Interior View of A Hospital in the Salisbury Prison.Interior View of A Hospital in the Salisbury Prison.Interior View of A Hospital in the Salisbury Prison.Click for larger image
Interior View of A Hospital in the Salisbury Prison.
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Constant association with suffering deadened our sensibilities. We were soon able to pass through the hospitals little moved by their terrible spectacles, except when patients addressed us, exciting a personal interest.
Credulity of our Government.
The credulity and trustfulness of our Government toward the enemy passed belief. Month after month it sent by the truce-boats many tons of private boxes for Union prisoners, while the Rebels, not satisfied with their usual practice of stealing a portion under the rose, upon one trivial pretext or other, openly confiscated every pound of them. At the same time, returning truce-boats were loaded with boxes sent to Rebel prisoners from their friends in the South, and express-lines crowded with supplies from their sympathizers in the North.
The Government held a large excess of prisoners, and the Rebels were anxious to exchange man for man; but our authorities acted upon the cold-blooded theory of Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, that we could not afford to give well-fed, rugged men, for invalids and skeletons—that returned prisoners were infinitely more valuable to the Rebels than to us, because their soldiers were inexorably kept in the army, while many of ours, whose terms of service had expired, would not re-enlist.
The private soldier who neglects his duty is taken out and shot. Officials seemed to forget that the soldier's obligation of obedience devolves upon the Government the obligation of protection. It was clearly the duty of our authorities either to exchange our own soldiers, orto protect them—not by indiscriminate cruelty, but by well-considered, systematic retaliation in kind, until the Richmond authorities should treat prisoners with ordinary humanity. It was very easy to select a number of Rebel officers, corresponding to the Union prisoners in the Salisbury garrison, and give them precisely the same kind and amount of food, clothing, and shelter.
General Butler's Example of Retaliation.
When the Confederate Government placed certain of our negro prisoners under fire, at work upon the fortifications of Richmond, General Butler, in a brief letter, informed them that he had stationed an equal number of Rebel officers, equally exposed and spade in hand, uponhisfortifications. When his letter reached Richmond, before that day's sun went down, the negroes were returned to Libby Prison and ever afterward treated as prisoners of war. But, by the mawkish sensibilities of a few northern statesmen and editors, our Government was encouraged to neglect the matter, and thus permitted the needless murder of its own soldiers—a stain upon the nation's honor, and an inexcusable cruelty to thousands of aching hearts.
I have supped full with horrors.Macbeth.
I have supped full with horrors.Macbeth.
I have supped full with horrors.
Macbeth.
The weariest and most loathed worldly lifeThat ache, age, penury and imprisonmentCan lay on nature.Measure for Measure.
The weariest and most loathed worldly lifeThat ache, age, penury and imprisonmentCan lay on nature.Measure for Measure.
The weariest and most loathed worldly lifeThat ache, age, penury and imprisonmentCan lay on nature.
Measure for Measure.
Attempted Outbreak and Massacre.
On the 26th of November, while we were sitting at dinner, John Lovell came up from the yard and whispered me:
"There is to be an insurrection. The prisoners are preparing to break out."
We had heard similar reports so frequently as to lose all faith in them; but this was true. Without deliberation or concert of action, upon the impulse of the moment, a portion of the prisoners acted. Suffering greatly from hunger, many having received no food for forty-eight hours, they said:
"Let us break out of this horrible place. We may just as well die upon the guns of the guards as by slow starvation."
A number, armed with clubs, sprang upon a Rebel relief of sixteen men, just entering the yard. Though weak and emaciated, these prisoners performed their part promptly and gallantly. Man for man, they wrenched the guns from the soldiers. One Rebel resisted and was bayoneted where he stood. Instantly, the building against which he leaned was reddened by a great stain of blood. Another raised his musket, but, before he could fire, fell to the ground, shot through the head.Every gun was taken from the terrified relief, who immediately ran back to their camp, outside.
Had parties of four or five hundred then rushed at the fence in half a dozen different places, they might have confused the guards, and somewhere made an opening. But some thousands ran to it at one point only. Having neither crow-bars nor axes they could not readily effect a breach. At once every musket in the garrison was turned upon them. Two field-pieces opened with grape and canister. The insurrection—which had not occupied more than three minutes—was a failure, and the uninjured at once returned to their quarters.
The yard was now perfectly quiet. The portion of it which we occupied was several hundred yards from the scene of themêlée. In our vicinity there had been no disturbance whatever; yet the guards stood upon the fence for twenty minutes, with deliberate aim firing into the tents, upon helpless and innocent men. Several prisoners were killed within a dozen yards of our building. One was wounded while leaning against it. The bullets rattled against the logs, but none chanced to pass through the wide apertures between them, and enter our apartment. Sixteen prisoners were killed and sixty wounded, of whom not one in ten had participated in the outbreak; while most were ignorant of it until they heard the guns.
Cold-Blooded Murders Frequent.
After this massacre, cold-blooded murders were very frequent. Any guard, standing upon the fence, at any hour of the day or night, could deliberately raise his musket and shoot into any group of prisoners, black or white, without the slightest rebuke from the authorities. He would not even be taken off his post for it.
One Union officer was thus killed when there could be no pretext that he was violating any prison rule.
Massacre of Union Prisoners.Massacre of Union Prisoners.Massacre of Union Prisoners attempting to Escape from Salisbury, North Carolina.Click for larger image
Massacre of Union Prisoners attempting to Escape from Salisbury, North Carolina.
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Moses Smith, a negro soldier of the Seventh Maryland Infantry, was shot through the head while standing inoffensively beside my own quarters, conversing with John Lovell. One of many instances was that of two white Connecticut soldiers who were shot within their tents. We induced one of the surgeons to inquire at head-quarters the cause of the homicide. The answer received was, that the guard saw three negroes in range, and, knowing he would never have so good an opportunity again, fired at them, but missed aim and killed the wrong men! It seemed to be regarded as a harmless jest.
Hostility to "Tribune" Correspondents.
Though my comrades and myself, either byfinesseor bribery, often succeeded in obtaining special privileges from the prison officers, the hostility of the Confederate authorities was unrelenting. Our attorney, Mr. Blackmer, after visiting Richmond on our behalf, returned and assured us that he saw no hope of our release before the end of the war, unless we could effect our escape. Robert Ould, who usually denied that he regarded us with special hostility, on one occasion, in his cups, remarked to the United States Commissioner:
Though my comrades and myself, either byfinesseor bribery, often succeeded in obtaining special privileges from the prison officers, the hostility of the Confederate authorities was unrelenting. Our attorney, Mr. Blackmer, after visiting Richmond on our behalf, returned and assured us that he saw no hope of our release before the end of the war, unless we could effect our escape. Robert Ould, who usually denied that he regarded us with special hostility, on one occasion, in his cups, remarked to the United States Commissioner:
"The Tribunedid more than any other agency to bring on the war. It is useless for you to ask the exchange of its correspondents. They are just the men we want, and just the men we are going to hold."
Our Government, through blundering rather than design, released a large number of Rebel journalists without requiring our exchange. Finally, while among the horrors of Salisbury, we learned that Edward A. Pollard, a malignant Rebel, and an editor ofThe Richmond Examiner, most virulent of all the southern papers, was paroled to the city of Brooklyn, after confinement for a few weeks in the North. This news cut uslike a knife. We, after nearly two years of captivity, in that foul, vermin-infested prison, among all its atrocities—he, at large, among the comforts and luxuries of one of the pleasantest cities in the world! The thought was so bitter, that, for weeks after hearing the intelligence, we did not speak of it to each other. Mr. Welles, Secretary of the Navy, was the person who set Pollard at liberty. I record the fact, not that any special importance attaches to our individual experience, but because hundreds of Union prisoners were subjected to kindred injustice.
A Cruel Injustice.
At the Salisbury penitentiary was a respectable woman from North Carolina, who was confined for two months, in the same quarters with the male inmates. Her crime was, giving a meal to a Rebel deserter! In Richmond, a Virginian of seventy was shut up with us for a long time, on the charge of feeding his own son, who had deserted from the army!
In September, a number of Rebel convicts, armed with clubs and knives, forcibly took from John Lovell a Union flag, which he had thus far concealed. After the prisoners of war arrived they vented their indignation upon the convicts, wherever they could catch them. For several days, Rebels venturing into the yard were certain to return to their quarters with bruised faces and blackened eyes.
Rebel Expectations of Peace.
During the peace mania, which seemed to possess the North, at the time of McClellan's nomination, the Rebels were very hopeful. Lieutenant Stockton, the post-Adjutant, one day observed:
"You will go home very soon; we shall have peace within a month."
"On what do you base your opinion?" I asked.
"The tone of your newspapers and politicians. McClellanis certain to be elected President, and peace will immediately follow."
"You southerners are the most credulous people in the whole world. You have been so long strangers to freedom of speech and the press, that you cannot comprehend it at all. There are half a dozen public men and as many newspapers in the North, who really belong to your side, and express their Rebel sympathies with little or no disguise. Can you not see that they never receive any accessions? Point out a single important convert made by them since the beginning of the war. Before Sumter, these same men told you that, if we attempted coërcion, it would produce war in the North; and you believed them. Again and again they have told you, as now, that the loyal States would soon give up the conflict, and you still believe them. Wait until the people vote, in November, and then tell me what you think."
In due time came news of Mr. Lincoln's re-election. The prisoners received it with intense satisfaction. I conveyed it to the Union officers, from whom we were separated by bayonets—tossing to them a biscuit containing a concealed note. A few minutes after, their cheering and shouting excited the surprise and indignation of the prison authorities. The next morning I asked Stockton how he now regarded the peace prospect. Shaking his head, he sadly replied:
"It is too deep for me; I cannot see the end."
A private belonging to the Fifty-ninth Massachusetts Infantry, had left Boston, a new recruit, just six weeks before we met him. In the interval he participated in two great battles and five skirmishes, was wounded in the leg, captured, escaped from his guards, whileen routefor Georgia, traveled three days on foot, was thenre-captured and brought to Salisbury. His six weeks' experience had been fruitful and varied.
That hope deferred which maketh the heart sick, began to tell seriously upon our mental health. We grew morbid and bitter, and were often upon the verge of quarreling among ourselves. I remember even feeling a pang of jealousy and indignation at an account of some enjoyment and hilarity among my friends at home.
The Prison Like the Tomb.
Our prison was like the tomb. No voice from the North entered its gloomy portal. Knowing that we had been unjustly neglected by our own Government, wondering if we were indeed forsaken by God and man, we seemed to lose all human interest, and to care little whether we lived or died. But I suppose lurking, unconscious hope, still buoyed us up. Could we have known positively that we must endure eight months more of that imprisonment, I think we should have received with joy and gratitude our sentence to be taken out and shot.
Frequently prisoners asked us, sometimes with tears in their eyes:
"What shall we do? We grow weaker day by day. Staying here we shall be certain to follow our comrades to the hospital and the dead-house. The Rebels assure us that if we will enlist, we shall have abundant food and clothing; and we may find a chance of escaping to our own lines."
I always answered that they owed no obligation to God or man to remain and starve to death. Of the two thousand who did enlist, nearly all designed to desert at the first opportunity. Their remaining comrades had no toleration for them. If one who had joined the Rebels came back into the yard for a moment, his life was in imminent peril. Two or three times such persons wereshockingly beaten, and only saved from death by the interference of the Rebel guards. This ferocity was but the expression of the deep, unselfish patriotism of our private soldiers. These men, who carried muskets and received but a mere pittance, were so earnest that they were almost ready to kill their comrades for joining the enemy even to escape a slow, torturing death.
Something about Tunneling.
We grew very familiar with the occult science of tunneling. Itsmodus operandiis this: the workman, having sunk a hole in the ground three, six, or eight feet, as the case may require, strikes off horizontally, lying flat on his face, and digging with whatever tool he can find—usually a case-knife. The excavation is made just large enough for one man to creep through it. The great difficulty is, to conceal the dirt. In Salisbury, however, this obstacle did not exist, for many of the prisoners lived in holes in the ground, which they were constantly changing or enlarging. Hence the yard abounded in hillocks of fresh earth, upon which that taken from the tunnels could be spread nightly without exciting notice.
After the great influx of prisoners of war in October, a large tunneling business was done. I knew of fifteen in course of construction at one time, and doubtless there were many more. The Commandant adopted an ingenious and effectual method of rendering them abortive.
In digging laterally in the ground, at the distance of thirty or forty feet the air becomes so foul that lights will not burn, and men breathe with difficulty. In the great tunnel sixty-five feet long, by which Colonel Streight and many other officers escaped from Libby prison, this embarrassment was obviated by a bit of Yankee ingenuity. The officers, with tacks, blankets, and boards, constructed a pair of huge bellows, like those used by blacksmiths. Then, while one of them worked with his case-knife,progressing four or five feet in twelve hours, and a second filled his haversack with dirt and removed it (of course backing out, and crawling in on his return, as the tunnel was a single track, and had no turn-table), a third sat at the mouth pumping vigorously, and thus supplied the workers with fresh air.
The Tunnelers Ingeniously Baffled.
At Salisbury this was impracticable. I suppose a paper of tacks could not have been purchased there for a thousand dollars. There were none to be had. Of course we could not pierce holes up to the surface of the ground for ventilation, as that would expose every thing.
Originally there was but one line of guards—posted some twenty-five feet apart, upon the fence which surrounded the garrison, and constantly walking to and fro, meeting each other and turning back at the limits of each post. Under this arrangement it was necessary to tunnel about forty feet to go under the fence, and come up far enough beyond it to emerge from the earth on a dark night without being seen or heard by the sentinels.
When the Commandant learned (through prisoners actually suffering for food, and ready to do almost any thing for bread) that tunneling was going on, he tried to ascertain where the excavations were located; but in vain, because none of the shaky Unionists had been informed. Therefore he established a second line of guards, one hundred feet outside of those on the fence, who also paced back and forth in the same manner until they met, forming a second line impervious to Yankees. This necessitated tunneling at least one hundred and forty feet, which, without ventilation, was just as much out of the question as to tunnel a hundred and forty miles.
"A good wit will make use of any thing: I will turn diseases to commodity."King Henry IV.
"A good wit will make use of any thing: I will turn diseases to commodity."King Henry IV.
"A good wit will make use of any thing: I will turn diseases to commodity."
King Henry IV.
Fifteen Months of Fruitless Endeavor.
We were constantly trying to escape. During the last fifteen months of our imprisonment, I think there was no day when we had not some plan which we hoped soon to put in execution. We were always talking and theorizing about the subject.
Indeed, we theorized too much. We magnified obstacles. We gave our keepers credit for greater shrewdness and closer observation than they were capable of. We would not start until all things combined to promise success. Therefore, as the slow months wore away, again and again we saw men of less capacity, but greater daring, escape by modes which had appeared to us utterly chimerical and impracticable.
Fortune, too, persistently baffled us. At the vital moment when freedom seemed just within our grasp, some unforeseen obstacle always intervened to foil our plans. Still, assuming a confidence we did not feel, we daily promised each other to persist until we gained our liberty or lost our lives. After the malignity which the Richmond authorities had manifested toward us, escape seemed a thousand-fold preferable to release by exchange.
I should hardly dare to estimate the combined length of tunnels in which we were concerned; they werealways discovered, usually on the eve of completion. My associate was wont to declare that we should never escape in that way, unless we constructed an underground road to Knoxville—two hundred miles as the bird flies!
Even if we passed the prison walls, the chance of reaching our lines seemed almost hopeless. We were in the heart of the Confederacy. During the ten months we spent in Salisbury, at least seventy persons escaped; but nearly all were brought back, though a few were shot in the mountains. We knew of only five who had reached the North.
A Fearful Journey in Prospect.
"Junius," certain to see the gloomy side of every picture, frequently said: "To walk the same distance in Ohio or Massachusetts, where we could travel by daylight upon public thoroughfares, stop at each village for rest and refreshments, and sleep in warm beds every night, we should consider a severe hardship. Think of this terrible tramp of two hundred miles, by night, in mid-winter, over two ranges of mountains, creeping stealthily through the enemy's country, weak, hungry, shelterless! Can any of us live to accomplish it?"
When at last we did essay it, the journey proved nearly twice as long and infinitely severer than even he had conceived.
Among the officers of the prison, were three stanch Union men—a lieutenant, a surgeon, and Lieutenant John R. Welborn. They were our devoted friends. Their homes, families, and interests, were in the South. Attempting to escape, they were likely to be captured and imprisoned. Remaining, they must enter the army in some capacity, and they preferred wearing swords to carrying muskets. Hundreds of Loyalists were in the same predicament, and adopted the same course.
A Friendly Confederate Officer.
These gentlemen were of service to us in a thousand ways. They supplied us with money, books, and provisions; bore messages between us and other friends in the village; and kept us constantly advised of military and political events known to the officials, but concealed from the public.
Lieutenant Welborn came to the garrison only about a month before our departure. He belonged to a secret organization known as the Sons of America, instituted expressly to assist Union men, whether prisoners or refugees, in escaping to the North. Its members were bound, by solemn oath, to aid brothers in distress. They recognized each other by the signs, grips, and passwords, common to all secret societies.
We soon discovered that Welborn was not only of the Order, but a very earnest and self-sacrificing member. He was singularly daring. At our first stolen interview he said: "You shall be out very soon, at all hazards." Had he been detected in aiding us, it would have cost him his life; but he was quite ready to peril it.
Beyond the inner line of sentinels, which was much the more difficult one to pass, stood a Rebel hospital, where all medicines for the garrison were stored. When we were placed in charge of the Union hospitals, Mr. Davis was furnished with a pass to go out for medical supplies. It was the inflexible rule of the prison that all persons having such passes should give paroles not to escape. Davis would have assumed no such obligation. But in the confusion incident to the great influx of prisoners of war, and because it was the business of several Rebel officers—the Commandant, the Medical Director, and the Post-Adjutant—instead of the duty of one man to see it done, he was never asked for the parole.
A few days later, the prison authorities gave similarpasses to "Junius" and to Captain Thomas E. Wolfe, of Connecticut, master of a merchant-vessel, who had been a prisoner nearly as long as we. We attempted to convince them, through several deluded Rebelattachés, that it was essential to the proper conduct of the medical department that I too should be supplied with a pass. Doubtless we should have succeeded in time, had not an incident occurred to hasten our movements.
On Sunday, December 18th, we learned that General Bradley T. Johnson, of Maryland, had arrived, and on the following day would supersede Major Gee as Commandant of the prison. Johnson was a soldier who knew how business should be done, and would doubtless put a stop to this loose arrangement about passes. Not a moment was to be lost, and we determined to escape that very night.
I engaged several prisoners, without informing them for what purpose, in copying from my hospital books the names of the dead. I felt that, to relieve friends at home, we ought to make an effort to carry through this information, as long as there was the slightest possibility of success.
Effects of Hunger and Cold.
My own books only contained the names of prisoners who died in the hospitals. "Out-door patients"—those deceased in their own quarters, or in no quarters whatever, were recorded in a separate book, by the Rebel clerk in the outside hospital. I dared not send to him for their names on Sunday, lest it should excite his suspicion. But the list from my own records was appalling. It comprised over fourteen hundred prisoners deceased within sixty days, and showed that they were now dying at the rate of thirteen per cent. a month on the entire number—a rate of mortality which would depopulate any city in the world in forty-eight hours, and send thepeople flying in all directions, as from a pestilence! Yet when those prisoners came there, they were young and vigorous, like our soldiers generally in the field. There was not a sick or wounded man among them. It was a fearful revelation of the work which cold and starvation had done.
When I put on extra under-clothing for the possible journey, it was without conscious expectation—almost without any hope whatever—of success. I had assumed the same garments for the same purpose, at the very least, thirty times before, within fifteen months, only to be disappointed; and that was enough to dampen the most sanguine temperament.
We believed that our attempt, if detected, would be made the excuse for treating us with peculiar rigor. But, in the event of discovery, we were likely to be sent back to our own quarters for the night, and not ironed or confined in a cell until the next morning.
Another Plan in Reserve.
Lieutenant Welborn was on duty that day. We made him privy to our plan. He agreed, if it proved unsuccessful, to smuggle in muskets for us; and we proposed to wrap ourselves in gray blankets, slouch our hats down over our eyes, and pass out at midnight, as Rebel soldiers, when he relieved the guard. Once in the camp, he could conduct us outside.
On that Sunday evening, half an hour before dark (the latest moment at which the guards could be passed, even by authorized persons, without the countersign), Messrs. Browne, Wolfe, and Davis, went outside, as if to order their medical supplies for the sick prisoners. As they passed in and out a dozen times a day, and their faces were quite familiar to the sentinels, they were not compelled to show their passes, and "Junius" left his behind with me.
Stopped by the Sentinel.
A few minutes later, taking a long box filled with bottles in which the medicines were usually brought, and giving it to a little lad who assisted me in my hospital duties, I started to follow them.
As if in great haste, we walked rapidly toward the fence, while, leaning against trees or standing in the hospital doors, half a dozen friends looked on to see how the plan worked. When we reached the gate, I took the box from the boy, and said to him, of course for the benefit of the sentinel:
"I am going outside to get these bottles filled. I shall be back in about fifteen minutes, and want you to remain right here, to take them and distribute them among the hospitals. Do not go away, now."
The lad, understanding the matter perfectly, replied, "Yes, sir;" and I attempted to pass the sentinel by mere assurance.
I had learned long before how far a man may go, even in captivity, by sheer, native impudence—by moving straight on, without hesitation, with a confident look, just as if he had a right to go, and no one had any right to question him. Several times, as already related, I saw captives, who had procured citizens' clothes, thus walk past the guards in broad daylight, out of Rebel prisons.
I think I could have done it on this occasion, but for the fact that it had been tried successfully twice or thrice, and the guards severely punished. The sentinel stopped me with his musket, demanding:
"Have you a pass, sir?"
"Certainly, I have a pass," I replied, with all the indignation I could assume. "Have you not seen it often enough to know by this time?"
Apparently a little confounded, he replied, modestly:
"Excuse Me for Detaining You."
"Probably I have; but they are very strict with us, and I was not quite sure."
I gave to him this genuine pass belonging to my associate:
Head-quarters Confederate States Military Prison, }Salisbury, N. C.,December 5, 1864.}Junius H. Browne, Citizen, has permission to pass the inner gate of the Prison, to assist in carrying medicines to the Military Prison Hospitals, until further orders.J. A. Fuqua,Captain and Assistant-Commandant of Post.
Head-quarters Confederate States Military Prison, }Salisbury, N. C.,December 5, 1864.}
Junius H. Browne, Citizen, has permission to pass the inner gate of the Prison, to assist in carrying medicines to the Military Prison Hospitals, until further orders.
J. A. Fuqua,Captain and Assistant-Commandant of Post.
We had speculated for a long time about my using a spurious pass, and my two comrades prepared several with a skill and exactness which proved that, if their talents had been turned in that direction, they might have made first-class forgers. But we finally decided that the veritable pass was better, because, if the guard had any doubt about it, I could tell him to send it into head-quarters for examination. The answer returned would of course be that it was genuine.
But it was not submitted to any such inspection. The sentinel spelled it out slowly, then folded and returned it to me, saying:
"That pass is all right. I know Captain Fuqua's handwriting. Go on, sir; excuse me for detaining you."
"That pass is all right. I know Captain Fuqua's handwriting. Go on, sir; excuse me for detaining you."
I thought him excusable under the circumstances, and walked out. My great fear was that, during the half hour which must elapse before I could go outside the garrison, I might encounter some Rebel officer orattachéwho knew me.
Encountering Rebel Acquaintances.
Before I had taken ten steps, I saw, sauntering to and fro on the piazza of the head-quarters building, a deserter from our service, named Davidson, who recognized and bowed to me. I thought he would not betray me, but was still fearful of it. I went on, and a few yards farther,coming toward me in that narrow lane, where it was impossible to avoid him, I saw the one Rebel officer who knew me better than any other, and who frequently came into my quarters—Lieutenant Stockton, the Post-Adjutant. Observing him in the distance, I thought I recognized in him that old ill-fortune which had so long and steadfastly baffled us. But I had the satisfaction of knowing that my associates were on the look-out from a window and, if they saw me involved in any trouble, would at once pass the outer gate, if possible, and make good their own escape.
When we met, I bade Stockton good-evening, and talked for a few minutes upon the weather, or some other subject in which I did not feel any very profound interest. Then he passed into head-quarters, and I went on. Yet a few yards farther, I encountered a third Rebel, named Smith, who knew me well, and whose quarters, inside the garrison, were within fifty feet of my own. There were not half a dozen Confederates about the prison who were familiar with me; but it seemed as if at this moment they were coming together in a grand convention.
Not daring to enter the Rebel hospital, where I was certain to be recognized, I laid down my box of medicines behind a door, and sought shelter in a little outbuilding. While I remained there, waiting for the blessed darkness, I constantly expected to see a sergeant, with a file of soldiers, come to take me back into the yard; but none came. It was rare good fortune. Stockton, Smith, and Davidson, all knew, if they had their wits about them, that I had no more right there than in the village itself. I suppose their thoughtlessness must have been caused by the peculiarly honest and business-like look of that medicine-box!
——Wheresoe'er you areThat bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you?King Lear.
——Wheresoe'er you areThat bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you?King Lear.
——Wheresoe'er you areThat bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you?
King Lear.
"Out of the Jaws of Death."
At dark, my three friends joined me. We went through the outer gate, in full view of a sentinel, who supposed we were Rebel surgeons or nurses. And then, on that rainy Sunday night, for the first time in twenty months, we found ourselves walking freely in a public street, without a Rebel bayonet before or behind us!
Reaching an open field, a mile from the prison, we crouched down upon the soaked ground, in a bed of reeds, while Davis went to find a friend who had long before promised us shelter. While lying there, we heard a man walking through the darkness directly toward us. We hugged the earth and held our breaths, listening to the beating of our own hearts. He passed so near, that his coat brushed my cheek. We were beside a path which led across the field from one house to another. Davis soon returned, and called us with a low "Hist!" We crept to the fence where he waited.
"It is all right," he said; "follow me."
He led us through bushes and lanes until we found our friend, leaning against a tree in the rain, waiting for us.
"Thank God!" he exclaimed, "you are out at last. I wish I could extend to you the hospitalities of my house; but it is full of visitors, and they are all Rebels. However,I will take you to a tolerably safe place. I have to leave town by a night train in half an hour, but I will tell ---- where you are, and he will come and see you to-morrow."
Hiding in Sight of the Prison.
He conducted us to a barn, in full sight of the prison; directed us how to hide, wrung our hands, bade us Godspeed, and returned to his house and his unsuspecting guests.
We climbed up the ladder into the hay-mow. Davis and Wolfe burrowed down perpendicularly into the fodder, as if sinking an oil-well, until they were covered, heads and all. "Junius" and myself, after two hours of perspiring labor, tunneled into a safe position under the eaves, where we lay, stretched at full length, head to head, luxuriating in the fresh air, which came in through the cracks.
Wonderfully pure and delicious it seemed, contrasted with the foul, vitiated atmosphere we had just left! How sweet smelled the hay and the husks! How infinite the "measureless content" which filled us at the remembrance that at last we were free! Hearing the prison sentinels, as they shouted "Ten o'—clock; a—ll's well!" we sank, like Abou Ben Adhem, into a deep dream of peace.
Our object in remaining here was twofold. We desired to meet Welborn, and obtain minute directions about the route, which thus far he had found no opportunity to give us. Besides, we anticipated a vigilant search. The Rebel authorities were thoroughly familiar with the habits of escaping prisoners, who invariably acted as if there were never to be any more nights after the first, and walked as far as their strength would permit. Thus exhausted, they were unable to resist or run, if overtaken.
Certain to be Brought Back.
The Commandant would be likely to send out and picket all the probable routes near the points we could reach by a hard night's travel. We thought it good policy to keepinsidethese scouts. While they held the advance, they would hardly obtain tidings of us. We could learn from the negroes where they guarded the roads and fords, and thus easily evade them. Our shelter, in full view of the garrison, and within sound of its morning drum-beat, was the one place, of all others, where they would never think of searching for us.
On the second morning after our disappearance,The Salisbury Daily Watchmanannounced the escape, and said that it caused some chagrin, as we were the most important prisoners in the garrison. But it added that we were morally certain to be brought back within a week, as scouts had been sent out in all directions, and the country thoroughly alarmed. Some of these scouts went ninety miles from Salisbury, but were naturally unable to learn any thing concerning us.
II.Monday, December 19.
Remained hidden in the barn. There was a house only a few yards away, and we could hear the conversation of the inmates whenever the doors were open. White and negro children came up into the hay-loft, sometimes running and jumping directly over the heads of Wolfe and Davis.
At dark, another friend, a commissioned officer in the Rebel army, came out to us with a canteen of water, which, quite without food, we had wanted sadly during the day. He was unable to bring us provisions. His wife was a Southern lady. Reluctant to cause her anxiety for his liberty and property, imperiled by aiding us, or from some other reason, he did not take her intothe secret. Like most frugal wives, where young and adult negroes abound, she kept her provisions under lock and key, and he found it impossible to procure even a loaf of bread without her knowledge.
With his parting benediction, we returned to the field where we had waited the night before, and found Lieutenant Welborn, punctual to appointment, with another escaped prisoner, Charles Thurston, of the Sixth New Hampshire Infantry.
Thurston had two valuable possessions—great address, and the uniform of a Confederate private. At ten o'clock, on Sunday night, learning of our escape, and thinking us a good party to accompany, he walked out of the prison yard behind two Rebel detectives, the sentinel taking him for a third officer. Slouching his hat over his face, with matchless effrontery he sat down on a log, among the Rebel guards. In a few minutes he caught the eye of Welborn, who soon led him by all the sentinels, giving the countersign as he passed, until he was outside the garrison, and then hid him in a barn, half a mile from our place of shelter. The negroes fed him during the day; and now here he was, jovial, sanguine, daring, ready to start for the North Pole itself.
Commencing the Long Journey.
Welborn gave us written directions how to reach friends in a stanch Union settlement fifty miles away. It was hard to part from the noble fellow. At that very moment he was under arrest, and awaiting trial by court martial, on the charge of aiding prisoners to escape. In due time he was acquitted. Three months later he reached our lines at Knoxville, with thirty Union prisoners, whom he had conducted from Salisbury.
We said adieu, and went out into the starry silence. Plowing through the mud for three miles, we struck the Western Railroad, and followed it. Beside it were severalcamps with great fires blazing in front of them. Uncertain whether they were occupied by guards or wood-choppers, we kept on the safe side, and flanked them by widedétoursthrough the almost impenetrable forest.
Too Weak for Traveling.
We were very weak. In the garrison we had been burying from twelve to twenty men per day, from pneumonia. I had suffered from it for more than a month, and my cough was peculiarly hollow and stubborn. My lungs were still sore and sensitive, and walking greatly exhausted me. It was difficult, even when supported by the arm of one of my friends, to keep up with the party. At midnight I was compelled to lie, half unconscious, upon the ground, for three-quarters of an hour, before I could go on.
We accomplished twelve miles during the night. At three o'clock in the morning we went into the pine-woods, and rested upon the frozen ground.
III.Tuesday, December 20.
We supposed our hiding-place very secluded; but daylight revealed that it was in the midst of a settlement. Barking dogs, crowing fowls, and shouting negroes, could be heard from the farms all about us. It was very cold, and we dared not build a fire. None of us were adequately clothed, and "Junius" had not even an overcoat. It was impossible to bring extra garments, which would have excited the attention of the sentinel at the gate.
We could sleep for a few minutes on the pine-leaves; but soon the chilly air, penetrating every fibre, would awaken us. There was a road, only a few yards from our pine-thicket, upon which we saw horsemen and farmers with loads of wood, but no negroes unaccompanied by white men.
Severe March in the Rain.
Soon after dark it began to rain; but necessity, that inexorable policeman, bade us move on. When we approached a large plantation, leaving us behind, in a fence-corner, Thurston went forward to reconnoiter. He found the negro quarters occupied by a middle-aged man and woman. They were very busy that night, cooking for and serving the young white people, who had a pleasure-party at the master's house, within a stone's throw of the slave-cabin.
But when they learned that there were hungry Yankees in the neighborhood, they immediately prepared and brought out to us an enormous supper of fresh pork and corn-bread. It was now nine o'clock on Tuesday night, and we had eaten nothing since three o'clock Sunday afternoon, save about three ounces of bread and four ounces of meat to the man. We had that to think of which made us forget the gnawings of hunger, though we suffered somewhat from a feeling of faintness. Now, in the barn, with the rain pattering on the roof, we devoured supper in an incredibly brief period, and begged the slave to go back with his basket and bring just as much more.
About midnight the negro found time to pilot us through the dense darkness and pouring rain, back to the railroad, from which we had strayed three miles. The night was bitterly cold, and in half an hour we were as wet as if again shipwrecked in the Mississippi.
For five weary miles we plodded on, with the stinging rain pelting our faces. Then we stopped at a plantation, and found the negroes. They told us it was unsafe to remain, several white men being at home, and no good hiding-place near, but directed us to a neighbor's. There the slaves sent us to a roadside barn, which we reached just before daylight.