Merion, the Warden, would about realize the Northern ideal of a Southern overseer. He was an obstinate man, and his cruelty was low, vulgar, and brutal like his mind. He would have been hypocritical, but that his character was too coarse-grained to be pliant enough for successful dissimulation. The members of the Board of Directors (with one or two exceptions) were men of much the same stamp as the Warden – with rather more cultivation perhaps, and less force. He entirely controlled them all. He knew enough of medicine to pronounce quinine "a luxury," but he directed the treatment of the sick, as he did all else.
After some three weeks of close confinement, we were permitted to exercise in the hall for four hours during the day, and were locked in for the rest of the time. The nervous irritability induced by this long and close confinement, sometimes showed itself in a manner which would have amused a man whose mind was in a healthy condition. Just as soon as we were permitted to leave our cells in the morning and meet in the hall, the most animated discussions, upon all sorts of topics, would begin. These would occasionally degenerate into clamorous and angry debates. The disputants would become as earnest and excited over subjects in which perhaps they had never felt the least interest before, as if they had been considering matters of vital and immediate importance. A most heated, and finally acrimonious dispute once arose regarding General Joseph E. Johnston's hight. One party asserted positively that his stature was just five feet nine inches and a quarter. The other affirmed, with a constancy that nothing could shake, that he was no taller than five feet eight inches and a half. Numerous assertions were made by as many men, that they had frequently stood near him, and that he was about their hight. If these declarations were all as true as they were dogmatic, the General's stature must have varied in a remarkable manner, and his tailor could have had little peace of mind. Warm friendships, of long standing, were interrupted by this issue for entire days, until happily a new question was sprung, and parties were reorganized. A grave and radical difference of opinion arose as to whether Selma was on the east or the west bank of the Alabama river. Two intimate friends got into an argument regarding the relative excellence of the ancients and moderns in material civilization and the mechanical arts. The discussion lasted three weeks; during its continuance each alluded (in support of his position) to architectural and engineering triumphs, which the most learned encyclopedist might in vain consult his books or torture his memory to verify. It was at last dropped, unsettled. But for months the most casual reference by either to the Egyptian Pyramids, or the bridge over the Menai Straits, would produce a coolness between them. The battle of Waterloo was an inexhaustible theme of contention. Wellington did not wish for night on the day itself half as cordially as he would have wished for it, if he had been a prisoner at the penitentiary and condemned to listen to the conflicting opinions about his strategy.
Exchange and escape, however, were the topics of most earnest and constant thought. One or the other was the first thought which came into our minds in the morning, and the last that occupied them at night. Victor Hugo has, in his wonderful book, "Les Miserables," daguerreotyped the thoughts and the feelings of a prisoner. That book was a great favorite with the inmates of our hall and the admiration it excited was so general and honest, that (it is a literal fact) there was not more than one or two disputes about it. Two of the officers who escaped with General Morgan, Captains Sheldon and Taylor, were recaptured, and brought back to the penitentiary. They ventured into Louisville, where they were well known, were recognized, and arrested.
After General Morgan's escape, the treatment we received was not only more rigorous, but the sneaking, spying instincts of the keepers seemed stimulated. It was, of course, to be expected that they would be suspicious (especially after the lesson they had received), but these creatures evinced suspicion, not as I had been accustomed to see men show it – they stole and pried about, eaves-dropping, creeping upon and glaring at us (when they thought they could do so undetected) like cellar-bred, yellow-eyed, garbage-fed curs. Their manner gave one an impression of cold cruelty and slinking treachery that is indescribable, it was snakish.
A military guard was placed at the prison immediately after the General's escape, and for some time sentinels (with bayonets fixed) paced the hall. None of us had imagined that we could welcome the presence of Federal soldiers with so much satisfaction. The difference in the tone and manner of the soldiers from that of the convict-drivers, made it a relief to have any thing to say to the former. They were evidently disgusted with their associate goalers. There was a sergeant with this guard (named Lowe, I think,) who, while he rigidly discharged his duty, seemed desirous to avoid all harshness.
In February I was removed, at the solicitation of friends, to Camp Chase. Having made no application for this removal, nor having heard that one had been made in my behalf, I was surprised when the order for it came, and still more surprised when I learned at Camp Chase that I was to be paroled. I was permitted to go freely where I pleased within the limits of the camp, excellent quarters were assigned me, and my condition was, in all respects, as comfortable as that of the officers on duty there. Colonel Richardson, the commandant, was a veteran of the army of the Potomac, and had accepted the charge of the prison after he had been disabled by wounds. If the treatment which I received at his hands, was a fair sample of his conduct toward prisoners generally, it is certain that none had a right to complain of him, and it would have been a fortunate thing if just such men had been selected (upon both sides) to be placed over those whose condition depended so entirely upon the will and disposition of the officers in charge of them. Finding that my parole was not likely to result in my exchange, and that there was no other Confederate officer similarly indulged, I applied to be sent back to the penitentiary. Enough had reached my ears to convince me that others would be granted paroles in order to tempt them to take the oath, and I did not care to be caught in such company.
When I left Camp Chase, where every one had been uniformly polite and respectful in demeanor, and I had enjoyed privileges which amounted almost to liberty, the gloom of the penitentiary and the surly, ban-dog manner of the keepers were doubly distasteful, and the feeling was as if I were being buried alive. I found that, during my absence, the prisoners had been removed from the hall, which they had all the time previously occupied, to another in which the negro convicts had formerly slept, and this latter was a highly-scented dormitory. The cause of the removal was that (desperate at their long confinement and the treatment they were receiving) a plan had been concocted for obtaining knives and breaking out of the prison by force. A thorough knowledge of the topography of the entire building was by this time possessed by the leaders in this movement. They had intended to secure Merion, and as many as possible of the underlings, by enticing them into the hall upon some pretext, and then gagging, binding, and locking them up in the cells. Then giving the signal for the opening of the doors, they expected to obtain possession of the office and room where the guns were kept. One of the party was to have been dressed in convict garb, to give the necessary signal, in order that all suspicion might have been avoided. It is barely possible that, with better luck, the plan might have succeeded, but it was frustrated by the basest treachery.
Among the sixty-eight prisoners of war confined in the penitentiary, there were four whose nerves gave way and they took the oath of allegiance to the United States in other words, they deserted. One of this four betrayed the plan to the warden. Men were sometimes induced "to take the oath" by a lack of pride and fortitude, and absence of manly stamina, who would have done nothing else prejudicial to the cause which they abandoned, or that would have compromised their former comrades. Their were men, however, who added treachery to apostacy, and this man was one of that infamous class. The four were so fearful of exciting the suspicion of the other prisoners, and so well aware of the bitter scorn and resentment which their conduct would raise against them, that they carefully concealed their design to the last moment. It was not until our release from prison, that the proofs of the utter and base treachery of the spying and informing villain were obtained.
There is a reason why the name of this wretch should not be given here. Enough know of his crime to damn him forever in the estimation of all honorable men, and gallant and devoted men, than whom no truer gentlemen and braver soldiers served under the Confederate banner, bear the same name. His relatives (who fought throughout the war and quit with records upon which there are no stains), must not see the name (which they made honorable), associated with his shame.
Search was at once made for the knives which the prisoners had obtained and for other evidence which might corroborate the informer's report. Fifteen knives had been introduced into the hall, and were in the hands of as many prisoners. The search was inaugurated secretly and conducted as quietly as possible, during the time that the prisoners were locked in the cells, but information was gotten along the ranges that it was going on, and only seven knives were discovered. The remaining eight were hidden, so ingeniously, that, notwithstanding the strict hunt after every thing of the kind, they were not found. Merion's fury at the idea of any danger threatening him was like that of some great cowardly beast which smells blood and is driven mad with fear. All of the party were at once closely confined again, and the seven who were detected with the knives, were sent to the dungeons, where they were kept seven days, until the surgeon declared that a longer stay would kill them.
They passed the period of their confinement in almost constant motion (such as the limits of the cell would permit), and said that they had no recollection of having slept during the whole time. When they came out they were almost blind and could scarcely drag themselves along.
One of the party, Captain Barton, was so affected, that the blood streamed from under his finger nails. When I returned (after a month passed at Camp Chase), I was startled by the appearance of those, even, who had not been subjected to punishment in the dungeon. They had the wild, squalid look and feverish eager impression of eye which lunatics have after long confinement.
At last, in March 1864, all were removed to Fort Delaware, and the change was as if living men, long buried in subterranean vaults, had been restored to upper earth. About the same time one hundred and ten officers of Morgan's division, who had been confined in the Pennsylvania Penitentiary, were transferred to Point Lookout. These officers described the treatment which they received as having been much better than that adopted toward us, yet one of their number had become insane. All that I have attempted to describe, however, must have been ease and luxury compared with the hardship, hunger and harsh cruelty inflicted upon the Confederate private soldiers imprisoned at Camps Morton and Douglass and at Rock Island. These men would often actually pick up and devour the scraps thrown out of the scavenger carts. Some of them froze to death – insufficient fuel was furnished, when it was furnished at all, and the clothing sent them by friends was rarely given them. The men of my regiment told me of treatment, inflicted upon them at Camp Douglass, which if properly described and illustrated with engravings, and if attributed to Confederate instead of Federal officials, would throw the whole North into convulsions. Many of these men, of this regiment, had escaped in the first two or three months of their imprisonment, and a bitter hatred was then excited against the less fortunate. They were, in some instances, tied up and beaten with the belts of the guards, until the print of the brass buckles were left on the flesh; others were made to sit naked on snow and ice, until palsied with cold; others, again were made to "ride Morgan's mule" (as a scantling frame, of ten or twelve feet in hight, was called), the peculiar and beautiful feature of this method of torture, was the very sharp back of "the mule." Sometimes, heavy blocks, humorously styled spurs, were attached to the feet of the rider. As for the shooting of men for crossing the "dead line" (upon which, so much stress has been laid in accounts of Andersonville), that was so well understood, that it was scarcely thought worthy of mention. But an elaborate description of life in the Federal prisons is unnecessary.
The eighty thousand Confederate prisoners of 1864 and 1865, or rather the survivors of that host, have already told it far better than I can, in their Southern homes, and we have had sufficient experience of the value of sympathy away from home, to make no effort for it. Moreover, a contest with the Yankee journalists is too unequal – they really write so well, and are so liberal in their ideas regarding the difference between fact and falsehood, have so little prejudice for, or against either, that they possess, and employ, a tremendous advantage. And then the pictorials – a special artist has only to catch a conception, in a Philadelphia or New York hospital, and straightway he works off an "Andersonville prisoner," which carries conviction to those who can not read the essay, upon the same subject, by his co-laborers with the pen. What chance has a Southern writer against men who possess such resources? At Fort Delaware, General Schoeff, the commandant, placed some eighteen or twenty of us in the rooms built in the casemates of the fort, and allowed us, for some time, the privilege of walking about the island, upon our giving him our paroles not to attempt escape.
General M. Jeff. Thompson, of Missouri, was the only Confederate officer at that prison, before our party arrived, but many others from Camp Chase, came about the same time. General Thompson's military career, is well known to his countrymen, but only his prison companions know how kind and manly he can be under circumstances which severely try the temper. His unfailing flow of spirits kept every one else, in his vicinity cheerful and his hopefulness was contagious. He possessed, also, an amazing poetical genius. He wrote with surprising fluency, and his finest compositions cost him neither trouble nor thought. Shut him up in a room with plenty of stationery, and in twenty-four hours, he would write himself up to the chin in verse. His muse was singularly prolific and her progeny various. He roamed recklessly through the realm of poesy. Every style seemed his – blank verse and rhyme, ode and epic, lyrical and tragical, satiric and elegiac, sacred and profane, sublime and ridiculous, he was equally good at all. His poetry might not perhaps have stood a very strict classification, but he produced a fair, marketable sample, which deserved (his friends thought) to be quoted at as liberal figures as some about which much more was said. General Thompson would doubtless have been more successful as a poet, if he had been a less honest and practical business man. He persisted in having some meaning in all that he wrote, and only a first class poet can afford to do that.
The cunning New England method is also the safest in the long run – when a versifier suspects that he lacks the true inspiration, he had better try the confidence game, and induce the public to admire by writing that which no one can understand. It would seem, too, that writing poetry and playing on the fiddle have this much in common, that a true genius at either is fit for nothing else. The amateurs can take care of themselves, but the born-masters display an amiable worthlessness for every thing but their art. Now General Thompson was thoroughly wide-awake and competent in all practical matters.
At Fort Delaware the prevailing topic of conversation was exchange; men who were destined to many another weary month of imprisonment, sustained themselves with the hope that it would soon come. At last a piece of good fortune befell some of us. It was announced that General Jones, the officer in command at Charleston, had placed fifty Federal officers in a part of the city where they would be exposed to danger from the batteries of the besiegers. An order was issued that fifty Confederate officers, of corresponding rank, should be selected for retaliation. Five general and forty-five field officers were accordingly chosen from the different prisons, Fort Delaware furnishing a large delegation for that purpose. The general officers selected were Major General Frank Gardner, the gallant and skillful commander of Port Hudson; Major-General Edward Johnson, one of the fighting Generals of the army of Northern Virginia (which is to say one of the bravest of the very brave), and a true man, whose sterling worth, intelligence and force of character would win him respect and influence wherever those qualities were valued; Brigadier-General Stewart, of the Maryland brigade, another officer who had won promotion in that heroic army of Northern Virginia, and had identified his name with its deathless fame. There was still another of these fortunate men – fortunate in having helped to win fields where Confederate soldiers had immortalized the title – Brigadier-General Archer was the fourth general officer. A favorite officer of General A.P. Hill, he was in every respect worthy of a hero's friendship and confidence. The fifth was Brigadier-General M. Jeff. Thompson. Among the field officers who went were seven of the penitentiary prisoners – Colonels Ward, Morgan, and Tucker, Majors Webber, Steele, and Higley and myself.
We left our comrades with a regret, felt for their bad fortune, for we felt assured that our apparent ill-luck would terminate in an exchange. Colonel Coleman, who had been confined in the Fort with the party of which so many were sent on this "expedition," was bitterly disappointed at being left behind, and we regretted it equally as much. Three of our companions through so many vicissitudes, we never saw again – three of the worthiest – Captains Griffin, Mullins, and Wardour died shortly afterward.
On the 26th of June, we were put on board of a steamer, and puffed away down the Delaware river. It was confidently affirmed that we were going to be placed on Morris Island, where the Charleston batteries would have fair play at us, so that our friends (blissfully unconscious of how disagreeable they were making themselves) might speedily finish us. The prospect was not absolutely inviting, but after the matter was talked over, and General Gardner, especially, consulted (as he had most experience in heavy artillery), we felt more easy. General Thompson, who had fought that way a good deal, said that "a man's chance to be struck by lightning was better than to be hit by a siege gun." This consoled me very little, for I had all my life been nervously afraid of lightning. However, we at last settled it unanimously that, while we would perhaps be badly frightened by the large bombs, there was little likelihood of many being hurt, and, at any rate, the risk was very slight compared with the brilliant hope of its resulting in exchange.
After we got fairly to sea, very little thought was wasted on other matters. The captain of the vessel, said that there was "no sea on," or some such gibberish, and talked as if we were becalmed, at the very time that his tipsy old boat was bobbing about like a green rider on a trotting horse. It is a matter of indifference, what sort of metal encased the hearts of those who first tempted the fury of the seas, but they must have had stomachs lined with mahogany. It is difficult to believe men, when they unblushingly declare that they go to sea for pleasure. There has been a great deal of pretentious declamation about the poetry and beauty of the ocean.
Some people go off into raptures about a "vast expanse" of dirty salt water, which must, in the nature of things, be associated in every one's mind with sick stomachs and lost dinners. The same people get so tired of their interminable view of poetry, that they will nearly crowd each other overboard, to get sight of a stray flying fish, or porpoise, or the back fin of a shark sticking out of the water. This trip to Hilton Head came near taking the poetry out of General Thompson.
Ten of us were lodged in a cabin on the upper deck, where we did very well, except that for one half of the time we were too sick to eat any thing, and for the other half we were rolling and tumbling about in such a manner that we could think of nothing but keeping off of the cabin's roof. The others were stowed away "amidships," or in some other place, down stairs, and as all the ports and air-holes were shut up, when the steamer began to wallow about, they were nearly smothered, and their nausea was greatly increased. They were compelled to bear it, for they could not force their way on deck and they had nothing with which to scuttle the ship. One western officer declared to me afterward, that he seriously thought, at one time, that he had thrown up his boot heels.
When we reached Hilton Head, we were transferred to the brig "Dragoon" (a small vessel lying in the harbor), and she was then anchored under the guns of the frigate Wabash. Here we remained five weeks. The weather was intensely hot. During the day we were allowed to go on deck, in reliefs of twenty-five each, and stay alternate hours, but at night we were forced to remain below decks. A large stove (in full blast until after nightfall), at one end of the hold in which we were confined, did not make the temperature any more agreeable. The ports were kept shut up, for fear that some of the party would jump out and swim eight miles to the South Carolina shore. As there were fifty soldiers guarding us and three ship's boats (full of men), moored to the vessel, there was little reason to apprehend any thing of the kind.
The sharks would have been sufficient to have deterred any of us from attempting to escape in that way. There was a difference of opinion regarding their appetite for human flesh, but no man was willing to personally experiment in the matter. A constant negotiation was going on during these five weeks, between the authorities at Hilton Head and Charleston, which seemed once or twice on the point of being broken off, but fortunately managed each time to survive.
We were never taken to Morris' Island, although our chances for that situation, seemed more than once, extremely good. Subsequently a party of six hundred Confederate officers were taken there, and quartered where they would have the full benefit of the batteries. None, however, were injured by the shells, but three fourths of them were reduced to a condition (almost as bad as death), by scurvy and other diseases, brought about by exposure and bad food. At last, on the 1st of August, it was authoritatively announced that we were to be taken on the next day to Charleston to be exchanged. Only those who have themselves been prisoners, can understand what our feelings then were – when the hope that had become as necessary to our lives as the breath we drew, was at length about to be realized. That night there was little sleep among the fifty – but they passed it in alternate raptures of congratulation at their good luck, or shivering apprehension lest, after all, something might occur to prevent it.
But when the next day came and we were all transferred to a steamer, and her head was turned for Charleston, we began to master all doubts and fears. We reached Charleston harbor very early on the morning of the 3rd, lay at anchor for two or three hours, and then steamed slowly in toward the city, until we passed the last monitor, and halted again. In a short time, a small boat came out from Charleston, with the fifty Federal prisoners on board and officers of General Jones' staff, authorized to conclude the exchange. When she came alongside, the final arrangements were effected, but not until a mooted point had threatened to break off the negotiation altogether. Happily for us, we knew nothing of this difficulty until it was all over, but we were made very nervous by the delay. When all the details were settled, we were transferred to the Confederate boat, and the Federal officers were brought on board of the steamer which we left; then touching hats to the crew we parted from, we bade our captivity farewell.
Twelve months of imprisonment, of absence from all we loved, was over at last. No man of that party could describe his feelings intelligibly – a faint recollection of circumstances is all that can be recalled in such a tumult of joy. As we passed down the bay, the gallant defenders of those works around Charleston, the names of which have become immortal, stood upon the parapets and cheered to us, and we answered like men who were hailing for life. The huge guns, which lay like so many grim watch dogs around the city, thundered a welcome, the people of the heroic city crowded to the wharves to receive us. If anything could repay us for the wretchedness of long imprisonment and our forced separation from families and friends, we found it in the unalloyed happiness of that day.
General Jones had then (and has now), the profound gratitude of fifty of his comrades. Ever doing his duty bravely and unflinchingly, he had, now, ransomed from the enemy, men who would have consented to undergo any ordeal for that boon. The citizens of Charleston hastened to offer us the traditional hospitality of their city. General Jones had informed them of the names of our party, and they had settled among themselves where each man was to be taken care of. If that party of "ransomed sinners" shall ever become "praying members" the Charlestonians will have a large share in their petitions.
But the recollection of our gallant comrades left behind would intrude itself and make us sad, ever in the midst of our good fortune. Some of them were not released until the summer after the close of the war.
No men deserve more praise for constancy than the Confederate prisoners, especially the private soldiers, who in the trials to which they were subjected steadfastly resisted every inducement to violate the faith they had pledged to the cause.
A statistical item may not come amiss, in concluding this chapter. There were, in all during the war, 261,000 Northern prisoners in Southern prisons, and 200,00 °Confederate prisoners in Northern prisons; 22,576 Northern prisoners died, and 22,535 Confederate prisoners died; or two Federals died out of every twenty-three, and two Confederates died out of every fifteen.