THE PRISON PEN.
When Marcy Gray awoke the next morning he made the mental resolution
that from that time forward, no matter what happened or how homesick he
might be, he would follow Bowen’s advice and example to the letter, eat
and sleep all he could and keep up a brave heart, so as to be in
readiness to improve the first opportunity for escape that presented
itself. Fortunately some things occurred that made it comparatively easy
for him to hold to his resolve for a few days at least. After some more
smoked bean soup and half-baked corn bread had been served for breakfast
(and this time Marcy did just what Bowen said he would, and pushed and
crowded with the rest in order to get a clean pan to eat from), the
grated door that led into the hall was thrown open and the commander of
the prison appeared on the threshold with Captain Fletcher at his side.
The latter held in his hand the book in which Marcy had seen his name
and descriptive list entered the day before. A hush of expectancy fell
upon the prisoners, who surged toward the door in a body. Something out
of the ordinary was about to happen, and they were impatient to know
what it was.
“Get back there!” shouted Captain Wilkins. “You seem to be in a mighty
hurry to leave these good quarters, but some of you will wish yourselves
back here before many days have passed over your heads.”
These words had a depressing effect upon some of the prisoners, but they
were very cheering to Marcy Gray and his friend Bowen. The captain made
it plain that they were to be sent off in some direction, and anything
was better than being shut up in that gloomy jail.
“As fast as your names are called pick up your plunder and go down into
the yard and fall in for a march of seventy-five miles,” continued the
captain. “That will be your first taste of a soldier’s life.”
“Seventy-five miles,” repeated Marcy. “We must be going to Raleigh, and
from there it is about a hundred miles by rail to Salisbury. By
gracious, Bowen, if they send us there I’ll not be much over two hundred
miles from home.”
“I hope they’ll not separate us,” was the reply. “That’s what I am
afraid of now.”
Captain Fletcher called off the names as they were written in his book,
and the prisoners one after another disappeared down the stairs. Some
responded with a cheerful “here,” and walked as briskly as though they
were going home instead of into the army, while others answered in
scarcely audible tones and moved with slow and reluctant steps. When
Bowen’s name was called he lingered long enough to give Marcy’s hand a
friendly squeeze, and when he passed through the door out of sight he
seemed to have taken all the boy’s courage with him; but when his own
name was called a few minutes later, Marcy was himself again. He went
into the jail yard and fell into the line that was being formed there
under command of an officer he had not seen before. On the opposite side
of the yard was a company of soldiers, veterans on the face of them, who
were standing at “parade rest,” and Marcy straightway concluded that
they were the men who were to guard the prisoners during the march.
Marcy hoped they would continue to act in that capacity as long as an
escort was needed. He wasn’t afraid of veterans, but he did not want any
Home Guards put over him.
“What have you got in your grip?” inquired the officer, as Marcy fell
into his place in line.
“Clothing, sir,” answered the boy, holding out the valise as if he
thought the officer wished to inspect it.
“I am willing to take your word for it,” said the latter, who no doubt
knew that Captain Wilkins had given the valise a thorough examination.
“I was going to suggest that you had better wrap its contents in your
blanket and leave the grip behind. It will only be in your way, and you
don’t want too much luggage on the march.”
Marcy thought the suggestion a good one, and with the officer’s
permission he fell out long enough to act upon it. By the time he took
his place in line again the prisoners who were to be sent away were all
assembled in the yard, and the commander and Captain Fletcher had come
out of the jail. The few unfortunates who remained behind were suspected
of being deserters, and they were to be detained until their record
could be investigated. Captain Fletcher handed his book to the strange
officer, who proceeded to call the roll a second time, for he had to
receipt for the men committed to his care as if they had been so many
bags of corn. When this had been done the prisoners were marched through
the gate into one of Williamston’s principal streets, the guards with
loaded muskets on their shoulders fell in on both sides of them, and
their weary journey, which was to end at a point more than three hundred
miles away, was fairly begun.
They were nearly three weeks on the road, and during that time not an
incident happened that was worthy of record. Marcy afterward said that
all he could remember was that he was hungry all the time, and too tired
and sleepy to think of escape, even if it had been safe to attempt it.
Their veteran guards, who accompanied them no farther than Raleigh, told
them that from that point they would travel by rail, and so they did as
far as the rails went; but miles of the road-bed had to be traversed on
foot because the road itself had been torn up by raiding parties of
Union cavalry, who, after heating the rails red-hot, had wrapped them
around trees or twisted them into such fantastic shapes that nothing but
a rolling-mill could have straightened them out again.
At Raleigh a company of militia took charge of the conscripts (that was
what everyone called them and what they called themselves now), and then
their sufferings began. Their new guards were absolutely without
feeling. The commanding officer either could not or would not keep them
supplied with food, nor would he permit them to leave the ranks long
enough to get a drink of water. Marcy, who found it hard to keep up
under such circumstances, wanted to try what power there might be in one
of his gold pieces, but Bowen would not listen to it.
“Not for the world would I have these ruffians know that you have good
money in your pocket,” said he earnestly. “They would make some excuse
to shoot you in order to get it. Hold fast to every dollar of it, for
you will see the time when you will need it worse than you think you do
now.”
It was not until they arrived within a few miles of their destination
that Marcy and his companions learned where they were going, and what
they were expected to do when they got there. Some of the militia who
were doing guard duty at the Millen prison pen had been ordered to
Savannah, and the conscripts were to take their places; but beyond the
fact that Millen was situated somewhere in the eastern part of Georgia,
a few miles south of Waynesborough, their ignorant guards could not tell
them a thing about it.
“It must be pretty close to the coast, and that’s the way we’ll go when
we get ready to make a break,” said Marcy.
“And what would we do if we succeeded in reaching the coast?” demanded
Bowen. “It would be the worst move we could make, for it would take us
right into danger. There are no Union war ships stationed off the
Georgia coast, and even if there were, how could we get out to them? No,
sir. We’ll go the other way and strike for the Mississippi.”
“And cross three States?” exclaimed Marcy, astounded at the proposition.
“Why, it must be four or five hundred miles in a straight line.”
“No matter if it’s a thousand,” said Bowen obstinately. “We’ll be safe
if we go that way, and we’ll be captured and shot if we go the other. If
we can only pass Macon I’ll be among friends.”
“And if we can strike the Mississippi about Baton Rouge _I_ would be
among friends,” said Marcy. “But across three States that are no doubt
infested with Home Guards and bloodhounds! Bowen, you’re crazy.”
“Not so crazy as you will show yourself to be if you try to reach the
coast,” was the reply. “But we haven’t started yet, and you will have
plenty of time to think it over and decide if you will go with me or
strike out by yourself.”
This conversation had a disheartening effect upon Marcy, who knew that
if his clear-headed companion left him to take care of himself, his
chances for seeing home and friends again were very slim indeed. While
he was thinking about it, and trying to grasp the full meaning of the
words “across three States infested with Home Guards and bloodhounds,”
the train stopped at Millen Junction and the conscripts were ordered to
disembark. As fast as they left the cars they were drawn up in line near
the depot, which was afterward burned by Sherman’s cavalry, and the roll
was called. After that they were formally turned over to the commander
of the prison, who was there to receive them, and marched out to the
stockade. Marcy had just time to note that it was a gloomy looking place
and that a deep silence brooded over it, before he was marched into the
fort, whose cannon commanded the prison at all points. There they were
divided into messes and assigned to quarters, with the understanding
that they were to go on duty the next morning at guard-mount. The
barracks were crowded when Marcy first went into them, but some of the
militia were ordered to Savannah that afternoon, and when they were gone
he and Bowen were able to find a bunk. They had managed to be put into
the same mess, and that was something to be thankful for.
So far the conscripts had nothing to complain of. Their supper was
abundant and passably well cooked, and it was delightful to know that
they could get a drink of water when they wanted it, without asking
permission of some petty tyrant who was quite as likely to refuse as he
was to grant the request. But Marcy looked forward with some misgivings
to guard-mount the next morning. The idea of putting raw recruits
through that complicated ceremony was a novel one to him, and although
he had no fears for himself, he was afraid that the awkwardness of some
of his companions would bring upon them the wrath of the adjutant; that
is, if the latter was at all strict, and liked to see things done in
military form. Before he went to his bunk, however, he found that he had
little to fear on that score. A sergeant came into the barracks with a
paper in his hand, and began warning the recruits for guard duty the
next day, ordering them to fall in line in front of him as fast as their
names were called. Marcy’s was one of the first on the list, and when it
was read off he stepped promptly to his place, dressed to the right, and
came to a front. The sergeant, who knew a well-drilled man when he saw
him, was surprised. He looked curiously at Marcy for a moment, and then
went on calling off the names of the guard.
“I’ll bet I made a mistake in showing off that way,” thought Marcy. “As
soon as this company is organized they will take me out of the ranks and
make me a corporal or something, and that would be a misfortune, for I
shouldn’t have half the chance to talk to Bowen that I’ve got now.”
There were forty recruits warned for duty, and when they were all
standing before him the sergeant said that when they heard the bugle
sound the adjutant’s call at nine o’clock in the morning, they would be
expected to assemble on the parade ground, and when they got there they
would be armed and told what to do. Then, having performed his duty, the
sergeant faced them to the right and broke ranks, at the same time
looking hard at Marcy and jerking his head over his shoulder toward the
door. Marcy followed him when he left the barracks, and when they were
out of hearing of everybody the sergeant said:
“Where have you been drilled?”
“At the Barrington Military Academy. I was there almost four years. But
don’t say anything about it, will you?”
“You’re sure you’re not a deserter?” continued the sergeant.
“No!” gasped Marcy. “I am a refugee. I haven’t even been conscripted. I
was arrested in my mother’s presence and shoved into Williamston jail;
and if I were a deserter, don’t you suppose Captain Wilkins would have
known it? What put that into your head?”
“Oh, I saw you had been drilled somewhere, and I didn’t know but it was
in the army. If that was the case you would be in a bad row of stumps
among these Home Guards. If one of them could prove that you are a
deserter he would get a thirty days’ furlough.”
“And what would be done with me?”
“I am sure I don’t know, but nobody would ever see you again after
General Winder got his hands on you.”
“Who is General Winder?” inquired Marcy.
“He is the officer who has charge of all the Southern prisons, and it is
owing to him that the Yanks are starving and dying by scores right here
in this stockade,” said the sergeant bitterly.
“Starving and dying by scores!” ejaculated Marcy, who had never heard of
such a thing before.
“That’s what I said. There were twenty-three bodies brought through that
gate yesterday, and eighteen this morning.”
“Why, that’s brutal! it’s downright heathenish!” exclaimed Marcy.
“Well, we can’t give them what we haven’t got, can we?” demanded the
sergeant. “Winder could send us grub if he wanted to——”
“I know he could,” interrupted Marcy. “There’s plenty of it along the
road between here and Raleigh. I saw it.”
“But as long as he doesn’t see fit to forward it we can’t issue it to
the prisoners,” added the sergeant. “You don’t want some Home Guard to
report to him that you are a deserter, do you?”
“I should say not,” exclaimed Marcy. “If that’s the sort of a brute he
is, I would stand no show at all with him. But no one can prove that I
have ever been in the army before.”
“They might put you to some trouble to prove that you haven’t, and my
object in bringing you out here was to warn you that you’d better not
throw on any military airs while you stay in this camp.”
“I am very grateful to you,” replied Marcy, who did not expect to find a
sympathizing friend in a rebel non-commissioned officer. “You are not a
Home Guard?”
“Not much. I was one of the first men in our county to volunteer, but I
couldn’t stand hard campaigning, and so I asked to be put on light duty,
and I had influence enough to carry my point. But I would have stayed in
the army till I died if I had dreamed that I would be sent to help guard
a slaughterhouse; for that is just what this stockade is. The commander
is nothing but a Home Guard, but he hates conscripts as bad as he does
Yankees, and you want to watch out and do nothing to incur his
displeasure.”
“I don’t know how to thank you——” began Marcy.
“That’s all right. I knew as soon as I looked at you that you are as
much out of place here as I am, and I don’t want to see you get into
trouble. Of course you won’t repeat what I have said to you.”
“Not by a long shot. You have done me too great a favor.”
The two separated, and Marcy went into the barracks and sought his bunk,
feeling as if he were in some way to blame for the sufferings of the
Union soldiers who were confined within the stockade. That they should
be allowed to perish for want of food, when there was an abundance of it
scattered along the line of the railroad within easy reach of the
prison, seemed so terrible to Marcy that he could not dismiss it from
his mind so that he could go to sleep. He did not then know that the
Confederate commissary was the worst managed branch of the army, and
that General Bragg’s men had been on short rations while in Corinth
there was a pile of hard tack as long and high as the railroad depot
that was going to waste. Our starving boys in Libby prison could look
through the grated windows upon the fertile fields of Manchester,
“waving with grain and alive with flocks and herds,” and General Lee
wrote that there were supplies enough in the country, and if the proper
means were taken to procure them there would not be so many desertions
from his army. Every Union soldier who died for want of food in Southern
prison pens was deliberately murdered, and the Richmond papers declared
that General Winder was to blame for it. If the latter had not been
summoned by death to answer before a higher tribunal, there is no doubt
but that he would have been hanged by sentence of court martial as
Captain Wirz was.
Marcy Gray scarcely closed his eyes in slumber that night, and when he
did, his sleep was disturbed by horrible dreams in which starving
prisoners and unfeeling Confederate officers bore prominent parts. He
arose from his bunk as weary and dispirited as he was when he got into
it, breakfasted on a cup of sweet potato coffee and a small piece of
corn bread, and when the adjutant’s call sounded was one of the first to
appear on the parade ground; but he did not take as much pains to fall
in like a soldier as he did the day before. On the contrary he seemed to
be the greenest one among the conscripts, for when he was commanded to
“dress up a little on the right centre” he did not move until the
adjutant shook his sword at him and asked if he were hard of hearing.
In only one particular did this guard-mount resemble those in which
Marcy had often taken part at the Barrington Academy. The guard, which
was composed of an equal number of Home Guards and conscripts, was
divided into two platoons with an officer of the guard in command of
each, and an officer of the day in command of the whole, and there all
attempts to follow the tactics ceased except when the adjutant saluted
the new officer of the day and reported, “Sir, the guard is formed.”
There was no band to sound off and no marching in review. Instead of
that the officer of the day said to one of his lieutenants, “Go ahead,
Billy, and fill up the boxes,” and in obedience to the order, the same
sergeant who had warned the conscripts for duty the night before placed
himself at the head of the first platoon, to which Marcy belonged, and
marched them to the commander’s headquarters, where they were supplied
with old-fashioned muskets and cartridge-boxes.
“Give me that gun!” shouted the sergeant, who was out of all patience
when he saw that some of the conscripts held their pieces at trail arms,
and that others placed them on their shoulders as they might have done
if they had been going to hunt squirrels in the woods. “Now watch me.
This is shoulder arms. Put your guns that way, all of you, and keep them
there.”
So saying he marched the platoon away to relieve the sentries on post.
Marcy was No. 6, and this brought him to a station about the middle of
the eastern side of the stockade. When his number was called he followed
the sergeant up a ladder and into a box from which a grizzly Home Guard
had been keeping watch during the morning hours. The latter, instead of
bringing his musket to arms port, as he ought to have done when passing
his orders, dropped the butt of it to the floor and rested his chin on
his hands, which he clasped over the muzzle.
“There aint nothing much to do but jest loaf here and keep an eye on
them abolitionists,” said he, jerking his head toward the stockade. “Do
you see that dead-line down there? Well, if you see one of ’em trying to
get over or under it shoot him down; and don’t stop to ask him no
questions, neither. I’d like mighty well to get a chance to do it, kase
I want thirty days home. I reckon that’s all, aint it, sard?”
The sergeant said he reckoned it was, and when the two went down the
ladder Marcy stepped to the side of his box and took his first view of
the inside of a Southern prison pen. He had seen a picture of Camp
Douglas in an illustrated paper which Captain Burrows gave him one day
when he was in Plymouth, and had taken note that the Confederate
prisoners there confined were provided with comfortable quarters, into
which they could retreat in stormy weather, and where they could find
shade when the sun grew too hot for them; but there was nothing of the
kind inside this stockade. There was no shelter from sun or rain except
such as the prisoners had been able to provide for themselves. There
were multitudes of little tents made of blankets, which were hardly high
enough for a man to crawl into, and scattered among them were mounds of
earth that looked so much like graves that Marcy was startled when he
saw a ragged, emaciated apparition, which had once been an able-bodied
Union soldier, slowly emerge from one of them and throw himself down
upon the ground as if he didn’t care whether he ever got up again or
not. The stockade was crowded with just such pitiful objects, who
dragged their skeleton forms wearily over the sun-baked earth or lay as
motionless as dead men under the shelter of their little tents. It was a
spectacle to which no language could do justice, and Marcy turned from
it sick at heart to make an examination of the stockade itself. It was
built of pine logs set upright in the ground and scored on each side so
that they would stand closely together, and they were held in place by
heavy planks which were spiked across them on the outside near the top.
Built upon little platforms, located at regular intervals around the top
of the stockade, were sentry boxes like the one Marcy now occupied, to
which access was gained by ladders leading from the ground outside. On
the inside of the stockade, about fifteen feet from it and running
parallel to it all the way around, was a railing three feet high made by
nailing strips of boards to posts that had been firmly set in the
ground. It was an innocent looking thing, but it had sent into eternity
more than one brave man who had incautiously approached it. It was the
dead-line.
“But it will never be the death of anybody while I am on post,” thought
Marcy, wondering how any man could want a furlough bad enough to shoot a
fellow being down in cold blood. “I never could look my mother or Jack
in the face if I should do a deed like that, and I’d never have a good
night’s rest. Heaven will never smile upon a cause upheld by men who are
as cruel as these rebels are. They ought to be whipped.”
Long before the time arrived for him to be relieved Marcy became so
affected by the sight of the misery and suffering he had no power to
alleviate that he wanted to drop his musket and take to his heels; and
he would have welcomed a cyclone or an earthquake, or any other
convulsion of nature, that would have shut it out from his view forever.
On several occasions some of the thirsty wretches approached within a
few feet of the dead-line, with battered, smoke-begrimed cups or pieces
of bent tin in their hands, to drink from the sluggish stream that
flowed through the pen—for the water was clearer there than it was
anywhere else—and then it was that the fiendish nature of the sentry in
the next box on the right showed itself. As often as a prisoner drew
near to the stream with a dish in his hand, this man would cock his
musket, bring it to a ready, and crane his long neck eagerly forward, as
if he hoped that the soldier might forget himself and approach close
enough to the fatal line to give him an excuse for shooting. Once or
twice Marcy was on the point of warning the boys in blue to keep farther
away, but he remembered in time that he had been told to ask no
questions, and that was the same as an order forbidding him to speak to
the prisoners. To his great joy the sentry who was so anxious to have a
furlough did not earn it that day. At length Marcy saw the relief
approaching, and then he took the first long, easy breath he had drawn
for four miserable hours. He passed his orders in as few words as
possible and hurried down the ladder, feeling as if he had just been
released from prison himself. He marched around the stockade with the
relief, and was surprised to see how extensive it was. It was not
crowded like Andersonville, nor were the sanitary conditions quite so
bad; but they were bad enough, and the mortality was just as great in
proportion to the number of prisoners confined in it. When they reached
the barracks the platoon to which he belonged was drilled for half an
hour at stacking arms, and it was not until the movement was
accomplished to his satisfaction that the officer of the guard allowed
them to break ranks and go to dinner.
“You look as though you had had a spell of sickness,” were the first
words his friend Bowen said to him, when the two found opportunity to
exchange a few words in private. “What’s the matter?”
“Wait until you have stood in one of those boxes for four hours, and see
if you don’t feel as bad as I look,” answered Marcy. “It’s awful, and I
don’t see how I can go there again. Why, Charley, the sentry who stood
next to me fairly ached to shoot one of those poor fellows. I never saw
a quail hunter more eager to get a shot than he was.”
“Did the prisoner come near the dead-line?”
“There must have been fifty or more of them who came to the bayou to get
a drink; but they were not within ten feet of the dead-line.”
“And what did you do?”
“I? I didn’t do anything.”
“Well, the next time that thing happens, I would make a little
demonstration, if I were in your place,” said Bowen. “You can act as if
you were going to shoot, but of course you needn’t unless you have to.”
“Do you want me to understand that I will be reported if I don’t?”
“That’s what I mean. I have had a talk with some of these Home Guards
this morning, and have found out what sort of chaps they are. If you are
too easy with the prisoners you’ll get them down on you, and then
they’ll tell on you whether you do anything wrong or not. And you want
to keep out of the clutches of the captain, for he’s a heathen.”
Marcy afterward had occasion to remember this warning.