THE UNION MEN OF RICHMOND.
At the tent of the Union Commission, pitched near a fountain on Capitol
Square, I met a quiet little man in laborer’s clothes, whom the agent
introduced to me as “Mr. H——,” adding, “There were two votes cast
against the ordinance of secession in this city: one of those votes was
cast by Mr. H——. He is one of the twenty-one Union men of Richmond.”
He looked to be near fifty years of age; but he told me he was only
thirty-two. “I’ve been through such things as make a man look old!” He
showed me his gray hair, which he said was raven black, without a silver
streak, before the war.
“I was four times taken to the conscript camp, but never sent off to
fight. I worked in a foundery, and my employer got out exemption papers
for me. The Confederates, when they wanted more men, would declare any
time that all the exemption papers then out were void, and go to picking
us up in the street and sending us off to camp before we knew it. Some
would buy themselves off, and a few would get off as I did,—because they
could do work nobody else could do.”
He was a man of intuitive ideas and originality of character. Although
bred up under the influence of the peculiar institution, poor, and
uneducated, he had early formed clear and strong convictions on the
subject of slavery. “I was an Abolitionist before I ever heard the word
abolitionist.” He believed in true religion, but not in the religion of
traitors.
“I never hesitated to tell ’em what I thought. ‘God has no more to do
with you all,’ says I, ‘than he has with last year’s rain. I’d as lieves
go to a gambling-house, as to go and hear a minister pray that God would
drive back the armies of the North. You are on your knees mocking at
God, and He laughs at you!’ Events proved that what I said was true.
After every Fast, the Rebels lost some important point. There was a
Fast-day just before Fort Donelson; another before New Orleans was
taken; another before Gettysburg and Vicksburg; another before Atlanta
fell; and another before the evacuation of Richmond. That was the way
God answered their prayers.”
He corroborated the worst accounts I had heard concerning the state of
society in Richmond during the war.
“It seemed as though there was nothing but thieving and robbery going
on. The worst robbers were Hood’s men, set to guard the city. They’d
halt a man, and shoot him right down if he wouldn’t stop. They’d ask a
man the time, and snatch his watch. They went to steal some chickens of
a man I knew, and as he tried to prevent them, they killed him. At last
the women got to stealing. We had an insurrection of women here, you
know. I never saw such a sight. They looked like flocks of old buzzards,
picked geese, and cranes; dressed in all sorts of odd rigs; armed with
hatchets, knives, axes,—anything they could lay their hands on. They
collected together on the Square, and Governor Letcher made ’em a speech
from the Monument. They hooted at him. Then Jeff Davis made a speech;
they hooted at him too; they didn’t want speeches, they said; they
wanted bread. Then they begun to plunder the stores. They’d just go in
and carry off what they pleased. I saw three women put a bag of
potatoes, and a barrel of flour, and a firkin of butter in a dray; then
they ordered the darkey to drive off, with two women for a guard.”
Another of the faithful twenty-one was Mr. L——, whom I found at a
restaurant kept by him near the old market. It was he who carried off
Col. Dahlgren’s body, after it had been buried by the Rebels at Oak
Wood.
“I found a negro who knew the spot, and hired him to go with me one dark
night, and dig up the body. We carried it to Mr. Rowlett’s house [Mr.
Rowlett was another of the faithful], and afterwards took it through the
Confederate lines, in broad daylight, hid under a load of peach-trees,
and buried it in a metallic case. It lay there until after the
evacuation, when it was dug up and sent home to Admiral Dahlgren’s
family.”
Mr. L—— devoted much of his time and means during the war to feeding
Union prisoners, and helping Union men through the lines. “I was usually
at work that way all night; so the next day I’d be looking sick and
sleepy; and that way,—with a little money to bribe the doctors,—I kept
out of the Rebel army.” In January, 1865, he was arrested for sending
information through the lines to General Butler, and lay in prison until
the evacuation.
One of the most interesting evenings in my Richmond experience I passed
at the house of Mr. W——, on Twenty-fifth Street. A Northern man by birth
and education, he had remained true to his nativity at a time when so
many from the Free States living at the South had proved renegades and
apostates. Arrested early in the war for “disloyalty,” he had suffered
six months in Salisbury Prison because he would not take the oath of
allegiance to the Confederate Government.
“I could have got my liberty any day by taking that oath. But I never
would, and never did. As good and true men as ever trod the earth died
there because they would not take it. Mr. Buck, of Kentucky, was one.
Almost his last words were, ‘Tell my wife I would be glad to go home,
but I’d rather die here than take an oath that will perjure my soul.’ He
was happy; he died. Dying was not the worst part of it, by any means;
our sufferings every day were worse than death.”
Liberated at last, through the intercession of his wife, Mr. W—— came
home, and devoted himself to feeding and rescuing Union prisoners, and
to serving his country in other perilous ways.
He corroborated what had been told me with regard to the number of Union
men in Richmond.
“You will find men enough now, who claim to have been Union men from the
first. But of those whose loyalty stood the test of persecution in every
shape, there are just twenty-one,—no more, and no less. I’ve watched
them all through, and if there’s a Union man I don’t know, I should like
to see him. Those men of influence, who opposed secession in the
beginning, and afterwards voted for it, but who pretend now to have been
in favor of the Union all the while, were the most mischievous traitors
of all, for they carried the lukewarm with them.”
There were Union women, however, who worked and suffered as heroically
for the cause as the men. “One lady was nine months in prison here for
sending information through the lines to our armies. She was very ill at
one time, and wished to see a minister. They sent her Jeff Davis’s
minister. ‘Miserable wretch!’ said he, ‘I suppose I must pray with you,
but I don’t see how I can!’”
“When my husband was in prison,” said Mrs. W——, “we suffered greatly for
the necessaries of life. We had a little money in the savings-bank; and
he sent us an order for it: ‘Please pay to my little son,’ and so forth.
Payment was refused, because he had not taken the oath of allegiance,
and the money was confiscated.”
Of the labors, perils, sacrifices, and anxieties which the Union men of
Richmond underwent, in giving secret aid to the good cause, no adequate
account has ever been published, nor ever will be published. “I did no
other business at the time. I gave my whole life to it, and all my
means. I nearly went crazy. Besides Libby and Castle Thunder, there were
several smaller prisons in Richmond. There was one next door to us here.
There was another on the opposite side, a little farther up the street.
We had the prisoners under our very eyes, and couldn’t help doing
something for them. We could see their haggard faces and imploring eyes
looking out at us from the windows,—or from behind the windows,—for it
wasn’t safe for them to come too near. One day I saw one approach a
little nearer than usual,—his head was perhaps a foot from the
window,—when the guard deliberately put up his gun and blew out his
brains. He was immediately carried away in a cart; and as a little red
stream trickled along the ground, a boy ran after it, shouting, ‘Thar’s
some Yankee blood; bring a cup and ketch it!’ The papers next day
boasted that in an hour the dead man was under the sod.”
A fund was secretly collected for the benefit of the prisoners. One of
the first contributors towards it was an illiterate poor man named
White. He put in five dollars. Mr. W—— told him that was too much for a
man in his circumstances. “No,” said White, “I’s got two fives, and I
reckon the least I can do is to go halves.” From that small beginning
the fund grew to the handsome sum of thirteen thousand dollars.
White, concealing his Union sentiments from the authorities, got
permission to sell milk and other things to the prisoners, which they
paid for often with money he smuggled in to them. With small bribes he
managed to secure the good-will of the guard. He played his part
admirably, higgling with his customers, and complaining of hard times
and small profits, while he gave them milk and money, and carried
letters for them. One day a prisoner was observed to slip something into
his can. To divert suspicion, White pretended great surprise, and,
appearing to fish out a dime, held it up to the light as if to assure
himself that it was real. “I’s durned if there a’n’t one honest Yankee!”
said he, with a grin of satisfaction.
Mrs. W—— obtained permission to send some books to the prisoners; very
few reached them, however,—the greater part being appropriated by the
Rebels. Donations of clothing and other necessaries met with a similar
fate. In this state of things, White’s ancient mule-cart and honest face
proved invaluable. He carried a pass-book, in which exchanged prisoners
were credited with sums subscribed for the benefit of their late
companions. Many of these subscriptions were purely fictitious,—the
money coming from the Union-men’s fund. On the strength of one fabulous
contribution, set down at fifty dollars, he had given the prisoners over
a hundred dollars’ worth of provisions, when a Rebel surgeon stopped
him.
“Haven’t you paid up that everlasting fifty dollars yet?”
“Doctor,” said White, producing his pass-book, “I’s an honest man, I is;
and if you say I can’t put in no more on this yer score, you jest write
your name hyer.”
The surgeon declining to assume the responsibility, White managed to
take in to the prisoners, on the same imaginary account, milk and eggs
to the amount of fifty dollars more.
“I told you there were only twenty-one Union men in Richmond,” said Mr.
W——. “I meant _white_ Union men. Some of the colored people were as
ready to give their means and risk their lives for the cause as anybody.
One poor negro woman, who did washing for Confederate officers, spent
her earnings to buy flour and bake bread, which she got in to the
prisoners through a hole under the jail-yard fence; knowing all the
while she’d be shot, if caught at it.”
Mr. W—— assisted over twenty Union prisoners to escape. Among other
adventures, he related to me the following:—
“From our windows we could look right over into the prison-yard
adjoining us here. Every day we could see the dead carried out. In the
evening they carried out those who had died since morning, and every
morning they carried out those that had died over night. Once we counted
seventeen dead men lying together in the yard, all stripped of their
clothes, ready for burial; so terrible was the mortality in these
prisons. The dead-house was in a corner of the yard. A negro woman
occupied another house outside of the guard-line, and close to my garden
fence.”
He took me to visit the premises. We entered by a heavy wooden gate from
the street, and stood within the silent enclosure. It was a clear,
beautiful evening, and the moonlight lay white and peaceful upon the
gable of the warehouse that had served as a prison, upon the old
buildings and fences, and upon the ground the weary feet of the sick
prisoners had trodden, and where the outstretched corpses had lain.
“Every day some of the prisoners would be marched down to the medical
department, a few blocks below, to be examined. A colored girl who lived
with us, used to go out with bread hid under her apron, and slip it into
their hands, if she had a chance, as she met them coming back. One
morning she brought home a note, which one of them, Capt. ——, had given
her. It was a letter of thanks ‘to his unknown benefactors.’ Miss H——,
who was visiting us at the time, proposed to answer it. It was much less
dangerous for her to do so, than it would have been for me, for I was a
suspected man; I had already been six months in a Rebel prison. But if
she was discovered writing to a Yankee, her family would be prepared to
express great surprise and indignation at the circumstance, and denounce
it as a ‘love affair.’” (The H——s are one of the Union families of
Richmond; and Miss H—— was a young girl of nerve and spirit.)
“In this way we got into communication with the Captain. It wasn’t long,
of course, before he made proposals to Miss H——; not of the usual sort,
however, but of a kind we expected. He and another of the prisoners, a
surgeon, had resolved to attempt an escape, and they wanted our
assistance. After several notes on the subject had passed,—some through
the hands of the colored girl, some through a crack in the
fence,—everything was arranged for a certain evening.
“Citizens’ clothes were all ready for them; and I obtained a promise
from G——, a good Union man, to conceal them in his house until they
could be got away. To avoid the very thing that happened, he was not to
tell his wife; but she suspected mischief,—for it’s hard for a man to
hide what he feels, when he knows his life is at stake,—and she gave him
no peace until he let her into the secret. She declared that the men
should never be brought into their house.
“’We’ve just got shet of one boarder,’ says she, meaning a prisoner they
had harbored, ‘and I never’ll have another.’
“I couldn’t blame her much; for we were trifling with our lives. But G——
felt terribly about it. He came down to let me know. It was the very
evening the men were to come out, and too late to get word to them. If
their plans succeeded, they would be sure to come out; and what was to
be done with them? They would not be safe with me an hour. My house
would be the first one searched. G—— went off, for he could do nothing.
Then, as it grew dark, we were expecting them every moment. There was
nobody here but Miss H——, my wife, and myself. The colored girl was in
the kitchen. It was dangerous to make any unusual movements, for the
Rebel guard in the street was marching past every three minutes, and
looking in. We sat quietly talking on indifferent subjects, with such
sensations inside as nobody knows anything about who hasn’t been through
such a scene. My clothes were wet through with perspiration. Every time
after the guard had passed, we held our breath, until—tramp, tramp!—he
came round again.
“At last in came the colored girl, rushing from the kitchen, in great
fright, and gasped out in a hoarse whisper,—‘Lord Jesus, master! two
Yankees done come right into our backyard!’
“’We have nothing to do with the Yankees,’ I said; ‘go about your work,
and let ’em alone.’ And still we sat there, and talked, or pretended to
read, while once more—tramp, tramp, tramp—the guard marched by the
windows.”
“But there was a guard inside the prison-yard; how then had the Yankees
managed to get out?”
“I’m coming to that now. I told you the dead were borne out every
morning and evening. That evening there was an extra body. It was the
Yankee Doctor. He had bribed the prisoners, who carried out the dead, to
carry him out. The dead-house was outside of the guard. They laid him
with the corpses, and returned to the prison. Poor fellows! there were
four of them; they were sent to Andersonville for their share in the
transaction, and there every one of them died.
“A little while after, as some prisoners were going in from the yard,
they got into a fight near the door. The guard ran to interfere; and the
Captain, who was waiting for this very chance,—for the scuffle was got
up by his friends expressly for his benefit,—darted into the negro
woman’s house, and ran up-stairs. From a window he jumped down into my
garden. In the mean time the Doctor came to life, crawled out from among
the dead men, pushed a board from the back side of the dead house,
climbed the fence, and joined his friend the Captain, under our kitchen
windows.
“Not a move was made by any of us. We kept on chatting, yawning, or
pretending to read the newspaper; and all the while the guard in the
street was going his rounds and peeping in. Everything—the freedom of
these men, and my life—was hanging by a cobweb. One mistake, a single
false step, would ruin us. But everything had been preärranged. They
found the clothes ready for them, and we were waiting only to give them
time to disguise themselves. So far, it could not be proved that I had
anything to do with the business, but the time was coming for me to take
it into my own hands.
“I showed you the alley running from the street to my backyard, and now
you’ll see why I took you around there. The Captain and the Doctor after
getting on their disguise, were to keep watch by the corner of the house
at the end of the alley, and wait for the signal,—a gentleman going out
of the house with a lady on his arm and a white handkerchief in his
hand. They were to come out of the alley immediately, and follow at a
respectful distance.
“Having given them plenty of time,—not very many minutes, however,
though they seemed hours to us,—Miss H—— put on her bonnet, and I took
my hat; I watched my opportunity, and just as the guard had passed, gave
her my arm, and set out to escort her home. As we went out, I had
occasion to use my handkerchief, which I flirted, and put back into my
pocket. We didn’t look behind us once, but walked on, never knowing
whether our men were following or not, until, after we had passed
several corners, Miss H—— ventured to peep over her shoulder. Sure
enough, there were two men coming along after us.
“We walked past Jeff Davis’s house, and stopped at her father’s door.
There I took leave of her, and walked on alone. I had made up my mind
what to do. G—— having failed us, I must try R——; an odd old man, but
true as steel. It was a long walk to his house, and it was late when I
got there. I hid my men in a barn, and knocked at the door.
“’Anything the matter?’ says Mrs. R——, from the window.
“’I want to speak with Mr. R—— a moment,’ I said. I saw she was
frightened, when she found out who I was; but she made haste to let me
in. Serious as my business was, I couldn’t help laughing when I found
R——. He sleeps on a mattress, his wife sleeps on feathers; and both,
occupy the same bed. They compromise their difference of taste in this
way: they double up the feather-bed for Mrs. R——; that gives her a
double portion, and makes room for R—— on the mattress. She sleeps on a
mountain in the foreground; he, in the valley behind her.
“’W——,’ says he, looking up over the mountain, ‘there’s mischief ahead!
You wouldn’t be coming here at this hour if there wasn’t. Is it a Castle
Thunder case?’
“’No,’ I said, quietly as I could, for he was very much agitated.
“’I’m afraid of Castle Thunder!’ says he. ‘I’m afraid of you! If it
isn’t a Castle Thunder case, I demand to know what it is.’
“’It’s a halter case,’ I said. And then I told him. He got up and pulled
on his clothes. I took out fifty dollars in Rebel money, and offered
him, for the feeding of the men till they could be got away.
“’You can’t get any of that stuff on to me!’ says he. ‘I’m afraid of it.
We shall all lose our lives, this time, I’m sure. Why did you bring ’em
here?’
“But though fully convinced he was to die for it, he finally consented
to take in the fugitives. So I delivered them into his hands; but my
work didn’t end there. They were nine days at his house. Meantime,
through secret sources, by means of bribes, I got passes to take them
through the lines. These cost me a hundred dollars in greenbacks; then,
when everything was ready, all passes were revoked, and they were good
for nothing. Finally Dennis Shane took the job of running them through
the lines for five hundred dollars in Rebel money.
“He got them safely through; and just a month from that time one of
those men came back for me. General Butler sent him: he wanted to talk
with me about affairs in Richmond. I went out with a party of seven; and
when near Williamsburg we were all captured by a band of Confederate
soldiers.
“I determined not to be taken back to Richmond and identified, if I
could help it. I got down at a spring to drink, crawled along under the
bank a little way, as fast as I could, then jumped up, and ran for my
life. I was shot at, and chased; they put dogs on my track; I was four
days and nights without food; but I escaped, while all the rest were
carried back. After that I ran the lines to Butler whenever he wanted to
see me, until it wasn’t safe for me to go back to Richmond, where my
operations had become known.
“After the war was over, and our troops had possession,” added Mr. W——,
“then I came back, and saw what I had never expected to see in this
world. I saw the very men who had robbed, persecuted, and imprisoned me,
rewarded by our government. I came back to find that under the
administration of our own generals, Ord and Patrick, it was in a man’s
favor to be known as a secessionist, and against him to be known as a
Union man. The Union men were insulted and bullied by them, the colored
people were treated worse under their rule than they had ever been by
the Rebels themselves, and the secessionists were coaxed and petted. A
Rebel could obtain from government whatever he asked for; but a Union
man could obtain nothing. When we were feeding and flattering them at a
rate that made every loyal man sick at heart, I sent a request in
writing for a little hay for my horse. I got a refusal in writing: I
couldn’t have any hay. At the same time the government was feeding in
its stables thirty horses for General Lee and his staff.”
A hundred similar instances of partiality shown to the Rebels by the Ord
and Patrick administration were related to me by eye-witnesses; coupled
with accounts of insults and outrages heaped upon loyal men and
Freedmen. Happily Ord and Patrick and their pro-slavery rule had passed
away; but there were still complaints that it was not the true Union men
who had the ear of the government, but those whose unionism had been put
on as a matter of policy and convenience. This was no fault of General
Terry, although he was blamed for it. When I told him what I had heard,
he said warmly,—
“Why don’t these men come to me? They are the very men I wish to see.”
“The truth is, General, they were snubbed so often by your predecessors
that they have not the heart to come.”
“But I have not snubbed them. I have not shown partiality to traitors.
Everybody that knows me knows that I have no love for slavery or
treason, and that every pulse of my heart throbs with sympathy for these
men and the cause in which they have suffered.”
One evening I met by appointment, at the tent of the Union Commission, a
number of the dauntless twenty-one, and accompanied them to a meeting of
the Union League. It was a beautiful night, and as we walked by the
rainy fountain, under the still trees, one remarked,—
“Many an evening, when there was as pretty a moon as this, I have wished
that I might die and be out of my misery. That was when I was in prison
for being loyal to my country.”
At the rooms of the League I was surrounded by these men, nearly every
one of whom had been exiled or imprisoned for that cause. I witnessed
the initiation of new-comers; but in the midst of the impressive
solemnities I could not but reflect, “How faint a symbol is this of the
_real League_ to which the twenty-one were sworn in their hearts! To
belong to this is now safe and easy enough; but to have been a true
member of that, under the reign of terror,—how very different!”