men, in their reckless and savage
shooting, and afterwards observed more care in firing at the prisoners.
Hounds were kept near the prison to track escaped fugitives. Lieutenant
Parker, while attempting to escape, was so much torn and bitten by these
dogs that he died the day after his recapture.
Mingled with thoughts of home, and the friends gathered around loved
firesides, there had by this time arisen in young Glazier's mind a stern
determination to win his freedom, or, in the effort, forfeit his life.
As the weather grew colder, the possession of wood became a matter of
necessity, and some of the prisoners were paroled to pass beyond the
lines, and gather such broken branches and pieces of bark in the
neighboring woods as they could carry back into camp. Glazier availed
himself of this privilege, and stored up an abundance of fuel. But a
more important acquisition than fuel to him was the knowledge he
obtained of the topography of the surrounding country. One great
difficulty he foresaw in getting away arose from the sorry condition of
his shoes, which were nearly soleless. He succeeded, however, in
obtaining the rim of an old regulation-hat, and out of this fashioned a
serviceable pair of soles for his worn-out brogans, and thus removed one
obstacle from his path.
We need feel no surprise that he and many of his companions thought no
risk too great to run for the chance of effecting their escape. Their
treatment by this time had become so bad as to be almost unendurable.
For example, to avoid being frozen to death, they were compelled to run
around all night, and only when the sun arose in the morning dare they
venture to recline themselves on the ground to sleep. The truth is, that
our friend, in common with many of his comrades, had arrived at the
desperate conclusion that no fate, even death by shooting, or by
hounds, could be worse than the misery and suffering he was now
enduring. It was not alone that they were starved and shelterless, sick
and unattended, nearly naked, with no hope of being clad; it was not
alone that they were immersed, day and night, in filth and squalor like
hogs, with no prospect of relief to cheer them; but, in addition to all
this suffering of their own, they were compelled to witness the
sufferings of others--to hear their sighs and groans, and look upon
faces that hard usage and despair had made ghastly and terrible. They
would greet in the morning a man sick and emaciated perhaps, but still a
human being, erect and in God's image, who, in the evening of the same
day, would disappear from among them, making a desperate dash for
freedom. The following day a broken, nerveless, shivering wretch would
be dragged into their midst, blood-stained, faint, and with the gashes
of a blood-hound's teeth covering his face and throat.
Thus it was that existence became unbearable. Their own sufferings were
hard, but to continue for many long months looking upon the sufferings
of others added to their misery beyond endurance. Accordingly, when
Thanksgiving-day arrived, and the excitement created by Sherman's "march
to the sea" had reached its highest point, Glazier and a
fellow-prisoner, named Lieutenant Lemon, determined that _they_ would
wait no longer the slow process of tunneling, but make a bold effort for
liberty--or die in the attempt.
"It was customary," says the former, "to extend the guard-line in the
morning for the purpose of allowing prisoners (as previously stated) to
collect fuel on a piece of timbered land just opposite the camp, and it
was our intention this morning to take a shovel, when permitted to pass
to the woods, and make a hole in the ground large enough to receive our
two 'skeletons,' and then enlist the services of some friend, who would
cover us up with brush and leaves, so that, when the guard was
withdrawn, we would be left without the camp." The plan looked feasible,
and, if successful, it would not be a difficult matter to reach Augusta,
Georgia, at which point they hoped to find themselves within Sherman's
lines. The fates, however, decreed otherwise. Their scheme was rendered
abortive by the simple fact, that upon that particular morning, the line
was not extended at all. Why it was not, is purely a matter of
conjecture. Possibly, "the morning being unusually cold and raw," the
guard did not care to leave their own snug tents along the line of the
encampment, with no greater inducement than that of increasing the
comfort of their Yankee prisoners, who, for that day, were left without
any fires at all; but, be this as it may, the guard-line was not
extended as was usual, and thus the plot of our young friends was
frustrated for the time being. They agreed to "watch, pray _and act_" at
the very first opportunity that presented. It was not long before that
opportunity came.
Early upon the day following that of their disappointment, the
conspirators arranged that each should make a reconnaissance of the
lines, discover the weak points of the enemy, and, that being
accomplished, rendezvous at a given spot, ready to act upon any likely
plan that might suggest itself to them. Glazier had become a tolerably
expert physiognomist, and singled out an unsophisticated-looking
giant, who was patrolling a certain beat, as the best man among the line
of sentries on whom to practise an imposition. This individual was
evidently a good-natured lout, not long in the service, and very much
resembling our conception of "Jonas Chuzzlewit," in respect to his
having been "put away and forgotten for half a century." It is only
necessary to add that his owners "had stuck a musket in his hand, and
placed him on guard." Yet there was some pluck in him. He was just the
sort of man who, led by a good officer, would fight like a lion, but
whose animal instincts had so befogged his intellect that, if left to
his own resources, he would be as likely to ruin friend as foe.
[Illustration: The Escape From Columbia--crossing The Dead Line.]
When Glazier rejoined his comrade, he described this man, and the
friends agreed that they would boldly cross the "dead-line" immediately
in front of him, be ready to answer promptly his challenge, and, by the
audacity of their movement, attempt to deceive him in regard to their
real character and purpose. With such a man as they had to deal with,
this scheme was certain to result in one of two things: he would let
them pass, or he would kill them both; therefore, courage and
_sang-froid_ were matters of first necessity.
Accordingly, with the utmost coolness, and laughing and chatting
together, they sauntered up to and upon the fatal line. The sentinel
looked at them in amazement. He then brought his piece to bear upon
Glazier completely covering his person, and, with the usual order to
"Halt!" added: "Whar in hell are you going, Yanks?" As if his dignity
was seriously offended by this demand, our hero answered this question
by asking another: "Do you halt paroled prisoners here?" "His meek 'No,
sir!'" Glazier relates, "was not yet lost in the distance when I boldly
crossed the dreaded line, adding: 'Then let my friend in the rear follow
me;' and so we passed, while the sentinel murmured 'All right!' And
right it was, for now we were free, breathing the fresh air, untainted
by the breath of hundreds of famishing, diseased and dying men."
They could not proceed very far without falling in with numbers of the
paroled prisoners. This they did, but their presence excited no
suspicion or comment, as they assumed to belong to the party. They
applied themselves to gathering wood and piling it apparently for
transportation, and gradually crept on and on until they reached a point
beyond the vision of the gray-jackets, when off they started at the top
of their speed; and although before long they were compelled to reduce
their pace, they put several miles behind them in a space of time that
at any other period of their lives, or under any other circumstances,
would have seemed impossible. Pausing to regain breath, they turned, and
_Columbia_ was no longer within sight. This, in itself, was a relief,
for the place was associated in their minds with the intense misery they
had suffered within its boundaries.
Could these men have _foreseen_ the not very distant future, they would
have known that every sigh and groan that cruelty had wrung from them in
that place of torture would be avenged; they would have seen loyal
soldiers swarming in its streets, their old comrades in misery torn from
the grasp of their merciless jailers, and the soulless "Southern
Chivalry" thrust into their place; they would have seen red-handed
vengeance doom that city of blood to destruction, and the glaring
tongues of fire lap up the costly goods and edifices of its vile and
relentless citizens; and those who had no mercy for them in their
wretchedness and famine, now awe-struck on finding that the men they had
so barbarously trampled upon had now the power and the will to retort
upon them with interest; they would have seen brothers in arms, who
until now had been merciful to their enemies when in their power,
suddenly transformed into ravenous wolves, fierce and terrible in their
righteous wrath at the treatment their less fortunate brothers had met
with in this city of blood. The Avenger had come! and not one house but
would fall a smouldering heap of ruins. They would have foreseen this
city ablaze with burning homes for its sins against humanity; its men,
so lately drunk with pride and satiated with cruelty to their
countrymen; its women divested of all womanly attributes, and invested
with those of demons, _now_ all cowed and humbled in the dust! They
would have seen one noted instance of the interference of a just
Providence that occurred amid all this dreadful saturnalia--a woman,
pale, but beautiful of feature, delicate of form, madly rushing to and
fro in front of her blazing house, crying for her child that lay within
it. They would have seen a poor, emaciated prisoner, roused to exhibit
strength and courage by the hope of saving life, rush in and drag the
cradle and its innocent living freight from the very jaws of death,
while burning rafters crashed and fell upon him; they would have seen
him place the babe in its mother's arms, and they would have seen that
mother turn with streaming eyes to thank the saviour of her child, _and
then start back conscience-smitten, and scream and fall, seeing in her
child's preserver a man who in the prison had once implored her for a
piece of bread because he was starving, and she spat upon him because he
was of Northern race_!! Could they have seen the future of the coming
months, they would have seen all this and more. But no such prevision
was vouchsafed them. Their thoughts were now of themselves. They felt
that the shade of a deadly peril encompassed them. Columbia and its
prison were hidden from their sight, but still they were so near that at
any moment the hounds might scent them, and if recaptured, all the
horrors they had undergone would be light compared with the fate they
must submit to in the future.
Fortunately for the purpose of our fugitives, the settlements, whether
towns or villages, in that part of the country, were "few and far
between." The residences of the planters were also distant from each
other and few in number, and the ravines and swamps which abound there,
while in many respects disagreeable and dangerous lurking spots, were
still the safest refuges for hunted men. The wilder the country, the
better it promised to Glazier and his comrade fleeing for their lives.
Their greatest fear was the dreaded blood-hound. Our friends knew they
could defeat most of the devices of human ingenuity in tracking them,
but they were apprehensive that the instinct of the brutes, which a
depraved humanity had enlisted in its service, might render abortive all
their plans and precautions. They did their best, however, to baffle
their canine foes, and nightfall found them hurrying forward on the
Lexington Court-house Road.