nsoner o

1864-5

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A Prisoner of War in Virginia, 1864-5.
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Geo. Haven Putnam
ist Lieut, and Adjt. i76th Regt., N. Y. Vols.

A

Prisoner of War in Virginia

1 864-5

By
George Haven Putnam

Adjt. and Bvt-Major 176th N. Y. S. Vol..

George Haven Putnam

U. S. Loyal Legion, December 7, 1910

With Illustrations

G. P. Putnam's Sons

New York and London
Cbe fmicfterbocfeec press
1912

N. Y. VoU.

A

Prisoner of War in Virginia

1 864-5

By
George Haven Putnam

Adjt. and Bvt.-Major 176th N. Y. S. Vols.

Reprinted, with Additions, from the Report of an Address

Presented to the N. Y. Commandery of the

U. S. Loyal Legion, December 7, 1910

With Illustrations

G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
fmfcfcerbocfcer press
1912

COPYRIGHT, igia

BY

GEORGE HAVEN PUTNAM

ttbe ftnfcfcerbocfcer preee, flew

Co

MY ARTIST CHUM

MAJOR HARRY VANDERWEYDE

IN MEMORY OF PRISON DAYS (AND NIGHTS) IN LIBBY AND DANVILLE

249494

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING

PAGE

GEORGE HAVEN PUTNAM,

ist Lieut, and Adjutant, I76th Regt. N. Y. S.
Vols., September, 1864 . Frontispiece

MOSBY'S CAVALRY

RAIDING A QUARTERMASTER'S TRAIN . . 5

" AND SHERIDAN FIFTEEN MILES AWAY ! " . 8
LIBBY PRISON, RICHMOND 17

MORNING TOILET, UNION OFFICERS' PRISON,
DANVILLE, VA. WINTER 1864-65.
From a sketch made at the time by Captain
Harry Vander Weyde ... .41

An Experience in Virginia Prisons

During the Last Winter of the

War

An Experience in Virginia Prisons

During the Last Winter of the

War

THE following record of my sojourn in the
winter of 1864-65 in Libby and in Danville
prisons was prepared under the instructions of the
Commander of the New York Commandery of
the Loyal Legion for publication in the volume of
Reports of the Commandery. Forty-eight years
have elapsed since the winter here described, and
I cannot undertake to say that my memory can
be trusted for all of the details or incidents. I
have no doubt that these will be open to correction
on the part of comrades who may have shared the
experiences of those strenuous months. I can
only say that the record has been set down in
good faith, and may be accepted as possessing
such value as belongs to any individual experi
ence recalled after a long interval of years.

: • • The Battle of Cedar Creek

My experience as a prisoner in Virginia began
on the 1 9th of October, 1864, a day made famous
by Sheridan's decisive victory at Cedar Creek.
At the time of the battle, my regiment, which
belonged to Grover's division of the iQth Army
Corps, occupied a position on the extreme left
of the line that had been assigned to the corps.
On our left, the field sloped down to the Shenan-
doah Pike, while on the farther side of the pike,
a rising ground extending to the flank of Massa-
nutten Mountain was occupied by the 8th Corps.
The line of the entire army faced southward, the
only direction from which an attack seemed to
be possible.

It was difficult in any case to believe that an at
tack was to be anticipated even from so persistent
and plucky an opponent as General Early. Within
the preceding thirty days, Early's army had been
sent whirling through Winchester, and had been
driven back from its works on Fisher's Hill, with
a serious loss of men and of guns. It seemed cer
tainly very unlikely that these beaten, tired, and
hungry troops could venture an attack upon
Sheridan's lines.

The Attack 7

The battle of Cedar Creek has been often de
scribed, and the main events are, of course, familiar
to all of my readers who were present or who have
kept themselves interested in the record of the
decisive events of the war. My individual re
lation to it was but small, as I was "taken posses
sion of" during the early hours of that strenuous
morning. We were aroused in the foggy darkness
by the sound of firing across the pike on our left.
We realised that something was wrong with our
friends in the 8th Corps, but it was impossible to
see across the road, and during the first hour our
understanding of what was happening was very
confused. In falling into line on the alarm, we
faced, as said, to the south, but when round shot
came rolling along our trench from across the pike,
it was evident that the attack to be repelled was
to come from the east or from the southeast.
Our brigade was wheeled to the left so as to face,
or nearly to face, the pike, and before long the rest
of the division wheeled in like manner, forming an
extension of our line. A field-battery of four or
six guns had been placed a little in advance of the
position of my regiment. The first shots across

8 Save the Gun

the road had disabled some of the horses, and the
men had dragged in behind our infantry line all
of the guns but one. A brigade-commander (I
think it was Colonel Dan. Macauley of the nth
Indiana) called from his horse (and it is my memory
that at that hour but very few of the officers had
ventured to mount their horses) for men to go out
and drag in the last gun. A group of us started
across the field, but just as we went forward, Mac
auley received a shot through his chest. The men
in the line, finding that the "Butternuts" were
working across the pike to the north, fell back, if
I understand rightly not under any orders but
with the instinct of veterans to keep themselves
from being outflanked. When I reached the gun,
I found that there were not enough men with me
to make it possible to move the piece across the
rough ground, and we were almost immediately
cut off by an intervening line of the enemy. The
slope was an uncomfortable resting-place, as for
a brief time it was receiving a scattering fire from
both sides. We lay down flat on the rough turf,
and while I was not even at that time a large man,
I remember having the uncomfortable feeling, as

Taken Prisoner 9

the zip, zip of the balls went over our heads, that
I was swelling upward as big as an elephant. We
had, however, but few minutes to be troubled with
this phase of the situation, as the second line of
the enemy soon came sweeping across the road
and promptly took possession of our little group.
I was the only officer in the lot and I think there
may have been with me eight or nine men. As I
saw the advance of the rebel line, I had hidden my
sword in a cleft of the rock. It was a presentation
sword bearing, in addition to my own name, those
of the company officers of my regiment, and I have
been hoping since the war that some impecunious
Southerner would be interested, for a proper con
sideration, in looking up the owner; but I have
had no tidings of it. I had in my belt a small
Remington revolver and without thinking the
matter out, I had, in place of disposing of the pistol,
taken out and thrown away the cylinder. The
first "Butternut" with whom I came in contact
was a little excited; I think he must have gotten
hold of a drop of 8th Corps whiskey. He took the
pistol from my belt, and as long as he held it up
straight in front of him, he was quite pleased with

io A Difference of Opinion

his acquisition. When on turning it, however,
he discovered the absence of the cylinder, he was
a very mad "reb" indeed. He brought up his
Enfield with an imprecation and ordered the
"damned little Yank" to find that cylinder. I
was naturally not very much interested in meeting
his wishes excepting for the purpose of getting rid
of the threatening Enfield, and I had given the
cylinder a miscellaneous chuck and should not
have known where to look. Fortunately one of
his officers was within reach and, knocking down
his piece, sent him to the front, while myself and
the men with me were taken across the creek
to be placed with the prisoners that had been
gathered in a little earlier from the camp of the
8th Corps.

In the course of an hour or so, these prisoners,
aggregating, I think, ten or eleven hundred, were
stood up in line, and certain non-commissioned
officers, delegated for the purpose, " went through "
each individual of the line with a thoroughness
and precision that indicated previous practice.
They took possession of overcoats, blankets, and
the contents of our pockets — money as far as we

Appropriations 1 1

had any, watches and knives; they also took what
under the circumstances was the most serious loss
for men who had a long march before them, our
shoes. I was pretty well down on the left of the
line and some time before my turn was reached
I was able to note what were the articles that were
being appropriated. I realised that a considerable
march had to be made and I was not at all happy
at the idea of being obliged to do my tramping
without shoes or with the fragmentary apologies
for shoes that the "rebs" were chucking back to
the Yankees in exchange. I took my knife and
made some considerable slashes in the uppers of
my shoes. The result was that they were not
considered worth appropriating and they fortun
ately held together during the march and for some
time thereafter. The only other man in the line,
as far as I noticed, who saved his shoes was a young
staff -officer of the 6th Corps, Lieutenant Vander-
Weyde. I had observed the youngster before be
cause he had small feet and wore patent leathers
with which he seemed to be well satisfied. I .re
membered hearing some of our boys throwing out
jeers at "pretty little patent leathers" as, a day

12 My Chum VanderWeyde

or two earlier he had ridden through our camp.
The smallness of his feet saved for him his pretty
boots. These were taken off two or three times
by the examiners but no one was able to put them
on, and with a half-indignant good nature, the
last examiner threw back the articles with the
words, "Here Yank, you can keep your damned
pretty little boots." As far as I can remember,
VanderWeyde had the only decent looking boots
to be seen that winter in my division of the prison.
We remained under guard in a field to the south
of the Cedar Creek bridge until two in the after
noon. We were out of sight of the lines on which
the fighting was being conducted, but we realised
that our men must have been driven back and that
Early's force was in close pursuit, because the
sound of the firing had gone off far to the north
ward. Between twelve and two, there had been
a lull or else the firing was so far distant that it no
longer reached our ears. A little after two, there
was a revival of the sound of musketry and we
thought it was coming our way. The impression
that there might be some change in the condition
of affairs was strengthened by our being hurried

March of the Prisoners 13

into a column of march and started along the pike
southward. Our hosts had forgotten to give us
any mid-day meal and most of us had not had time
for any breakfast before getting into fighting line
in the early morning, so that we were rather faint
for a hurried tramp. During one of the short
rests that had to be allowed to tired-out men in
the course of the afternoon, our brigade dog who
had, very unwisely for himself, followed the line
of march, was taken possession of by some hungry
men and a little later on one of my own group was
good enough to give me a hurriedly toasted chunk.
I do not know how I should have been able to hold
up for the afternoon if it had not been for my share
of the dog.

While, on the ground of our being hurried south
ward, we were somewhat encouraged about the
final outcome of the battle, it was not easy to
believe that what had seemed in the early morning
to be so thorough a defeat could have been changed
into a victory. In fact, it was weeks, before,
through the leakage of news into the prison, we
got knowledge of the actual outcome of the day.
In the course of the evening, our guards remem-

14 A Break for Liberty

bered to scatter among us a little hardtack taken
from one of our own commissary waggons, but the
ration was very small for the amount of marching
that had to be done with it. Sometime before
midnight, in company with VanderWeyde with
whom I had fallen into "chumming" relations,
I made a break for liberty. We remembered the
region through which we had marched not long
before as "ruthless invaders," and it was our idea
to strike for a dry ditch which was on the farther
side of a field adjoining the road. We bolted just
behind the nearest guard and took him so far by
surprise that his shot and that of the guard next
in line did not come near enough to be dangerous,
and we succeeded in tumbling into the ditch
which we found unfortunately to be no longer dry.
There was, in fact, an inch or two of water in the
bottom. There was nothing to do but to lie quiet
and wait until the column of prisoners and guards
had passed. We were disappointed, however, to
find that the sound of the marching continued for
an indefinite period ; and in fact pretty soon there
were added to the tramp of feet sounds from a
long series of wheels. It was evident that the

At the Bottom of the Ditch 15

trains, or such of the waggons as remained of the
trains, were being moved southward. Then there
came a rumble which seemed like that of field-
guns. While we were puzzling in our minds as
to whether the whole army could really be on the
retreat, the question was answered in a most un
satisfactory fashion. Not only were Early's
troops marching southward but they were going
with such urgency that the road was not sufficient
for their purpose. They were straggling into the
fields on both sides, and a group of two or three,
too tired and too sleepy to watch their steps,
tumbled into our ditch on top of us. They said
things and so did we. Our state of mind was in
fact like that of South Carolina three years earlier;
we only wanted to be let alone. But that privilege
was not granted to us. We were hustled out of
the ditch, chilled and out of temper at our failure
and at what seemed to us the unnecessarily rough
treatment of our new captors. We were, so to
speak, butted back into the road and hustled
along from group to group until in the early hours
of the morning we found ourselves again in the
column of prisoners. I understood later that our

16 Recaptured

cavalry had pursued that column through a large
part of the night and we must have done pretty
lively marching to keep ahead of them, but the
horses doubtless were tired on their part.

It is my memory that the tramp to Stauntori
took the better part of three days. I recall our
arrival in early morning in the main street of the
little town, at breakfast time or at what seemed to
us ought to be breakfast time. The prisoners
were huddled into a little square in front of the inn
and we were near enough to hear the sound of the
rebel officers at breakfast. I think we could take
in the pleasant smell of the ham and eggs. After
what seemed to us a very long wait, the commis
sary came out on the little balcony of the hotel
with some assistants bearing a few boxes of hard
tack. These boxes were thrown over from the
balcony into the square in such fashion that they
broke as they fell and the officers on the balcony
enjoyed the spectacle of the prisoners scrambling
for their breakfast. Later in the day, we were
put into box cars and started on the journey for
Richmond. There was but a single track and our
train was switched frequently to allow of the pass-

rt vo
> oo

§ =

I!
1

Hotel de Libby 19

ing of passenger trains and supply trains, so that
our progress to Richmond was slow. The officers
were marched across the town to Libby Prison
where the captain of our guard secured a receipt
for us from Sergeant Turner, while the men were
taken over to Belle Isle.

The first of the prison functions was the strip
ping of every man to the skin for the purpose of a
further appropriation of any valuables that he
might have succeeded in concealing. In this fresh
search, I lost $150, that I had sewn into the inside
of my shirt. The moneys that had been saved by
a few of the officers after the first search were,
with hardly an exception, taken possession of at
the second examination.

We were interested to see the adjutant of the
prison noting down in a little memorandum book
the sums taken from each man. "It will be all
right, gentlemen," he said reassuringly, "these
moneys will of course be returned to you." This
ceremony completed, we were shown into the
general living room on the top floor of the Libby
building. It is my memory that at this time,
October, 1864, the prison was full, but not crowded.

20 Our Money Placed "In Safety"

Floor space was made for us under the supervision
of one of our own officers who took upon himself
the responsibilities of what might be called quarter
master's duties. At our request, VanderWeyde
and myself were given floor space together, and
we then took an account of our joint property.
I had picked up en route (I do not recall where)
a small piece of blanket and I had also succeeded
in retaining a broken pocket-knife. My chum had
a tin cup and a pocket-comb. These things were
held in common. As personal appurtenances we
had been fortunate enough to save our tooth
brushes which the examining sergeant had not
considered worth appropriating, and my chum,
who was a clever artist, had also been able to retain
possession of a pocket sketch-book and a pencil.
These tooth-brushes later became noteworthy.
It is my memory that there were not more than a
dozen or so among about 350 officers. The pos
sessors placed their tooth-brushes through the
button-holes of their blouses ; partly because there
was no other safe or convenient storage place, and
partly perhaps to emphasise a sense of aristocratic
opulence. We became known as the " tooth-

No More Blockade-Running 21

brush brigade." My chum, with some protest
from me against the using up of my knife, did some,
artistic carving on the handle of his brush, pro
ducing with no little skill a death's-head and a
skeleton. Late in the winter, when we had been
moved to Danville, one of the officers of the guard
offered me for my brush $300, of course in Con
federate currency. I expressed a little surprise
that the article, no longer new, should have such
selling value, and he began to reply, "Well, but
you see now we cannot get any more," and then
checked himself. The word "now" emphasised
itself in my ear, and connecting this with certain
rumours that had already leaked into the prison,
I realised that Wilmington must have fallen
and that no more tooth-brushes or other supplies
from England could be secured. But this is, of
course, advancing in my narrative.

In Libby, as later in Danville, the prisoners,
comprising as said, only commissioned officers,
maintained an organisation and ordinary disci
pline. We accepted as authoritative the orders of
the senior officer in the prison, and this officer as
sociated with him two or three men who divided up

22 Prison Rations

between them responsibilities for keeping order,
for assigning quarters, for adjusting difficulties, etc.
Our general went through the form, and it was not
much more than a form, of appointing on his staff
a commissary. It was the duty of this officer to
receive from the prison sergeant the daily ration
and to arrange for an equitable distribution of such
ration among the prison messes. We had, for the
convenience of such distribution, been divided
into groups of six or eight. The so-called commis
sary had, of course, nothing to issue but the ration
that was brought in. His office reminded me of
the description given by the young showman in
the menagerie, "this is the jackal what perwides
for the lion always perwiding that there is anything
to perwide." The Libby ration in these last
months of 1864 comprised soup made out of in
conspicuous little beans, and a chunk of corn bread.
During the close of our sojourn in Libby, the soup
part was cut off and the ration reduced itself to
the corn bread. The corn bread as baked was
marked out into squares, but for some reason which
I never had explained to me, each square of corn
bread was a ration not for one but for two. The

4 'With or Without" 23

messes, therefore, were subdivided into pairs and
the chums had to arrange between themselves each
morning for the division of the flat chunk into two
portions. My chum and myself took turns in
cutting that chunk into two pieces. On one piece
was laid the broken knife and the man who had
done the cutting then called to the other fellow,
who stood with his back to the cake, to say whether
he would have it " with " or "without " (the knife).
Whichever piece one got, the other always looked
a little bigger. We regretted to part with the
black bean soup, although we had not been fond
of it. It contained about as many bugs as there
were beans, the taste was abominable, and the
nourishment probably slight. I understood later
when I was on parole in Richmond, that the beans
and corn-meal issued to the prisoners had been
rejected by the commissaries as unfit for their
own troops. I should not venture to estimate
with any precision the size or the weight or the
chunk of corn bread which came to us once a day.
My memory is, however, quite clear on the point
that it was absurdly small. Some of us went
through the form of cutting our chunk into three

24 Difficulties of the Commissariat

pieces with the idea that we would make three
meals out of it; but it was very difficult to avoid
eating up the three meals within the first hour
even though we knew that we should have to wait
until eleven o'clock the next morning for another
chunk. Large or small, the chunk was not even
nourishing throughout. The cake as baked con
tained other things besides corn-meal. Pieces of
the corn-cob were ground up indiscriminately and
we also found in the cake cockroaches and other in
sects and occasionally pieces of mice that had lost
their way in the meal-bins. In reply to complaints
that were from time to time submitted, the prison
officers had nothing to say but that it was the best
they had and that the Yankees had better be thank
ful that they got anything. I judge that by De
cember 9, 1864, it must have been a very difficult
task indeed for the rebel commissary-general to
secure by his two lines of single track roads, one
of which was from time to time being cut by our
raiders, sufficient food to supply the army and the
townspeople. It was not surprising that the fare
remaining for the prisoners should have been
inconsiderable in amount and abominable in

Sleeping Accommodations 25

quality. The stupid brutality of the whole
business was in keeping prisoners at all in Rich
mond during the last winter of the war; for that
stupidity which, as it meant the loss of many lives,
may fairly be described by the simpler word of
murder, the responsibility must rest with Jefferson
Davis, Commissioner Ould, and General Winder.
The abiding place through the night and through
the greater part of the day was, as said, the strip
of floor allotted to each. It is my memory that
at this time Libby was not so crowded but that
each man could have the advantage of putting his
head back against the wall. Later, when we were
transferred to Danville, the arrangement of space
required four rows of sleepers, two with their heads
to the wall and two with their heads to the centre.
The wall spaces were, of course, in demand. At
the point of the wall in Libby where my own head
rested (more or less restlessly) I found scratched
(apparently with the point of a nail) on the two
or three bricks the names of previous occupants
of the quarters, names representing in most cases
men who had " joined the majority." I naturally
added, in order to complete the record, my own

26 The Bricks of Libby

name on a brick a corner of which was still frre.
Some years after the war, a correspondent wrote
to me from Richmond that he could if I wished send
me this autographed brick in consideration of the
payment of $5.00. As, however, there would have
been no difficulty in scratching my name on another
brick, I did not think the purchase worth while.
That brick and its companions are now resting
somewhere in Ashtabula County, Ohio. Some of
you will recall that the Libby building was pur
chased by some speculators to be put up in Chicago
for exhibition. It was a stupid plan, for the his
toric interest of the building was properly to be
connected with its location, and there was some
thing repellent in the thought of using as a show
place a structure which represented so much of
pathetic tragedy. I was myself not at all dis
pleased to learn that the train carrying the timbers
and the bricks of Libby had been wrecked at
Ashtabula, and the materials scattered over the
surrounding fields. The timbers were, I believe,
finally taken to Chicago, but I understood that in
place of going to the labour of picking up the scat
tered bricks, they utilised in reconstructing the

Flashes from Our Guns 27

building, old bricks available in Chicago. Whether
or not they undertook to replace the scratched
names of the dead veterans I do not know.

The ship-chandlery of William Libby & Son
was, as we all know, placed close to the edge of the
James River, so that goods could be landed directly
on the Libby pier. Looking across the river from
the back windows of the prison, we were able,
during the nights of December, to see from time
to time the flashes of the guns from the lines of
the Army of the James. We used to make our
artillery officers study out the line of fire and give
us their opinion as to whether they did not believe
the flashes were getting nearer. I suppose the
distance was something over six miles, and if I am
wrong in this calculation, there are veterans from
the Army of the James who will set me right.

The prison had by this winter been so protected
that there was no chance of any further attempts
at escape by tunnelling. The cellar floor through
which Rose and his associates had dug their tunnel
in 1863 had been masoned over and under the
later arrangement of the guards it would have
been impracticable in any case to secure admission

28 The Blood-hound Guard

to this floor without observation. A most im
portant part of the protection, however, was given
by the addition to the prison guard of a magnificent
blood-hound. The sergeant marched in front of
the guard and the hound in the rear, and looking
from the prison windows we could see him cock
up his eye at us as he passed, as if he very fully
understood the nature of his responsibilities.
From time to time, the hound would also, either
under orders or possibly of his own motion, make
the circuit of the building, sniffing around its
foundations. There would have been no chance
of an undiscovered tunnel while that dog was
within reach. I had trouble with that dog some
months later when I was on parole in Richmond.
I had been told that the intelligence of the blood
hound enabled him to be taught all kinds of things,
but that it was very difficult, if not impossible,
to unteach him anything. This hound had been
taught "to go for" anybody wearing blue cloth.
At this later time, I had secured clean clothes from
home and the blue was, therefore, really blue
instead of the nondescript colour of my much-worn
prison garments. I had occasion from time to

A Sergeant's Amusement 29

time to go to Castle Thunder, where the dog was
kept, and the sergeant of the prison guard amused
himself by putting the dog on a long leash to see
how near he could get to the little Yankee adjutant
without quite " chawing" him up. I complained
in due form to the captain of the guard that the
jaws of the hound did not constitute a fair war
risk. He accepted my view and had the dog put
on a shorter leash so that I was able to get past him
into the prison door. I was told that when
Weitzel's troops entered Richmond, the dog was
captured and was later brought to New York and
sold at auction on the steps of the Astor House.
If the buyer permitted any of his home circle to
wear army blue, there must certainly have been
trouble.

On the first Tuesday in November, it was de
cided to hold in the prison a presidential election.
I may admit to having shared the doubt expressed
by some others as to the wisdom of the attempt.
There was among the prisoners a dissatisfaction,
which might be called a well-founded dissatis
faction, at the way in which they had been neg
lected, or appeared to have been neglected, by

30 Blocking the Exchange

the authorities in Washington. At this time, the
exchange had been blocked for more than six
months and when in the following February, ex
change arrangements were finally resumed, there
had in fact been no general exchange for nearly
twelve months. As the war progressed and the
resources of the Confederates were diminished,
it was impossible for them to make appropriate
provision for the care of prisoners, at least as far
as the prisons of Northern Virginia were concerned.
Even if there had been an honest desire on their
part to save the lives or to protect the health of the
helpless men for whom they were responsible, the
task would have been difficult; but it was quite
evident that there was no such desire. I remember
among the war correspondence that is in print a
letter from Commissioner Ould to President Davis,
written in the winter of 1864-65, urging the policy
of a prompt renewal of the exchange arrangements.
It is evident, writes the commissioner (I am
quoting only the substance of the letter and there
fore do not use quotation marks) , that we need for
our depleted ranks all the fighting men that can
be secured. The men who are returned to us from

Old Lamps for New 31

the Northern prisons are for the most part able-
bodied and fit for service ; while but few of the fel
lows that we should send North in the exchange
will be permitted by their surgeons again to handle
muskets.

I realised some months later the truth of Com
missioner Quid's observations. The men who
came out of Libby and Danville in February, 1865,
were, with hardly an exception, unfit for service.
The Confederates whom we met on the steamboats
coming to Richmond as we went down the James,
looked to be in good working and good fighting
condition. By November, 1864, the mortality
in the Virginia prisons had become serious. The
men who were not entirely broken down were,
through lack of food and through the exposure to
cold from lack of clothing, physically discouraged
and depressed although they did maintain for the
most part will power. I could not but fear, there
fore, that in an election which was to indicate their
approval or their disapproval of the management
of the authorities in Washington and of the in
action in regard to the renewal of the exchange,
a majority of their votes might naturally be cast

32 We Re-elect Lincoln

against the re-election of Lincoln. The men who
had planned this test election trusted their com
rades, and their confidence proved to be justified.
When the vote was counted, it was found that we
had re-elected Lincoln by about three to one.
Years afterwards, I learned from Robert Lincoln
that the report of this vote in Libby Prison, reach
ing his father months later, was referred to by the
President as the most satisfactory and encouraging
episode in the presidential campaign. His words
were in effect: we can trust our soldiers. The
votes had of course no part in the official count
but they were, as Lincoln understood, important,
as showing the persistent courage and devotion
of the men. My own ballot would in any case
have been illegal as I was but twenty years of age,
but I have always felt that it was on the whole
the most important vote I ever cast.

One night late in December, we had an inter
ruption which, while at the time fatiguing, gave
ground for encouragement. We were ordered
up at two o'clock in the morning and were hurried
across the town and packed into box cars for
Danville. We gathered, from the exchange of a

Hurried Out of Richmond 33

word or two with the guards who permitted them
selves to talk, that there was a scare at headquarters
about the advance of our lines. The journey was
exhausting partly because, in the hurry of getting
rations for us, the authorities had found nothing
more convenient than salt fish and the train was
allowed to stop but seldom. But thirsty and
tired as we were, we were happy with the thought
that perhaps our men really were getting into
Richmond. They really were, but it took five
months more to accomplish the task.

We had quarters assigned to us in Danville in
a tobacco warehouse, the windows on the southern
end of which overlooked the River Dan. The
view from these windows included, in addition
to the river, a stretch of North Carolina, and in
the far distance could be seen the hazy outlines
of the great Smoky Mountains. These mountains
meant to us more than a bit of scenery; we asso
ciated with them the possibilities of freedom. It
was the general talk that if a man could make his
way to the recesses of the mountains, and that if
he did not starve or freeze in the wilderness, and
if he struck the right kind of darkies or the right

34 The Great Smoky Mountains

kind of Southern deserters, he might possibly
finally get through to our lines. A few men did
succeed, as I will relate later, in getting away
from Danville Prison and several of them tried
the great Smoky route. As far as I could learn
from later reports, but two succeeded in getting
through. The others were lost and were doubtless
starved or frozen in the wilderness. As it was
impossible to get any food with which to make
the start and as the army blouses, originally not
very stout, were worn threadbare, and as the ma
jority of the men had either no shoes or but frag
ments of shoes, the prospects for starving or for
freezing on the way were excellent.

The tobacco warehouse might have made a
fairly comfortable abiding-place if it had been
properly fitted up and cared for. But the glass
was broken from many of the windows, and Dan
ville lies high enough to give many cold days and
many still colder nights in the months of winter.
The building comprised three floors, a ground
floor and two upper floors. The sojourning of the
prisoners was restricted to the two upper floors.
The lower floor was used merely as a thoroughfare

Quarters in Danville 35

to the yard and for the water parties who were
permitted once or twice a day to bring water from
the river. It was the duty of the guard who pro
tected the yard and of his fellow who patrolled
the lower floor, to see that no prisoners were per
mitted to linger either in the yard or on their way
back to their own floor. Now and then, in fact,
the prisoners were subjected by impatient guards
to some very annoying hustling. The two floors
were divided so that by the beginning of the winter
there were about two hundred on each floor. I
emphasise at the beginning of the winter because
as the months rolled on, the numbers became
smaller. There were enough vacancies through
death to give space on the floor. At the outset,
however, the men were arranged in two rows with
their heads to the wall and two rows with their
heads to the centre. The additional comfort of
the position by the wall was to some extent offset
by the fact that it was nearer to the cold wind
that came through the broken windows. The
floors were dirty as we took possession of them
and they became dirtier as the weeks went by.
At one time, we essayed a petition to the officer of

36 Exchanges of " Property "

the guard for hoes with which to scrape off the
surface of dirt. The request was denied on the
ground, I believe, that the hoes might have been
utilised as weapons. At either end of the room,
was an old-fashioned stove fitted for the burning
of wood, and as the weather grew colder, sleeping
positions near the stove advanced in value. Ex
changes of berths were made for property consid
eration. A piece of blanket, a pair of shoes more
or less dilapidated, or a pocket-knife, constituted
the exchange currency. The wood for the stove
was brought in from the wood-pile in the yard by
the prisoners, the work being of course done under
guard. The supply of wood was kept pretty scant
and there were long hours when the fires were
out and when our application for permission to
bring in more wood received no attention. It is
my memory that in Danville the daily ration was
brought down to the corn bread alone. There
were apparently no damaged beans available and
the good beans that were fit to eat must have been
very much needed in Richmond. Danville was
at this time one of the great sources of supplies
for Lee's army at Richmond, and the one-track

My Artist Chum 37

road was very fully employed with the trains from
the South bearing to Lee's army such supplies as
were still to be secured in the almost exhausted
Confederacy.

My selection of a chum proved fortunate in one
way that I could not have anticipated. Vander-
Weyde was clever with his pencil and some por
traits that he had sketched of the guards attracted
attention not only in the prison but with some of
the officers outside. He was fortunate enough to
be invited by one or two officers who had homes in
town, to go to their houses and to sketch wife or
daughter. He objected properly enough that his
blouse was shabby and his trousers disreputable
and also that in the absence of soap he was not fit
for the presence of ladies. The officers wanted
the portraits, and the result was that the fortunate
VanderWeyde secured a bath with real soap, and
a jacket and pair of trousers that held together
and that gave him in the midst of the rags with
which he was surrounded, the appearance of an
aristocrat. The rags discarded by the swagger
artist enabled me to do some very important patch
ing on my own garments. Further, in going first

38 Art and Hoe-Cakes

to one house and then to the other, Vander-
Weyde had the opportunity of getting something
to eat and finally, and that is where I came in,
he was thoughtful enough to remember to stow
away in a pocket a couple of hoe-cakes for his
chum. It was VanderWeyde's good fortune a
few months later, to serve on the staff of the officer
who commanded the advance brigade of the troops
taking possession of Danville. His commander,
knowing of his prison experience, authorised him
to receive from the mayor the formal surrender
of the town. VanderWeyde had, during his ex
perience as a working artist, been a guest at the
mayor's house and had been there cared for by
the mayor's wife. He had, therefore, an additional
motive for desiring to make the function of sur
render as gentle and as informal as possible. He
found himself, however, received by the mayor
with the utmost severity and with not the slightest
sign of recognition. In April, 1865, the mayors
of Virginia towns found it difficult, and it was quite
natural that they should have found it difficult,
to accept any social relations with the triumphant
invaders.

The Songs of Prison 39

While the occupations of the day gave very little
opportunity for exercise, we found ourselves fairly
sleepy by nightfall. Either by some general con
sensus of habit or possibly as a result of orders
from our commanding officers, we got into the
habit of turning in (a mere figure of speech, of
course, as we had nothing to turn into) at about
the same hour and all together. It was the custom,
after we were all recumbent and there was quiet
across the floor, for two or three of the men who
had good voices and good memories to raise a
song in which the rest of us joined as far as we knew
how or when there was an easy chorus. The
songs selected were, however, mainly of the quieter
not to say sadder variety, which did not include
choruses. I have the memory that the songs grew
sadder as the winter wore on. We began jubi
lantly enough with Marching through Georgia and
other verses of triumph or hopefulness, but in the
later months the more frequent selections were
such airs as Mother, Will You Miss Me? Tenting
on the Old Camp Ground, and Home, Sweet Home.
As the lines of the sleepers thinned ®ut through
the winter months, the doubts evidently increased

40 Companions of the Night

as to the prospects for any further triumphant
marching through Georgia or anywhere else by
our lot of veterans. Some of the improvised choirs
had memory also of the words and airs of psalms
and hymns and the singing of these constituted
the only religious exercises of which I have memory.
The singing went on until from the commander's
corner of the room came the word "taps," after
which we were all expected to be quiet and to get
what sleep we could.

In spite of fatigue and of the fact that we were
nearly all youngsters, sleep was by no means an
easy accomplishment. The floor was hard and
cold currents of wind coming in through the broken
panes made it chilly. There was hardly anything
that could be called covering. I suppose that
among the 350 men, there may have been sixty
or seventy scraps of blanket. As before stated,
the overcoats had been taken together with a
large number of the shoes, so that shoulders and
feet were both chilly. Last and by no means least,
sleep was interfered with by the constant irritation
of the big vermin which grew bigger as we grew
smaller. The beasts crawled over the ground

Wood and Water 43

from body to body and their attacks seemed to
become more aggravating as the men became more
emaciated. By daylight, they could be picked off.
and the first occupation of the morning was usually
to free oneself from their immediate presence,
but in the darkness there was nothing to be done
but to suffer with patience.

It was not easy to find occupation for the long
hours of the day. In the earlier weeks of the winter,
the more energetic of us drew lots for the oppor
tunity of making the trip to the river, a hundred
yards or so away, for the bringing in of water.
The water parties comprised from six to eight men
who were watched over by two or three guards.
Under the earlier arrangement, each man carried
a pail, but later as we grew weaker, a pail full or
a pail half full was more than one fellow could
manage and the routine finally came to be for two
men to carry together a pail about half full of
water. There was also occasional requirement
for parties to bring in wood from the wood-pile
but in this luxury we were sadly stinted. There
was for a time some activity in chess-playing.
Two groups were formed at either end of the room

44 Story Telling

which fought out with each other in a series of
tournaments. I had a boy's knowledge of chess
which was much strengthened by my prison ex
perience with older men. It is my memory that
the chess champion of the prison was Captain
Mason who is at this time (December, 1910),
Consul- General in Paris. Our chess-boards were
made out of a couple of pieces of plank which we
had been permitted to secure from the guard-house,
and the squares on which had been marked out
with charcoal. The chessmen had been carved,
with no little labour, out of pieces of our fire- wood.
Later in the winter, our chess playing came to a
stop. We found that the attempt to concentrate
eyesight and attention, when we had had so little
to eat that our brain cells were denuded of blood,
caused dizziness, and occasionally fainting fits. I
think, in fact, that an order to stop chess came
from the general or his adjutant.

Something was done in the way of occupation
or amusement by the more active- minded in telling
stories by turn, stories which comprised everything
from actual reminiscence to the vaguest fantasy.
Under the pressure of contributing their share to

Studies 45

the entertaining of the group, men who, according
to their own account, had never been guilty of
imagination and had not had any power of ex
pression, found it possible to add something of
personal interest to the entertainment. There
were also instituted a few classes of instruction.
In company with three or four others, I took les
sons in Spanish from one of the officers who was
a Mexican by birth. He succeeded in securing,
through the kindness of one of the guards, a second
hand Spanish grammar which was divided up into
as many pieces as there were students. Some of
us, therefore, had to begin the grammar in the
middle and some tackled their Spanish language
from the final pages ; but before the book was ab
solutely worn out, we did make some progress.

I myself undertook a class in German, but as I
had no grammar or text available I had to work
entirely from memory. I was assisted in my un
dertaking by a scholarly young captain, William
Cook, who had had time before entering the service
to get through some years at least of his course at
Yale. Cook knew no German, but he had a good
working knowledge of grammar. During my

46 A Barmecide Feast

sojourn in Germany, I was under the care of an
oculist and I had taken in my German by ear and
knew none of the rules of grammar. The work
of our class was shaped by the presentation by
myself of a certain number of sentences or at
least of words in grammatical relation to each
other, from which examples Cook would work
out the grammatical rule. Then our patient
students would have to learn first the words and
then the rule. We did make some progress so
that before the work of the class was given up
there was quite a fluency of utterance, most of it
pretty bad as far as the German was concerned,
but still giving evidence of application. I recall
that towards the end of our class work, Cook and
I decided to give a banquet to our class. The
feast could be described as Barmecide as there
was nothing to eat and nothing to drink. But
we gathered together on the floor as if we were
sitting about a well-appointed table. From my
end of the table I read out, as if from a menu, a
list of the courses which as given were certainly
most appetising and in the wording of which no
expense was spared. The associate host from his

Will Power and Vitality 47

end specified the wines which were to accompany
each course. After going through the motions of
eating and drinking, the two hosts read in turn the
toasts of the evening which had to be responded
to by the men called upon. It was the instruction
that the utterances were to be made in German with
the permission when no German word was avail
able, to fill in that the gap with an English term.
The language resulting was naturally pretty mixed,
but we did get some fun out of the attempt and
we promised each other that "when the cruel
war was over,'* the dinner was to be repeated in
the best restaurant in New York and that it should
not be a Barmecide feast. The real feast never
came off. By the time that those of us who were
New Yorkers got home, the group of our German
class had been so seriously broken into by death
that the coming together would have been not a
conviviality but a sadness.

The desire of occupation, whether in the way of
amusement or instruction, was not merely for the
purpose of passing the time. We realised in look
ing about the room that unless our minds, or at
least our thoughts, could be kept busy in some

48 Government

fashion, there was risk of stagnation that might
easily develop into idiocy. I recall a number of
cases in which men who, as their vitality diminished
had lost the power of hopefulness, had lost also
the control of their wills; the faces became vacant
and in the more serious cases their conscious in
telligence disappeared. These men would sit
twirling their thumbs or would stand looking out
of the windows with a vacant stare and with eyes
that saw nothing. I should have been interested
in learning how far this loss of will power and un
derstanding persisted with such of the men as
survived the imprisonment; but there was no op
portunity of tracing the later fortunes of our
prison comrades.

I have referred to the "government" of the
prison — and to the fact that we accepted, at least
in our officers* prison, the authority of seniors
just as we should have done in camp. I believe
that this acceptance of authority and maintenance
of discipline accounted for the better success on
the part of the officers as compared with the en
listed men in maintaining the vitality and in les
sening the percentage of illness and death. There

Officers and Privates 49

were two other prisons in the town, both I believe
tobacco warehouses, in which the enlisted men
were confined, possibly a thousand or more.
There was no difference in the quarters and no
difference in the food between the two prisons;
but we understood from the Confederate sergeants
that the percentage of death among the men was
very much greater than among the officers.

During the first two years of the war, there was
for the majority of the Northern regiments very
little difference in class between the men in the
ranks and the commissioned officers. The men
in the ranks and the officers came from practically
the same family groups and the same average oc
cupations and they differed but little in average
intelligence. As the war progressed, however,
the ineffective officers who had gotten their
commissions either by accident or by influence,
were largely weeded out. The men who secured
commissions during the last two years were much
more largely men who were promoted from the
ranks as they had shown capacity. They were
naturally on the whole of better education, and of
larger intelligence than the men who remained in

50 Hayes and Duffid

the ranks and they possessed a better will power.
It was this will power, the decision to live if pos
sible, the unwillingness to give up, beaten by the
Confederacy or by circumstances, that helped
during the last winter of the war to save the lives
of a number of starving officers.

The senior officer in the Danville Prison during
the larger part of the winter was Brigadier-General
Joseph Hayes, of Boston, who had been in com
mand of a regular brigade in the 5th Corps. It is
my impression that Colonel Ralston who had
commanded one of the regiments from Central
New York, acted as associate with Hayes. I do
not recall the name of the officer who did duty
as prison adjutant. The officer next in rank to
Hayes was a plucky and headstrong general named
Duffie. Duffie had, I believe, seen service in
France and was, I was told, a capable cavalry
officer. He was ambitious, vain, and if crossed,
somewhat hot-tempered. His qualities would not
have been impressed upon my memory if it had
not been for his responsibility in the direction of
an attempt to escape, an attempt which was badly
planned and badly executed and which cost the

An Attempted Outbreak 51

lives of several of our prisoners and the wounding
of several more.

At the time of this attempt which was, I think,
in the middle of January, 1865, General Hayes was
ill and had been removed to the prison hospital.
News had come from Richmond to the Confederate
commander of our prison that a band of Yankee
raiders were operating somewhere to the west of
Danville and were probably intending to make a
dash at certain of the bridges on the railroad
running southward. A couple of companies,
comprising perhaps 150 men, had been brought
into Danville by train as the first contingent of a
force which was expected to head off the raiders
and to protect the bridges. We knew the number
of this force because they were made the guests of
the prison guard and in going into the guard-house
for their noon-day meal, they had stacked their
muskets within sight of our prison windows. It
occurred to some one that if those 150 muskets
could be seized, we should have enough force to
overcome, at least for the moment, the prison
guard, while the unarmed owners of the muskets
would be helpless. Duffie (the officer highest in

52 An Attempted Outbreak

rank) jumped at the idea and called for volunteers
to make a rush for the muskets. We youngsters
were naturally not called into the council, but we
were able to hear some of the discussion. A
number of the older or at least of the more experi
enced officers gave their opinion at once against
the scheme. The opportunity for getting at the
muskets was to be made by the sending out of a
party for water and at the moment of the water
party's return, a rush was to be made with a
column of a hundred or more, at the open door of
the basement. The difficulties of the immediate
execution of the scheme were serious. Even,
however, if the first steps had been successful and
we had secured the muskets, and if we had been
able with these muskets to get control of the
guards and of the guard-house, the position would
have been a very unpromising one. In order to
get to our own lines on the northeast, it was neces
sary to make our way through Lee's army. The
only direction in which we were not likely to en
counter rebel forces was the southwest towards
the mountains of North Carolina. That plan
meant, however, finding our way without food,

Duffid Assumes Command 53

with very little clothing, and with hardly any
shoes, through many miles of wilderness. Such
a body of men could have been easily overtaken
by a comparatively small force of cavalry. To
most of us the plan seemed, therefore, to be an
absurdity. Among those who took this view was
Colonel Ralston.

Duffle listened to the objections and then as
serted his authority as commander. "I order the
attempt to be made," he said, "and I call upon the
men who have not forgotten how to obey orders,
to follow." With such a word there was of course
no alternative. A hundred and fifty of us fell in
and received our instructions. Three or four were
detailed to overpower and to choke senseless the
guard who had charge of the prison yard, while
another group was detailed to take care in the same
manner of the guard or of the two guards who pa
trolled the lower floor. Other men were detailed to
make up the water party, a party which being left
outside of the building, would, if we succeeded in
breaking out, be in no little peril. The signal was
given and the rush at the guards was made. One
man was successfully stifled, but one of the two, or

54 A Rush for Liberty

of the three (I have forgotten the number) suc
ceeded, before being finally jumped upon, in get
ting out a yell of warning. The yell came just as
the door had been opened to let in the water party.
The guards outside made a rush at once to close
the half -opened door and the column from within,
taken by surprise, was a little late in making the
counter rush. The guards succeeded in getting
the door closed and the bar up, and then, putting
their rifles through the gratings of the windows,
they fired one or more volleys upon our men as
sembled on the lower floor. A number were hit,
I do not now recall just how many, but I do re
member that one of the first who fell was Colonel
Ralston, who, while protesting from the beginning
against the movement, had been at the head of
the column. The water party, fortunately was
not molested. We carried our wounded upstairs
as the men from the guard-house rushed out and
took possession of their muskets. There was
nothing more to be done and the Confederate
colonel in charge realised that the attempt was
over. He marched in a little later with his ad
jutant and a couple of guards and had the wounded

A Tunnel 55

carried to the hospital. As Ralston was taken off,
I recall his answer to a question from one of his
friends as to the extent of his hurt: "It is," he
said, "neither as deep as a well nor as wide as a
church door, but 't will do." He died that night.
It was the belief of most of us that if Hayes had
been within the prison at the time of this so-called
"opportunity to escape," no such foolhardy
attempt would have been risked.

In the course of the winter, a plan of escape of
a very different character was attempted. In
looking out of the upper windows of the prison,
we could see on the side towards the open country
a big ditch which was not many feet from the
prison wall. The suggestion came to some that
if by means of a tunnel from the basement, one
or more men could reach the ditch, they could
lie quiet until an opportunity came to slip away
in the darkness towards the open country. The
first difficulty was how to get to the cellar for the
necessary work on such a tunnel. We had noted
on first visiting the prison yard a pair of folding
doors, barred from the inside, which from their
position evidently gave entrance (or as barred,

56 Obstacles

refused entrance) to the cellar. One of the guards
was posted in the yard and it was his duty to
remain there through the two hours (or later, as
the watches were extended, through the four
hours) of his service. The walls about the yard
were high enough to make impossible any scaling,
and even if an exceptionally tall prisoner, a man
with a Jean Valjean capacity for flying over a wall,
could have gotten across, he would have found
himself under the fire of the muskets of the guards
who patrolled about the building. The guard
having charge of the yard got into the habit,
therefore, as the winter progressed and the weather
became more severe, of taking his station inside
the door of the lower floor. This absence of the
guard gave us the opportunity of testing the bar
which held closed the doors leading into the cellar.
It proved to be wooden and a hand-saw having
been produced through the nicking with a pen
knife of the edge of an old table knife, the bar was,
on one stormy evening when the wind made a suffi
cient noise, sawn through with no great difficulty.
The pressing open of one of the folding doors re
vealed, as it could only reveal, an unknown dark-

Work in the Cellar 57

ness. We had, of course, no means of knowing
how deep below the floor of the cellar might be.
Lots were drawn for the duty or the privilege, of
finding out, and a couple of men tumbling over
found the drop not more than four feet. A third
man snuggled into a corner of the yard to give
warning when the coast would be clear so that the
interlopers could make their way back again.
It was only on stormy nights that this invasion
of the cellar became possible but there were in the
course of a month or two enough such nights to
make possible a beginning of the work on the
tunnel. The operation had to be conducted en
tirely by "feel " as the cellar was in total darkness.
The floor of earth was, fortunately, fairly dry.
A point was selected midway along the outer wall,
that is to say the wall towards the open country,
at which by measuring by "feel'* the length of the
bigger stones in the foundation, the prospector
secured, or thought he had secured, a stone big
enough as an archway for the tunnel. The ex
cavating instruments comprised a couple of tin
plates and a few shingles. The ground was for
tunately soft, and as the cellar was not visited,

^g Miscalculations

for this particular tunnel there was no such diffi
culty as was encountered with most of the attempts
at tunnelling from prisons, in disposing of the
excavated earth. In the course of weeks, progress
was made, but a miscalculation as to the length
of the superlying stone or as to the strength of the
stone, came near to costing the life of one of the
tunnellers and resulted in the necessity of begin
ning the work over again. The stone fell in and
caught our man somewhere on the shoulders. A
hurried signal was given out to the yard and at
considerable risk of discovery (fortunately there
was a heavy sleet on) several men tumbled in
and succeeded in lifting the stone and in bringing
out in a half -smothered condition their unfortu
nate comrade. He had his face washed and was
slipped upstairs without being observed, and the
next day, after a more careful examination as to
the safety of the foundation stone above, a fresh
beginning was made.

In the course of a few weeks, this tunnel was
projected out beyond the building and beneath
the walk along which marched the prison patrol.
We had of course no spirit level and there was no

The Alarm 59

light with which it could have been utilised. The
working of the line of excavation was, therefore,
a matter of feel and of guess-work, and it is
not surprising that under the circumstances the
engineering failed in precision. The tunnel had
been permitted to slant upwards too close to the
surface of the ground. As a result of this mis
chance, one of the guards in an early morning hour
(fortunately at a time when no workers were busy
in the cellar) fell through. Frightened as he was
(I believe his arm was broken) he yelled murder,
and the guard next to him fired off his piece. Then
followed a general firing of pieces into the darkness
and the turning out of the entire prison guard.
We understood afterwards that the alarm had come
to the guard-house that the Yankees were at
tacking the town, a belief that was shared by that
number of the prisoners who had not been invited
to take part in the work of the tunnel and who
had no knowledge of the scheme. Nothing more
serious happened, however, than the spoiling of
our sleep for the early morning hours. When the
poor guard whom we had unwittingly entrapped
was pulled out of the hole, there was of course

60 Failure of the Tunnel

no difficulty in tracing the line of the tunnel. The
folding doors admitting to the cellar were closed
with an iron bar, and we judged that the guards
whose duty it was to hold post in the yard must
have received a pretty sharp reprimand from their
superiors. Through the rest of the winter, how
ever inclement the weather, the man with the
musket remained outside. A tin plate had been
left behind by one of the workers and this was
brought into the upper room by the sergeant of the
guard for the purpose of identifying the owner.
Fortunately the plate carried but a single initial,
and the owner preferred to lose his property,
valuable as it was, rather than to incur the penalty
that was visited upon all attempts to escape.

I recall during the winter but one other method
of escape that was tried and that did bring a small
measure of success. The path by which we trav
elled from the prison to the river on our trips
for water passed the back of a foundry, the works
of which went through to the street beyond. One
of the furnaces abutted almost directly on the
path and we noticed that during certain days in
the week this furnace was out of blast. It oc-

The Foundry Furnace 61

curred to some one that it would be possible for a
man to tumble in from the pathway to the cavity
of the furnace and, lying there until nightfall, to
make his way in the dark across the turnpike
bridge to North Carolina and possible safety.
In the early part of the winter, the guards had been
strict in their supervision of the parties, counting
the group as we came out and as we returned, and
keeping a close watch as we marched. Later,
the supervision decreased; it was realised that the
chances of escape were small and that apart from
the difficulty of getting out of the town, the pro
spect of getting safely through the journey to our
lines was very slim. The water parties were also
made larger because we had insisted that no one
man was strong enough to carry even a half -full
bucket. The men whose shoes still possessed any
possibility of service drew lots for the chance of
tumbling into the furnace. The first trial came
out happily. Under a prearranged plan, the last
man of the water party, losing his shoe in the mud,
stopped to regain it and the guard who brought up
the end of the procession naturally had to stop
with him. The man marching immediately in

62 Making Good the Count

front of that guard was the one who had drawn
the lot and he tumbled over unobserved into the
furnace hole on the right. A week later, another
chap got off in the same way and in the course of
four or five weeks, four men in all succeeded in
getting away. Each chance had to wait for a
convenient opportunity. The furnace fire must
be out, the water party had to be fairly large,
and the guards must not be too observant.

The question as to making good the count at
the morning roll-call had of course been considered.
The sergeant who had charge of the roll was a
good-natured one-armed veteran from South
Carolina. It was his habit, after seeing that the
yard was clear, to count the men in the lower room
and then, making his way up the straight steps
and watching to see that no one passed him, to
add to his count the men who were in the room
above. If these two figures made up the number
of prisoners who ought to be present, his responsi
bility was ended. We managed, before the first
man got away, to cut a trap-door in the flooring
between the two rooms in the corner diagonally
farthest from the hatchway. We had still avail-

The Sergeant's Roll-Call 63

able the saw that had been utilised on the folding
doors and I think that another saw was manu
factured for the purpose. Over this trap-door
was placed a chap who groaned with more or less
real inflammatory rheumatism, and the scraps of
blanket on which he lay covered the lines of the
trap-door. A certain amount of groaning on the
part of the rheumatic patient kept the good-
natured sergeant from inspecting his corner too
closely. On the morning after the first escape,
the patient being for the moment removed from
his corner, a prisoner from below was hustled upon
the shoulders of a comrade so as to be counted
over again in the room above. There was of
course a little more difficulty after the second and
after the third escape in getting two and then three
men through the trap-door while the sergeant
was passing up the stairway. The sergeant was,
however, kept engaged in conversation on the
causes of the war, on the history of South Carolina,
or on some other engrossing subject, and as long
as no one passed him on the stairs, he had no
reason to feel suspicious at the delay. When
the fourth prisoner got away, the problem of the

64 A Winter Tramp

trap-door became, however, quite serious. It
was finally arranged that there should be an acci
dent on the stairway. A couple of chaps began
scuffling, near the top step, as if in play, and at
the critical moment when the sergeant was half
way up, the scufflers tumbled over, rolling down
the stairs and carrying the sergeant with them.
There was of course risk of broken arms or some
thing worse, but they all got off with a few bruises
and after earnest apologies, the sergeant was per
mitted to make his way upstairs and to complete
his count. Two of the men who took the furnace
road to freedom got across the river into North
Carolina, and one of these, after a long and freezing
sojourn in the mountains, actually turned up
within our lines somewhere in Tennessee. The
other was never heard from and doubtless perished
in the wilderness.* The other two thought they
would have a better chance in Virginia, but they
were both captured before they had got very far

* After my paper was put into type, I learned that this state
ment was an error. I have received from the veteran referred
to a letter denying, with some indignation, that he had ever
"perished in the wilderness." He succeeded, with no little pluck
and endurance, in making his way to our lines on the coast of
North Carolina.

An Excited Colonel 65

north and were taken to Richmond. The first
man was identified as coming from Danville, and
General Winder, the commissary of prisoners,
sent word up to the commander of our prison, a
word that must have been in the shape of a re
primand, to know why he had not reported the
escape of his prisoner. Our commander, a one-
legged Marylander, reported that there must be
some error or that the Yankee was lying, as he had
all his prisoners in hand. A week or two later,
the second chap was captured and also taken to
Richmond and a similar, and probably sharper, re
proof came up to Danville. Then the commander
said he would do the counting himself. He had
us all put into the upper room and went over the
ranks man by man. When he found that there
were four Yankees short, he was a very excited
lieutenant-colonel indeed. He made us an address,
speaking with tears in his eyes, of the pains he had
taken to make us comfortable. He was actually
reproaching the 350 men who were left with the
crime of the four who had gotten away. His in
dignation that there should be any dissatisfac
tion on our part reminded me of Mr. Bumble's

66 Poor Whites on Guard

impressive words to Oliver Twist. As far as I
know, the secret of the trap-door was not dis
covered, but the poor sergeant of South Carolina
was deprived of his job and thereafter the roll was
called in the upper room with all present. It hap
pened further that after the escape of the four
men, the work in the foundry became more active
and there was practically no time when it could
be utilised by us.

Our guards represented rather a curious mixture
of good-natured indifference and a kind of half
witted cruelty. The officers were, as stated,
disabled veterans and were on the whole not a bad
lot. This was true also of certain of the sergeants.
The rank and file, however, can best be described
as scrapings from the mountains. They were
mostly slight, overgrown youngsters with less
than the proper proportion of wits. They seemed
something like the beans that had been given to us
in our soup at Libby, not fit for service in the
Confederate ranks but good enough for the Yankee
prisoners. I assume that if the disease had at
that date been discovered, they would have been
described as hook-worm patients. I remember

A Malicious Shot 67

one incident which indicated the lack of proper
soldierly control. A man standing near me was
washing his tin plate out of the window and some
drops of water fell on the head of the guard below.
Without a word of caution, the guard turned, put
up his piece, and fired. The ball, missing the man
at whom it was directed, went through the floor
a little farther along and shattered the arm of a
fellow who was entirely innocent in the matter.
A shattered arm in the low state of vitality, which
was general in February, was a very serious thing,
and it is my memory that this poor fellow lost his
life. Some of us who had seen the whole matter
made up a report for the officer of the guard and
demanded that the guard should be punished. He
disappeared for a few days and we assumed that
he was somewhere under discipline. But when he
returned he had on corporal's stripes and was
more cocky than ever. He belonged to the half
witted lot, and I do not believe he had any full
responsibility for his actions. He was in fact not
fit to be trusted with a musket.

In December, 1864, when it seemed as if the
resumption of general exchanges might still be

68 Supplies for Prisoners

indefinitely delayed, an agreement was arrived
at between the authorities on either side for the
paroling of certain officers who could be used for
the distribution among their fellow-prisoners of
supplies delivered for the purpose under flag of
truce. As the death-rate in the Southern prisons
continued to increase, there was naturally an in
creasing pressure brought to bear on the part of
the kinsfolk of the prisoners upon the authorities
in Washington to do something either to bring
about exchange or in some other way to save the
lives of the men. The interest of the Confederacy
in bringing about exchange has already been re
ferred to, and the view of Commissioner Ould
that it was desirable to secure the return of able-
bodied veterans in exchange for used-up Yankees
who could never fight again, finally prevailed*
but not until February, 1865. In December, the
authorities in Washington, carrying out promptly
the agreement arrived at, paroled a Confederate
general, Beale of Georgia, who was permitted to
select as associates three or four other officers.
A number of bales of cotton were sent up from
Savannah, under flag of truce, only a week or two

In Richmond on Parole 69

before the capture of the city by Sherman had
transferred to the United States the title to all
the cotton remaining in the city. This cotton was
sold on the cotton exchange in New York for the
account of General Beale, and the price being in
the neighbourhood of $1.50 a pound, he secured
sufficient funds for his purposes. The authorities
in charge of the Confederate prisons acted more
slowly, and it was not until February that parole
papers were given to General Joseph Hayes of
Boston, and to three officers selected by him as his
associates. The post of distributing officer on
parole was naturally very much in demand. It
meant direct communication with home, clean
clothes, soap, and the possibility of something to
eat ; and Hayes must have had difficulty in making
his selections. I was very fortunate, having but
a slight personal acquaintance with the general,
to be taken for his junior assistant in the work
to be done in Richmond. The senior was Colonel
Charles Hooper of Boston. I do not recall the
names of the other two officers who were paroled.
One was posted in Danville and the other was sent
to Salisbury. It is my impression that no attempt

70 In Richmond on Parole

was made for the distribution of supplies for
prisons south of Salisbury.

Hayes, Hooper, and myself were shipped back
to Richmond on a train which seemed to be still
slower than that by which we had three months
back journeyed to Danville. At the close of
February, 1865, the single track road from Rich
mond to Danville was in very bad condition, while
the pressure upon the rails must have been very
considerable. We were given quarters in Rich
mond in a tobacco factory, not very far from Libby
Prison, and a coloured corporal from Weitzel's
brigade was paroled to wait upon us. It was my
duty as the youngest to report two or three times
a week to the pier on the James where I met the
officer in charge of our flag of truce boat, and to
give a receipt to him for the supplies brought up.
We had during the winter been permitted to write
letters to be forwarded across the lines to friends
at home. The restriction was that the letter
should be on a half sheet and that it should be
handed open to the adjutant of the prison. If
the contents of the letter did not meet the approval
of the adjutant, it was not to be forwarded. It

Clean Clothes and Soap! 71

was only occasionally that we could secure scraps
of paper on which to write, but I managed to
place in the hands of the prison adjutant a letter
to the home folks about once a week. It was
only on my return home in March that I learned
that but five of my letters had gotten through.
I do not know whether the result with my letters
could be taken as a fair example of what happened
to the letters of the others. Two or three men with
whom I had the opportunity later of comparing
experiences, however, reported that their friends
had received but three or four out of a long series
of letters handed over to the prison adjutant.
The letters sent home after the announcement
of our parole were, however, safely delivered and
as a result, we three officers who were fortunate
enough to have been assigned in Richmond se
cured, by an early flag of truce boat, greetings
from home, clean clothes, and soap. We hardly
recognised ourselves after our first cleaning up
and the replacing of the rags with blue cloth that
held together.

The supplies delivered to me from the flag of
truce boat comprised blankets, blouses, shirts,

72 "Toting" Supplies across Richmond

trousers and shoes. I do not recall the receipt of
any food. It would, in fact, have been pretty
difficult to get food safely across hungry Richmond
into the prisons even though the need of starving
prisoners might be greater than that of the citizens.
I had some difficulty in the outset in arranging to
get my supplies " toted" across the town. There
were hardly any vehicles within reach and those
that came in sight were busy enough with the
needs of the Confederate quartermaster and com
missaries. Such waggons as I saw were drawn by
mules, and in the lack of forage the mules were
thin and were evidently getting pretty weary of
their task. I finally got hold of a couple of darkies
who were too old to be of any particular service
for the Confederate officials. Coloured men were,
of course, utilised very largely for service in the
quartermaster's department and also for work
in the trenches. These darkies got an old hand
cart, which, while too small to make the transport
expeditious, answered the purpose fairly well.
It was necessary for me to accompany each trip
of the hand-cart, as otherwise the coloured men
would have been promptly arrested as thieves and

The Streets of Richmond 73

the goods would have been lost. My parole
papers had to be shown to every legitimate en
quirer and as a matter of fact were shown also to
a number of unofficial enquirers who were puzzled
that a fellow in clean Federal uniform should be
walking through Richmond without guard. It
is fair to say that I met with hardly any instances
of discourtesy. It is probable that if I had been
carrying on this work a year or two earlier, I
should have had more difficulty in getting through
the streets of Richmond without abuse of some
kind or other. By February, 1865, however, the
residents of Richmond, and particularly those
who had done service in the ranks, evidently
understood that the war was coming to a close.
They had in fact information which was not yet
available for a prisoner like myself. The certainty
that Richmond must before many weeks be in
the hands of our troops might very easily have
influenced the manners of the street crowd.

I had promised, under the conditions of my
parole, to go nowhere about the city excepting
between the three prisons, Libby, Castle Thunder,
and one other building, the name of which I have

74 Packages for Dead Men

forgotten. It is my belief that about this date
the miserable encampment on Belle Isle which
had served earlier as a prison and where so many
of our good men had frozen to death, had been
abandoned. General Hayes learned that in a
building, not far from our quarters had been stored
a number of packages sent through the lines for
our prisoners, and he directed me to visit the build
ing and to give him a report. I found some thou
sands of packages which had accumulated for years
and many of which had crumbled almost to dust.
The sight was really pathetic when one bore in
mind the loving thought with which the little
parcels had been prepared in Northern homes and
had been sent forth as a greeting to the soldier
member of the family. It is difficult to understand
just what the idea of the prison authorities had
been in regard to these packages. They had re
ceived them by flag of truce with the understand
ing, if not with the promise, that they would be
delivered as far as the men to whom they were
addressed were within reach. No trouble, however,
appears to have been taken to look up the owners.
The fragments of many opened packages indicated

Packages for Dead Men 75

that things which gave any appearance of value
had been appropriated by the guards, while the
thousands of packages that remained had simply
been thrown into a corner of the tobacco ware
house to rot. The contents of such of the parcels
as were still intact were naturally varied. I
remember, among the things that remained, testa
ments, locks of hair, packs of cards, and reading
matter of one kind or another, from hymns to
melodramatic romances. With these articles were
in most cases loving short signatures which gave
no clue to the full name of the writer. Not a few
of the packages had contained food and these had
naturally decayed with the damp or had been
eaten up by rats and by insects. The traces of
the food could, however, still be noted on the
wrappers.

I made out lists of the names and addresses
that could still be deciphered on the wrappers
of the parcels which were not too much decayed
and the contents of which could still be of value
for the prisoners. These lists I compared with the
rosters of the prisons and in the chance that some
of the roster names might not have been correctly

76 Packages for Dead Men

entered, I took pains more than once to call out
the names at the roll-call of the prisoners. I recall
but one or two instances in which I was able to
connect the men with the parcels. The accumula
tion had been going on for such a period of months
and of years that the men had very largely dis
appeared, either by exchange or by death. The
general finally told me to give up the task as not
worth further labour.

I may recall in this connection a remark of the
prison adjutant, in regard to my roll-call. As I
came into the prison, the men would at once fall
into line, knowing that if I had any package or
message or any material to distribute it would be
necessary for me to call the roll. "I don't under
stand, Adjutant," said my guide, "how you secure
such prompt attention for your roll-call. When I
come in in the morning for my count, it takes any
number of minutes to get the fellows into line
and they all insist that on the ground of rheu
matism or other invalidism, it is impossible for
them to move any more quickly."

I have no very clear memory of the appearance of
the Richmond streets, but one impression remains

The Women of Richmond 77

vividly in my mind. My walk to Castle Thunder
took me across Main Street where, in the morning
hours, I met the women going to market, and sad-
looking women they were. They were for the
most part dressed in black and in the cases in
which, doubtless for the sake of economy, they
wore butternut brown, the faces were none the
less in mourning. They looked as if they were all
widows or orphans. The figures were wan as well
they might be, for at this time the whole town was
restricted to the shortest of short rations. In
their market baskets, they carried great wads of
Confederate currency, but I knew well how little
purchasing power those blue-back dollars pos
sessed, and I knew also from our corporal who did
our little marketing, that with the best money,
or with the largest amount of the worst money,
there was hardly anything in the market to buy.
Some considerate authority in Washington, bear
ing in mind that the paroled officers would
have expenses to meet, had had the thought of
sending down with our other goods a chest of Con
federate money taken from the supplies that had
as a result of captures accumulated in Washington

78 Millions of Money

during the four years. My receipt was given at
the boat for "one chest of money, precise contents
unknown." There were in that chest millions
upon millions of dollars, more, in volume at least,
than I had ever dreamed of possessing. In send
ing our man to market, I used to take from the
chest armfuls of money, jamming it into the
market basket until the basket would hold no
more. In exchange for this mass of "legal ten
der," we would receive a dozen or two ears of
corn or a little ground meal, and now and then
as a special luxury a piece of mule steak. I
remember one morning our man, with no little
air of triumph, brought in an egg. I was
afraid to ask how many thousand dollars had
been paid for that egg. Said the general, "Gen
tlemen, I do not usually claim the privileges
of rank, but it is my impression that that egg
properly belongs to the officer in command." We
naturally raised no objection, and when the egg,
having been boiled, was placed upon the table
and the top was taken off, it was the unanimous
decision that as far as rank was concerned, it could
be appropriated by anybody who wanted it.

Where Are Our " Deposits " ? 79

That egg must have been laid between the lines
during several campaigns.

We had expected to make a long sojourn in
Richmond, but within a fortnight of our arrival,
we got news that the long- delayed exchange had
been finally declared. I think my work on parole
lasted in all about three weeks. When we heard
that a date had been fixed for our departure, I
reminded the general that we had still to receive
from the adjutant of Libby Prison a report con
cerning the moneys that had been taken from us.
I recalled the memorandum book in which the
amounts had been entered and the promise that
these should be returned to us at the close of our
imprisonment. The general was himself interested
to the extent of some hundreds of dollars and he
promptly instructed me to present his compliments
at the office of Commissioner Ould and to ask for
an accounting. At this late period in the cam
paign, the commissioner was a difficult man to find,
but after various calls I finally succeeded in secur
ing an interview and in giving him the message.
I took the liberty of adding a statement of my
own personal interest in the matter. One hundred

80 Commissioner Ould

and fifty dollars loomed very large in my memory
and it certainly represented hard earnings. The
commissioner seemed embarrassed. "Adjutant,"
he said, "the officer who had charge of that part
of the prison business in October last is now dead,
and I am sorry to say that there was some con
fusion in his accounts. Of course, however, you
gentlemen ought to have your money. I will look
into the matter and see what can now be done."
I reminded the commissioner that we were to
leave for the North at an early date and asked if
I could call the next day. I got an appointment
but I did not find my commissioner. And it was
only after delivering through his secretary a rather
peremptory note from the general, that I did
succeed in securing a further word with him.
"The general directs me to say, Commissioner,
that he will take to Washington such report in
regard to these moneys as you see fit to send. If
the Confederate authorities instruct us to say
that they are unable to trace the record of these
deposits and to make good the promise given by
the prison officials, the general will carry such
statement to Washington." " No, no, Adjutant,"

Trading in Danville 81

said the commissioner with some annoyed hesi
tation. " Of course, we do not wish any such report
to go out. It is a mere matter of detail and book
keeping. The money will of course be forthcom
ing." "I am instructed, sir," I replied, "to call
again to-morrow in case I can not secure your
report to-day." I did call on the morrow, but to
no purpose. I called for the last time the day
following and waited until within fifteen minutes
of the departure of the boat; but finally decided
that home and freedom were of more value than
a claim against the Confederate government for
$150, and leaving my name, I made a quick run
for the wharf.

I learned later from the reports of my prison
comrades some of the incidents of their journey
from Danville to Richmond. As soon as the an
nouncement was made that the exchange had been
effected and that our men were to leave immedi
ately for the North, traders from the town made
their way into the prison with offers of money to
such of the prisoners as were able to give an im
pression of financial responsibility, and of having
at home fathers or other correspondents who

82 Trading in Danville

would be likely to honour their drafts. If these
Danville traders could have been induced earlier
in the winter to hand over Confederate money in
exchange for drafts on the North, much suffering
would have been avoided and undoubtedly some
lives would have been saved. I imagine that the
certainty that the Confederacy was approaching
its downfall constituted an important influence
in bringing these traders to the conclusion that
with the prospect of very satisfactory profit on
the drafts that were honoured, they could afford
to take the risk on some of the more doubtful
clients. The offers were, if I recollect rightly, at
the rate of exchange of one hundred blue-back
dollars for one greenback. The actual ''value, " if
the blue-back could have been said at that time to
have any real value, would have been more nearly
at the rate of one thousand to one. Of course;
in accordance with the usual army practice, if one
man secured funds, money was available for every
one who was in need. The train was made up but
slowly and the guards had no reason to be parti
cularly watchful of their prisoners, none of whom
had any desire to remain in Danville. There

Trading in Danville 83

was, therefore, plenty of time with the aid of this
newly acquired wealth to make purchases in the
town before starting for Richmond. Shoes were
secured and something in the form of jackets and
trousers. I imagine that our men preferred to
wear butternut garments that were complete
rather than to remain in blue cloth rags.

It was only when our men came to visit the
Danville shops that they realised how trifling was
the value of the blue-back currency in exchange
for which they had just given good money in drafts
on their fathers in the North. Dealers are usually
glad to make sales, but in March, 1865, the wise
shop-keeper preferred to hold on to his shoes and
blouses rather than to exchange them for pieces of
paper which in the course of a few days would
have no market value whatsoever. Shoes were
quoted at two thousand dollars; and blouses and
rough shirts were held at corresponding prices.
The boys were disappointed to find that they
had not secured through their drafts enough money
to obtain any satisfactory outfits, and they were
not allowed the time for further financial opera
tions or for another shopping expedition. Some

84 Results of Apple-jack

supplies of food were also bought which proved

•
useful enough for the journey to Richmond, a

trip the length of which was seriously increased
by the frequent siding of the train. Certain of
the officers were injudicious enough to include with
their purchases some apple-jack rum, but I was
told that, realising the certainty of disaster if,
after so long a period of starvation any drinking
was indulged in, they did not use the rum or any
serious quantity of it for themselves, but partly
as a matter of policy and partly as a joke, gave
it to the guards.

According to the story as it came to me, by
the time they reached Richmond late in the
evening of the second day, these guards, with
the exception of the officer in command and
his orderly sergeant, were so drunk that there
was no possibility of steering them with any

;tid of decent discipline across Richmond with
e prisoners. In fact, many of them, lying down
L the platform of the station, refused to move at
all. The lieutenant in command, a one-armed
veteran of not a bad sort, was in a state of perplex
ity and mortification. Our officers were ready,

"We Must Get into Libby" 85

however, to cheer him up. "Don't be troubled,
Lieutenant. We '11 find our way across to Libby
Prison without a guard. You can come over in
the morning with your guard and you will find
us all ready to answer roll-call. Of course," they
added, "we are not going to be out of the way to
morrow morning. We 've got to get to Libby.
We have business in the North." There was
nothing else for the lieutenant to do, and he let
the Yankees leave the station in their own way.
Our boys tramped across the town very much as.
they chose. Not all of them knew the way and
those who did were not interested in going straight.
When they encountered any of the town guards,
their word was very simple. They were poor
Yankee prisoners who, wanting to go to Libby
Prison, had lost their way. They managed, ac
cording to the story, to have a good deal of fun
that night. They straggled over the town, seeing
the sights, being arrested from time to time and
"honourably discharged," but in the end, as pro
mised, all making their way to the entrance of Mr.
Libby 's ship-chandlery warehouse. The prison
sergeant must have had a wearisome night. He

86 The Old Flag

was called up from hour to hour to let in the
straggling Yankees. "You must let us in," was
the demand. "We are poor stray Yankees with
no other place to go to. We must get into Libby."
At no other time during the war was that old
building, so full of sad memories, a place into
which entrance was desired. The next morning,
the one-armed lieutenant came over with his
sergeant and with a fair quorum of his resusci
tated guard. The roll was called, the Yankees
were found to be all on hand, and the lieutenant
got his receipt and freed himself from further
responsibility. It was with the fresh memory of
this last practical joke in their minds that I found
my comrades on reaching the flag of truce boat at
the wharf behind Libby. Worn and weak as they
were, many of them, in fact, seriously invalided
and not a few never to recover any measure
of health or strength, they were all cheered up
with the realisation that they were again beneath
the Stars and Stripes and with the certainty that
home and loved ones were within reach.

The trip down the James River was interesting
on more grounds than one. We had a glimpse of

The James River 87

the camps of the Army of the James and a full
view of the great depots which the commissaries
and quartermasters had established along the river.
We passed in the upper region of the stream, the
one or two vessels remaining of the Confederate
James River Fleet, while near Bermuda Hundred
(if I recall the locality correctly) we ran over the
wrecks of certain Confederate gunboats which
had been smashed by our own vessels or batteries.
A little below Bermuda Hundred we passed
another flag of truce boat bringing up-stream the
Confederate prisoners who had been exchanged
for us. The boats passed near enough for a
fairly trustworthy inspection of the passengers,
and we could not but feel that, as far as military
effectiveness was concerned, our government was
making a bad bargain. The Southern troops had
had clothing issued to them by our own prison
quartermasters, and some of them, who had passed
through Baltimore, had also been fitted out with
additional equipment by sympathising friends.
They looked sturdy and fit for service. I admit
that such hasty views as it was possible to secure
while the boats were passing could hardly be

88 Protection of Coloured Troops

accepted as historic evidence, but our impressions
were confirmed by the later history.

The long delay in arriving at the exchange had,
as I understand, been due to two causes. The
Southerners had from an early period in the war
taken the stand that negro troops who had been,
or who might have been, slaves should not be
exchanged, and the same prohibition was to hold
against the white officers of the negro regiments.
Lincoln took the ground (very properly) that all
the United States soldiers must be protected alike,
and that until the negro troops and their white
officers could be assured of receiving as prisoners
the same treatment that was accorded to the other
prisoners and could be placed upon the same basis
for exchange lists, the exchange should be stopped.
The block of the exchange on this ground continued
for a series of months, and then, under the pressure
of requirement from the generals demanding to
have their ranks filled up, Davis conceded the
point and consented to the re-establishment of
exchange arrangements. He agreed also, at least
in form, to give to the negro prisoners and to the
officers of their regiments the same treatment that

Stanton and the Exchange 89

was accorded to the others. As a fact, however,
as far as we had the opportunity of hearing the
prison gossip, both the privates and the officers of
the coloured regiments had a specially hard time.
The exchange was later blocked under a policy
for which, I believe, Secretary Stanton must take
the responsibility. In one of his letters of 1864,
he pointed out that it would not be good policy
to send back to be placed again on the fighting
line, 70,000 able-bodied Confederates, and to
receive in exchange men who, with but few ex
ceptions, were not strong enough to hold their
muskets. Stanton, while arbitrary, was not a
cruel man. I doubt whether his judgment in
this matter was sound, because it was not fair
to our own prisoners or to the army as a whole.
The conclusions that he reached, after having in
his hands reports from the Northern prisons and
reports of the examination of the men who were
being returned from the Southern prisons, were
undoubtedly however based upon a pretty clear
understanding of the actual conditions. The
exchange finally brought about on the first of
March, 1865, was probably the result in the main

90 Annapolis

of pressure brought to bear upon Stanton, through
President Lincoln, on the part of the relatives of
the prisoners and of the leaders in the field who
took the ground that our soldiers were entitled
to protection and to a fair chance for life, whether
they were prisoners or not.

Our particular group of "exchanged rubbish"
was taken to Annapolis, and we were kept there
for a week or more before being allowed to be
distributed to our homes. I believe the purpose
was to get us cleaned up, as it was not considered
good form to send to decent Northern homes men
who were still infected with vermin. The three
or four of us who, having been on parole, had al
ready done our cleaning up, naturally protested,
and I think we were finally permitted to get away
a day or two before the others.

It was true also that a considerable proportion
of the men were actually not strong enough to
travel, and had to be toned up with care and with
a gradual increase of nourishment. There were
in fact quite a number of deaths in Annapolis
of men who, having waited patiently for months,
were not to be permitted after all again to see

Condition of Prisoners 91

their homes. As far as I was able to judge from
the reports given by the surgeons in charge of the
depot in Annapolis, and by the information secured
later, but very few of the prisoners who were
returned under the exchange of March, 1865, were
fitted for further service, or ever did get back to
the front. I must myself have belonged to the
tougher lot for I was, after a fortnight's rest, ad
judged fit for service, but after reporting to my
regiment, I did not again meet in the field a single
one of my old-time prison associates.

I learned when reporting for duty (by letter to
the Adjutant-General in Washington) that my
regiment which still belonged to Grover's divis
ion of the iQth Army Corps, was stationed at
Newbern, North Carolina. The transportation
given to me from the Quartermaster's Department,
fixed a route from Norfolk through the Great
Dismal Swamp Canal, and then by way of Albe-
marle and Pamlico Sounds to Morehead City.
This was a part of the South that I had never
visited, and I found the journey novel and inter
esting. The little boat used for the canal was
modest in dimensions, and its engine gave it a

92 The Dismal Swamp Canal

speed of about six miles an hour. We were told
that there were in the swamp hundreds, or per
haps thousands of refugees and deserters, coloured
and white, and that boats on the canal were sub
ject to attack. I judge that the attacks were made
not so much for the service of the Confederacy as
for the purpose of plunder. Our boat was armed
with a little Catling gun, or possibly a gun of some
patent preceding the Catling. According to my
memory, the gun was a very crude affair, and
certainly needed development to become an ef
ficient instrument. Its range was short, as it had
been planned for the purpose of throwing grape-
shot or musket-balls as a volley for a few hundred
feet only. It was, therefore, not ill-fitted for the
particular work now required to keep the banks
of the river clear from skirmishers. The cartridges
were, as I remember, thrown into a hopper and
the gun, having been sighted, was worked with a
kind of crank. This sent out the balls in a more
or less continuous volley until the supply in the
hopper was exhausted. One of the defects of the
armament was that there was no protection for
the man working the hopper. We came under

An Early Catling 93

fire several times during our trip, and one hopper-
gunner was wounded. On the whole, however,
our volleys proved effective in clearing the bushes
along the canal; but it was, nevertheless, satis
factory to emerge from the dark and dubious
recesses of the swamp into the open waters of Al-
bemarle Sound, and to be transferred to the larger
boat which took charge of the United States mails
and supplies. Our trip from the mouth of the canal
to Morehead City was uneventful, being varied
only with an occasional running aground. The
sound had many shallows and the old-time beacons
had disappeared, and I judge that navigation must
have been difficult. From Morehead City, we
made our way by rail, a very uneven and jolting
rail, to Newbern. There, I had the satisfaction of
reporting to my regiment and of securing the kind
of greeting that comes to a comrade whom they
had not expected to see again. The Department
of North Carolina was at that time under the com
mand of General Terry. The General enjoyed the
distinction of being possibly the only civilian Gen
eral officer, that is to say General officer who had
had no previous military training, who had dur-

94 General Terry

ing an active service of four years "made good"
with every responsibility that was placed upon
him, and who retained at the close of the war,
with credit to himself and with full advantage to
the service, an independent command.

While at Newbern, I had knowledge of an ex
ample of heroism that deserved a larger measure
of appreciation and of honour than was ever given
to it. Several representatives of the Sanitary and
Christian Commissions were working in the de
partment giving service to the soldiers, not only
to the invalids, but to those who while well enough
for duty were glad to receive reading matter and
to secure help in the writing of their letters; but
probably the larger portion of their labour was
devoted to the contrabands. A contraband camp
had, under the orders of the commander, been
established at a distance of a mile or two from the
town into which had been corralled the darkies,
young and old, who were continually making their
way into the lines and calling for protection and
for food. The able-bodied fellows were utilised,
as far as requirement came, for manual labour
about the Post and for personal service to the

The Contraband Camps 95

officers. The quartermaster issued the most
needful articles of clothing and the commissary
gave a half ration, which was so much in advance
of what the people had been accustomed to receive
that it had for them the effect of the highest luxury.
During the weeks of my sojourn in Newbern,
smallpox broke out in this contraband camp, and
it became necessary for the protection of the town
and of the soldiers, to shut off at once and abso
lutely communication between the contrabands
and the Post and settlements. A cordon of sen
tries was drawn around the camp, and no one was
allowed to pass one way or the other. Food was
placed by the sentries at points at which it could
be secured and taken into camp by the negroes,
but there was at the time at least no medical aid
and, according to the gossip that leaked out
through the sentry lines, the stronger men and
women were taking possession of the food, and
those who were sick were dying from starvation
as well as from the pest. Impressed with the
accounts of the conditions and of the misery under
which the coloured community was suffering, two
representatives of the Christian Mission, Vincent

96 Colyer and Smallpox

Colyer, an artist of New York, with an associate
whose name I have forgotten, had an interview
with General Terry and the post surgeon and of
fered to take charge of the contraband camp. The
surgeon emphasised, naturally, that if these men
once crossed the picket line they could not come
back to civilisation until the pest had been stamped
out, but that condition Colyer, of course, already
understood. The authorities were well pleased
to accept the service and sacrifice offered, because,
under the existing conditions, the risk of infection
for the town and for the troops was very serious.
Colyer and his friend made their way across the
lines, taking with them medicines and supplies.
They arranged for a trustworthy system for the
sending out of reports of conditions and for the
receipt from day to day of the further supplies
that would be required. I learned afterwards
that they had found in the camp a kind of pande
monium. The sick were dying without attendance,
and the old people, the women and children, and
the feeble folk generally, overawed by those who
were stronger, were not getting any adequate share
of the provisions that had been placed within

Colyer and Smallpox 97

reach. Colyer organised, under threat of severe
punishment for any disobedience, the men who
were strong enough into gangs for burying the
dead, for caring for the sick, and for doing the
cleaning up that was urgently required. The wom
en, encouraged by the presence of trustworthy
authority, took charge again of the cooking and
washing. Whatever treatment was necessary had
to be carried out, and was carried out, without
direct medical aid. In the course of a few weeks'
time, smallpox was stamped out and Colyer and
his associate, who had fortunately escaped the
contagion, were free to return to civilisation. It
was the kind of service that deserved the American
equivalent of the Victoria Cross or of the Cross of
the Legion of Honour ; but as far as I know, no
official recognition other than the thanks of Gen
eral Terry and of the post surgeon, were ever
given to these two devoted patriots.

I did not find myself attracted with the region
of Eastern North Carolina. The land is low and
in no way picturesque. The fighting portion of
the inhabitants had for years been busied else
where. It is, I believe, on record that North

98 Eastern North Carolina

Carolina contributed to the army, a larger portion
of troops (not only in proportion to its population
but in the absolute aggregate) than any other
State in the Confederacy. The men of the North
had reason to know from experience on many a
hardly contested battle-field that the "tar-heels"
could fight. What we saw of the homes of these
North Carolina citizens on the eastern coast did
not give us a favourable impression of their stand
ard of comfort. Not a few of the women of the
poorer class had impaired their complexions and
any beauty that their mouths might once have had,
by the practice of clay-eating or snuff-dipping.
In looking over the dreary little cottages on the
coast, I recalled the description given in Olmsted's
Seaboard Slave States. This book, published in
1858, gave an account of a trip taken on horse
back by an intelligent Yankee farmer from Vir
ginia along the coast to Jacksonville. Olmsted's
descriptions of the condition of the South just
before the war have often been compared to those
given by Arthur Young in his Travels in France
written a year or two before the outbreak of the
Revolution of 1783. Olmsted writes with reserve,

Helper's Impending Crisis 99

but he makes clear that the commercial founda
tions of the Southern planters were unsound, and
it was evident to him that trouble of some kind
was near at hand. It has in fact been made clear
by the later history, that the impending bank
ruptcy of thousands of the great planters, lead
ers in society and in politics, while, of course, not
one of the larger causes of the war, was a not
unimportant influence in hastening events. Olm-
sted's book has been kept in print, and half a
century later it is still the acknowledged authority
on its subject.

Another volume which brought out much more
excitement at the time was likewise connected
with North Carolina. In 1859 was published by
an active-minded North Carolina citizen named
Hinton Rowan Helper, a volume called The
Impending Crisis. In this book, Helper, who
was evidently a keen observer, describes the
resources of the South and the conditions of its
prosperity. He points out that these conditions
rested on an insecure foundation. He is confident
that commercial trouble is near at hand, and he
sees that this expectation must, of necessity, ac-

ioo Sherman and Johnston

centuate the political unrest. He points out
further that the belief in the wealth of the South
was largely exaggerated. I remember among
other details he mentions that the value of the
hay crop in the North was greater than that of
the entire cotton crop. Helper's keen analysis
and unsatisfactory conclusions proved very dis
tasteful to his neigbours in North Carolina, as to
the South generally. The book became the text
for bitter controversies in Washington, and its
author was for years banished from Southern soil.
The historians of to-day understand the value and
the importance of the descriptions given by these
two authors and the substantial trustworthiness
of their descriptions and predictions.

Early in April, Terry received orders to abandon
the posts and garrisons on the coast, and to col
lect every fighting musket that he had available
to make a line between the Goldsboro region
and the Virginia border. Sherman was coming
North from Columbia, and was anxious that
Johnston, who was, with his old-time skill and
persistency, making the best possible defensive
fight with his retreating army, should be prevented

Stores of Corn-meal 161

from joining forces with Lee. Sherman had had
news of the breaking of the lines in front of
Richmond, and he realised that the purpose of
Lee and Johnston would be to get together for a
final struggle somewhere in the neighbourhood of
Danville. The battalions available were gathered
in from the coast and marched through the State
towards Goldsboro and my command was finally
placed at Durham Station.

The Commissary- General, in ransacking the
country for supplies, reported that he found sub
stantial stores of corn-meal and of corn on the
cob in various warehouses in Goldsboro and in
other stations in the region. These had, of course,
been collected for the needs of the army in Virginia.
Those of us who had recently been prisoners in
Danville, close to the North Carolina line, and
who knew about the conditions obtaining in the
infamous prison of Salisbury, a few miles to the
west, realised that, with these stores of corn avail
able, there had been no excuse for the starvation
rations upon which the prisoners had tried to live,
and as a result of which so many of our prisoners
had failed to live, both in Danville and in Salisbury.

io2 Sherman Ends the War

The knowledge that food had been within easy
reach of prisons in which the lives of our comrades
had been sacrificed on starvation rations, gave us
a renewed feeling of indignation against those
who were chiefly responsible for the management
of the prisons of the South, — Jefferson Davis,
General Winder, and Commissioner Ould.

Terry was able to make some show of troops
between Goldsboro and the roads to Virginia;
but the line was very thin and could not have
withstood any well-directed attack from an army
like Johnston's. Sherman kept himself, however,
so close on the heels of the retreating Confederates
that General Johnston, plucky and persistent as
he was, had found it impracticable to break away
northward and our thin line was never attacked.

The events that followed are matters of well-
known history. I had the satisfaction of standing
in line with my regiment when General Johnston
surrendered at Durham Station the last effective
army of the Confederacy. The war was at an
end, and the Republic had been maintained.

A fortnight before the dramatic event at
Durham Station, there came to our troops the

Death of Lincoln 103

overpowering sorrow of the news of the death of
Lincoln. The work to which the Great Captain
had devoted his best years and had now sacrificed
his life, was in a sense completed. He had carried
out his pledge of maintaining the life of the Nation.
I have described elsewhere the manner in which
the news of the death of the great Leader came to
the soldiers and the way in which they received it.
I found myself a unit in the crowd of ten thousand
men all overpowered by the same emotion. Never
before had I seen thousands of grown men sobbing
together. It is impossible now, fifty years after
the event, to recall the feeling of that day without
being again touched with the wave of emotion.

The sorrow came not only to the Army and to
the North; the South came later to realise how
great had been the loss, for its own pressing needs,
in the death of the shrewd, kindly, sympathetic,
far-seeing President. Lincoln, with his old-time
knowledge of and sympathy with the problems of
the South, would have given in full measure his
thought and vitality to the service of the great
communities that were now desolate and that were
in urgent need of the guidance of the National

104 The Loss to the South

Government and of help and resources from their
late opponents. We may feel confident that
Lincoln's influence would have prevailed with the
leaders of Northern opinion, that wiser policies
would have directed reconstruction and that the
South would have accepted cordially the hand of
fellowship extended for its recuperation and re
organisation.

The discouraging and mortifying experiences of
the reconstruction years would have been avoided
or would at least have been very much minimised.
There was no other man in the country who could
have taken hold of the complex problems with any
similar prospect of success. The death of Lincoln
was a most serious misfortune in the way of re-
constitution of the Republic, and it took years of
sad experience to bring back to the policies that
Lincoln would assuredly have advocated and have
directed, the men who became responsible for the
conduct of the National Government.

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