“Southern prisons will sometimes yawn,And yield their dead into life again.”
“Southern prisons will sometimes yawn,And yield their dead into life again.”
“Southern prisons will sometimes yawn,And yield their dead into life again.”
“Southern prisons will sometimes yawn,
And yield their dead into life again.”
There was a happy meeting: he recognized, and could converse with his wife for a few hours—and then death came. The following morning a few sympathizing strangers stood with her, in the little chapel, as the last impressive service was performed; and then he was carried to rest beside the thousands of his fellow-soldiers.
A browned and emaciated boy, who had endured a long imprisonment, said the earth he burrowed out was his only shelter until he planted a few grains of corn: with great watching and care, it grew to screen him slightly from the sun, and remind him offieldsof it at home.
A man from the 15th Massachusetts, whose name I neglected to take, was captured at the battle of theWilderness eight days after re-enlisting. He had with him a blackened, soiled Bible: the binding and paper had once been handsome, but now, from exposure to storms, like its owner, looked badly; he said the rebels often tried to get it, but he managed to secrete it: it was his best friend, and very precious to him; he hoped to take it with him to his home in Massachusetts.
Upon giving to one of them some trifling articles, he thanked me very cordially, and said: “You must not think us a set of children, because such little things make us so happy; but remember we have hadnokindness shown us for fifteen months, and these things tell us we are home again among friends.” And thus they talk by the hour.
Two brothers were lying side by side: one had lost half his foot and was in the hospital, while his brother was in the stockade at Andersonville. The one in the hospital had concealed some money, which he divided with his brother as soon as he could get out to him; thus enabling both to purchase food, and probably saved their lives.
Near them was a wounded Indian, and a Maine man six feet four inches tall—now so emaciated that he does not weigh one hundred pounds: in health, weighs over two hundred.
June 6th, came the last arrival of bad cases: among them Philip Hattel, Company I, 51st Pennsylvania Vols., from near Barren Hill, Montgomery County; he was captured at the battle of the Wilderness; from prison, sent to Fortress Monroe; from there to this place. He lingered three weeks, and died, as thousands of his comrades had, from cruel starvation.
It seems strange that one of the earliest captured should be returned among the very last. The name I have lost, but the facts are as I wrote them when the man related the story to me: After the first Bull Run fight, a number of men were making their escape to a place of safety, when some negroes offered to pilot them beyond the rebels; but they were soon surrounded, and the whole party taken to Richmond, where they were tried for abducting slaves, and sentenced to imprisonment during the war. They were kept in Richmond two years: then moved in regular rotation through all the prisons, and sent North with the very last. What became of their colored friends, they never knew. It was very mortifying to the soldier to think he had been a prisoner during the entire war: and fearful that his friends would not receive him, he determined to take the name of one who had died in prison; his comrades had great difficulty in dissuading him from doing so.
An old gentleman, from Columbia, Penna., came inquiring for “St. John’s Hospital.” Two days previous he had received a letter from his son, whom they had long mourned as dead; and now, overjoyed to know that he was alive, he could hardly wait to be directed to the place. The boy came in the last arrival, is convalescent, and will return with him.
The 1st of July found the hospitals vacated, and a few months later restored to their former uses. The war ended, peace ensured, men mustered out of service, our work completed, there came for the first time in all these long, eventful years, to overtasked mind and wearied body, the perfectrest of home!
This glimpse of hospital work can give but an imperfect sketch of a portion of that mighty host “who have filled history with their deeds, and the earth with their renown.”
THE END.