Reminiscences of a Rebel Part 4

In a few days after having taken involuntary quarters in the Old Capitol I read with surprise and grief an article in the Baltimore _American_, headed "Meade _versus_ Lee." General Lee, misinformed by somebody, had reported that there had been no battle at Falling Waters, and that none of his soldiers had been captured except those who had straggled during the night or fallen asleep in barns by the roadside. When he published that statement he knew that there had been no engagement of his ordering, but he did not know that the gallant and accomplished Pettigrew had been wounded on the field, nor that some of his men had kept the enemy in check, while others were thereby afforded the opportunity of safely crossing the river. No; the men who were captured with me were not stragglers: they were taken on the field of battle, and they were as brave and dutiful as any that ever wore the gray. Neither was General Meade's report strictly correct, but it corresponded more closely with the facts. He did not capture a brigade, as he said, but he did take the flags of Brockenbrough's brigade, and enough men of other commands to form one.

During the whole term of my imprisonment I anxiously longed to be exchanged, being willing any day to swap incarceration for the toils and dangers of active military service. In the early part of the war there were some partial exchanges, but as it was prolonged the government at Was.h.i.+ngton rejected all overtures for a cartel. Throughout the North there were raised loud and false reports that Federal soldiers in Southern prisons were being wantonly maltreated, while the National Government might have restored them to freedom and plenty by agreeing to the exchange of prisoners that was urged repeatedly by the Confederate Government. The refusal was an evidence of the straits to which the Union was pushed, and an act of injustice and cruelty to the prisoners of both sides. It was, moreover, an undesigned but exalted testimony to the valor of Southern soldiers, for it was as if Mr. Stanton, the secretary of war, had said to every man in the Federal armies: "If in the fortunes of war you should be captured, you must run the risk of death in a rebel prison. I will not give a Southern soldier for you,--you are not worth the exchange." Gen. Grant said: "Our men must suffer for the good of those who are contending with the terrible Lee;"

and ignoring the claims of humanity and the usages of honorable warfare, he lowered the question to a cold commercial level when he declared that it was "cheaper to feed rebel prisoners than to fight them."

CHAPTER XII

But now we are in prison and likely long to stay, The Yankees they are guarding us, no hope to get away; Our rations they are scanty, 'tis cold enough to freeze,-- I wish I was in Georgia, eating goober peas.

Peas, peas, peas, peas, Eating goober peas; I wish I was in Georgia, eating goober peas.

--_Stanza of a Prison Song_.

Only about two weeks did we abide in the Old Capitol, the officers being transported to Johnson's Island, and the privates to other prisons. Our route was by Harrisburg, and as the train was leaving the city it jumped the track, jolting horribly on the cross-ties, but inflicting no serious injury.

The Sandusky river before it pa.s.ses through its narrow mouth into Lake Erie widens into a beautiful bay about four miles wide. In this bay is situated Johnson's Island, low and level, and containing three hundred acres. It is not in the middle of the bay, but is on the north side, half a mile from the main land, while on the other side it is three or more miles from the city of Sandusky across the water.

The prison walls enclosed a quadrangular s.p.a.ce of several acres, the southern wall running along the margin of the bay and facing Sandusky.

They were framed of wooden beams, on the outer side of which, three feet from the top, there was a narrow platform on which the guard kept continual watch. Thirty feet from the wall all around on the inside there was driven a row of whitewashed stobs, beyond which no prisoner was allowed to go on pain of being shot by the sentinels. At night the entire s.p.a.ce within was illuminated by lamps and reflectors fixed against the walls.

Within the walls there were eleven large wooden buildings of uniform size, two stories high. The first four were part.i.tioned into small rooms, and were sheathed; the remaining seven had two rooms on each floor, and they afforded no protection against the weather except the undressed clapboards that covered them. In each house the upper story was reached by an outside flight of steps. In the larger rooms some sixty or seventy men were huddled together. Around the sides bunks were framed on pieces of scantling that extended from floor to ceiling, arranged in three tiers, so that a floor s.p.a.ce of six feet by four sufficed for six men. My cotton tick was never refilled, and after doing service for many months it became flat and hard. Our quarters and accommodations were such as the Yankees thought good enough for rebels and traitors, but in summer we were uncomfortably and unhealthily crowded, and in winter we suffered from the cold, because one stove could not warm so large and windy an apartment. Many a winter night, instead of undressing, I put an old worn overcoat over the clothes I had worn during the day.

At first I "put up" in block No. 9, afterward in No. 8, and toward the end of my imprisonment in No. 3, which was much more comfortable.

In summer, water was obtained from a shallow well, but in winter, when the bay was frozen, a few men from each mess were permitted to go out of the gate in the afternoon and dip up better water from holes cut through the ice. On these occasions a strong guard extended around the prisoners from one side of the gate to the other.

From the time of my capture until the fall of the year the rations were fairly good and sufficient, but then they were mercilessly reduced, upon the pretext of retaliation for the improper treatment of Union prisoners in the South. The bread and meat rations were diminished by a half, while coffee, sugar, candles, and other things were no longer supplied.

We did our own cooking, the men of each mess taking it by turns, but the bread was baked in ovens outside and was brought in a wagon every morning. A pan of four loaves was the daily allowance for sixteen men.

When I got my fourth of a loaf in the morning I usually divided it into three slices, of which one was immediately eaten and the others reserved for dinner and supper; but when the time came for the closing meal I had no bread, for hunger had previously claimed it all. But for some clothes, provisions, and money that were sent to me by kind friends residing in Kentucky and Maryland I think that I could not have lived to witness the end of the war. There was not enough nutriment in the daily ration to support vigorous health, and it was barely sufficient to sustain life. I believe that a few of the prisoners succ.u.mbed to disease and died because they had an insufficiency of nouris.h.i.+ng food. Bones were picked from ditches, if perchance there might be upon them a morsel of meat. I was begged for bread, when I was hungry for the want of it.

All the rats were eaten that could be caught in traps ingeniously contrived. When prejudice is overcome by gnawing hunger, a fat rat makes good eating, as I know from actual and enjoyable mastication.

For a time we were permitted to obtain the news of the outside world through the New York _World_ and the Baltimore _Gazette_, but these were suppressed; and then we had to depend upon a little Sandusky sheet and the Baltimore _American_, which vilified the South and claimed for every battle a Union victory.

How did we while the time away? Well, we organized a minstrel band, singing clubs, and debating societies; we had occasional lectures and exchanged books in a so-called reading room; we had two rival base-ball teams, and we played the indoor games of chess, checkers, cards, and dominoes. I spent much time in reading the Bible, besides some of Scott's novels and the charming story of Picciola.

On Sunday there were Bible cla.s.ses, and sometimes sermons by men who had gone from the pulpit into the army. Among them were a Methodist colonel from Missouri, a Baptist colonel from Mississippi, and a Baptist captain from Virginia. At one time evangelistic services were held in a lower room of block No. 5, and a number of converts confessed Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, and declared their denominational preference. Those who decided to be Baptists were permitted, under guard, to go out to the sh.o.r.e and were baptized in the bay by Captain Littleberry Allen, of Caroline county, Virginia; the rest could find within the walls as much water as they considered necessary for the ordinance.

Block No. 6 was set apart for a hospital, into which a prisoner might go in case of sickness. It was superintended by a Federal surgeon, but a large part of the prescribing was done by Confederate officers who had been practicing physicians. The nursing was performed by the patients'

more intimate friends, who took it by turns day and night. I have a sorrowful recollection of sitting up one night to wait on Captain Scates of Westmoreland county, and to administer the medicines prescribed by the doctors. The ward was silent save for occasional groans, the lights were burning dimly, and there was no companion watching with me. About midnight the emaciated sufferer died, pa.s.sing away as quietly as when one falls into healthy slumbers. I closed his eyes and remained near the body until the grateful dawn of morning. Guarded by soldiers we went to the cemetery without the walls, and committed the body to the ground, far away from his family and native land.

Nearly all the men confined on Johnson's Island were officers, of every rank from lieutenant to major-general, and numbering about twenty-six hundred. They represented all parts of the South and nearly every occupation, whether manual or professional. They were men of refinement,--ingenious, daring; and they were enclosed in this prison because it was secured no less by an armed guard than by the surrounding water.

Every man was trying to devise some method of escape, but only a few succeeded, not only because the difficulty was great, but also because there were spies among us. Three men tunneled out from Block No. 1, only to find themselves surrounded by Yankee soldiers. Captain Cole, a portly man, became jammed in the pa.s.sage, and was somewhat like Abe Lincoln's ox that was caught and held on a fence, unable to kick one way or gore the other. The incident furnished the theme of another minstrel song, with the chorus, "If you belong to Gideon's band."

I had a secret agreement with Captain John Stakes, of the 40th Virginia, that if either saw a way of escape he would let the other know. Many a time with longing eyes we looked upon a sloop that used to tie up for the night at a wharf near the island. If we only could get to it! And so we began a tunnel under block No. 9, but finding that our labors were discovered by a spy, we were constrained to desist.

Two men filed saw teeth on the backs of case knives, and on a rainy, dark, and windy night they crawled down a ditch to the wall on the bay sh.o.r.e, and cut their way out; but they were captured and brought back.

There were a few successful escapes. One man, smarter than the rest of us, when we went to a vessel to fill our ticks with straw concealed himself under what remained in the hold and was carried back to Sandusky, whence he wended his stealthy flight. Colonel B. L. Farinholt, of Virginia, got away in a very artful manner, an account of which has been published. In January, 1865, when the thermometer registered 15 below zero and an arctic northwest wind was blowing furiously Captain Stakes took me aside and told me in whispers that he and five others were going out that night, and that they had agreed that I might go with them. I answered that if the Yankees were to throw open all the gates and grant permission, I would not in my feeble health and with clothes so insufficient, depart in such bitter weather. When the hour came those six men rushed to the wall, and setting up against it a bench, on which rungs had been nailed, climbed over. They were not shot at, perhaps because the sentries, not expecting such an attempt, had taken refuge from the cold in their boxes. On the thick ice that begirt the island they crossed over on the north side and gained the mainland. Captain Robinson, of Westmoreland, and three others with him, hiding in the daytime and traveling at night, after enduring many hards.h.i.+ps arrived in Canada, where they were clothed and fed and supplied with money. Taking s.h.i.+pping at Halifax, they ran the blockade and landed in Wilmington, North Carolina. One of the six men was recaptured by a detective on a train in New York. My friend Stakes was overtaken the next morning and brought back so badly frostbitten that it became necessary to amputate parts of some of his fingers.

By some means, I know not how, information was received in the prison that certain agents of the Confederate government in Canada would come to the island in steamboats captured on Lake Erie to release the prisoners. It was agreed that when they approached and blew a horn the prisoners would storm the walls and overpower the guards. We, therefore, organized ourselves into companies and regiments and waited anxiously for the sight of the boats and the sound of the horn. Though we had no arms, except such as the rage of the moment might supply, and did not doubt that some of us would be killed, we were ready to fulfil our part of the desperate contract; and we felt no doubt of success, for the Hoffman Battalion that composed our guard had never been in battle nor heard the rebel yell. The expected rescuers never came. There must have been some real foundation for the proposed movement, for very soon the guard was reinforced by a veteran brigade, and the gunboat _Michigan_ came and anch.o.r.ed near the island and showed her threatening portholes.

CHAPTER XIII

'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home; A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there, Which seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere.

--PAYNE.

If one longs for home while roaming amidst pleasures and palaces, how much more intense, suppose you, must be the nostalgia of the soldier confined in a far distant prison?

March 14, 1865, was one of the happiest days of my life. After a captivity of twenty months, I was led out of the prison with the three hundred others, conducted to a steamboat, and homeward bound transported to Sandusky. The thick ice that for three months had covered the bay was floating in broken pieces on the surface, through which the boat struggled with so much difficulty that I feared it would be necessary to put back to the island; but the trip was made at the expense of some broken paddles. Why we were selected rather than our less fortunate compatriots I cannot guess, unless it was to save the annoyance and the expense of burial, for some of our party had been wounded, others as well as myself, had recently recovered from serious sickness, and all were adjudged to be unfit for military service; or perhaps there was the same number in Southern prisons that for special reasons the Federal War Office desired to have exchanged.

The train that was to convey us southward was made up of box-cars, upon the floors of which there was a thin covering of straw. We were so crowded that we all could not lie down at the same time. The sleepers lay with their heads at the sides of the cars, while their legs interlaced in the middle. We took the situation in good humor, and slept by turns, those who could not find room standing amidst entangled legs and feet. Thus we traveled several days and nights, our train being frequently switched for the pa.s.sage of regular trains. Our route was by Bellaire to Baltimore, or rather to Locust Point, where we took pa.s.sage on a steamboat for James river. Having landed the next day, we walked across a neck of land formed by a bend of the river to the wharf where a boat from Richmond was expected to meet us. A company of negroes made a show of conducting us across the neck, though a company of children armed with cornstalks would have been equally efficient.

We had not long to wait until the smokestack of the Confederate steamboat could be seen winding along as she tracked the serpentine course of the river. As she neared the wharf the band on board struck up that sweetest of tunes,--"Home, Sweet Home." Some of my companions laughed, some threw their caps into the air, others hurrahed, while my own emotions were expressed only by tears of joy that coursed down my cheeks. When, however, the music glided into the exhilarating notes of "Dixie" I joined in the cheering that mingled with the strain.

We arrived in Richmond on the 22d of March, the eighth day after we had started. I was pained to notice in the city so many signs of delapidation and poverty, and to learn that Confederate money had depreciated to the point of sixty for one. The captain's salary that the government owed me for two years was worth only about fifty dollars in specie, which a friend in the treasury department advised me to collect at once, inasmuch as he thought that the capital would be soon evacuated. I took him for a timorous prophet, and told him I would wait until I rejoined the army, when I should need it. I did not know, as he did, the impoverished and critical condition of the Confederacy.

I was not exchanged, but "paroled for thirty days unless sooner exchanged." I set out for the Northern Neck in company with Lieutenant Purcell, of Richmond county, and Captain Stakes, of Northumberland. We rode on a train as far as Hanover and then struck out afoot across the country. Notwithstanding the fact that one of my companions limped on a leg that had been wounded at Gettysburg and the other was a little lame from frosted toes, it taxed all my powers to keep up with them. If I had rejoiced to see the James, I was happier still to set foot once more upon the bank of the Rappahannock. When we had crossed over we went to the home of Lieutenant Purcell, where we spent the night, and the next day, Monday, March 27, I arrived at home. I supposed that I should take them by surprise, but somehow they had received intelligence of my coming; and as I approached the house I found them all lined up in the yard, white and black. "And they began to be merry."

I found John in the stable, having been ridden home by my faithful man, Charles Wesley, who supposed that he had left me dead at Falling Waters.

On the 14th of April, Good Friday, when I was thinking of returning to Richmond to inquire whether I had been exchanged and was still hoping for the independence of the Southern Confederacy, I attended religious services at a church in the neighborhood. When these had been concluded and the congregation were talking as usual in the yard a messenger arrived with a newspaper, which the Yankees had sent ash.o.r.e from one of their gunboats, and which contained the details of General Lee's surrender of his army five days previously at Appomattox. My heart sank within me. My fondest hopes were crushed. The cause for which I had so often exposed my life, and for which so many of my friends had died, had sunk into the gloomy night of defeat.

I was thankful that out of the horrid conflict I had escaped with my life, a gray coat, and a silver quarter of a dollar. Although I had partic.i.p.ated in all the battles that were fought by the Army of Northern Virginia, I was never seriously hurt. At Mana.s.sas one bullet struck my leg, and another forcibly wrenched my sword from my hand. At Chancellorsville a bomb exploded just in front of me, making a hole in the ground and covering me with dirt, the pieces flying away with discordant noises. Countless b.a.l.l.s whizzed by my ears, and men fell all around me, some of them while touching my side. Am I not justified in appropriating the words of David addressed to Jehovah, "Thou hast covered my head in the day of battle?"

Withdrawal from the Union was the right of the Southern States, as appears from the history of the making and adoption of the federal const.i.tution; and great was the provocation to use it. It is not, however, always wise,--either for persons or communities,--to exercise their rights. Secession in the year 1860 was a hot headed and stupendous political blunder,--a blunder recognized by the majority of the people of Virginia, who refused to follow the example of her southern sisters until there was forced upon her the cruel alternative of waging war either against them or against the States of the North.

Though secession was a grievous error, nevertheless the war that was waged by the Federal Government was a crime against the const.i.tution, humanity, and G.o.d. But now, as we view the present and retrospect the past, who may say that all has not turned out for the best? We find consolation in the belief that the Lord's hand has shaped our destiny, and we meekly submit to his overruling providence.

"If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well It were done quickly."

But the war, like Duncan's murder, was not done after it was done. There supervened the unnecessary, vindictive, and malignant reconstruction acts of the Federal Congress.

On the 14th of April, only nine days after Lee had surrendered, a great calamity befell the South in the foolish and infamous a.s.sa.s.sination of President Lincoln, who was the only man who could have restrained the rage of such men as Sumner in the Senate and Stephens in the House of Representatives. The hatred of the Northern politicians was intensified by the supposition that his death was instigated by Southern men, and it did not abate even after they were convinced that the supposition was unfounded.

It is a singular fact that while the war was in progress the acts of secession were considered null and void, and the Southern States were declared to be parts of an indissoluble union, but when the war had ended they were dealt with as alien commonwealths and conquered territories. For four years Virginia was not a co-equal State in the Union but "Military District No. 1," governed by a Federal general, who appointed the local officers in the several counties. The affairs of the State were managed by carpetbaggers in close agreement with despicable scalawags and ignorant negroes. The elective franchise was granted to the emanc.i.p.ated slaves regardless of character or intelligence, while it was denied to many white men. In Lancaster county the negroes had a registered majority of a hundred voters; it was represented in a const.i.tutional convention by a carpetbagger, and after the adoption of the const.i.tution it was represented in the Legislature by a negro. To injury were added hatred and insult. It was not enough that the South was conquered, it must be humiliated by African domination!

The Southern people did not go to war--war came to them. Not to gain military glory did they fight, although this meed must be awarded to them. Nor was the perpetuation of African slavery the object for which they took up arms, for in Virginia nineteen-twentieths of the citizens owned no slaves, and there was perhaps the same proportion in the other States of the Confederacy. Neither was it for conquest that they so long waged the unequal contest; for though they twice crossed the Potomac it was not to gain an acre of territory, but only to relieve their own beleaguered capital. From first to last it was a purely defensive struggle to maintain for themselves the freedom they cheerfully accorded to other communities, and to make good the inherited belief that "all just government derives its power from the consent of the governed."

They simply resisted subjugation by a hostile government whose right to rule them they denied.

As we review the history of that gigantic struggle we are not surprised that the South was subdued, the only wonder being that it was not sooner done. It required two and a quarter millions of soldiers four years to overcome one-third of that number. The South had no navy to open her ports, no commerce for her products, no foundries for the manufacture of arms. During the first year there were not muskets enough to supply her volunteers, though later on sufficient numbers were taken on the fields of battles, fifty-two cannon and thirty thousand small arms being captured in the battles around Richmond, besides the many thousands that were taken in subsequent engagements.