"Abandon all hope who enter here."
"Abandon all hope who enter here."
Up three flights of stairs, we were escorted into a room, fifty feet by one hundred and twenty-five, filled with officers lying in blankets upon the floor and upon rude bunks. Some shouted, "More Yankees!—more Yankees!" while many crowded about us to hear our story, and learn the news from the West.
Incarcerated in Libby Prison.
We soon found friends, and became domesticated in our novel quarters. With the American tendency toward organization, the prisoners divided into companies of four each. Our journalistic trio and Captain Ward ceased to be individuals, becoming merely "Mess Number Twenty-one."
The provisions, at this time consisting of good flour, bread, and salt pork, were brought into the room in bulk. A commissary, elected by the captives from their own number, divided them, delivering its quota to each mess.
Picking up two or three rusty tin plates and rheumatic knives and forks, we commenced housekeeping. The labor of preparation was not arduous. It consisted in making little sacks of cotton cloth for salt, sugar, pepper, and rice, fitting up a shelf for our dishes, and spreading upon the floor blankets, obtained from our new comrades, and originally sent to Richmond by the United States Government for the benefit of prisoners.
The Libby authorities, and white and negroattachés, were always hungry for "greenbacks," and glad to give Confederate currency in exchange. The rates varied greatly. The lowest was two dollars for one. During my imprisonment, I bought fourteen for one, and, a few weeks after our escape, thirty were given for one.
A prison sergeant went out every morning to purchase supplies. He seemed honest, and through him we could obtain, at extravagant prices, dried apples, sugar, eggs, molasses, meal, flour, and corn burnt and ground as a substitute for coffee. Without these additions, our rations would hardly have supported life.
In our mess, each man, in turn, did the cooking for an entire day. In that hot, stifling room, frying pork, baking griddle-cakes, and boiling coffee, over the crazy, smoking, broken stove, around which there was a constantcrowd, were disagreeable in the extreme. The prison hours were long, but the cooking-days recurred with unpleasant frequency.
We scrubbed our room two or three times a week, and it was fumigated every morning. At one end stood a huge wooden tank, with an abundant supply of cold water, in which we could bathe at pleasure.
Sufferings from Vermin.
The vermin were the most revolting feature of the prison, and the one to which it was the most difficult to become resigned. No amount of personal cleanliness could guard our bodies against the insatiate lice. Only by examining under-clothing and destroying them once or twice a day, could they be kept from swarming upon us. For the first week, I could not think of them without shuddering and faintness: but in time I learned to make my daily entomological researches with calm complacency.
In Nashville, two weeks before my capture, I met Colonel A. D. Streight, of Indiana. At the head of a provisional brigade from Rosecrans's army, he was about starting on a raid through northern Alabama and Georgia. The expedition promising more romance and novelty than ordinary army experiences, now grown a little monotonous, I desired to accompany him; but other duties prevented. I had been in Libby just four hours, when in walked Streight, followed by the officers of his entire brigade. We had taken very different routes, but they brought us to the same terminus.
Streight's command had been furnished with mules, averaging about two years old, and quite unused to the saddle. Utterly worthless, they soon broke down, and with much difficulty, he remounted his men upon horses, pressed from the citizens; but the delay proved fatal.
The Rebel General Forrest overtook him with alargely superior force. Streight was an enterprising, brave officer, and his exhausted men behaved admirably in four or five fights; but at last, near Rome, Georgia, after losing one third of his command, the colonel was compelled to surrender. The Rebels were very exultant, and Forrest—originally a slave-dealer in Memphis, and a greater falsifier than Beauregard himself—telegraphed that, with four hundred men, he had captured twenty-eight hundred.
Lieutenant Charles Pavie, of the Eightieth Illinois, who commanded Streight's artillery, came in with his coat torn to shreds; a piece of shell had struck him in the back, inflicting only a flesh wound. Upon feeling the shock, he instinctively clapped his hands to his stomach, to ascertain if there was a hole there, under the impression that the entire shell had passed through his body!
Prisoners Denounced as Blasphemous.
The prisoners bore their confinement with good-humor and hilarity. During the long evenings, they joined in the "Star-Spangled Banner," "Old Hundred," "Old John Brown," and other patriotic and religious airs.The Richmond Whig, shocked that the profane and ungodly Yankees should presume to sing "Old Hundred," denounced it as a piece of blasphemy.
Captain Brown and his officers, of the United States gunboat Indianola, were pointed out to me as men who had actually been in prison for three months. I regarded them with pity and wonder. It seemed utterly impossible that I could endure confinement for half that time. After-experiences inclined me to patronize new-comers, and regard with lofty condescension, men who had been prisoners only twelve or fifteen months! "The Father of the Marshalsea" became an intelligible and sympathetic personage, with whom we should have hobnobbed delightfully.
Thievery of a "Virginia Gentleman."
Simultaneously with our arrival in Richmond, a Rebel officer of the exchange bureau received a request from the editor ofThe World, for the release of Mr. Colburn. It proved as efficient as if it had been an order from Jefferson Davis. After ten days' confinement in Libby, Colburn was sent home by the first truce-boat. A thoroughly loyal gentleman, and an unselfish, devoted friend, he was induced to go, only by the assurance that while he could do no good by remaining, he might be of service to us in the North.
At his departure, he left for me, with Captain Thomas P. Turner, commandant of the prison, fifty dollars in United States currency. A day or two afterward, Turner handed the sum to me in Confederate rags, dollar for dollar, asserting that this was the identical money he had received. The perpetrator of this petty knavery was educated at West Point, and claimed to be a Virginia gentleman.
"Junius" suffered greatly from intermittent fever. The weather was torrid. In the roof was a little scuttle, to which we ascended by a ladder. The column of air rushing up through that narrow aperture was foul, suffocating, and hot as if coming from an oven. At night we went out on the roof for two or three hours to breathe the out-door atmosphere. When the authorities discovered it, they informed us, through Richard Turner—an ex-Baltimorean, half black-leg and half gambler, who was inspector of the prison—that if we persisted, they would close the scuttle. It was a refined and elaborate method of torture.
On one occasion, this same Turner struck a New York captain in the face for courteously protesting against being deprived of a little fragment of shell which he had brought from the field as a relic. A Rebelsergeant inflicted a blow upon another Union captain who chanced to be jostled against him by the crowd.
For slight offenses, officers were placed in an underground cell so dark and foul, that I saw a Pennsylvania lieutenant come out, after five weeks' confinement there, his beard so covered with mold that one could pluck a double handful from it!
Prisoners Murdered by theGaurdsGuards.
Prisoners putting their heads for a moment between the bars of the windows, and often for only approaching the apertures, were liable to be shot. One officer, standing near a window, was ordered by the sentinel to move back. The rattling carriages made the command inaudible. The guard instantly shot him through the head, and he never spoke again.
Colonel Streight was the most prominent prisoner. He talked to the Rebel authorities with imprudent, but delightful frankness. More than once I heard him say to them:—
"You dare not carry out that threat! You know our Government will never permit it, but will promptly retaliate upon your own officers, whom it holds."
When our rations of heavy corn-bread and tainted meat grew very short, he addressed a letter to James A. Seddon, Confederate Secretary of War, protesting in behalf of his brigade, and inquiring whether he designed starving prisoners to death! The Rebels hated him with peculiar bitterness.
The five Richmond dailies helped us greatly in filling up the long hours. At daylight an old slave, named Ben, would arouse us from our slumbers, shouting:—
"Great news in de papers! Great news from de Army of Virginny! Great tallygraphic news from the Soufwest!"
Fourth-of-July Celebration Interrupted.
He disbursed his sheets at twenty-five cents per copy, but they afterward went up to fifty.
A lieutenant in Grant's army, while charging one of the batteries in the rear of Vicksburg, received a shot in the face which entered one eye, destroying it altogether. Ten days after, he arrived in Libby. He walked about our room with a handkerchief tied around his head, smoking complacently, apparently considering a bullet in the brain a very slight annoyance.
We attempted to celebrate the Fourth of July. Captain Driscoll, of Cincinnati, with other ingenious officers, had manufactured from shirts a National flag, which was hung above the head of Colonel Streight, who occupied the chair, or rather the bed, which necessity substituted. Two or three speeches had been made, and several hours of oratory were expected, when a sergeant came up and said:—
"Captain Turner orders that you stop this furse!"
Observing the flag, he called upon several officers to assist him in taking it down. Of course, none did so. He finally reached it himself, tore it down, and bore it to the prison office. A long discussion ensued about obeying Turner's order. After nearly as much time had been consumed in debate as it would have required to carry out the programme, and speak to all the toasts—dry toasts—it was voted to comply. So the meeting, first adopting a number of intensely patriotic resolutions, incontinently adjourned.
The Horrors of Belle Isle.
The Rebel authorities confiscated large sums of money sent from home to the prisoners, and sometimes stopped the purchase of supplies, asserting that it was done in retaliation for similar treatment of their own soldiers confined in the North. Still our officers fared incomparably better than the Union privates who were halfstarved upon Belle Isle, in sight of our prison. We did not fully accredit the reports which reached us touching the sufferings of these prisoners, though the engravings of their emaciation and tortures in the New York illustrated papers, which sometimes drifted to us, so enraged the Rebels, that we often called their attention to them. But our own paroled officers, who were permitted to distribute among the privates clothing sent by our Government, assured us that they were substantially true.
Who was so firm, so constant, that this coilWould not infect his reason?Tempest.
Who was so firm, so constant, that this coilWould not infect his reason?Tempest.
Who was so firm, so constant, that this coilWould not infect his reason?
Tempest.
When sorrows come, they come not single spies,But in battalions.Hamlet.
When sorrows come, they come not single spies,But in battalions.Hamlet.
When sorrows come, they come not single spies,But in battalions.
Hamlet.
The Captains Ordered Below.
On the 6th of July, an order came to our apartments for all the captains to go down into a lower room. At this time, as usual, there was constant talk about resuming the exchange. They went below with light hearts, supposing they were about to be paroled and sent North. Half an hour after, when the first one returned, his white, haggard face showed that he had been through a trying scene.
After being drawn up in line, they were required to draw lots, to select two of their number for execution, in retaliation for two Rebel officers, tried and shot in Kentucky by Burnside, for recruiting within our lines.
Two Selected for Execution.
The unhappy designation fell upon Captain Sawyer, of the First New Jersey Cavalry, and Captain Flynn, of the Fifty-first Indiana Infantry. They were taken to the office of General Winder, who assured them that the sentence would be carried out; and without pity or decency, selected that hour to revile them as Yankee scoundrels who had "come down here to kill our sons, burn our houses, and devastate our country." In reply to these taunts, they bore themselves with dignity and calmness.
"When I went into the war," responded Flynn, "Iknew I might be killed. I don't know but I would just as soon die in this way as any other."
"I have a wife and child," said Sawyer, "who are very dear to me, but if I had a hundred lives I would gladly give them all for my country."
In two hours they came back to their quarters. Sawyer was externally nervous; Flynn calm. Both expected that the order would be carried out. We were confident that it would not. I predicted to Sawyer—
"They will never dare to shoot you!"
"I will bet you a hundred dollars they do!" was his impulsive reply. I said to Flynn—
"There is not one chance in ten of their executing you."
"I know it," he answered. "But, when we drew lots, I took one chance in thirty-five, and then lost!"17
On the same evening came intelligence that, at an obscure town in Pennsylvania called Gettysburg, Meade had received a Waterloo defeat, was flying in confusion to the mountains of Pennsylvania after losing forty thousand prisoners, who were actually on their way to Richmond. It was entertaining to read the speculations of the Rebel papers as to what they could do with these forty thousand Yankees—where they could find men to guard them, and room for them—how in the world they could feed them without starving the people of Richmond.
The Gloomiest Night in Prison.
We did not fully believe the report, but it touched us very nearly. Those reverses to our army came home drearily to the hearts of men who were waiting hopelessly in Rebel prisons, and weighed them down like millstones.
Success kindled a corresponding joy. I have seen sick and dying prisoners on cold and filthy floors of the wretched hospitals filled with a new vitality—their sad, pleading eyes lighted with a new hope, their wan faces flushed, and their speech jubilant, when they learned that all was going well with the Cause. It made life more endurable and death less bitter.
Already suffering from anxiety for Flynn and Sawyer, and disheartened by the reports from Pennsylvania, we received intelligence that Grant had been utterly repulsed before the works of Vicksburg, the siege raised, and the campaign closed in defeat and disaster. It was a very black night when this grief was added to the first. The prison was gloomy and silent many hours earlier than usual. Our hearts were too heavy for speech.
But suddenly there came a great revulsion. Among the negro prisoners was an old man of seventy, who had particularly attracted my attention from the fact that when I happened to speak to him about the National conflict, he replied, after the manner of Copperheads, that it was a speculators' war on both sides, in which he felt no sort of interest; that it would do nobody any good; that he cared not when or how it ended. I wondered whether the old African was shamming, lest his conversation should be reported, to the curtailing of his privileges, or whether he was really that anomaly, a black man who felt no interest in the war.
Glorious Revulsion of Feeling.
But about five o'clock, one afternoon, he came up into our room, and, when the door was closed behindhim, so that he could not be seen by the officers or guards, he made a rush for an open space upon the floor, and immediately began to dance in a manner very remarkable for a man of seventy, and rheumatic at that. We all gathered around him and asked—
"General" (that was hissoubriquetin the prison), "what does this mean?"
"De Yankees has taken Vicksburg! De Yankees has taken Vicksburg!" and then he began to dance again.
As soon as we could calm him into a little coherence, he drew from his pocket a newspaper extra—the ink not yet dry—which he had stolen from one of the Rebel officers. There it was! The Yankeeshadtaken Vicksburg, with more than thirty thousand prisoners.
Good tidings, like bad, seldom come alone. Shortly after, we learned that there was also a slight mistake about Gettysburg—that Lee, instead of Meade, was flying in confusion; and that, while our people had captured fifteen or twenty thousand Rebels, those forty thousand Yankee prisoners were "conspicuous for their absence."
How our hearts leaped up at this cheering news! How suddenly that foul prison air grew sweet and pure as the fragrant breath of the mountains! There was laughing, there was singing, there was dancing, which the old negro did not altogether monopolize. Some one shouted, "Glory, hallelujah!" Mr. McCabe, an Ohio chaplain, whose clear, ringing tones, as he led the singing, cheered many of our heaviest hours, instantly took the hint, and started that beautiful hymn, by Mrs. Howe, of which "Glory, hallelujah" is the chorus:—
"For mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."
"For mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."
Every voice in the room joined in it. I never saw men more stirred and thrilled than were those three or fourhundred prisoners, as they heard the impressive closing stanza:—
"In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea,With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me;As He died to make men holy, letusdie to make men free!"
"In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea,With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me;As He died to make men holy, letusdie to make men free!"
Exciting Discussion in Prison.
Despite reading, conversing, and cutting out finger-rings, napkin-rings, breast-pins, and crosses, from the beef-bones extracted from our rations, in which some prisoners were exceedingly skillful, the hours were very heavy. A debating-club was formed, and much time was spent in discussing animal magnetism and other topics. Occasionally we had mock courts, which developed a good deal of originality and wit.
Late in July, a mania for study began to prevail. Classes were formed in Greek, Latin, German, French, Spanish, Algebra, Geometry, and Rhetoric. We sent out to the Richmond stores for text-books, and all found instructors, as the motley company of officers embraced natives of every civilized country.
July 30th was a memorable day. The prisoners had become greatly excited on the momentous question of small messesversuslarge messes. There were only three cooking-stoves for the accommodation of three hundred and seventy-five officers. A majority thought it more convenient to divide into messes of twenty, while others, favoring small messes of from four to eight each, determined to retain those organizations. The prisoners now occupied five rooms, communicating with each other.
A public meeting was called in our apartment, with Colonel Streight in the chair. A fiery discussion ensued. The large-mess party insisted that the majority must rule, and the minority submit to be formed into messes of twenty. The small-mess party replied:—
"We will not be coerced. We are one-third of all the prisoners. We insist upon our right to one-third of the kitchen, one-third of the fuel, and one of the three cooking-stoves. It is nobody's business but our own whether we have messes of two or one hundred."
I was never present at any debate, parliamentary, political, or religious, which developed more earnestness and bitterness. The meeting passed a resolution, insisting upon large messes; the small-mess party refused to vote upon it, and declared that they would never, never submit! The question was finally decided by permitting all to do exactly as they pleased.
Prisoners kept in the underground cells heard revolting stories. They were informed by the guards that the bodies of the dead, usually left in an adjoining room for a day or two before burial, were frequently eaten by rats.
Stealing Money from the Captives.
From want of vegetables and variety of diet, scurvy became common. With many others, I suffered somewhat from it. On the 13th of August, Major Morris, of the Sixth Pennsylvania Cavalry, died suddenly from a malignant form of this disease. His fellow-prisoners desired to have his body embalmed. The Rebel authorities had one hundred dollars in United States currency, belonging to the major, but they refused to apply it to this purpose. Four hundred dollars in Confederate currency was therefore subscribed by the prisoners. Several brother-officers of the deceased were permitted to follow the remains to the cemetery.
Horrible Treatment of Northern Citizens.
Thirty or forty Northern citizens were confined in a room under us. They were thrust in with Yankee deserters of the worst character, and treated with the greatest barbarity. Their rations were very short; they were allowed to purchase nothing. We cut a hole through the floor, and every evening dropped downcrackers and bread, contributed from the various messes. When they saw the food coming, they would crowd beneath the aperture, with upturned faces and eager eyes, springing to clutch every crumb, sometimes ready to fight over the smallest morsels, and looking more like ravenous animals than human beings. Some of them, accustomed to luxury at home, ate water-melon rinds and devoured morsels which they extracted from the spittoons and from other places still more revolting.
Several schemes of escape were ingenious and original. Impudence was the trump card. Four or five officers took French leave, by procuring Confederate uniforms, which enabled them to pass the guards. Captain John F. Porter, of New York, obtaining a citizen's suit, walked out of the prison in broad daylight, passing all the sentinels, who supposed him to be a clergyman or some other pacific resident of Richmond. A lady in the city secreted him. By the negroes, he sent a message to his late comrades, asking for money, which they immediately transmitted. Obtaining a pilot, he made his way through the swamps to the Union lines, in season to claim, on the appointed day, the hand of a young lady who awaited him at home. He was an enterprising bridegroom.
During the long evenings, when we were faint, bilious, and weak from our thin diet, some of my comrades, with morbid eloquence, would dwell upon all luxuries that tempt the epicurean palate,—debating, in detail, what dishes they would order, were they at the best hotels of New York or Philadelphia. These tantalizing discussions were so annoying that they invariably drove me from the group, sometimes exciting a desire to strike those whowoulddrag forward the unpleasant subject, and keep me reminded of the hunger which I was striving to forget.
Extravagant Rumors among the Prisoners.
The exchange was altogether suspended, and new prisoners were constantly arriving, until Libby contained several hundred officers.
Extravagant rumors of all sorts were constantly afloat among the captives; hardly a day passing without some sensation story. They were not usually pure invention; but in prison, as elsewhere during exciting periods, the air seemed to generate wild reports, which, in passing from mouth to mouth, grew to wonderful proportions.
I had rather than forty pound I were at home.Twelfth Night, or What you Will.
I had rather than forty pound I were at home.Twelfth Night, or What you Will.
I had rather than forty pound I were at home.
Twelfth Night, or What you Will.
Transferred to Castle Thunder.
On the evening of September 2d, all the northern citizens were transferred from Libby to Castle Thunder. The open air caused a strange sensation of faintness. We grew weak and dizzy in walking the three hundred yards between the prisons.
That night we were thrust into an unventilated, filthy, subterranean room, nearly as loathsome as the Vicksburg jail. But we smoked our pipes serenely, remembering that "Fortune is turning, and inconstant, and variations, and mutabilities," and wondering what that capricious lady would next decree. At intervals, our sleep upon the dirty floor was disturbed by the playful gambols of the rats over our hands and faces.
The next morning we were drawn up in line, and our names registered by an old warden named Cooper, who, in spectacles and faded silk hat, looked like one of Dickens's beadles. His query whether we possessed moneys, was uniformly answered in the negative. When he asked if we had knives or concealed weapons, all gave the same response, except one waggish prisoner, who averred that he had a ten-inch columbiad in his vest pocket.
The Commandant of Castle Thunder was Captain George W. Alexander, an ex-Marylander, who had participatedwith "the French Lady"18in the capture of the steamer St. Nicholas, near Point Lookout, and was afterward confined for some months at Fort McHenry. He formerly belonged to the United States Navy, in the capacity of assistant engineer. He made literary pretensions, writing thin plays for the Richmond theaters, and sorry Rebel war-ballads. Pompous and excessively vain, delighting in gauntlets, top-boots, huge revolvers, and a red sash, he was sometimes furiously angry, but, in the main, kind to captives. He caused us to be placed in the "Citizens' Room," which he called the prison parlor. Its walls were whitewashed, its four windows were iron-barred, its air tainted by exhalations from the adjoining "Condemned Cell," which was fearfully foul. It was lighted with gas, and had a single stove for cooking, a few bunks, and a clean floor.
Castle Thunder contained about fifteen hundred inmates—northern citizens, southern Unionists, Yankee deserters, Confederate convicts, and eighty-two free negroes, captured with Federal officers, who employed them as servants in the field.
More Endurable than Libby.
The prison's reputation was worse than that of Libby; but, as usual, we found the devil not quite so black as he was painted. We missed sadly the society of the Union officers, but the Commandant andattachés, unlike the Turners, treated us courteously, never indulging in epithets and insults.
In the Citizens' Room were two northerners, namedLewis and Scully, sent to Richmond in the secret service of our Government, by General Scott, before the battle of Bull Run, and confined ever since. One of them was a Catholic, through the influence of whose priest both had thus far been preserved. But they held existence by a frail tenure, and I could not wonder that long anxiety had turned Lewis's hair gray, and given to both nervous, haggard faces.
In all southern prisons I was forced to admire the fidelity with which the Roman Church looks after its members. Priests frequently visited all places of confinement to inquire for Catholics, and minister both to their spiritual and bodily needs. The chaplain at Castle Thunder was a Presbyterian. He scattered documents, and preached every Sunday in the yard or one of the large rooms. He would have given tracts on the sin of dancing to men without any legs.
The Rev. William G. Scandlin and Dr. McDonald, of Boston—agents of the United States Sanitary Commission—were held with us. The doctor was dangerously ill from dysentery. The Commission had never discriminated between suffering Unionists and Confederates, extending to both the same bounty and tenderness; yet the Rebels kept these gentlemen, whom they had captured on the way to Harper's Ferry with sanitary supplies, for more than three months.
Determined not to Die.
"Junius" was very feeble; but during the weary months which followed, he manifested wonderful vitality. His indignation toward the enemy, and his earnest determination not to die in a Rebel prison, greatly helped his endurance. Like the Duchess of Marlboro', he refused either to be bled or to give up the ghost.
A Virginia citizen was brought in on the charge of attempting to trade in "greenbacks,"—a penitentiaryoffense under Confederate law. Before he had been in our room five minutes one of the sub-wardens entered, asking:
"Is there anybody here who has 'greenbacks?' I am paying four dollars for one to-day."
The negroes were used for scrubbing and carrying messages from the office of the prison to the different apartments. Invariably our friends, they surreptitiously conveyed notes to acquaintances in the other rooms, and often to Unionists outside.
A Negro Cruelly Whipped.
While we were at Libby, an intelligent mulatto prisoner from Philadelphia was whipped for some trivial offense. His piercing shrieks followed each application of the lash; one of my messmates, who counted them, stated that he received three hundred and twenty-seven blows. A month afterward I examined his back, and found it still gridironed with scars.
At the Castle the negroes frequently received from five to twenty-five lashes. I saw boys not more than eight years old turned over a barrel and cowhided. One woman upward of sixty was whipped in the same manner. This negress was known as "Old Sally;" she earned a good deal of Confederate money by washing for prisoners, and spent nearly the whole of it in purchasing supplies for unfortunates who were without means. She had been confined in different prisons for nearly three years.
The next oldest inmate was a Little Dorrit of a cur, born and raised in the Castle. Notwithstanding her life-long associations, she manifested the usual canine antipathy toward negroes and tatterdemalions.
The Execution of Spencer Kellogg.
Soon after our arrival, Spencer Kellogg, of Philadelphia, one of our fellow-prisoners, was executed as a Yankee spy. He had been in the secret service of theUnited States, but belonged to the western navy at the time of his capture. He bore himself with great coolness and self-possession, assuring the Rebels that he was glad to die for his country. On the scaffold he did not manifest the slightest tremor. While the rope was being adjusted, he accidentally knocked off the hat of a bystander, to whom he turned and said, with great suavity: "I beg your pardon, sir."
Steadfastness of Southern Unionists.
The loyalty of the southern Unionists was intense. One Tennessean, whose hair was white with age, was taken before Major Carrington, the Provost-Marshal, who said to him:
"You are so old that I have concluded to send you home, if you will take the oath."
"Sir," replied the prisoner, "if you knew me personally, I should think you meant to insult me. I have lived seventy years, and, God helping me, I will not now do an act to embitter the short remnant of my life, and one which I should regret through eternity. I have four boys in the Union army; they all went there by my advice. Were I young enough to carry a musket I would be with them to-day fighting against the Rebellion."
The sturdy old Loyalist at last died in prison.
There were many kindred cases. Nearly all the men of this class confined with us were from mountain regions of the South. Many were ragged, all were poor. They very seldom heard from their families. They were compelled to live solely upon the prison rations, often a perpetual compromise with starvation. Some had been in confinement for two or three years, and their homes desolated and burned. Unlike the North, they knew what war meant.
Yet the lamp of their loyalty burned with inextinguishable brightness. They never denounced the Government,which sometimes neglected them to a criminal degree. They never desponded, through the gloomiest days, when imbecility in the Cabinet and timidity in the field threatened to ruin the Union Cause. They seldom yielded an iota of principle to their keepers. Hungry, cold, and naked—waiting, waiting, waiting, through the slow months and years—often sick, often dying, they continued true as steel. History has few such records of steadfast devotion. Greet it reverently with uncovered head, as the Holy of Holies in our temple of Patriotism!
——One fading moment's mirth, With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights.Two Gentlemen of Verona.
——One fading moment's mirth, With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights.Two Gentlemen of Verona.
——One fading moment's mirth, With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights.
Two Gentlemen of Verona.
A Waggish Journalist.
We consumed many of the long hours in conversing, reading, and whist-playing. Night after night we strolled wearily up and down our narrow room, ignorant of the outer world, save through glimpses, caught from the barred windows, of the clear blue sky and the pitying stars.
Still, endeavoring to make the best of it, we were often mirthful and boisterous. Two correspondents ofThe Herald, Mr. S. T. Bulkley and Mr. L. A. Hendrick, were partners in our captivity. Hendrick's irrepressible waggery never slept. One evening a Virginia ruralist, whose intellect was not of the brightest, was brought in for some violation of Confederate law. After pouring his sorrows into the sympathetic ear of the correspondent, he suddenly asked:
"What are you here for?"
"I am the victim," replied Hendrick, "of gross and flagrant injustice. I am the inventor of a new piece of artillery known as the Hendrick gun. Its range far exceeds every other cannon in the world. A week ago I was testing it from the Richmond defenses, where it is mounted. One of its shots accidentally struck and sunk a blockade runner just entering the port of Wilmington. It was not my fault. I didn't aim at the steamer. I was just trying the gun for the benefit of the country. Butthese confounded Richmond authorities insisted upon it that I should pay for the vessel. I told them I would see them ------ first, and they shut me up in Castle Thunder; but I never will pay in the world."
"You are quite right. I would not, if I were you," replied the innocent Virginian. "It is the greatest outrage I ever heard of."
Proceedings of a Mock Court.
A fellow-prisoner had been elected commissary of our room, to divide and distribute the rations. One evening a court was organized to try him for "malfeasance in office." The indictment charged that he issued soup only when he ought to issue meat—stealing the beef and selling it for his personal benefit. One correspondent appeared as prosecuting attorney, another as counsel for the defense, and a third as presiding judge.
An extract from a Richmond journal being objected to as testimony, it was decided that any thing published by any newspaper must necessarily be true, and was competent evidence in that court. A great deal of remarkable law was cited in Greek, Latin, German, and French. Counsel were fined for contempt of court, jurors placed under arrest for going to sleep. When the spectators became boisterous, the sheriff was ordered to clear the court-room, and, during certain testimony, the judge requested that the ladies withdraw.
The jury returned a verdict of guilty, and, after being harangued in touching terms upon the enormity of his offense, the culprit was sentenced to eat a quart of his own soup at a single meal. It was an hilarious affair for that loathsome place, which swarmed with vermin, and where the silence was broken nightly by the clanking and rattling of the chains of convicts.
Many prison inmates exhibited daring and ingenuity in attempting to escape. Castle Thunder was vigilantlyand securely guarded, with a score of sentinels inside, and a cordon of sentinels without.
Escape by Killing a Guard.
In the condemned cell adjoining our room was a Rebel officer named Booth, with three comrades, under sentence of death on charge of murder. All were heavily ironed. Nightly, as the time appointed for their execution approached, they surprised us by dancing, rattling their chains, and singing. At one o'clock on the morning of October 22d, we were awakened by shouts and musket-shots. The whole Castle was alarmed, and the guard turned out.
With a saw made from a case-knife, Booth had cut a hole through the floor of his cell, his comrades the while singing and dancing to drown the noise. They were compelled to be very cautious, as a sentinel paced within six feet of them, under instructions to watch them closely. Filing off their irons, they descended cautiously through the aperture into a store-room, where they found four muskets. In the darkness they removed the lock from the door, and each taking a gun, crept into another room opening to the street; struck down the sentinel, and felled a second with the butt of a musket, knocking him ten or twelve feet. At the outer door, a guard, who had taken the alarm, presented his gun. Before he could fire, Booth shot him fatally through the head.
The three late prisoners ran up the street, several ineffectual shots being fired after them by the guards, who dared not leave their posts. At the long bridge across the James River they knocked down another sentinel, who attempted to stop them. Traveling by night through the woods, they soon reached the Union lines.
A considerable number of prisoners smeared their faces with croton-oil to produce eruptions. The surgeon,called in at exactly the right stage, pronounced the disease small-pox. They were driven toward the small-pox hospital in unguarded ambulances, from which they jumped and ran for their lives. It was a profound mystery to the physician that patients should be so agile, until, examining one face after the eruptions began to subside, he detected the imposition.
In Tennessee two Indiana captains were found within the Rebel lines. They were actually in the secret service of the Government, reconnoitering Confederate camps; but they passed themselves off as deserters, and were brought to the Castle. One told me his story, adding:
"They offer to release us if we will take the oath of allegiance to the Southern Confederacy; but I cannot do that. I want to rejoin my regiment, and fight the Rebels while the war lasts. I must escape, and I cannot afford to lose any time."
He kept his own counsel; but the next night took up a plank and descended to a subterranean room, whence he began digging a tunnel. After several nights' labor, when almost completed, the tunnel was discovered by the prison authorities. He immediately commenced another. That also was found, a few hours before it would have proved a success. Then he tried the croton-oil, and in ten days he was again under the old flag.
Escape by Playing Negro.
One prisoner, procuring from the negroes a suit of old clothing, a slouched hat, and a piece of burnt cork, assumed the garments, and blackened his face. With a bucket in his hand, he followed the negroes down three flights of stairs and past four sentinels. Hiding in the negro quarters until after dark, he then leaped from a window in the very face of a sentinel, but disappeared around a corner before the soldier could fire.
Another was sent to General Winder's office for examination. On the way he told his stolid guard that he was clerk of the Castle, and ordered him:
"Go up this street to the next corner and wait there for me. I am compelled to visit the Provost-Marshal's office. Be sure and wait. I will meet you in fifteen minutes."
The unsuspecting guard obeyed the order, and the prisoner leisurely walked off.
Captain Lafayette Jones, of Carter County, Tennessee, was held on the charge of bushwhacking and recruiting for the Federal army within the Rebel lines. If brought to trial, he would undoubtedly have been convicted and shot. He succeeded in deluding the officers of the prison about his own identity, and was released upon enlisting in the Rebel army, under the name of Leander Johannes.
Escape by Forging a Release.
George W. Hudson, of New York, had been caught in Louisiana, while acting as a spy in the Union service. Returning to the prison from a preliminary examination before General Winder, he said:
"They have found all my papers, which were sewn in the lining of my valise. There is evidence enough to hang me twenty times over. I have no hope unless I can escape."
He canvassed a number of plans, at last deciding upon one. Then he remarked, with great nonchalance:
"Well, I am not quite ready yet; I must send out to buy a valise and get my clothes washed, so that I can leave in good shape."
Three or four days later, having completed these arrangements, he wrote an order for his own discharge, forging General Winder's' signature. It was a close imitation of Winder's genuine papers upon whichprisoners were discharged daily. Hudson employed a negro to leave this document, unobserved, upon the desk of the prison Adjutant. Just then I was confined in a cell for an attempt to escape. One morning some one tapped at my door; looking out through the little aperture, I saw Hudson, valise in hand, with the warden behind him.
"I have come to say good-by. My discharge has arrived." (In a whisper,) "Put your ear up here. My plan is working to a charm. It is the prettiest thing you ever saw."
He bade me adieu, conversed a few minutes with the prison officers, and walked leisurely up the street. A Union lady sheltered him, and when the Rebels next heard of Hudson he was with the Army of the Potomac, serving upon the staff of General Meade.