LIBBY, CASTLE THUNDER, AND BELLE ISLE.
Strolling along a street near the river, below the burnt district, I
looked up from the dirty pavements, and from the little ink-colored
stream creeping along the gutter, (for Richmond abounds in these
villanous rills,) and saw before me a sign nailed to the corner of a
large, gloomy brick building, and bearing in great black letters the
inscription,—
LIBBY PRISON.
Passing the sentinel at the door, I entered. The ground-floor was
partitioned off into offices and store-rooms, and presented few objects
of interest. A large cellar room below, paved with cobble-stones, was
used as a cookhouse by our soldiers then occupying the building.
Adjoining this, but separated from it by a wall, was the cellar which is
said to have been mined for the purpose of blowing up Libby with its
inmates, in case the city had at one time been taken.
Ascending a flight of stairs from the ground-floor, I found myself in a
single, large, oblong, whitewashed, barren room. Two rows of stout
wooden posts supported the ceiling. The windows were iron-grated, those
of the front looking out upon the street, and those of the rear
commanding a view of the canal close by, the river just beyond it, and
the opposite shore.
There was an immense garret above, likewise embracing the entire area of
the floor. These were the prison-rooms of the infamous Libby. I found
them occupied by a regiment of colored troops, some sitting in Turkish
fashion on the floor, (for there was not a stool or bench,) some resting
their backs against the posts or whitewashed walls, and others lying at
length on the hard planks, with their heads pillowed on their knapsacks.
But the comfortable colored regiment faded from sight as I ascended and
descended the stairs, and walked from end to end of the dreary chambers.
A far different picture rose before me,—the diseased and haggard men
crowded together there, dragging out their weary days, deeming
themselves oftentimes forgotten by their country and their friends,—men
who mounted those dungeon-stairs, not as I mounted them, but to enter a
den of misery, starvation, and death.
On the opposite side of the same street, a little farther up, was Castle
Thunder,—a very commonplace brick block, considering its formidable
name. It was still used as a prison; but it had passed into the hands of
the United States military authorities. At the iron-barred windows of
the lower story, and behind tin wooden-barred windows above, could be
seen the faces of soldiers and citizens imprisoned for various offences.
Belle Island I had already seen from the heights of Richmond,—a pleasant
hill rising out of the river above the town, near the farther shore. The
river itself is very beautiful there, with its many green islets, its
tumbling rapids sweeping down among rocks and foaming over ledges, and
its side-dams thrown out like arms to draw the waters into their
tranquil embrace. My eye, ranging over this scene, rested on that fair
hill; and I thought that, surely, no pleasanter or more healthful spot
could have been selected for an encampment of prisoners; But it is
unsafe to trust the enchantment of distance; and after seeing Libby and
Castle Thunder, I set out to visit Belle Island.
I crossed over to Manchester by a bridge which had been constructed
since the fire. As both the Richmond and Danville, and the Richmond and
Petersburg railroad bridges were destroyed, an extraordinary amount of
business and travel was thrown upon this bridge. It was shaken with
omnibuses and freight-wagons, and enveloped in clouds of dust. Loads of
cotton and tobacco, the former in bales, the latter in hogsheads, were
coming into the city, and throngs of pedestrians were passing to and
fro. Among these I noticed a number of negroes with little bundles on
their backs. One of them, a very old man, was leaning against the
railing to rest.
“Well, uncle, how are you getting along?”
“Tolerable, mahster; only tolerable.” And he lifted his tattered cap
from his white old head with a grace of politeness which a courtier
might have envied.
“Where are you going?”
“I’s go’n’ to Richmond, mahster.”
“What do you expect to do in Richmond?”
“I don’t know right well. I thought I couldn’t be no wus off than whar I
was; and I hadn’t no place to go.”
“How so, uncle?”
“You see, mahster, thar a’n’t no chance fo’ people o’ my color in the
country I come from.”
“Where is that?”
“Dinwiddie County.”
“You have walked all the way from Dinwiddie County?” “Yes, mahster; I’se
walked over fo’ty mile. But I don’t mind that.”
“You’re very old, uncle.”
“Yes, I’ve a right good age, mahster. It’s hard fo’ a man o’ my years to
be turned out of his home. I don’t know what I shall do; but I reckon
the Lord will take keer of me.”
The tone of patience and cheerfulness in which he spoke was very
touching. I leaned on the bridge beside him, and drew out from him by
degrees his story. His late master refused to give wages to the freedmen
on his lands, and the result was that all the able-bodied men and women
left him. Enraged at this, he had sworn that the rest should go too, and
had accordingly driven off the aged and the sick, this old man among
them.
“He said he’d no use fo’ old wore-out niggers. I knowed I was old and
wore-out, but I growed so in his service. I served him and his father
befo’e nigh on to sixty year; and he never give me a dollar. He’s had my
life, and now I’m old and wore-out I must leave. It’s right hard,
mahster!”
“Not all the planters in your county are like him, I hope?”
“Some of ’em is very good to their people, I believe. But none of ’em is
will’n’ to pay wages a man can live by. Them that pays at all, offers
only five dollars a month, and we must pay fo’ ou’ own clothes and
doctor’s bills, and suppo’t ou’ families.’
“It seems you were better off when in slavery,” I suggested.
“I don’t say that, mahster. I’d sooner be as I is to-day.” And
cheerfully shouldering his bundle, the old African tramped on towards
Richmond. What was to become of him there?
I kept on to Manchester, passed the great humming mills by the
river-side, and turning to the right, up the Danville railroad, reached
Belle Island bridge after a brisk fifteen minutes’ walk. Crossing over,
I entered the yard of a nail-factory, where some men were breaking up
heavy old iron, cannons, mortars, and car-wheels, by means of a
four-hundred pound shot dropped from a derrick forty feet high. Beyond
the factory rose the pleasant hill I had viewed from the city. I climbed
its southern side, and found myself in the midst of a scene not less
fair than I had anticipated. Behind me was a cornfield, covering the
summit; below rushed the river among its green and rocky islands; while
Richmond rose beyond, picturesquely beautiful on its hills, and rosy in
the flush of sunset.
But where had been the prisoners’ camp? I saw no trace of it on that
slope. Alas, that slope was never trodden by their feet, and its air
they never breathed. At the foot of it is a flat, spreading out into the
stream, and almost level with it at high water. Already the night-fog
was beginning to creep over it. This flat, which was described to me as
a marsh in the rainy season, and covered with snow and slush and ice in
winter, was the “Belle Isle” of our prisoners. Yet they were not allowed
the range even of that. A trench and embankment enclosing an oblong
space of less than six acres formed the dead-line which it was fatal to
pass. Within this as many as twelve thousand men were at times crowded,
with no shelter but a few tattered tents.
As I was examining the spot, a throng of begrimed laborers crossed the
flat, carrying oars, and embarking in boats on the low shore looking
towards the city. They were workmen from the nail-factory returning to
their homes. One of them, passing alone after his companions, stopped to
talk with me at the dead-line, and afterwards offered me a place in his
boat. It was a leaky little skiff: I perched myself upon a seat in the
bow; and he, standing in the stern, propelled it across with a pole.
“Where were the dead buried?” I asked.
“The dead Yankees? They buried a good many thar in the sand-bar. But
they might about as well have flung ’em into the river. A freshet washed
out a hundred and twenty bodies at one time.”
“Did you see the prisoners when they were here?”
“I wasn’t on the Island. But from Richmond anybody could see their tents
hyer, and see them walking around. I was away most of the time.”
“In the army?”
“Yes, sir; I was in the army. I enlisted fo’ three months, and they kept
me in fou’ years,” he said, as men speak of deep and unforgiven wrongs.
“The wa’ was the cruelest thing, and the wust thing fo’ the South that
could have been. What do you think they’ll do with Jeff Davis?”
“I don’t know,” I replied; “what do you think?”
“I know what I’d like to do with him: I’d hang him as quick as I would a
mad dog! Him and about fo’ty others: old Buchanan along with ’em.”
“Why, what has Buchanan done?”
“He was in cohoot with ’em, and as bad as the baddest. If we had had an
honest President in his place, thar never’d have been wa’.”
From the day I entered Virginia it was a matter of continual
astonishment to me to hear the common people express views similar to
those, and denounce the Davis despotism. They were all the more bitter
against it because it had deceived them with lies and false promises so
long. Throughout the loyal North, the feeling against the secession
leaders was naturally strong; but it was mild as candle-light compared
with the fierce furnace-heat of hatred which I found kindled in many a
Southern breast.
The passage of the river was delightful, in the fading sunset light. On
a bluff opposite Belle Island was Hollywood, the fashionable cemetery of
Richmond, green-wooded, and beautiful at that hour in its cool and
tranquil tints. As we glided down the river, and I took my last view of
the Island, I thought how often our sick and weary soldiers there must
have cast longing eyes across at that lovely hill, and wished themselves
quietly laid away in its still shades. Nor could I help thinking of the
good people of Richmond, the Christian citizens of Richmond, taking
their pleasant walks and drives to that verdant height, and looking down
on the camp of prisoners dying from exposure and starvation under their
very eyes. How did these good people, these Christian citizens, feel
about it, I wonder?
Avoiding the currents sweeping towards the Falls, my man pushed into the
smooth waters of a dam that fed a race, and landed me close under the
walls of his own house.
“This yer is Brown’s Island,” he told me. “You’ve heerd of the
laboratory, whar they made ammunition fo’ the army?” He showed me the
deserted buildings, and described an explosion which took place there,
blowing up the works, and killing, scalding, and maiming many of the
operatives.
Passing over a bridge to the main land, and crossing the canal which
winds along the river-bank, I was hastening towards the city, when I
met, emerging from the sombre ruins of the burnt district, a man who
resembled more a wild creature than a human being. His hands, arms, and
face were blackened with cinders, his clothes hung upon him in tatters,
and the expression of his countenance was fierce and haggard. He looked
so much like a brigand that I was not a little startled when, with a
sweeping gesture of his long lean arm and claw-like fingers, he clutched
my shoulder.
“Come back with me,” said he, “and I’ll tell ye all about it; I’ll tell
ye all about it, stranger.”
“About what?”
“The explosion,—the explosion of the laboratory thar!”
Dragging me towards Brown’s Island with one hand, and gesticulating
violently with the other, he proceeded to jabber incoherently about that
dire event.
“Wait, wait,” said he, “till I tell you!”—like the Ancient Mariner with
skinny hand holding his unwilling auditor. “My daughter was work’n’ thar
at the time; and she was blowed all to pieces! all to pieces! My God, my
God, it was horrible! Come to my house, and you shall see her; if you
don’t believe me, you shall see her! Blowed all to pieces, all to
pieces, my God!”
His house was close by, and the daughter, who was “blowed all to
pieces,” was to be seen standing miraculously at the door, in a
remarkable state of preservation, considering the circumstances. She
seemed to be looking anxiously at the old man and the stranger he was
bringing home with him. She came to the wicket to meet us; and then I
saw that her hands and face were covered with cruel scars.
“Look!” said he, clutching her with one hand, while he still held me
with the other. “All to pieces, as I told you!”
“Don’t, don’t, pa!” said the girl, coaxingly. “You mustn’t mind him,”
she whispered to me. “He is a little out of his head. Oh, pa! don’t act
so!”
“He has been telling me how you were blown up in the laboratory. You
must have suffered fearfully from those Wounds!”
“Oh, yes; there was five weeks nobody thought I would live. But I didn’t
mind it,” she added with a smile, “for it was in a good cause.”
“A good cause!” almost shrieked the old man; and he burst forth with a
stream of execrations against the Confederate government which made my
blood chill.
But the daughter smilingly repeated, “It was a good cause, and I don’t
regret it. You mustn’t mind what he says.”
I helped her get him inside the wicket, and made my escape, wondering,
as I left them, which was the more insane of the two.
But she was not insane; she was a woman. A man may be reasoned and
beaten out of a false opinion, but a woman never. She will not yield to
logic, not even to the logic of events. Thus it happens that, while the
male secessionists at the South have frankly given up their cause, the
female secessionists still cling to it with provoking tenacity. To
appeal to their intelligence is idle; but they are vulnerable on the
side of the sentiments; and many a one has been authentically converted
from the heresy of state rights by some handsome Federal officer, who
judiciously mingled love with loyalty in his speech, and pleaded for the
union of hands as well as the union of States.
[Illustration: DISTRIBUTING RATIONS.]