This NarrativeDuly AuthenticatedbySworn Statementsof Two Comrades who were on the Escape, is on file in Pension Claim, No. 352,023.After Seventeen Years Inquiry.
This NarrativeDuly AuthenticatedbySworn Statementsof Two Comrades who were on the Escape, is on file in Pension Claim, No. 352,023.
After Seventeen Years Inquiry.
From all the information ever obtained touching the fate of first comrade left behind, thereasonableconclusion is that hePERISHEDat or near the place where we left him, his remains being found and decently buried near Blue Ridge Mountain. Whatever hisfatemay have been, it wasselfdecreed. His reasons for preferring to be left alone were satisfactory to him, and were notalldisclosed to us. One explanation of this last rather singular circumstance may be found in the fact that the comrade was an Englishman, and had been in this country but a few weeks before enlisting.
How much we should like to see the old "darky" to whom we said, "Put your ear to the string-hole," and on his compliance with the request we pronounced the word "Yankees." (See page 60.) "I'll git my trowserloons on."
In the case of leaving the second comrade, as described on pages 72-76, there was no option or time for deliberation. The exigencies of the hour compelled a separation. Mr. Tripp succeeded in escaping the notice of our pursuers, though hid in their immediate vicinity, and hearing their talk enumerating reasons for their failure to "take us in." After several days and nights of wandering and hiding, and of varied and interesting experience, Mr. Tripp was recaptured, sent to Richmond, kept there until September, 1864, was paroled, exchanged, and discharged. He is now living near Burlington, Kansas.
John F. Wood died June 20, 1864, "of wounds received in action." Referring to this, Sutherland, in a letter written not long since, says: "What a pity Wood had to die so soon after escaping prison. But he might have died a slow and miserable death at Andersonville had he not escaped."
Sutherland is living in Michigan, near Eagle Station. Smith resides at Dundee, same state. Mr. Smith very narrowly escaped drowning at Craig's Creek. Mr. Sutherland's opportune landing on the opposite bank of the rushing stream barely in time to extend to Smith a helping hand is all that saved him. In addition to all others, we had the perils by "Bogus Yankees" to encounter or avoid. Weriskedour lives to save them, and saving them weriskedthem again and again for our country. Having been captured in our third battle, by escaping, at least two of us, added to the three, thirteen more. But all this was better than Andersonville. Wemighthave been numbered among theMARTYRSof the nineteenth century. "I would not make that trip again," said Smith, "for the whole state of Michigan," adding "unless I had to."
Danville, Ill., November 27, 1885.W. H. N.